Former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah shares valuable insight on the doorman fallacy concept and how it relates to Veilguard losing access to the DA Keep.
The Veilguard is the most contentious game in the series for many reasons, but the lack of the Dragon Age Keep certainly didn't help. Every mainline Dragon Age game has featured a unique choice-preservation mechanic called The Keep that chronicles all your choices and carries them forward to the next game.
The newest Dragon Age didn't have this feature, and that might've been a mistake. In a recent video, pivotal franchise creative Mark Darrah discusses the doorman fallacy and how the lack of DA Keep had a larger effect on the game's perception even before it came out.
"Should BioWare have kept the Keep for Dragon Age the Veilguard? When I came back to help them out, I told them that they should.
"Now, there are reasons why that may not have been practical. It is a fairly substantial technical lift. The game existed in this perpetual state of almost always being about to ship.
"Certainly, keeping the keep wasn't free or even very cheap. It would have had consequences across other parts of the game to integrate."
Darrah says that losing even a sliver of your core audience can reverberate out to the wider perception of the game. And, if things go badly, enthusiast fans can turn on the game and perpetuate the negative image.
"Players are judging experiences, they're judging what the game is signalling that it is and what it isn't."
The long-time dev goes on to say that DA Keep was more than an addition; Keep is a representation of what the game is--a critically-important message to get right to fans.
"A feature like Dragon Age Keep doesn't make a ton of sense on a spreadsheet. It's expensive, and it's not used by very many people. But what it is is a symbol of what the game is.
"It's a contract that you're writing with the player base, saying that 'we are something' and that 'you can trust us to deliver the experience you're looking for.'"
BioWare may have had no real choice at the time, Darrah says:
"So did the lack of Dragon Age Keep hurt the Veilguard? Absolutely.
"Was it the right decision to make to remove it? I don't think so, but I think there are arguments to be made that it was the only decision that they could make at that time."
Keeping things consistent with these long-term IPs is important, especially with core fans that expect a certain experience. If those conditions aren't met, then things can go awry from the inside out.
Darrah offers more thoughts as to what developers should be mindful of when planning to cut features, especially ones that have helped define the franchise's identity:
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"Just because we can't put a dollar value on a feature, doesn't mean it isn't important to our game."
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