Dragon Age 4: The Future of Bioware's Upcoming  Dark-Fantasy Action RPG Looks Scary

Kotaku's Jason Schreier recently published an article called 'The Past and Present of Dragon Age 4' in which he discussed his thoughts regarding the current state of the next Dragon Age game, which Bioware announced officially at The Game Awards 2018 with the tagline 'The Dread Wolf Rises.'

Initially Dragon Age 4 was codenamed 'Joplin'- a more grounded game with a small scope but focusing more on story telling, interesting characters, fewer fetch quests and replayabilty.

Now Schreier went on to provide us with some inside information regarding the development cycle of the upcoming Dragon Age 4, which surprisingly started way back in late 2014, soon after Dragon Age Inquisition was released. A small group of the team working on the next Dragon Age game decided to approach the next entry with a very grounded approach.

A concrete plan revolved around making the game a smaller entry when compared to Dragon Age Inquisition, but one which was confident in its role-playing elements, storytelling, fewer fetch quests, and replayability. That version of Dragon Age 4 was codenamed 'Joplin'.

In it, you were going to play as a group of spies in the Tevinter Imperium, North of Thedas and was supposedly going to feature heists based missions. As soon as the idea started taking shape and the confidence of the people making it started rising, another catastrophe called Mass Effect Andromeda happened, and rest is history.

Cutting it short, the small group of people working on Joplin were hurled on to finish development of Mass Effect Andromeda back in 2017 so that it could ship on time and well, we all know how that turned out. Moving forward, when the Dragon Age team started expanding, EA envisioned a bold reality where all their games would be a live service title and this is where the trouble really began for Joplin.

By mid-2017 when Anthem's development wasn't going according to the plan. EA played its favourite move by cancelling the then Dragon Age 4 Joplin and shifted that team to help finish Anthem and we all know how that turned out as well.

EA forced Bioware to revamp their vision for Dragon Age 4, making it more of a live service title and hence it was codenamed 'Morrison.' This newer version of Dragon Age 4 would build upon the assets of Anthem and was being called by a lot of people ' Anthem with dragons.'

After cancelling Joplin, Dragon Age 4's development was started from scratch,keeping in mind the live service elements and was codenamed Morrison.

As of now Dragon Age 4, codenamed 'Morrison', is in very early stages of development. Nobody knows how it's going to turn out. If we are unrealistically optimistic then one may say that the upcoming Dragon Age 4 would revolutionize how we look at the live service titles.

It might blur the boundary between a single player story driven game and a multiplayer based title, something that Bioware promised us when it came to shoving Anthem up our faces as well but then we all know it turned out to right?

Schreier does go on to confirm that some of the stuff he has heard about the game sounds interesting. Such as for instance your companions can be controlled by other players by a drop-in and drop-out system which actually sounds really cool.

Plus the game's ever-changing narrative won't only depend on the choices of one player but on the basis of the whole community playing all across the globe. If Bioware manages to pull off something of that scope then the RPG genre would never ever be the same again.

Looking at the broader picture:

But let's be reasonable for a second. You see every big game developer has a certain way of making games. Something they believe in, something that makes them different from others. For example, let's say that Naughty Dog is really really good when it comes to making story-driven adventure games and every one of these titles plays very similar to some extent but since they are focusing on their strengths, every game turns out to be outstanding its own terms.

Now let's look at CD Projekt RED. They stick to one principle- that is to make mature, complex narrative driven single player RPGs. Even though the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 may feature a multiplayer mode, it won't affect the strength of its complex open world and deep characters which we all have grown to love and expect.

With Bioware, this specific vision or principle seems to have drowned in a lake of corporate people who are consistently seeking different ways to make more money for the company. Eventually losing sight of what really made Bioware such a great studio in the first place. They keep on changing their principle for every one of their upcoming titles, experimenting different styles, promising different things to their dedicated fan base who expect something else and are provided with something else leading to disappointment and dissatisfaction to both sides of the party.(Users and Producers) Experimenting is a fun creative process, but sometimes being more grounded and sticking to your root principle can make all the difference.

Right now, I can't imagine where the team at Bioware will take Dragon Age 4 in the coming years. It might turn out to be something we will eventually love or something that will be the end of Bioware for sure if they don't get this one right. But looking at it right now, it all seems very scary. And when things look scary from a distance, they usually tend to get scarier from close.