Saturday, April 1st 2023
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Development Team Bolstered With Mass Effect Staff, Ex-BioWare Veteran Added as Consultant
BioWare is working quietly on new entries in its long running Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, and not many details have been revealed about either game. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf was announced three years ago via a teaser trailer, but the gaming public knows little about the gameplay, lore or visual presentation. The Dreadwolf team has been expanded according to Gary McKay, general manager at BioWare - one of several details he divulged in a partially published interview conducted by GamesBeat. The game is in a post-production phase of development, and McKay confirmed via a blog update that Dreadwolf had reached an alpha milestone in September of 2022: "Now, for the first time, we can experience the entire game, from the opening scenes of the first mission to the very end. We can see, hear, feel, and play everything as a cohesive experience."
Select members of the Mass Effect team have been shifted over to help with late stage production on the fantasy RPG title: "Our studio is focused on creating the best Dragon Age: Dreadwolf while the core Mass Effect team continues their pre-production work." McKay also confirms that a former BioWare veteran has been re-introduced to the team, albeit in an external capacity: "We continue to iterate and polish Dreadwolf, focusing on the things that matter most to our fans. As we further connect this new experience with the series' legacy Mark Darrah will join the team as a consultant, bringing with him years of experience working on Dragon Age."
McKay is confident that the newly bolstered team will help with the final polish applied to Dreadwolf in its late stage of development: "We're proud to have this team, with strong leadership at the helm, working together to realize the vision we have for the game." The Canadian studio is very likely attempting to steer away from its mistakes of the past - their most recent all-original titles, Anthem (2019) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017), both launched in near unfinished states with technical issues abound. The BioWare group has experienced an exodus of talent over the past half decade, and Dragon Age: Dreadwolf's development team has not been spared from numerous staff departures. The return of Mark Darrah as a consultant on Dreadwolf is a curious bit of strategy for the company, considering that he quit his role as Executive Producer of the Dragon Age series in late 2020.
Sources:
Venture Beat, EA Official Dragon Age Dreadwolf Page
Select members of the Mass Effect team have been shifted over to help with late stage production on the fantasy RPG title: "Our studio is focused on creating the best Dragon Age: Dreadwolf while the core Mass Effect team continues their pre-production work." McKay also confirms that a former BioWare veteran has been re-introduced to the team, albeit in an external capacity: "We continue to iterate and polish Dreadwolf, focusing on the things that matter most to our fans. As we further connect this new experience with the series' legacy Mark Darrah will join the team as a consultant, bringing with him years of experience working on Dragon Age."
24 Comments on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Development Team Bolstered With Mass Effect Staff, Ex-BioWare Veteran Added as Consultant
You work hard for you money. Dont throw it away on something completely worthless as much as youre nostalgic about the franchise.
just make the remake of the first dragon age with mod manager.
They've released nothing but dog $h!+ since ME3 minus the ending.
The only Bioware remakes I'm interested in is Kotor and Jade Empire, preferebly Jade Empire.
I always felt DAO was over rated the console versions where trash and the pc version was only ok with mods. (story and characters are pretty great though) Part 2 and Inquisition was horrible.
Jade Empire was awesome but I also liked it better on Xbox partly because the PC version was 2 years late.
I'm not overly high on the Kotor remake but I'm hoping it isn't $h!+.
ME is arguably my all time fav story game and game universe/lore.
Its something that even after 3 full playthroughs I can get immersed/lost in so much that the next thing I'm noticing that its middle of the night and I should go to sleep/stop playing. :laugh: 'barely any game can pull this on me nowadays'
I even ended up liking Andromeda I just had to look at it from a different perspective and set my expectations according to that. 'I think I've finished the game with around 90 hours played'
Dragon Age Origins I did like but never finished, Inquisition barely tried out and yet to go back for a second try.
Their older games I'm hardly familiar with since I did not understand/speak English till my high school years so I wasn't interested in playing story games at the time and now I just can't go back to such old games.:oops:
Either way I'm trying to keep my expectations low and don't get hyped for a new ME game but its definitely something I'm interested in.
EDIT: forgot the music in the first Mass Effect one of my top 10, game soundtrack ever made.
Yea I also heard how I should avoid Andromeda and whatnot, I did play the game after it was decently patched up so I did not experience the day 1 issues at least.
Sure its not on the same level as the OG games like you said but it was fun for a side story in the ME universe/generally a cool Sci-Fi game that kept me interested.
And yea the soundtrack is really good in the trilogy and sometimes I still listen to some of the tracks while playing other games.:) 'Grind/farm games with muted ingame music'
The original Dragon Age was awesome - I played through it 3 times. The second was trash; it didn't even play like the original game did plus all the recycled maps, I couldn't even finish the game. Also, if I remember correctly they even made in game fun about reusing the same maps. With the direction they took with DA2 I didn't even bother to look at DA3.
You guys can keep your crap, EA. Thanks, but no thanks.
Mass Effect, 1 and 2 were okay, 3 got long in the tooth and how your entire franchise's worth of decisions didn't mean diddly squat at the end. I thought the multiple, same(ish) endings were a letdown. After ME 1-3, Andromeda didn't interest me.
I can only play so many different entries to a series before I stop caring. Like with Assassin's Creed. I got all the way through AC3 and got tired of how things just kept getting dragged on and then needing to play another entry that has the same gameplay, just in a different setting.