Anthem was puzzling from the start. Why would BioWare, a studio built almost exclusively on popular single-player RPGs like "Baldur's Gate," "Neverwinter Nights," "KOTOR," "Mass Effect," "Dragon Age," and let's not forget "Jade Empire," suddenly, jumped into a multiplayer-focused loot shooter" was strange, and if the result wasn't inevitable, at least it wasn't entirely surprising: we called it "deeply flawed and frequently frustrating" in 55% of our reviews, and just two years after its 2019 launch years later, BioWare pulled the plug and officially stopped future development.

There's an old adage that you learn more from your failures than your successes, and that may be one upside to Anthem's bombast: in a new feature in Edge magazine about BioWare's next game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, creative director John Eppler says that his experience with "Anthem" taught the studio some tough but important lessons.

"We've always been a studio built on digging deep into storytelling and role-playing, and we worked on the Anthem project for a year and a half," Eppler said. But at the end of the day, we were making a game that focused on something we weren't necessarily good at: storytelling.

"The biggest lesson for me and for the team was to know what you are good at and double down on it. Don't overextend yourself. Don't try to do a lot of things you don't have expertise in. A lot of people on this team came here to make a story-driven, single-player RPG."

The appeal of a game like "Anthem" is when it succeeds - which is relatively rare - the long-term monetization that single player RPGs do not provide. But there is real ambition in these self-contained games. Larian's huge success with "Baldur's Gate 3" is (ironically) the best proof of this; BioWare experimented with a live service element early on with "The Veilguard," but eventually dropped it in favor of a more traditional approach.

"Early on, we tried a lot of different ideas," said BioWare. But the form that The Veiled Guard took is, in many ways, the form we always strived for. We just tried different ways to get there. There was a moment when I really calmed down and said, "This is a single-player, story-driven RPG, and that's all it needs to be.

Epler's words echo those of game director Corinne Busche, who said in June that BioWare aims to make The Veilguard "the most complete single-player game possible," with no microtransactions or online requirements This coincides with the words of the game's director, Corinne Busche. I'm not a big fan of Dragon Age (and I can't help but believe that Dragon Age is a much better game than Dreadwolf): as the famous ranger Minsk said, "If you're an adventurer, be an adventurer!" That's what I mean.

"Dragon Age: The Veilguard" has no release date yet, but is expected later this year. It will probably coincide with the 10th anniversary of Dragon Age: Inquisition, which was released on November 18, 2014.