BioWare is in a bit of upheaval as of late.
The developer has seen a string of failures in recent years that have made many long for the days of Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic, Jade Empire, and the Mass Effect Trilogy.
It was announced last week that the company’s general manager, Casey Hudson, who served as a creative head for several large projects over a cumulative 20 year career with the developer was “retiring.” Along with him, Mark Darrah, the executive producer of the Dragon Age series, also announced that he was leaving.
From the outside, this appears to be an amicable split, though it’s still somewhat interesting to note that a general manager is retiring in the midst of several large projects with no replacement announced. On top of that, an executive producer is retiring in the middle of his game’s development.
Whether the split was amicable or not, we will probably never know. But many were curious as to how this might impact a number of major projects, chief of which is the upcoming reboot of Anthem, a failed multiplayer game that BioWare really put a lot of the company behind.
Christian Dailey was reshuffled to take Darrah’s place as executive producer on Dragon Age 4. This created a number of questions, as he was previously working on live Anthem content before becoming the head of BioWare Austin.
His job in Austin was overseeing the Anthem overhaul.
So now you have the head of the studio and the person in charge of Dragon Age both “resigning” at the same time. The person who was in charge of rebooting Anthem has been moved over to overseeing Dragon Age, and no one has been named as a new general manager.
It feels like Anthem is kind of the odd one out here, with Dragon Age 4, a re-release of the original Mass Effect trilogy called the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and a new as of yet unnamed Mass Effect game taking the center spotlight.
However, Dailey sent out a tweet last week to let everyone know that Anthem is still moving forward.
Thank you all for the love and enthusiasm you've shared with me re: Anthem. Wishing my friends @caseyDHudson and @bioMarkDarrah the very best. Big shoes to fill as I join the DA team. Tough decision but made easier because of the talented Anthem leadership and team in place. 🐉🤖
— Christian Dailey (@ChristianDailey) December 3, 2020
“Big shoes to fill as I join the DA team,” he said in the tweet. “Tough decision but made easier because of the talented Anthem leadership and team in place.”
Clearly, Dailey believes that the Anthem relaunch is still in good hands, and many believe that a lot of the work on this project is already done.
So, while BioWare continues to try and right the ship in the wake of these departures, it seems as though the reboot of Anthem 2.0 is still on track.
