Recently, Mark Darrah looked back on the development of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. He believes the game's performance was disappointing, partly because the project lacked experienced leaders familiar with the series during critical stages. Darrah had long participated in the development of the Dragon Age series and oversaw various entries; he left BioWare at the end of 2020.
Darrah stated that between 2017 and 2019, while he was involved in the development of Anthem, Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to receive sufficient guidance from these senior staff members, which negatively impacted the project.
Darrah also mentioned that the project's release date was adjusted multiple times, but each delay was insufficient. According to his description, the team was constantly approaching the next deadline, making it difficult to allocate enough time to review existing content, revise designs, or discard unsuitable elements. Although the overall project schedule was repeatedly postponed, these incremental adjustments still failed to provide the team with an opportunity to replan from a holistic perspective.
From Darrah's perspective, EA's arrangement for BioWare to release games annually exacerbated these difficulties. He recalled that BioWare once formulated a plan to release one title per year starting in 2013, involving Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, and the current game, then still known as Dragon Age 4. He believed that large-scale RPGs struggled to keep up with this pace, and the accumulated delays of each project created a ripple effect. In his view, these factors at least partially explain why Dragon Age: The Veilguard was not released until late 2024, as well as its subsequent lukewarm reception.