At the Game Awards 2018, developer BioWare teased the next entry into theDragon Agefranchise with an officially untitled game commonly referred to asDragon Age 4.According to a leak just before the reveal, the reason the game does not even have a proper title is because of how little work has been put into the latest entry, which can sound surprising since the last entry was 2014 Game of the Year. But this was supposedly so that BioWare could be all hands on deck for a successfulAnthemlaunch, which didn’t pan out as intended either.
Now, thanks to an explosive report by Kotaku, we know thatAnthemwas only in production for 18 months, and the E3 2017 demo was mostly fake. Because of this, many may be worried aboutDragon Age, and it seems that the development hell ofAnthemmay have already taken its toll. In fact, to stay the flames ofAnthemin production, there were some massive internal changes.
One of these is the replacement of BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn with the returning Casey Hudson. Then, BioWare internally canceled Joplin, the then-code name for the nextDragon Age,with many developers stating they were excited by creative director Mike Laidlaw’s vision for the return of Solas. Shortly after Joplin was canceled,Laidlaw left BioWareafter working there for 14 years.
BioWare, now operating under Casey Hudson, restarted the development ofDragon Age 4with a tiny team under the code name of Morrison. This would be theDragon Ageteased at the Game Awards 2018. The main reason that the team was shrunk was so that the studio could move its developers toAnthem, to release it on time. Whether this negatively affects the release ofDragon Age 4or not remains to be seen, but Executive Producer Mark Darrah claims to have put together adeveloper dream teamfor the title.
To his credit, Kotaku’s explosive report paints Darrah as the man with a plan who managed to pull the frayedAnthemtogether at the end of its production. Darrah was also working on Joplin before it was canceled, so while many may be worried about the fate ofDragon Age 4, it is hopefully in the right hands.
