Mike Laidlaw, of Dragon Age fame, took a break from AAA gaming in October 2017 when he left BioWare after 14 years of working there. He is now back to making, one year later, but this time on Ubisoft's roster, working on a secret project.
AAA games can be exhausting and Mike Laidlaw seemingly confirmed this when he left BioWare about a year ago. Since then, he worked as a consultant for Gato, among other developers, with focus on Waylanders, the upcoming crowdfunded RPG.
Laidlaw seems to be back to the big scene though, as he he joined Ubisoft Quebec City, in the role of Creative Director. This is the same role he had in BioWare. He will be working on a project that is yet to be announced, so while it is still unknown what the project is, Laidlaw removed a bit of the secrecy veil.
According to Laidlaw, he decided to join Ubisoft Quebec City full time after doing some consulting work there. Considering this is the studio that developed Assassin's Creed Odyssey, one could speculate it is the next Assassin's Creed title Laidlaw will be working on and that Ubisoft will double down on the RPG elements that earned Odyssey a ton of praise.
Since Laidlaw was the Creative Director for both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2, he has seen both the highs and lows in reception when it comes to new games. While Origins set the franchise up for a bright future, Dragon Age 2 was evidently a rushed, unfinished and dumbed down mess of a Dragon Age title. While on its own it wasn't a bad game, it certainly was a massive step back compared to Origins.
EA
It remains to be seen whether Ubisoft will be more lenient than EA when it comes to release date deadlines and avoid messing up their games at launch. They do have a history of half-baked launches, such as The Division and Rainbow Six: Siege, but they do eventually fix things and bring them to the state they should have been in originally.
Dragon Age - fantasy RPG series by Bioware and Electronic Arts
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