BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out today. Based on early reviews and deep dives into the game’s visuals, the consensus is that the studio “is back” after a couple of misfires – the live-service Anthem and the messy Mass Effect Andromeda.
The official teaser art for Mass Effect 5, image credit: BioWare/EA.
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That said, the response to Dragon Age: The Veilguard has not been uniformly positive. When the first gameplay footage debuted, many fans were shocked by the dramatic shift in the series’ visual tone. Gone was the realism and over-the-top Game of Thrones-style violence of the first Dragon Age game, and in its place, a more ‘cartoony,’ vibrant, stylized, and almost Pixar-like world. It is a deliberate design choice and one that many have also praised.
Outside of future updates and any potential expansion, BioWare’s next major release will be a new game in the beloved Mass Effect franchise. It will pick up the story after the climactic conclusion of Mass Effect 3 and continue the story of Commander Shepard and the N7 crew. To quash any rumors that the next Mass Effect will change the look and feel of the franchise for a more stylized approach, the game’s director, Michael Gamble, posted the following statement to social media.
“Mass Effect is Mass Effect. How you bring a Sci-Fi RPG to life is different than other genres or IPs and has to have different kinds of love,” Michael Gamble wrote. “Mass Effect will maintain the mature tone of the original trilogy. This is all I’m going to say for now.”
Michael Gamble is a BioWare veteran who has been with the studio for over a decade. He began his career there working on the iconic Mass Effect 2 before moving on to Mass Effect 3. He is currently leading development on Mass Effect 5.