Bioware has confirmed that it did consider adding multiplayer to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but ultimately decided to stick to its proven strengths.
This information appeared in a new interview with Game Informer . Gary Mackay, general manager of Bioware, confirmed that the developers experimented with many ideas during the pre-production stage.
At one point it was multiplayer – we seriously considered multiplayer, but we felt like we couldn’t move away from our roots.
When we asked ourselves, “What kind of game do we want to make?” we really wanted to get back to our roots – that’s compelling storytelling, unforgettable characters, and the ability to impact the world. We felt like multiplayer wasn’t going to allow us to do that. A single-player RPG is what we really wanted to focus our time on.
This corroborates a 2021 Bloomberg report that Veilguard initially had a strong focus on multiplayer, which was then dropped. The report cited the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the failure of Anthem as factors in convincing publisher EA that sticking with single-player was the best route.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is scheduled for release later this year for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X. No exact date has been announced, but it’s expected to be out in November.