PCG Article The next Dragon Age game is officially called Dreadwolf (PCG article)

[ZedClampet]

The next Dragon Age game is officially called Dreadwolf

BioWare said that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf won't be out this year, but it will reveal more about the game later in 2022. We'll keep you posted.

Article has a little lore in it. There's also a strange video with a static image and, at least for me, no sound, so I don't know what's up with that.

 

[mainer]

It'll be interesting to see how they actually handle that. He's not villainous, at least not in my playthroughs of DAI, but he did have strong feelings in certain areas, such as the Elves, as well as the spirits that live in the Fade. I was always able to get him to like me through conversations & actions, but it wasn't easy, as he gets annoyed easily and tends to be judgmental (it was much like dealing with Morrigan in DAO). But that was DAI. We'll see how Bioware handles his personality going forward.

My biggest concerns are how long has this game actually been in Production? DAI released in 2014 and the last DLC in 2015, yet all we've really seen so far is mostly concept art, seems to me they should be well past that stage. It feels like a troubled development cycle, much like ME Andromeda went through. I hope my fears are wrong and that they'll make a strong, single player focused, Dragon Age game.

 

[Johnway]

Its been a long time since the last Dragon age game. I barely much if inquisition at this point and the current story and besides being presumably based in tervinta. We'll see how it all pans out, but being published by EA you can probably expect a whole load of DLC and bloated with MTX somewhere. perhaps with a multiplayer component.

 

[Zloth]

DLC is fine by me, I'll just wait until it all shows up before buying. (Come to think of it, Dragon Age: Origin was one of the games that taught me to do that. I missed some good DLC because I bought too quickly.)

I wonder what the chances are that DA4 will look at your Inquisition save or load up data from that online database attached to your account?

 

[mainer]

I wonder what the chances are that DA4 will look at your Inquisition save or load up data from that online database attached to your account?

I certainly hope they will. I just checked this morning, and the Tapestry of Dragon Age Keep site is still active, so they do have a way to import your choices from previous games.
Tapestry • Dragon Age Keep

It will also be interesting to me to see which characters will appear, either as companions or in cameos, from the previous games. Several of them have appeared in 2 of the games, while Lelianna is the only one I know of to have been in all 3 (Alistair is a possibility, but I can't remember if he made cameos in both 2 & 3 or not).

 

[ZedClampet]

@mainer You mentioned you were worried about the history of development on the game, so here's the development timeline for DO: Dreadwolf which I found elsewhere (TweakTown.com). I also added a few of my own entries:

2015 - Dragon Age enters development in project codenamed "Joplin," would focus on Tevinter spies
April 2016 - Mark Darrah teases the new Dragon Age with a cryptic red book
March 2017 - Mass Effect Andromeda releases, critical flop damages BioWare's reputation
May 2017 - Sunless Sea writer Alexis Kennedy confirms they're contributing on the new Dragon Age, strongly hints Tevinter is the main setting
June 2017 - The game is canceled by Electronic Arts
July 2017 - BioWare GM Aaryn Flynn leaves after 17 years with the company
October 2017 - BioWare reboots the game to focus strongly on monetization and live services, aka codenamed "Morrison," causing creative director Mike Laidlaw to leave after 14 years with BioWare
September 2018 - BioWare talks about "live storytelling" during a PAX West panel, hints Dragon Age 4 would use online live services for game stories
December 2018 - BioWare releases first Dragon Age 4 teaser
February 2019 - Anthem releases, devs move over to Dragon Age as skeleton team upholds live services/works on Anthem reboot
September 2019 - GM Casey Hudson confirms DA4 is only in pre-production phases
October 2019 - EA says Dragon Age 4 won't release until after Fiscal Year 2022 (April 1, 2021 - March 31, 2022)
November 2019 - After several SP Star Wars games cancellations, Vince Zepella and Respawn Entertainment release Star Wars Fallen Order, a single-player game that is a huge financial success.
December 2020 - Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah and general manager Casey Hudson leave the company. To all appearances, things are looking grim.
February 2021 - BioWare shifts Dragon Age 4 from a multiplayer game into a fully-singleplayer RPG.
December 2021 - BioWare reiterates "we're still hard at work on building the next single-player focused experience for Dragon Age."
February 2022 - BioWare says the game is in mid-production and will be ready by 2024.
June 2022 - BioWare releases information about this 3rd version of the game.

Only my opinion: I think the key here for the move back to single-player (EA now has several other SP games in the works) is Vince Zampella, who has become increasingly important at EA. Unlike CEO Andrew Wilson, Zampella, who founded Respawn, is a gamer and a pretty smart guy, and he has a lot of personal characteristics (before his latest promotion he frequently slammed EA and Wilson when they deserved it) that have let him have a lot of autonomy and authority at the company. He was responsible for the most successful early COD games, the Titanfall games (Titanfall II single-player is amazing), Apex Legends and Star Wars Fallen Order. And after the recent disaster of Battlefield 2042, he's been placed in charge of the Battlefield franchise. As many multi-player games as he's produced, Zampella believes in single-player experiences and has had a lot of success with single-player through the years. And I'm fully convinced he's the only person in the company that could have influenced the change from being multiplayer, live-service focused.

 

[mainer]

Excellent timeline @ZedClampet ! Some of this I was aware of from reading previous PCG articles (and playing ME Andromeda), but putting it in a focused format like you did helps put things in perspective. It's easier to see why the public hasn't really seen much of the game.

Also, didn't Bioware switch from the Frostbite engine to the UE4 (or 5) engine? I swear I read something about that either this year or last year (possibly that was about the next ME game).

February 2021 - BioWare shifts Dragon Age 4 from a multiplayer game into a fully-singleplayer RPG.
December 2021 - BioWare reiterates "we're still hard at work on building the next single-player focused experience for Dragon Age."

I think the key here for the move back to single-player (EA now has several other SP games in the works) is Vince Zampella, who has become increasingly important at EA. Unlike CEO Andrew Wilson, Zampella, who founded Respawn, is a gamer and a pretty smart guy, and he has a lot of personal characteristics (before his latest promotion he frequently slammed EA and Wilson when they deserved it) that have let him have a lot of autonomy and authority at the company.

Zampella believes in single-player experiences and has had a lot of success with single-player through the years. And I'm fully convinced he's the only person in the company that could have influenced the change from being multiplayer, live-service focused.

These are the things that give me hope for DA Dreadwolf being a solid single player focused Dragon Age game. I had heard Zampella's name mentioned before, but it was just another name in the seemingly endless list of people coming or leaving. It's good to see some of his gaming background, and that he's actually a gamer.

 

[ZedClampet]

Also, didn't Bioware switch from the Frostbite engine to the UE4 (or 5) engine? I swear I read something about that either this year or last year (possibly that was about the next ME game).

I don't know for sure, but I think that was a recent change, at least the article about it was from the last few months, so I'm guessing Dreadwolf is probably still in Frostbite. But unlike Andromeda, they probably aren't trying to do massively different things technology-wise (like planetary landings), so it should be alright, I hope.