[source, article, BioWare Blog post]

On Game Mess Mornings just now, Jeff Grubb and another host/guest had the following to say about the recent BioWare layoffs and the future of Dragon Age & Mass Effect [transcript of relevant quotes]:

(During their conversation, they mentioned this article from VentureBeat and read out quotes from the recent BioWare blog post)

Grubb: "So this is about one fifth of their staff, and this is not related to the movement of SW:TOR to that new studio that's outside of EA, this is completely unrelated to that. This is directly affecting all the games that people might be concerned about with the future of BioWare."

Grubb: "They said they are looking to provide opportunities for all of these employees to apply for other jobs that are open at other EA studios, although they expect that not everyone will land on their feet within EA - they could go, they're probably gonna have to go elsewhere, not everyone is gonna be able to get a job within EA."

Host/Guest: "Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is going to, now, especially, be a lot of work, with these layoffs. I thought the 'corpo' tech word I hated the most [in the blog post] was 'disrupt', [but] I think my new word that [I hate] whenever I see it in announcements like this is 'agile'". Grubb: "Because 'agile' never means, the people at the top need to be thinking more quickly or need to take a pay cut or need to come up with ideas of their own. It always means, we need to pay fewer people less money. It's always an excuse to make these job cuts." Host/Guest: "I feel like, excuse my naivety, but like, hey, if I'm at the top, and I'm already making millions, I'm like, alright, cool, I'll take a pay cut so these other people below me that I've maybe built a relationship with, have maybe seen on a day to day basis, if not like, at least online, exchanged emails with online, been in a Zoom call with, seen faces - maybe so they don't have to effing lose their jobs and then I am overworking and burning bridges with my current existing employees that are staying." Grubb: "You could tell, how what all of what you just said, that is encompassed in that word 'agile'. Works backwards from, 'we are now in a relationship with an outside firm that is unionized, and that means they are gonna, make demands upon us, and that will ruin our agility. Boy, we need to be agile, and working with unions means we can't be agile'. And it's like, that's not exactly what it means, it's just the kind of thing you get grumpy about having to listen to what other people might need to make the job work to them and you don't ever wanna consider that you are only worried about your bottom line. And everyone sees through this, everyone listening to this show knows that, we know that, they know that, it is this song and dance they put on, and here we are."

Grubb: "Obviously the people losing their jobs is front and foremost the thing that people are concerned about here. Other people also are worried about, hey, what does this mean for the games that BioWare was working on? They commented on that [in the blogpost]." I did a little bit of looking into this, to see kind've, what's the status, because in the past on this show, on Grubb Snacks [another show or podcast], we've talked about Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. People are very thirsty for information coming out of BioWare. For a while there it was like, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf could have come out this year. In fact, internally at one point, the date that they were looking at was next month, September 2023. But internally, Dreadwolf keeps getting pushed back. They moved the internal expectations to March 2024 a while ago. March 2024 is pretty soon right? Well guess what, it's not coming out then either, they pushed it back again. It is not coming out until Summer 2024 at the earliest at this point. And this is not them talking publicly, this is just from my reporting, so, y'know, if it moves again, don't be surprised in any way because it's, I think it's very likely it moves back even further. I expect this game probably to launch by the end of next year, but [wincing], like, why launch at the end of next year when you can get out before the end of fiscal in March 2025? This thing could keep moving [further back]. Right now though, again, summer 2024 is what they're looking at at the earliest."

Grubb: "How are they gonna do that with fewer people? Well, guess what? They're bringing people in from the Mass Effect team. The Mass Effect team is being drained a little bit so that more people can come work on Dreadwolf, and that naturally means the next Mass Effect is getting pushed further down the line as well. So don't expect that any time soon. Most people weren't, but push it back even further in your heads, because the next Mass Effect is definitely being affected by this, it's gonna come out later."

Grubb: "Now about the 'why??' of all this. I think most people can figure out like, you know, BioWare's had a string of not-hits, at the very least, and some of them were kind've, bad pumpkins, rotten pumpkins - you open it up and look inside and no-one wanted to deal with this. So, like, okay, that's one thing. That's been true for a long time, so why's it happened suddenly? There's been some changes. For one, Apex Legends is on the decline. They've talked about this publicly a little bit. They had high expectations for the latest season of Apex Legends, and then they told investors that they were too aggressive and too optimistic with those expectations, and then internally they are now looking at it like, Apex Legends is on the decline, we do not necessarily expect it to reach the heights it once was at, and we're kinda looking at a long-term end-of-life for that game. Not like it's suddenly gonna go away, but not that it's gonna be this driver of growth for EA. It probably isn't going to be and they're no longer looking at that. So that's got them tightening their belts a little bit. Then there's the change to EA's corporate structure, this is another major thing that's kind've causing people to look at BioWare a little bit more, you know, with a little bit more skepticism. And that is, there used to be 'EA', and it was everything, and now there's 'EA Entertainment', and 'EA Sports', and these things are operating separately. There was a time when FIFA Ultimate Team and Madden Ultimate Team, that money was covering everybody. And now, when they look at the books, the FIFA/Madden Ultimate Team money is over there, and BioWare is over here with all these other studios. Apex Legends was in there, but Apex Legends - no longer covering everybody either. So it's like, okay, we're looking at BioWare, they're not bringing in a lot of money, and we're spending a lot of money. So what do we do in there, and that leads to them cutting jobs. And now it's, okay, they're gonna try to put out Dreadwolf, does that turn things around? That's the hope, but right now they're operating on the expectations that, or the reality that, the studio is costing money, its costs have racked up over the last several years, last four, five years especially, the costs have been racked up without a lot of big game releases, other than Mass Effect Legendary Edition. So they're trying to cut somewhere, and here we are."

Host/Guest: "These folks that [didn't get laid off] are going to have to crunch for what might be like one and a half years [on Dreadwolf], right?" Grubb: "Yeah".  Host/Guest: "Who knows, even after it comes out, if it's going to be in a good state, or an instance where a publisher is like, we just need to get this out the door." Grubb: "I mean that happened to Mass Effect: Andromeda, it happened with Anthem." Host/Guest: "I wanna say, unionize." Grubb: "Right." Guest: "But it seems like the publishers, straight from the top, will be like, yeah, we don't wanna work with you." Grubb: "Yeah. 'You unionize, and we'll walk away'. I think internally, if you unionized at a publisher, maybe you have a little bit more protection from that sort of thing happening, but not necessarily. You could just as easily find yourself in a situation where the studio finds a creative way to not have to deal with a union." Host/Guest: "Lets eliminate yachts." Grubb: "Yep. Man, super yachts? Whenever, I'm like, man..."

Grubb: "The writing was on the wall here, back when the split happened with EA, and them becoming EA Sports and EA Entertainment. Andrew Wilson said, 'We're doing this restructuring to empower our studio leaders with more creative ownership and financial accountability.' It was right there, they said it, right? 'Each studio is gonna have to be accountable for itself and its own money'." Host/Guest: "What about, 'the people at the top have the financial accountability?'" Grubb: "Yeah, and it's... whenever, 'financial accountability' to them always looks like, it's not finished, who cares, put the game out. Like that's what they think accountability looks like." Host/Guest: "Once this game launches, and if it does poorly, who are they gonna blame? They aren't gonna blame the people at the top, they're going to blame these individual studio leaders who they have 'empowered with their creative ownership'." Grubb: "Exactly. And I've seen responses to that, to this, because Mike Gamble is in charge of the next Mass Effect. He was one of the leaders on Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda. And so people are like, now I'm not excited for the next Mass Effect. And it's like, I don't really think it was his fault. It was clearly the leadership above him pushing those games out before they were ready." Host/Guest: "Makes you wanna shake people." Grubb: "Find someone in an alley..."

Grubb: "So, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, maybe next year. Next Mass Effect, after that. EA has had some success with its singleplayer games recently. Dead Space did pretty well, I think both the Star Wars Jedi games did very well. They started working on Star Wars Jedi, the third one, immediately after the second one, because they were like - that was the thing, if Jedi Survivor does well, then we'll do a third one. And they immediately started working on it because everyone internally was like, this did well. But if you look at EA as a whole, like, their financials do look a little bit grim, and it all goes back to Apex Legends over-stating, that, and the fact that for years now Battlefield has been lost in the woods. And so Apex Legends was already covering, it was like, we're gonna make money for ourselves, and we're gonna cover the missing money from Battlefield. They had already done the creative accounting there. 'Creative accounting' might sound illegal, it wasn't illegal, they were just like, leaving out Battlefield when they were talking to investors, and being like, look how good Apex Legends is doing, and saying don't look at the man behind the curtain which was Battlefield just floundering. So that worked, that worked for a while, and now it's, and now they have to - Apex Legends is covering for every freaking thing here, and it's like, it no longer is, it's on the decline, so that, live-service games continue to be a meal ticket and it kind of continues to be a little bit of an albatross, where, as goes these one or two big games these publishers have, so goes everything, and then the studios at the bottom - you know, BioWare, studio at the bottom of EA now, it feels like, you know, 250 employees, it's kind've relatively smaller, it's gonna pay the price, and here we are."

Grubb: "I know from covering this stuff how many people are so, so passionate about everything BioWare, and it feels like, you know, that's why the studio continues to be around it seems like, but um. I dunno, coming out of this, I can only imagine this team, morale is gonna take a big hit, and what does that do to the future of those games?"

[source]

𝓋𝒾𝒷𝓇𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓉 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑜 𝒷𝑒𝒾𝓃𝑔

𝓂𝒶𝓃𝒾𝒻𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝓁𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝑔𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓉 𝓇𝑒𝓈𝓅𝑒𝒸𝓉

Dalish Tattoos

Mike Laidlaw turned his override key, allowing me to put these up. 

what do you mean the kirkwall crew wasn't in absolution???

So.. I know we’re all drooling over Absolution right now, because ohh was that delicious!! But. Guys. Literally all week long I kept thinking about what this reminded me of…..

Like.. I could’ve sworn I’ve seen this before…….

…somewhere…

….this image…

…..this pose…

…..and it just dawned on me….

That’s… that’s a coincidence.. right?

We’re not.. we’re not gonna read anything into this, right?

Okay, so due to a number of great responses to this post, I kinda feel the need to clarify (and granted, I think I did a poor job at implying that I was joking and putting additional thoughts into tags 😅), I DO NOT think this is in any way coincidental, nor that we shouldn’t read anything into this, because that’s exactly what we should do here actually and also definitely BioWare’s intention. 😂 In fact, I don’t think there has ever been anything coincidental about DA’s visual language, but I digress. lol

As people have perfectly pointed out in the comments here, and it should be absolutely clear to anyone who’s paid a little attention by now that, yes, Solas and the Inquisitor are meant to be narrative foils. Just like these visuals mirror each other, so does the entire theme of Inquisition mirror Solas’ story of becoming the Dread Wolf. Just a person who happened to save people and in doing so, is forced to become a symbol to worship. The Inquisitor’s story is history in the making written by the Chantry’s narrative, just like Solas’ story was written by the Evanuris’ narrative, only that in *his* case, everything ended in tragedy, it happened centuries ago and now, this is all history remembers. His story has long been forgotten and completely reshaped over the ages. And now, history recalls himself as nothing but a deceitful monster.

“They call me the Dread Wolf, what will they call you when this is over?”

“Every great war has its heroes. I’m just curious what kind you’ll be.”

Take any of these lines from Trespasser:

“Ordinary guy saves people. Accidentally founds religion.” (- Varric when hearing about Fen'Harel’s story)

“Worship makes you more. He just wanted to help.” (- Cole)

“You also know the burden of a title that all but replaces your name.” (- Solas to the Inquisitor)

Take the entirety of the “The Dawn Will Come” scene and Solas’ reaction to it, how he instantly recognizes what’s happening, people starting to sing canticles and kneel before you and it’s in this very moment that Solas looks at the Inquisitor and knows “You’re gonna be what I was”.

Take the essential reason for why Solas paints the frescoes in the rotunda in the first place.

Take this whole conversation.

Take the parallels between Solas’ situation and what the Inquisitor experiences during “In Hushed Whispers”.

Take this post.

The very fact that DA4 is now even titled “Dreadwolf”, which in a way, is a direct response to the previous title “Inquisition”. Inquisitor and Dread Wolf. They are two sides of the same coin.

And it’s not just Inquisition, it’s a theme that’s conveyed throughout the entire series.

It’s not only the way how practically every codex entry or historical record in the entire series is written from someone’s personal point of view or multiple sources, it’s also Varric’s retelling of Hawke’s story to Cassandra, it’s everything about Ameridan’s story, Solas’ comment on the vastly different recollections of the events at Ostagar in the Fade depending on who’s memories you look at. It’s everywhere. It’s all the “unreliable narrators” and different perspectives. In the end, the question always stands, who to believe? What is the truth?

And while we’re at it, there’s something else I’d like to point out.

Because if we take all of this and especially that one quote of Varric “Ordinary guy saves people. Accidentally founds religion.” and the well-known lines “He did not want a body, but she asked him to come. He left a scar when he burned her off his face.” even further and take another look at *any* of the ancient elves or the sentinels in Mythal’s temple…

…I think the fact that, if you were to put Mythal’s vallaslin on Solas’ face, put him in that same armor, in that same crowd and he would blend in like a chameleon is also NOT a coincidence. He doesn’t just look similar to them, he looks just like them. Regardless of whether he was one of Mythal’s favorites or something, he WAS one of the People before he “became” Fen’Harel. That one “ordinary guy” in a million who, just like the Inquisitor, just happened to become that symbol when he saved his people and they started to worship him, even though he tried anything he could to prevent that.

The question is though, is there anything we can read into this beyond all that?

The Inquisitor saved the world by closing the rifts with the mark (and defeating Corypheus) as it’s depicted on the cover. In Tevinter Nights, Solas claims that whatever he’s going to do will “save this world”. If the entire world is sooner or later inevitably going to be consumed by the Blight or red lyrium or whatever and it’s proven that the Veil is getting weaker and *will* eventually come down at some point, no matter what… Who’s even able to tell anymore who the real “hero” or “villain” of this story actually is?

[source]

Claudia Black, VA of Morrigan, advising she is not in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. [source]

“In another World” New personal painting. Dragon Age related of course because I need to nourish my soul between all the commercial work.

Dragon Age 4 title reveal [source]

Jeff Grub GiantBomb Twitch livestream DA4 info transcript, for those who missed it:

Source: Jeff Grubb / GiantBomb on Twitch

DRAGON AGE 4 TITLE REVEAL [source]

Singleplayer Dragon Age 4 has returned from the war

[source, article] 

I love Zevran very.. very much

also just gonna casually plug my zevmancing warden origins fic

Character Headcanon: Poor Master Dennet

You know, I always feel a little sorry for Master Dennet. The Inquisitor is like, hey, I need a horse expert! Here is a horse expert! And he comes along to be your horse expert.

And for a while all is well. He brings his own fine horses, and the Inquisitor adds to the stable as she finds new breeding stock—often excellent. Where she got the charger from, he doesn’t know, and he feels too honored by having it in his care to ask.

And then the Inquisitor starts coming back with like… deer. And Dennet scratches his head, because he knows horses, and just because it has four hooves and you can put a saddle on it doesn’t make it a horse. Hell, the food and space and exercise requirements for a cob and a draft horse aren’t the same—a goddamn deer is presumably completely different. But he goes around Skyhold rounding up Dalish elves until he finds one who knew something about halla, on the principle that that’s probably the closest thing, and they work it out. (He’s always respected the way Dalish treat their halla, so it’s not that big of a leap. And even though Dalish—the Charger—doesn’t know anything much about how to raise halla, he looks the other way when she wants to spend half a day in the deer’s box stall being all affectionate at it. Can’t hurt.)

But deer of various kinds are at least still… well… grass-eating hoofed animals. Things don’t begin to really go sideways until they bring back the first dracolisk.

It’s a lizard. It’s a giant meat-eating lizard. Dennet is a master of horse, and he will stretch that to deer in a pinch, but asking him to figure out the care and feeding of big spiky lizard things is a bit much. It is—he tries to explain, first to Cullen and then to Josephine and finally to the Inquisitor herself—as if someone had decided that because you knew how to knead bread, you were obviously a master pugilist, because both things involved punching things. For his trouble he got a friendly clap on the shoulder and a “Just do your best! We can free up some funds to hire you more help!” (help from where? was he to hang up fliers somewhere for dracolisk handlers? where exactly was one supposed to go for that?).

(We will not even discuss the zombie horse with a sword through its head. We will not. The zombie horse got a stall to itself and was studiously ignored, on the principle that it was dead, and not much Dennet did could either help or hurt it.)

Dennet knew that he was in over his head and then some when the Inquisitor showed up with a charming grin and a giant fucking nug, and all he thought was, “Better see if any dwarves know what to feed it.” (Dagna does, but he’s a little afraid because she keeps having these ideas for ‘experimental feed,’ and….)

At least his life is never boring.

Poor Master Dennet

Loving you is a losing game

“I am yours” A comic about Zevran and my Warden Tabris

I’ll give a cookie to anyone who can find the typo in there.