Dragon Age: The Veilguard isn't out for a couple days yet, but the reviews are here and so far, so good: We scored it 79% in our review, "a genuinely enjoyable, gorgeous action-RPG that lacks the storytelling nuance of previous Dragon Age games," and it holds an even more impressive 84 aggregate score on Metacritic.
Speaking in today's quarterly investors call, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson attributed that positive critical response to what he sees as a genuine return to form for BioWare following the less-than-stellar response to the studio's online shooter Anthem.
Wilson remembers Anthem in a rather more favorable light than I do, saying reviews at the time "heralded the world as being incredibly rich and wonderful and high fidelity, and traversing that world being great, and some of the characters being super interesting." And yes, fair deal, we said the game world was "ridiculous pretty" and that flying through it was "sublime" in our otherwise pretty down 55% review.
But, he acknowledged, "the pieces of the puzzle just didn't quite come together in a way that I think BioWare had hoped," because developers were trying to do so many things that were outside of the studio's usual experience. With Dragon Age: The Veilguard, BioWare is "really returning to BioWare type games, really returning to BioWare's strength."
"What's happened subsequently since Anthem is the BioWare team has really rallied around what made BioWare a fan favorite studio and a fan favorite brand, and the types of games they make: incredibly rich worlds, incredibly nuanced characters, really powerful and compelling stories with camaraderie and friendship and relationships and decisions that matter in the context of gameplay," Wilson said.
"I think it's really been that return to what made BioWare great, and giving the studio time to really deliver against what makes BioWare great in the context of the Dragon Age world, is what amounts to a game like Dragon Age: The Veilguard."
What that amounts to, despite Wilson's enthusiasm, is of course an open question for now. Critical praise is great (although I can't help but note that Wilson's comments stand in sharp contrast to associate editor Lauren Morton's take in her review that characters and story are Veilguard's "weakest elements") but, as we've seen numerous times in the past, it's the sales that matter. Whether the positive response The Veilguard has been enjoying thus far translates into a commercial hit remains to be seen.
