idyllic_optimism

DA2 has a solid story and very well written companions. I can understand it is too different from the first game for the fans of DA:O. Full disclosure; I didn't know there was a prior game and DA2 was my entry to the franchise and I love it to pieces.After playing DA:O, it made Hawke's story even more meaningful to me, since Hawke was one of many refugees who just did everything in their power to keep their family alive and well. We played through seven years of that struggle. It's a pretty special game to me.

Veilguard marked a new low in every game aspect of a DA game, so I now consider DA2 a masterpiece, considering it was developed in just 2 years. After the empty world of DA:I, I've come to realize, I'll take reused assets with well written stories and characters any day.

DA:I companions were well written mostly, but there were so many of them and I guess I have a bandwidth of how many companions I'll care about in a game and that's not many (cue Iron Bull betrayal because I forgot to complete his companion quests)

I think the title of the article is misleading a bit. According to the article, the game has been in development since 2018 and they've been having issues they cannot seem to be able to fix to their satisfaction and it sounds like it's more viable for the studio to abandon the project than try to fix it by throwing more money and time at it. And it's a console game, so that limits their market, too.To me, reading the article, "narrative driven games don't sell anymore" is not the main problem.

It was very telling EA announced almost right after the launch that they won't release any DLC's and they're moving the team to ME5 already. If that was not the sign EA left DA:V for dead, I don't know what was.

If the leaks to be trusted, they expected to sell 10 million copies but now they're talking about they maybe can sell 3 million copies for the lifetime of the game.

Veilguard is far from success, and it's because it's the worst-written DA game to date. And that is on EA. They had every chance to make it a good game (as the art book they published shows just what a good story it was shaping up to be before EA forced them to start over for a live service version) but they chose to waste everyone's time for 10 years by changing their mind mid development multiple times, firing the veteran team members right in the middle of development....

What doesn't sell are the games that don't have a well written story or well-written characters. Or the games that their developers themselves don't have any passion or interest in, games just made to please shareholders.... Or games that get preachy on issues without proper care...