341: BioWare Drama Farming And Game Pass Sour Grapes

This week we talk about a new article talking about BioWare’s Dragon Age The Veilguard development, Herman Hulst thinks Marathon will do well, studio founder is mad about Game Pass, Xbox’s handheld may be cancelled, Playstation is doubling down on hardware and much more. Click this link for my socials, all of my other content and ways to support: https://linktr.ee/baundiesel

00:00:00 | Intro

00:00:25 | Opening

00:07:19 | News

00:59:07 | Updates

00:59:51 | Wrap Up

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is the Bonfire Gaming Podcast episode 341.
I'm your host Morgan, AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about Dragon Age the Vale Guard development info
Playstation's host confident about Marathon developer trashes
Game Pass deal that they signed up for and much more.

(00:25):
So I just returned from a week'svacation.
We actually went down to Clearwater Beach, FL.
It was a good time, it was fun. We take a a week every summer to
go somewhere. We have a young daughter.
My wife is a teacher so she, youknow, get summers off with her
set up and I have a lot of flexibility with my schedule and

(00:48):
things like that. So it, it was a ton of fun.
We, we had a blast. It was perfect weather while we
were down there. We stayed in a really nice
hotel, spent a lot of time on the beach, spent a lot of time
eating some really, really good food.
I don't think we had a single bad meal.
We had a couple meals that were like fine, but we we had was

(01:11):
like little Anthony's pizza downthere was super, super good that
there. There's just there's a handful
of places. The worst experience we had was
the first night because our flight was two hours late.
Our daughter was exhausted and we should not have tried to go
out to eat with her. I should have went, just grabbed
food and brought it back. But the food that we grabbed and

(01:33):
we waited forever for that kind of sucked.
Ended up being really, really, really good.
It just took forever to get, butit was fine.
We recovered pretty quickly thatnight and had a good time.
One thing that was interesting, and it always is when we do
these trips, is it means that I spend a week not entirely

(01:55):
disconnected from the gaming conversation and stuff like
that, but definitely less connected.
I we often go around the same time as all of the showcases
with Summer Game Fest and Xbox Showcase and so on and so forth.
So it, it's always interesting for me because, you know, I

(02:19):
spend 90 to 95% less time payingattention to that stuff.
So when I do, it's always very shocking.
And it reminds me of, well, if Iwas at home and I saw this
article or this tweet or this video, my reaction would be this
or that to make my own video, tomake a sassy post or, or

(02:40):
whatever. And it's not to say I didn't do
that while on vacation, but I also had many moments of having
that first instinct to see something and, and be like, Oh,
come on. And then to just not care
because I'm sitting on a beach with a drink in my hand and I've

(03:02):
got my family with me. We're just hanging out.
And it, it just put things into perspective a bit.
And it does every year. And I really appreciate those
trips for that. It's not to say I don't enjoy
giving my commentary on things so a few dozen people can can
hear what I think about stuff, but I I've definitely,

(03:25):
especially as I've been getting older, started to realize that
it's good to take information init maybe better to not worry so
much about responding to people to definitely.
I mean, I, I gave up years ago trying to convince anyone of

(03:45):
anything. I think even if you're listening
to this podcast, I'm not here totell you what to think.
I'm not here to honestly even influence you.
I'm just here to tell you what I'm seeing from other people to
do the best I can to give a, youknow, relatively balanced take
on, on things I'm seeing around and to, to give my take.

(04:10):
Maybe that can be informative. Maybe it can be, you know, a, a
way of giving you a take you wouldn't have heard otherwise or
something like that. I don't know.
But I've definitely, you know, taken the time on these trips to
take a step back, see what people are saying, maybe take it
in, but maybe not always feel like I have to respond, even

(04:33):
though my post history may not indicate that.
More than anything, it's just become a thing where I'm pretty
disheartened or disenchanted or I don't really know what the
right word is with really takinganyone else's take seriously.
It feels like most of the regular quote UN quote regular

(04:56):
people that you see posting on social media are basically just
parroting things they've heard from other people.
Those other people are often influencers and content
creators. And honestly, I would,
unfortunately, even though most quote, UN quote games journalist
into this, where they're just kind of saying the thing that
will get the most clicks, get them the most notoriety, get the

(05:19):
crowd to cheer. Because you know, we can't talk
about how one platform is doing stuff really bad, but the other
one's always doing bad, even if it doesn't appear to actually be
doing bad. It's just so many influencers
and stuff are so predictable at this point for me.
I feel like we can see a game that's coming out or some

(05:42):
announcement from a platform or something.
And I can you, you can name me like 5 content creators or
influencers or journalists and Icould give you their takes on
that stuff without even reading a single word from them.
And then they give their take and it's exactly what you
expected. It's just, it's almost every
time and being that predictable.And, you know, maybe it's

(06:05):
consistency, but my issue is that it's often predictable in
the sense of it's always going to be depending on what platform
is being talked about or, you know, what game or what
publisher or whatever, you know,based on the, the, the
individual or the group that you're thinking about.

(06:25):
It's to me, it's just seems pretty easy to be like, Oh yeah,
so and so is going to think thatso and so is going to say this.
And, and that just becomes kind of boring it when, when you,
when you consume content and youalready feel like you know
what's going to be said. I guess it just kind of ruins it
a little bit, especially becausethe predictability comes from

(06:50):
outlets being afraid to offend acertain publisher or platform or
outlets trying to stoke, you know, sensational stories about
certain platforms or, or, or whatever.
So the time away is really nice.I'm happy to be back.
I'm happy to be recording another episode of the podcast.

(07:10):
We have a lot to talk about today and I would like to get
into it. So let's do that.
OK, Getting into the gaming news, on the last episode I
covered all of the showcases. PlayStation Summer Game Fest and
Xbox talked about all of that. I, I'm not aware that any huge

(07:33):
things broke over the last week since those shows happened.
There was some maybe sort of thekind of leaks that maybe we, we
might have pricing for the Xbox hardware.
And then there's also rumors, which we'll get to in a little
bit about their first party hardware.
But what I want to open up with is is a topic that I'm actually

(07:54):
going to make a video about separate from this, where I'll
spend a little more time or be alittle more focused on it.
Of a Jason Schreyer of Bloombergwrote a had a big write up about
depending on the title you saw. I, I swear it changed multiple
times about the tumultuous development story of Dragon Age,

(08:15):
the Vale guard and how that's impacted EA, BioWare and the
upcoming Mass Effect game. So I'm, I'm not going to sit
here and read the whole article.I'm not even going to summarize
every point, mostly because there wasn't, as far as I can
tell and I could be proven wrong, there was nothing new in
this whole article. Now to a lot of people, a lot of

(08:37):
the info probably was new. I, I don't think everyone is as
focused on BioWare or EA or the Dragon Age team or the Mass
Effect team like someone like I am or other content creators who
kind of focus on, on, on this part of the gaming sphere,
right. But none of this info was new.

(08:58):
I will say that some of the infothat we got seems like it was
maybe from a different angle from different people in the
company. But you know, if you follow the
BioWare devs or former BioWare devs, if you've paid attention
to the articles, if you've just watched what's been happening.
I, I didn't think any of this was new.
And it was kind of strange to methat it was presented as like

(09:20):
this hard hitting takedown of what happened.
I I especially thought it was pretty pretty low quality and
kind of uninteresting for considering Jason Schreyer's
history. He is someone who, while I can't
stand him as an individual, I will give him credit that I I

(09:44):
would argue he's basically the only real games journalist, but
it is annoying that you know he's human.
And it definitely seems like there's a few subjects or
publishers or studios or games that he just can't be objective
with and often decides to throw his own opinions in.
So some points in the article that were made talking about how

(10:08):
by where it was given a short time to actually complete the
game after EA approved them removing the multiplayer
element. This comes from a long history
with Dragon Age of the Vale guard for roughly almost, you
know, about 10 years almost where they essentially rebooted
the game that became Vale Guard multiple times.

(10:29):
And, and I'm under the impression from this article and
from other things that we've heard that that final reboot
really only happened a few yearsago.
And you know, the, the developers, BioWare people there
were trying to tell EA like, hey, if if you don't want us to
make this a multiplayer game, which we've been working on for
years now, we need to like kind of start from scratch.

(10:52):
And basically it sounds like they weren't allowed to do that
or they weren't given the time to do it.
And they had to kind of try to, you know, reconfigure this
multiplayer game into the game that we eventually played as
Dragon Age, the Vale Guard. I will say from my own
experience, you can definitely tell there's things in the game.
There's places in the game that were obviously supposed to be

(11:14):
like a multiplayer hub, the justthe home base in the Vale, the
the castle or whatever that you unlock parts of and all that.
That pretty obviously seems likeit was supposed to be a shared
player space and like a multiplayer game.
It still works in the single player game, but things like
that, you know, you can definitely tell that that seems

(11:34):
legit. One of the more interesting
parts that we knew, but maybe wedidn't know as much detail is
that the team working on pre production for Mass Effect, the
next game was brought over like entirely and, and, and probably
the the closest thing we can seethe new information is that they
came over and basically took over development of Dragon Age.

(11:57):
There is a long history between what used to be two separate
teams of BioWare that was a Dragon Age team and a Mass
Effect team. There was also the Star Wars MMO
team, but they were kind of separate down in Austin.
But this Dragon Age Mass Effect,there was always been a rivalry.
It sounds like, you know, we've read about this in the past, but
this kind of reinforced that. And it sounds like basically

(12:22):
there was a lot of tension wherea lot of the Dragon Age
developers, like the leads and the people, like the directors
and stuff like that kind of got squeezed out and the Mass Effect
team basically took over. And that was reinforced by
BioWare and EA. That also seems like it resulted
in some of the tone issues. If you played the game, it takes

(12:46):
itself very seriously at times. It definitely doesn't and
others. And there's also it's presumed
that the final act of the game, which is very reminiscent of
Mass Effect 2 Suicide mission. It's definitely seems like there
was a lot of Mass Effect influence on the final act of
Vaillguard because it's for all intents and purposes another

(13:08):
suicide mission based on choicesand things that you decide to do
before the final act and during you know you can lose companions
and that that influence is pretty obvious from the Mass
Effect team during feedback. I believe it was pre alpha

(13:29):
playthroughs where they had the game playable from start to
finish and they were sending outto various people in EA various
on various teams and things likethat.
There's a lot of feedback that the kind of juvenile tone and
unserious tone would cause a lotof issues, a lot of concern in
that Mass Effect team. It sounds like put in a lot of,

(13:51):
you know, rewrites and, and, andthings like that.
Now, the problem was is that this was during the writers
strike toward the end of development or the the voice
actor strike, which is still technically ongoing.
We'll talk about that in a little bit.
So they weren't able to just straight up rerecord most of the
lines. Therefore they had the kind of
rejigger what they had. And this is what seems to be the

(14:14):
blame, at least partially, for the very kind of strange and
inconsistent tone that happens throughout the game, which is
something I've noted as well as a lot of other people.
It seems like, and we've seen this from the investor calls and
stuff like that, that EA was happy with the reviews and
reception of Vailguard, but theywere not happy with the sales

(14:34):
them being about half of what they were hoping for, which was
already kind of a low number, itseems like.
I still, and I didn't like this part of Shire's article where he
kind of Pooh poohed the FC-25 failure.
We've seen evidence since then that, you know, Valgard was
never expected to really make much money, if any really.

(14:54):
And I've been saying that for years, that I am under the
impression it just seems like EAwas just trying to get this game
out and so that they can move onto other stuff with BioWare and
and so on. In that the FC-25 revenue
failure was like a huge deal. Especially when you remember
that at least at one time FIFA or FC was like 50 plus percent

(15:18):
of EA's revenue. So if you know, even if say,
Vaalgar only sold 1/2 of what they expected, that impact on EA
is literal pennies compared to if FC-25 came in 5% under what
they were hoping for. And I still feel like that

(15:38):
conversation isn't really happening.
And I felt like Shire's article and when he talked about it
really kind of swept that under the rug of FC-25 was
significantly the bigger failurehere.
And Vale guard, I think, and to this day I still believe was
used as kind of a scapegoat. But you know, maybe I'm wrong.

(16:00):
And then it kind of wrapped up talking about how BioWare has
dozens of devs working on Mass Effect currently as it continues
in pre production. So here.
So here's my takes on on the article and some of the things I
saw it. This felt like a low effort hit
piece in my opinion by Schreyer.And he's done this before with

(16:23):
like the anthem and drama the times.
And there was like news to put out about that he brought out of
a lot of revelations during thattime that kind of explained what
happened with Andromeda and Anthem and stuff like that.
This isn't that, you know, maybeit's just a different time or,
or or whatever. Maybe it's just my own personal
knowledge, but the things in this article, you could have

(16:45):
found basically all this information for months at this
point and he just compiled it now.
Maybe that's the point, I don't know, but so many just the way
that he worded things, it was very obviously meant to make
this seem as bad as possible where someone who's paid
attention to this stuff really closely for years.

(17:06):
At this point. I just I have a different take
on it. We'll get into that.
I thought the the best the the capping the capping this article
off at the end with this industry and analyst saying, Oh,
I wouldn't be surprised if by orshuts down any day.
Like just some guy at some analyst firm and, and and sure,
I'm sure those things have value, but this was so it was so

(17:30):
transparent, at least to me, of like him just wanting to put
that final dagger in and twist it at the end of the article.
I thought it was extremely cheesy and lame and just really
beneath him. I I I may or may not have said
something to that effect on social media and one and and he

(17:50):
blocked me, which is fine. He's like one of the Shire is a
very good journalist most of thetime, but that man cannot take
anyone disagreeing with him. One of my favorite examples of
that was back in the day of he he put out an article at one
point. I think it was during the drama.
The anthem time of like the MassEffect may be shuttered forever.

(18:12):
And this was not long before Mass Effect will continue was
announced, right? And so many people, especially
in the Mass Effect subreddit, I assume we're calling we're,
we're, we're talking about beingclickbait and all of that, that
he literally made a Reddit post in the, in the subreddit
basically chastising people for claiming he was putting out

(18:33):
clickbait, which to me is just like, oh, so you, you know, it's
clickbait. But maybe that's just my take on
it. This dude doesn't handle
criticism well. He doesn't handle any kind of
pushback well. If you've ever seen interviews
with him and stuff like that, I mean, it's he's earned his
place. He's earned his voice,
obviously, and I don't need to say that, but he is like the

(18:56):
most pretentious person in game.You know, coverage and, and, and
it shows and, and, and examples like this I think are are are
are good ones. The point at where they, even
the people at the top of the game, you still need to be
somewhat skeptical about becausethey, they, they may not be
doing things completely legitimately.

(19:18):
It it, it was really interestinghow the, the, the, just the,
the, the whole putting all this together, the, the, the Vale
guard developers, the people whoworked on that game, especially
the frontline people. It really seems like they tried
to make their best game. I, I truly believe that, and I
think they mostly succeeded. There's definitely the the

(19:41):
writing isn't great all the time.
A lot of it kind of sucks. A few of the characters to me
were pretty unbearable and it wasn't for weird gooner issues,
it was just because I just like one of the characters Tosh.
A lot of people hate this character because they're non
binary. The way it's presented in the

(20:03):
game is pretty obnoxious. It it's just not very it feel.
It felt so forced and fake. I don't care that her character
was non binary, that was perfectly fine with me.
No, no problems at all. I, I genuinely could not care
less about that. I thought it was cool that they
tried. The problem is that the
execution was really bad. And it didn't help that no

(20:27):
matter what, you know, identification Tosh had as a
character, they're writing and just the lines they had were so
awful and so unbearable. It was they they wrote them like
like they were like a 12 year old and it just they were just
grading and it had nothing to dowith the subject.

(20:49):
It was literally just the the lines that were written.
And and that's a bummer because the game, like I said, the final
act is incredible. Technically, it's I would argue
that the Vale guards one of the best games made in a couple of
decades. I experienced no bugs, no major
crashes or issues like that. I can't remember any big

(21:12):
instances of any quests being bugged or anything like that.
The wrong model showing up, seeing the T pose in the
background. I had none of those issues.
It performed really really well on console.
I just, I, I, I think even if someone didn't like the game,
the content of the game, I stillthink it's a huge bummer that it

(21:34):
didn't get more credit for just being well made, for not having
microtransactions in it, for nothaving, you know, DLC that was
day one and all this stuff. They, they literally made the
game that people have been asking for for years.
It's just unfortunately for a lot of people, the actual
content didn't live up. There's also this kind of weird

(21:55):
situation where I'm someone who doesn't really like Dragon Age.
I've never played Origins or Dragon Age 2.
I did not like see, I just, I don't know, man.
It was, the whole thing was really interesting about the
leadership issues. It sounds like there was a lot

(22:16):
of criticism that maybe the original Dragon Age team that
was leading things wasn't doing a very good job, that there was
issues, especially with the narrative.
And that this is hard for me because I've like interacted
with some of these people. They've been super nice, super
thankful for my, you know, excitement about the game and

(22:39):
stuff like that. And I don't believe anyone wakes
up and goes to work and says I'mgoing to do a bad job today.
Like, I just think that maybe people aren't properly
experienced, maybe people aren'tproperly in the right spot for

(23:00):
positions and things like that. And maybe sometimes people kind
of like the smells of their own farts too much.
And I, I think it was, it's really interesting and
especially amongst their community and, and some of the
people who are no longer there. It, it was really interesting
seeing a lot of reaction to thisstuff of, of like taking no
ownership for me, where the, theblame is always all EA bad and

(23:26):
EA is bad. Andrew Wilson sucks.
EA does a bunch of stuff that sucks.
Like I'm I'm not here to defend EAII assure you, But I will also
say that I've seen a lot of belly aching and a lot of people
who we're in charge of stuff andyou know, sure they didn't have

(23:47):
enough time or enough resources or enough budget or whatever.
And that's what happens with every game almost unless like
except like Grand Theft Auto andRed Dead, like every other game
never has enough time or money, right.
And it seems like in the writingbeing a big one, like I'm newer
to this BioWare fandom, specifically Mass Effect.

(24:10):
And for me, I saw over these last few years when these like
veteran writers are being let goand stuff like that, people who
are, you know, like fan favorites because they wrote
some of their favorite characters and and so on.
You know, these people would be let go or they would quit and
leave or whatever. And there would be this, you
know, like the complete meltdownby a lot of fans and stuff.

(24:31):
And, and to me, as someone newer, all I could think about
was like, well, like, you know, arguably the worst part of their
most recent game was the thing they did.
And it was not great. It was extremely inconsistent.
And I've seen very little, you know, discussion of them being
like, yeah, maybe we could have done this or done that.

(24:52):
I've just basically seen blamingof everyone else.
And that, I don't know, it's just kind of rubbed me the wrong
way. I'm never going to be happy
about someone losing their job or having to find a new one or
whatever. But there is a point where if
you don't do a good job, that nomatter you know how well you've
done over the last 20 years, that you know, maybe your

(25:14):
services aren't wanted anymore by that place if it's not
working anymore. I really, and I've harped on
this before, but man, this, thisShire article really pissed me
off when I saw of course our favorite BioWare commentator,
David Gator or whatever his nameis, who literally hasn't been

(25:37):
there for like 20 years or something.
Or 10 years. He's had his own studio for
years at this point, which who knows what games they're making.
Apparently they've released one and they're about to release 1.
So if you ever wonder why Gator pops up all the time, he knows
the best way for him to probablyadvertise his new game is to
talk about BioWare. It's just every time this guy

(25:58):
talks, it's just moaning and groaning about how EA, you know,
preferred the Mass Effect team over he's the one of the main
writers for Dragon Age through its entire franchise until he
left. It's just always whining about
how EA always preferred the MassEffect team and this and that.
Oh, Dragon Age sold more copies?Well, look in the Metacritic

(26:22):
scores. And for a long time, that's what
mattered You, you won't find many Dragon Age titles in
Biowares, you know, top 10 or top 20.
It's it's almost all Mass Effectproperties.
So, you know, maybe that's maybethere's a thing there.
But he was quoted in this article, you know, I'm pretty
sure he was just speculating about how, you know, the Dragon

(26:45):
Age team wasn't getting any support from EA.
Then when the Mass Effect team came over and basically took the
reins of development of the Valeguard over that, they got
everything they wanted. Which contradicts the other
things that were in this articleabout how they didn't get enough
time after the final review of the game.
Again, it's messy. I, I just, I, I, I think this

(27:06):
was a very low tier article fromsomeone who we, we assume
typically sources and explains their, their articles really
well. I just, for me, I, I do think
it's just kind of tough because I, I just feel like there's been
very little ownership taken overthe things that were bad.

(27:26):
And the problem is, is that, youknow, I've seen, unfortunately,
a lot of people doing it who were involved or in the
community of being like, well, all of the, all of the weirdos
destroyed the conversation around Vaileguard.
The the people being weird aboutTosh being non binary, the
people being weird about, you know, gay romances or lesbian
romances or, or this or that thing, You know, this culture

(27:49):
war stuff that was awful around this game.
Don't get me wrong, it was really annoying and terrible.
It's not why the game failed, atleast from EA's perspective.
That stuff doesn't help. But I also think that we really,
especially us like, really connected people into the gaming

(28:09):
sphere who probably pay too muchattention to this stuff.
I don't think that we realize just how little broad impact
these people have The the God, Ieven saw some people in the Mass
Effect community or in the BioWare community being like,

(28:30):
you know, IGN has no relevance and people like Asman Gold do.
It's like, come on, man. Like the normies still care
about IGN. And just because there's a vocal
minority and it's and it's I'm not by minority, I don't mean a
small number. There's obviously, unfortunately
a lot of people who watch asthmagold and all these other losers

(28:53):
and pay attention to them, but they they don't speak for the
general gamer. And, and like it or not, a
website like IGN does more so than than say one of those kind
of, you know, right wing kind ofgrifter influencers, even though

(29:14):
it may not feel like it just because of, you know, the
atmosphere that we're typically in.
I, I don't think that grums or Asman gold is why Dragon Age the
Vale guard failed. I think it failed because it's
been a decade since the last game had come out.
It had been, it had all these issues that we've discussed with

(29:35):
writing and tone and I've seen Isaw someone complain about the
combat. I love the combat.
I think that was great. I feel like it could have
evolved a bit more as the game wore on, but I definitely don't
understand that being a criticism.
But that's neither here nor there.
I I think it failed because theykind of, I thought the marketing
was there was a lot of marketing.

(29:55):
I definitely don't think the Game Informer situation helped
where Game Informer shut down inthe middle of what seemed to be
their biggest campaign for the game.
I, I just, I, I just don't thinkit connected and, and more than
anything, I think the lack of fanservice for like old school
Dragon Age fans was a bigger hitthan even I thought it was going

(30:16):
to be. I, I was very much of the
opinion, Oh no, they need to target like new players like me.
Essentially, they need to targetpeople who aren't just Dragon
Age fans because it's been a decade since the last game.
A lot of gamers today never played the old Dragon Age games.
Maybe Inquisition, but probably not and I think they did a good

(30:37):
job of that. I felt targeted and I enjoyed
the Valeguard a ton, but it and it seems like there, there are
plenty of Dragon Age fans who like the game, but most of the
ones I interact with, and it seems like a lot of the more
hardcore ones, it seems like it didn't do a great job of making
them feel like they were playingthe next game and a series that

(31:00):
was beloved to them. It seemed like to a lot of them,
they just kind of made another game that happened to be a
Dragon Age game and that just wasn't all that enticing to a
lot of existing players or new players.
And that's when we see a game that is very technically sound
not end up being very financially successful.

(31:21):
And that's a bummer because there's a lot of things that the
Valeguard did that we should hope more games do in the
future. And a game like that, you know,
on paper failing, you know, for lack of a better term, makes
that fight to get some of those good, you know, consumer
friendly choices. And future games.

(31:43):
With the Mass Effect team, it seems like in a lot of ways they
kind of saved the Vale Guard from being a straight up maybe
kind of bad game to be in the game that I think in general
people felt like was pretty goodif not the best.
It was interesting some of this article talking about how some

(32:05):
big decisions that were made during the Vale Guard between
leadership. Those meetings just straight up
didn't include Dragon Age leadership.
It was just between people at EAand BioWare and Mass Effect from
that team, which I found to be kind of interesting.
Who knows how true all of that is or to what degree it was
happening. It does kind of seem like EA

(32:27):
slash BioWare basically dispatched the Mass Effect team
to come, quote UN quote fix the Vail Guard for, for however much
it could. We also know they were only
there during the last, you know,about year of development.
So it's not like they were therefor three or four years.
They were there for 18 months Max.

(32:48):
I, I just, it's been interestingfor me to see people just
instantly being like, oh, EA bador whatever, instead of
acknowledging like, oh, maybe, you know, maybe after almost 10
years, you know, or, or eight ornine years or whatever.
Maybe the way things were going that Dragon Age weren't great.
I mean, I, I, just, for me, mostof the stuff that we're seeing,

(33:14):
it just seems like the result ofa, of a studio in evolution,
right? That the moves made by EA, the
moves made by BioWare seem like they're going from a studio that
used to make 5-6 games at a timeand down to two or three to a

(33:34):
studio that makes one game at a time.
That's going to be, you know, all the corpos speak more agile
and more flexible or whatever they said during all these
different layoffs. And, and I think that's OK.
I don't think the the the day the the Insomniacs, the
Oblivions, or or the Obsidians are are are not normal nowadays,

(33:59):
especially not under third partyownership.
We likely aren't going to see a ton of studios making two or
three games at a time anymore, and I think we're seeing BioWare
become a studio that's going to work on one game at a time.
And there's a pretty solid chance that at least currently,

(34:20):
Dragon Age is probably a dead franchise.
And that sucks. It shouldn't be for those fans,
but it kind of seems like realistically that might be the
situation. I, I, I don't blame the fans for
being mad about that and being bitter, but it really is
frustrating to see fans and honestly even some big

(34:40):
influencers being, for lack of abetter term, kind of brain dead
about this stuff. Not not even considering why
this stuff would be happening for reasons, right?
Not even giving a moment to consider that, you know, we
don't like EAI think we all agree on that.

(35:01):
Andrew Wilson blows, right? But when you look at these
situations, if you look at them purely emotionally and reaction
wise, then you're not going to be, you're never going to have
like a good take on this stuff. And I'm not even saying I have a
good take on these things. But I do think that whether you
like it or not, you have to lookat these things as the the, the

(35:23):
meanderings of a giant corporation led by people who
are focused on making money. And that that's what kind of
sucks about games, right? Gaming is one of the art forms
where the people who make the money and the creatives are
closer than maybe any other industry, and that means that
the pain is felt by them more directly.

(35:44):
And we see we've been seeing that for years for the the
entirety of gaming history, but especially recently.
I I just think that is a lot of the takes are funny when people
are just like I saw someone I think was on threads be like
this article really sours me on EA like 1.
If this is what turned you against EA, then you have not

(36:06):
been paying attention on anything.
Like you have not paid attentionto anything ever that EA has
done because of all the things they've done.
Them seeing giving almost, you know, 10 years of development
and seemingly eternal patience with this game before it came
out, while they almost certainlyknew it wasn't going to do well,

(36:28):
that isn't a bad thing, or at least not for it shouldn't be
from a gamer's perspective. Them not just shutting down
BioWare or shutting down this project like this Dragon Age
project probably should have been shut down multiple reboots
before it even came out, but they didn't.
They kept trying to make it happen.
Whether it was sunk cost or whether it was passion for the

(36:51):
series, I don't know. It's probably sunk cost, but
we've seen them shut down other stuff.
If you pay attention to Respawn lately, they've cancel half the
games they were working on, right?
So they could have just canceledDragon Age.
They could have just shut BioWare down at any time in the
last decade, and they haven't. Instead, they're evolving the
studio. They let this Dragon Age game

(37:12):
come out even though it didn't seem like there was ever any
hope it was going to be like a big seller or anything, even
though I still think it's a pretty solid game and they're
seemingly continuing to see how they can make this work and to
put out another game in one of their legendary franchises with
Mass Effect. I, I, I just, I don't know,

(37:34):
like, like, I'm not asking people to be fans of EA.
It's perfectly fine to hate EA Everyone should, honestly.
But you got to have a little nuance.
You got to have some thought. You got to use your brain.
And you can't just be purely reactionary, purely emotional
about this stuff. You have to look at it and
realize the fact that they're even trying to make another Mass

(37:55):
Effect happen is honestly insane.
I, I will say it seems like they're doing a bunch of stuff
to try to make the next Mass Effect not have the same issues
that they've seemingly are in the middle of a pretty big
campaign to get Mass Effect backin the brain, back in the minds
of people. There is an Amazon show that's,

(38:15):
you know, in process of being made right now.
We have the legendary edition came out.
They they allow time and money to be spent to pretty lightly
remaster the original trilogy. And that for all intents and
purposes, seems to have sold extremely well.
It got people like me involved in the the community, like it

(38:36):
got me in and I've been making content about Mass Effect ever
since, right. So it worked, at least for me.
I mean, even now, just, you knowthis, you know, in the last 24
hours that I'm talking about this Battlefield 2042 is getting
like DLC for Mass Effect. I wouldn't be surprised if we
see Mass Effect characters in Fortnite here in the next year

(38:59):
or two. What I see this as, and people
are going to, I saw people are complaining, oh, they're wasting
time making this Battlefield stuff instead of working on Mass
Effect. I assure you, while it seems
like BioWare was involved in that, in that cosmetic deal,
likely just on a consulting basis, that no one, I, I, I

(39:20):
suspect no one at BioWare was making models for for
Battlefield. That was almost certainly one of
the support teams that's been working on Battlefield 2042 for
a long time. Maybe Bio Ware gave him some
concept art or something, who knows, But I, I, I see this as a
pretty long term effort by EA and BioWare to get Mass Effect

(39:43):
back in the minds of people. So when they start ramping up,
you know, development updates, when they start ramping up a
marketing campaign for the next game, people will remember that
the game exists, right? And even David Gator, the the
ultimate Dragon Age defender, has acknowledged, and I believe
even other people have as well, that even though Mass Effect has

(40:04):
sold less technically than the the Dragon Age games, by the
way, that was almost completely carried by Inquisition, which
was just released at that very good time for them.
I digress. It it it's.
Mass Effect has the mind share and that they seem to be trying
to work on that now, long beforewe'll see anything from the

(40:31):
actual game, which for all intents and purposes might be
another like five years away. I have no idea at this point,
but we'll have to wait and see. I'm really hoping that it's
2025. We get a pretty substantial in
seven day from BioWare. In theory, they will have been
working on the game again for roughly a year, if not a bit

(40:51):
more. Certainly they would have at
least a bunch of concept stuff, you know, maybe some vertical
slices, things like that to to give us for a big N7 day,
especially when we got essentially nothing last year.
So we'll have to wait and see, but I I enjoy this conversation

(41:12):
because I think it's a good deepdive into game development.
It's just also very frustrating to me because I feel like the
conversations around it are honestly pretty weak.
But hopefully they get better. Herman Holstel PlayStation is
confident that Marathon will perform better than Concorde.
I don't know how it could go worse.
Like, I don't know how it could go worse than spending like $400

(41:35):
million on a studio and game andthen shutting it down after a
week, but I digress. This comes from, you know, them
feeling like they're, they're learning from their life service
failures. I mean, they, they obviously
aren't like it's such a hilarious thing for them to, to
say or get into or like the, the, the thing, you know what we

(41:57):
saw from Marathon this goofy, what's this other game that
they've been working on? I forget, what's that?
The the studio that Jade Raymondfounded and now has left that's
working on payday or something like that.
No, that's a whole different series.
Whatever it is, it just seems like they're just going down the

(42:18):
same path. So I, I don't really know like
what they're doing. If I have to be totally honest,
I, I have no clue. It, it doesn't seem like they
know either. And we keep seeing it like we
had with the PlayStation showcase last week, like they
have ghosts of Yotai coming out.That's going to sell really
well. It's going to review really
well. People are going to love it.
They have a third party exclusive and Death Stranding 2

(42:40):
coming soon. It, it, it's going to get the,
the fart smelling 99 out of 10 that it didn't get in the first
game. But you know, the things are
different now. The the the fart smelling has
commenced and in that game, no matter how good or bad it is, is
going to get a nine out of 10 from people like they have these
games that are coming out but wedon't have a clue what like half

(43:02):
of PlayStation studios are doing.
We know Naughty Dog is working on Intergalactic, who knows
about Santa Monica, who knows about this other Naughty Dog
project that they're supposedly working on, who knows about, you
know, all of these, you know, even Insomniac, we know that

(43:23):
they were working on Wolverine and that a bunch of stuff got
leaked from that few years ago. And we've kind of heard nothing
since. You know, they have all these
studios, a gorilla. We we have no idea what they're
working on. Another Horizon game or, or
something different. We don't know.
And it seems like, and I would argue pretty heavily that what
we don't know why we don't know is because they had each of

(43:47):
these studios waste a bunch of time and resources on live
service games that I believe have all been cancelled at this
point. I I don't like, it's so strange.
It's just, it's weird. It's weird.
I've I talked about almost everyweek, so I won't harp on it too
much here, but I, I just, I don't know, like is Marathon
going to be more successful in Concord?
Yes, without any doubt in my mind, because it's being made by

(44:09):
Bungie. And whether we like it or not,
you know, whether the hive mind,you know, really focused gamer
brains, believe it or not, Bungie still has a good name
with a lot of gamers. There's still a lot of people
who love Destiny, and Marathon will have at least limited
success purely because it's a bungee game.
And a bunch of PlayStation gamers are going to hype it up

(44:31):
and a bunch of Bungie lovers aregoing to hype it up.
Is it going to have sustained success?
I would say almost certainly not.
I would say it's a, almost a guarantee it will not.
And you know, we'll just have tosee how that plays out.
I just, I don't know. It's, it's strange, it's weird.
And, and I think the weirdest part about it, and I think I

(44:52):
talk about this every time is how it's just, it's just getting
completely ignored by all of thebig influencers, the big
podcast, the big journalist. You see barely a peep about this
huge, I would argue drought of first party games coming from
PlayStation, albeit it's hard tocompare them to Xbox anymore

(45:12):
because Xbox has it's like 4 times more studios or something.
Like they are very different publishers at this point.
But still, for a platform that was known for these like heavy
hitter, super big, you know, really impressive first, you
know, first party games. You know, we we had like spider
man 2 a couple years ago, which probably could have been a

(45:33):
PlayStation 4 cross Gen. game. Almost all of the exclusive
games on PlayStation 5 probably could have been cross Gen. games
if they allowed them to be. I understand why they didn't,
but they could have been almost certainly.
I still don't know if we've seena game that definitely couldn't
have been on PS4. Even Astrobot probably could
have been, I assume Death Stranding 2, you know, and maybe

(45:57):
your tie, but probably not will will be games.
I've taken such a big step that they couldn't do it.
But you know, I don't know, it'sjust weird.
I'm glad Herman Holtz thinks that Marathon is going to do
better. But we'll, we'll see, man.
I played Marathon for a bit and it was bad.
Like, it was just not a very funexperience.
It felt completely soulless. Revenge of the Savage Planet

(46:22):
creative director Alex Hutchinson has attacked Game
Pass. Their new game has just come out
and it has garnered lower than expected sales.
And he went to some random game journalist website and did an
interview. And it's really funny because
apparently he's like said thingsalluding to the idea of like our

(46:43):
games can be like the next GrandTheft Auto, like success wise
and stuff. It's like, bro, you are nuts.
I think Grand Theft Auto 5 has sold like 200 million copies or
some crap. Like you are not replicating
that with your little dinky game.
I promise. Now this Revenge of the Savage
Planet, I forget what the first one was called.
It reviewed really well. People really liked it, had a
little controversy around it, but it wasn't too bad.

(47:05):
This situation is so strange. So this game was a day one Game
Pass game and he's basically blaming its low sales on that?
There's a lot of things to know about the situation 1.
Tons of games have come out in game pass day one have still
sold extremely well on PlayStation and Steam and other
platforms. So even if he feels like it's

(47:26):
taken away from Xbox sales, it almost never does with good
games like Expedition 33 and a bunch of other games.
It didn't hurt the sales on other platforms.
It almost certainly hurts them on Xbox for sure.
It's also worth remembering thatnot everyone who has an Xbox has
Game Pass. But regardless, the the the my

(47:48):
biggest annoyance with this is that he's the head of that
studio. He's the leader of the studio.
He and the other people in leadership agreed to the Game
Pass deal. He did not have to put their
game on Game Pass. No one forced them to.
What he did is he signed a deal with Game Pass, agreed to a
number that they probably paid them out, which most of these

(48:08):
devs seem to use it for development cost.
And you know, a big chunk of their development cost was
almost certainly paid for by Xbox for this Game Pass deal.
And now in hindsight, he probably just wishes he will
have asked more because his gameisn't selling because it's
probably just not that. It's kind of a niche game.
The first one reviewed really well, but I don't think it's
sold crazy. And now we're in the second

(48:29):
situation with this new game. We're like, he'll probably sell
OK, but he's like telling peoplelike, no, no game dev should
ever sign a game pass deal for ayear until a year after the game
is out. And it's like, dude, you didn't
have to. You could have taken your own
advice. Like you could have done that.
It's such a strange story and just feels like I do with sour

(48:51):
grapes because he signed a deal with no pressure.
You didn't have to do it. No one has to go on game pass.
You don't have to use game pass to play any game.
You can buy all of them if you want or just buy the ones you
want. Or you can have game pass for a
month and then cancel it. Like no one forces this.
So when I was reading through this and it was so funny.

(49:14):
He was the one who before release even he I saw that he
had quote tweeted shoe shoe. Hey, you, she does article about
how subscriptions are bad. He did that before GamePad
before his game even came out. So it kind of makes me wonder
like, oh, does he know his game's not really going to be
very popular and he's already setting up blaming Xbox and game

(49:35):
pass? I don't know.
I I may or may not have poked the bear a little bit with that
to see if he would bite and I don't know if he did.
I never saw anything, but it's just I just don't.
This is such a strange story because he's he's like
complaining or, or or or kind of, you know, upset that his
game is on Game Pass when he putit on Game pass.

(49:56):
Like no one did that but him. But you know, it's the the these
people like this, you know, you ask him to take accountability
for their own actions and it seems like a lot of them are
incapable of it. Look at the Split Gate 2 studio
owner slash nepo baby Tom Warrenis alleging in his paywall blog

(50:20):
for some reason even though he writes for a games journalist
website. I don't understand that the Xbox
handheld, the first party one, not the Asus one that we just
saw is essentially cancelled andfurther handheld gaming consoles
for Xbox will likely be made by third party hardware vendors.

(50:44):
I'm going to be honest, I don't always take Tom Warren very
seriously. He has a very throw a lot of
stuff at the wall and see what sticks method of games
journalism. So he gets hits on things and
he's right sometimes he is wronga lot of the time.
So kind of take that for what itis.
This also doesn't seem like original reporting.

(51:06):
We just recently heard that theyhad at least kind of delayed or
indefinitely delayed they first party handheld as they focus
more on the OS and the operatingsystem to make Windows 11 or
Windows in general, whatever they call in the future a a
better handheld operating systemto more to match Steam OS, which

(51:27):
people pretty much universally love.
This kind of just seems like an extension of that story to me at
least. And especially because I'm under
the impression that the team that was working on the handheld
is also a part of Microsoft thatwas making the the whatever

(51:47):
their books are called their their their own like tablet
slash laptops. And I think that series is going
away. There's a very good chance that
the team that was making this handheld may just not be around
or may not be around for long ormaybe focused on other things.
So it would kind of make sense if they continue making their
own, you know, desktop consoles,the next Xbox that they would

(52:11):
kind of let other companies makehandheld hardware to use their
software on it. And I wouldn't even be surprised
if one day we maybe even see a third party desktop, you know,
console for Xbox. It doesn't seem all that crazy
to me. President and CEO of Sony states

(52:31):
that they are doubling down on their PlayStation hardware
focused despite others in the industry taking new tactics and
strategies. This isn't all that surprising
it PlayStation very much has a 20 year old strategy when it
comes to how they run PlayStation and it's still
working. You know, even though I was
talking about how they're not putting out games and there's
all this like weird stuff going on with their hardware and how

(52:54):
they're, you know, counting, youknow, monthly active users and
all that stuff. Now they, they, they've still
sold like 80 million PlayStationFives like, so why wouldn't they
keep doing that? Now we know that PlayStation 5,
the OR at least consoles in general aren't these big money
makers, even though, you know, we're under the impression that
they are making some kind of profit on the hardware.

(53:16):
It's never very much and and they make all their money off
selling games on that hardware, which they seemingly sell a lot
of games on their hardware and they have 80 million units out
there. We're also under the impression
now that there's finally more PSFive players than PS4.
Enough people have adopted the five that they are finally, you
know, getting past that. It it there's a reason Call of

(53:38):
Duty was still making last Gen. versions of their games and and
maybe that will slowly start to kind of fall off.
Yeah, this isn't surprising. If anything, it just reinforces
my kind of statement for years now that Nintendo, PlayStation
and Xbox are companies taking completely different routes to
their future. I would argue that Nintendo and

(53:59):
PlayStation are similar in that they're still focusing on
exclusives, They're still focusing on hardware, where Xbox
is focusing on services and, and, and hardware being an
option and things like that, as well as using other platforms to
sell their games. You know, PlayStation is very
much you know, they're they're they're dabbling in the PC

(54:20):
market. They don't seem completely
convinced that they they've kindof dabbled in the streaming and
all that stuff. You know, Nintendo's just doing
the bio switch to and play our games at full price kind of move
and, and, and this just reinforces it.
So I don't expect things to change drastically anytime soon.
And really, it kind of makes logical sense.

(54:41):
Why, why would PlayStation change what they're doing?
They, they're, they're, they're finding success.
Is, are they doing what's going to be popular in the future?
Who knows. But I don't think they care
because their bank account is full of money.
Or at least it should be if theyweren't canceling games and
shutting down studios every month.
But I'm sure they'll get that figured out.

(55:03):
Kind of hitting a rundown here. And Nintendo Switch 2 has sold
3.5 million units in the first four days.
This isn't that surprising at all.
There's more consumers than everfor gaming.
Almost every new launch is goingto have, you know, more sold,
especially if it's a good console.
Switch to appears to be a good console for a lot of people.
So it's sold a lot. I still think though, we'll see

(55:24):
a huge dive. The Switch one was out for so
long and it had so much appeal for so long, sold to 150 million
units or whatever. I don't believe that's going to
happen with this one because I still believe this is basically
a Switch Pro and it just doesn't.
It's not so much better that youhave to get it and I fully

(55:48):
expect that Nintendo and the third party games that come out
for Nintendo for the Switch to we're going to see crossed in
games for a long time. When you have 150 million
customers out there, you continue to sell them software
until you absolutely can't. Now we won't be seeing the third
party games releasing on the Switch one, but I am very, very

(56:09):
willing to bet that we're going to see Switch one games like
first party Nintendo games release for at least a little
bit or some kind of version of it or maybe they can stream them
or something. I have no idea.
But they they will not abandon that customer base because it
makes them way too much money. Mine's eye has come out and it's

(56:32):
the the I've talked about a little bit.
It's just kind of controversial Grand Theft Auto competitor.
At least that's what they what they want it to be.
And it's made in this engine that is kind of, you can kind of
use it yourself. It's just like creative game.
But then they also kind of it's on its own track now and it's
called something different. Long story short, it seems like
it's a hot, buggy mess and that it's like, you know, a lot of

(56:54):
like Cyberpunk 2077 when it cameout, but maybe worse.
I've seen a few people being like, I actually think it's a
lot of fun. But there's also people who will
argue that like Cyberpunk didn'thave any bugs when it came out.
So I, I, I try to take the, the,the, the larger kind of voice on
this and more seriously. And it seems like it's kind of a

(57:15):
hot mess. We'll see what happens with it.
At least it's not complete vaporware, but it seems like
it's kind of close, or at least as close as you can get to it
when you're releasing an actual game.
So we'll see how that plays out.Blubber is has confirmed that
they're working on a Silent HillOne remake.
So after the success of the Silent Hill Two remake, it's not

(57:36):
that surprising at all that they're doing that.
And it seems like they're going to do a really good job because
they did with two. SAG AFTRA, the union that
represents voice actors and gaming, has reached a tentative
deal with, quote UN quote major studios.
It would end a years long strikeand it that strike is currently
suspended. So those people who are part of

(57:56):
that union currently can work with, I believe the Activisions,
the EAS and things like that, which they haven't been able to
for quite a while now. It's been a big deal.
Like I said about the Vale guard, they they weren't able to
do rewrites because those voice actors, for the most part, we're
not allowed to work. So hopefully that gets worked

(58:17):
out and AI doesn't steal all these people's jobs.
And then finally there is a possible Witcher 3 DLC coming.
Yes, the game that came out like10 years ago or whatever it may
be getting DLC in 2026. The idea is that it would likely
be made by a third party studio that was, believe it or not,
founded by former CDPR devs. And there's this idea that it

(58:41):
would be basically kind of what Virtuous is doing for Cyberpunk,
where you would have this third party studio make a DLC and it
would, I have to imagine, be DLCfor Witcher 3 that would
essentially lead into Witcher 4.The switch from Geralt to Siri
as the protagonist. I have to imagine it would have

(59:02):
something to do with that for content updates.
Nothing too big. I'm back from vacation, so I'm
hoping to get back on my Mass Effect 3 play through and
finally get through with that. Getting back to making videos, I
want to do a video just about the Schreyer article and what's
going on with BioWare and Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
I may end up just doing a podcast on the Mass Effect

(59:24):
typecast for that, so keep an eye out.
There's also other stuff to talkabout there.
This podcast will keep going andwe'll just kind of keep doing
our thing. So the summer is always a little
crazy for me because I've got the family here during that
time, but I still make time to do the things I want and
hopefully I can be on and doing the streaming, the podcasting

(59:46):
and all of that as necessary. And that's where I'm going to
wrap this one. U.
So thank you so much for listening to this episode.
Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app, leave a
review on Spotify or iTunes, andsubscribe to the Von Diesel
YouTube channel to get all of myvideos, including this podcast.

(01:00:06):
Thank you to everyone who supports his YouTube members and
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If you have any questions or feedback, comment on Spotify or
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(01:00:27):
That is all I have for this episode of the Bonfire Gaming
Podcast, so until next time.