This is HUGE. 😱
Dragon Age: The Veilguard just hit a groundbreaking milestone that no game has ever achieved before. And it’s leaving fans in awe. Could this be the start of a new era in gaming? 🤯
What does this mean for the future of RPGs? 🏆
👉 Want to know what makes this so historic? Click here to find out!
Dragon Age: The Veilguard just won an award. Well, not quite. After all the controversy, layoffs, and missed expectations, there is a small bright spot for the game today. The game’s official companion podcast, Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance, has won the Best Audio/Podcast award at the Tribeca Festival.
While the game itself fell short of both sales targets and fan expectations, this podcast has found the recognition and praise of critics. It’s a first not only for the Dragon Age franchise but for the video game industry as a whole. But it really would’ve been so much sweeter if the game weren’t as bad as it is.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s podcast won an award, but does it really matter now?
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The eight-episode Vows & Vengeance podcast was designed to introduce fans to the Veilguard’s new roster of characters ahead of the game’s release. The podcast game’s writing team didn’t directly work on it, but it did get assistance from John Epler, The Veilguard’s former creative director, who has since moved to EA’s Full Circle Studio.
So even though it wasn’t written by BioWare’s narrative team, it landed one of the year’s top awards in audio storytelling. The Best Audio/Podcast award at the Tribeca Festival is a big one to get. It’s a notable moment not just for the Dragon Age franchise, but for video game storytelling in general.
Unfortunately, the podcast’s victory is in sharp contrast to the performance of The Veilguard itself. Released in late 2024 after a decade of development hell, the game only got 1.5 million players within its first two months. And we say only because it was only half of EA’s internal targets.
And even despite its respectable critic scores (with an OpenCritic average of 80), it was labeled a commercial failure. The unfortunate reality of this is that it triggered mass layoffs within BioWare and ended a development cycle that had already seen a multitude of issues.
There were so many problems behind the scenes at BioWare
It’s a miracle the game even came out after what we’ve heard. | Image Credit: BioWare
We’ve already hinted at all the issues, but let’s touch upon them here. A recent report confirmed what we had all suspected. A big game like that with so much at stake couldn’t have failed this horribly without something going on behind the scenes. And there was.
Initially intended as a multiplayer live-service game, the game went through multiple internal reboots before it finally settled into being a single-player RPG. The report also says that there were issues between the Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams, as leadership conflicts and resource prioritization led to mistrust and inefficiencies.
In the end, it’s really no surprise that Dragon Age: The Veilguard wasn’t a success in most aspects. With all that going on behind the scenes, the flaws were big. But that doesn’t mean we hate BioWare. As the studio now works on Mass Effect 5, we can only hope that the same thing doesn’t happen to it.
Did you try our Dragon Age: The Veilguard? Have you listened to the Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance podcast? Let us know in the comments!
