10 TERRIBLE Video Games (That Secretly Saved Franchises)
4. Dragon Age II
2009's Dragon Age: Origins was a massive critical and commercial success, not to mention a sure Game of the Year contender, only for Dragon Age II to receive a far less enthusiastic response from fans, who felt that the game had been hastily rushed out for a quick buck.
And indeed, EA gave BioWare only around 16 months to complete the game, requiring intense crunch periods and extensive re-use of assets from its predecessor.
Fans were ultimately frustrated at the game's new art style, simplified character options, excessive focus on combat, unsatisfying story, and generally smaller scope and scale compared to the original.
Dragon Age II was the clear product of a dev team struggling to meet an absurdly unrealistic deadline, and thankfully, BioWare were given almost four years to create the third game, Dragon Age: Inquisition.
The result was an impressive hybrid of everything people loved about the first game and what little actually did work from the second, massively upping the scale and clearly only bringing the game to market when it was actually ready.
As a triumph of adversity which combined everything BioWare learned on the two prior games, Inquisition was massively acclaimed by critics, even winning Game of the Year at the 2014 Game Awards.