Following the cancellation of Anthem Next, EA allegedly decided to remove all planned multiplayer content from Dragon Age 4.
As Bloomberg reports, EA considers Dragon Age 4 to be crucial to BioWare’s success after the studio’s two most recent games, Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda, received lukewarm reactions from both critics and gamers.
On Wednesday, EA pulled the plug for all future development of Anthem Next, which was originally planned to be a major overhaul that would rekindle interest in the game. In addition to the cancellation, BioWare noted that it “should focus our efforts as a studio, and strengthen the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect titles”, as well as Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Andrew’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, and other key executives apparently compared the critical success and sales success of single-player Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to Anthem’s flop when they decided to shift focus and Dragon Age 4 a strict single player to make RPG.
Back in 2019, BioWare developers told Kotaku that Dragon Age 4 could include Anthem-like ‘live service’ components, adding that these elements would not be at the core of the experience.
“The idea was that Anthem would be the online game and that Dragon Age and Mass Effect, although they can experiment with online parts, is not what they define as franchises,” said one developer. “I do not think you will see us change those franchises completely.”
In today’s report, Bloomberg’s sources described Dragon Age 4 as a “heavy multiplayer component” before EA decided to return to the single player experience for which BioWare became famous through the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. We contacted EA to find out more about this, and will update our reporting when we hear it.
We contacted EA for comment, and we’ll update this article when we hear it.
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