Dragon Age Should Have Kept Its PC Identity, Mass Effect Andromeda Was Better Off MP Only, Says Ex BioWare GM

wccftech.com:

Former BioWare General Manager Aaryn Flynn wrote an intriguing retrospective piece in the latest EDGE magazine about his 17-year-long tenure at the Canadian developer, revealing interesting tidbits about franchises like Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

With regards to the fantasy IP, Flynn said Dragon Age: Origins was a bit stuck between its Neverwinter Nights roots (it shared the Eclipse Engine, too) and the new wave of RPGs like Bethesda's Oblivion. While the first game ended up shipping with the toolset, that didn't happen with the following two installments, and now Flynn wishes Dragon Age had stuck to its PC, modding-focused roots rather than chasing the cinematic vibe of Mass Effect.

Dragon Age, in the early days, had its fair share of identity crises. Was it going to be a tools-driven, modding-driven game like Neverwinter Nights? Was it going to be a big single player RPG like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? It went back and forth and ping-ponged and tried different things. All because tastes were changing and ideas were changing in the industry, and so we wanted to respond as best we could. Dragon Age: Origins on PC shipped with the toolset, so we did do that. I wish we’d kept that up and stuck to that. Unfortunately we got, I’d say, a little too homogenous between Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I wish we would have kept more of a PC-centric, Neverwinter-like identity for Dragon Age and let Mass Effect really be the cinematic storytelling masterpiece that it is.

Flynn also shared an interesting take on Mass Effect Andromeda. BioWare ended up having too much stuff on its plate, whereas he believes a smaller and multiplayer-focused Andromeda might have been a better option rather than the jack-of-all-trades game that came