Former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, who left BioWare in December 2020 but returned last year as a consultant on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. says today's big games are often announced prematurely, leading to the illusion that they're in development for exorbitant lengths of time.
Talking on his 'Mark Darrah on Games' podcast (timestamped here), Darrah spent some length of time explaining why it feels like AAA games take way longer to make than before. He argued that, in some big-name cases at least, they're simply being announced long before development really begins in earnest because most major studios are only equipped to fully develop one project at a time. He used Bethesda games and The Elder Scrolls 6, specifically, as examples, but he implied it's an issue not limited to any one game studio.
