Former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah has posted a sprawling video about the development of Anthem, EA and BioWare’s ill-fated mech RPG shoot-me-do. We’ve heard about this remarkably torrid period in the RPG developer’s existence from other ex-BioWare honchos and anonymous sources, but perhaps never quite this extensively: the video tops out at an hour long, and this is just part one.
There’s a bit of gossip and speculation from Darrah, but it’s an engrossing listen, assuming you’re not absolutely sick of the tale of how EA’s GaaSy ambitions screwed up BioWare. Here are some highlights based on a quick skimplay.
Darrah begins with the completion of Mass Effect 3, at which point EA were apparently really hammering home the “single player games are dead” angle, and trying to get BioWare onto live service gaming. It was at this point that Mass Effect 3 game director Casey Hudson pitched Dylan, the early codename for Anthem. EA higher-ups apparently loved the talk of a new approach to multiplayer storytelling, but the Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams were, Darrah continues, less than thrilled by the Dylan team’s suggestion that BioWare had to move with the times.
Darrah himself is ambivalent about Dylan’s initial pitch, calling it vague. This vagueness created problems in 2014 when Hudson left the studio, with nobody else quite sure what the game was supposed to be. According to Darrah, too much time was spent at this stage defining the game against the likes of Borderlands and Destiny.
In 2016, there were arguments that Dragon Age 4’s development team should be reassigned to the Dylan project. Other spats include a fiery response to a particular demo from Patrick Soderlund, CEO of Battlefield developers DICE, and negative feedback from EA to a perceived reduction in the number of Anthem exosuits, or Javelins, based on some WIP figures.
As for the name, there was a push to call it Javelins, but EA preferred “Beyond”, only to discover that Sony already had a trademark for this. Darrah notes humorously in passing that the original Dragon Age didn’t even have dragons when it was given that name.
The video brings us up to approximately late 2017, when Darrah himself became involved with Anthem. Look out for the second part down the line. Thanks to Resetera for passing this on.
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