Daily Briefing: Thursday 24th February

Christian Dailey Leaves BioWare - Another Leader Down

In an update posted by BioWare General Manager Gary McKay, Dragon Age 4 is currently in “Production”, with a full pre-production blueprint that the team understand and are focused on turning into a game. They’re sad to see Dailey go, but understand that the industry is changing and sometimes, people want something new - Twitter sentiment among devs is that he’s moving on happily and left his mark on the project, leaving it in ‘great hands’ for the future. McKay goes into depth explaining how the leadership of DA4 is mostly comprised of staff from earlier Dragon Age or Mass Effect games, and that later this year, we’ll hear more from the team.

• Given the positive sentiment around his leaving and Dragon Age’s progress, this doesn’t seem like anything to particularly worry about for Dragon Age fans. That said, Dailey joined in 2018 to a string of embarrassing BioWare failures, so I’m sure his moving on comes from wanting to be free of Anthem’s shadow.

Elden Ring Was The Highest Rated Game On OpenCritic, For A While

After around 90 reviews went live on the site, Elden Ring was sitting above Super Mario Odyssey at an astounding 97 out of 100. It has since fallen back down to 96, now occupying the 2nd slot on OpenCritic. An astounding feat for a game in a relatively niche genre, and it marks the second FromSoftware game in a row to receive major accolades - Sekiro, out in 2019, came in at 90 out of 100 and won the Game Awards’ GOTY.

• FromSoftware’s history now spans 67 game releases, the vast majority of which released to ‘mixed’ or worse reception. That level of perseverance and their strength in the satisfying, simple combat niche combined with being able to create compelling RPG worlds to explore makes them one of the proven best developers in the world. They’ve come a long way since King’s Field.

EA Drop Knockout City As It Goes Free To Play

Velan Studios’ Knockout City is entering Season 5 as it reaches a 1 year anniversary, and they’ve announced that starting in Season 6 this Spring, it will be both self-published and free-to-play - EA will no longer be involved. It appears that Velan had different ideas for the future of the game than EA, so they’re going their separate ways.

• Knockout City saw 5 million players in its first 10 days, according to EA, due to being available to EA Play and Game Pass subscribers for free. It seems like EA haven’t really celebrated it despite some apparent success, although it reviewed in the low 80s and Velan seem happy enough to hedge their bets on its future.

Fallout New Vegas 2 Reportedly In “Very Early Talks”

Jeff Grubb, once again on Giant Bomb’s premium Grubbsnax show, has claimed that Microsoft are internally discussing Obsidian working on a Fallout New Vegas 2. He says it’s years and years away if it does happen, but that the conversations and interest are there. New Vegas is regarded by many as the best FPS Fallout game, although Obsidian’s most recent game, The Outer Worlds was effectively a Fallout spiritual successor set on multiple planets, and it released to less than ideal reviews. Under Microsoft however, Obsidian are likely to have a large budget and a lot of time to make a Fallout title right.

• New Vegas was an exceptionally written game, with an incredible world to experience. A follow-up today of similar quality seems unlikely, but Obsidian have the will and Microsoft have the way. And for all The Outer Worlds’ misgivings, fans still enjoy it tremendously and Pillars of Eternity and its sequel both released to fantastic reception.