Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Not Arriving Anytime Soon

[T0@st]

Electronic Arts has not included Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in its projected release schedule for the ongoing financial year (2023 to 2024) - industry insiders have previously suggested that the fourth entry in the series was marked down for a later-in-2023 launch. EA's day old financial report details a number of already announced games within a rundown that ends in April 2024. The schedule includes the recently released Star Wars Jedi: Survivor game, as well as Immortal of Aveum, a Lord of the Rings mobile title, F1 23, Madden '24, Sports FC (a FIFA successor) and extra content for Apex Legend and Sims 4. A mystery pair of games are due sometime after April 2024 - a mainline EA Sports title and an unnamed racing sim.

An in-progress Skate sequel joins Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in the far off fields of mid-2024 or beyond. Bioware started to hint about a potential fourth game in late 2018 - with vague promotional material popping up during the autumn Game Awards event. The Edmonton, Canada-based development team has been quietly working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf since then, with very little preview material issued in the interim - a non-gameplay teaser trailer was shown off way back in 2020. Gary McKay, general manager at BioWare, revealed last autumn that the game was fully playable from beginning to end, and recent information suggests that the Dreadwolf team has expanded in size to include Mass Effect series staffers. A former franchise and Bioware veteran, Mark Darrah, was added on as an external (expert) consultant on the project.



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[phanbuey]

I completely read that as "Deadwolf" and thought "well at least it's an appropriate name".

 

[Space Lynx]

I think this is good news, from everything i have read they are taking Dragon Age seriously this time, and even brought on people from Origins again (I think).

I for one am looking forward to it, but am in no rush. Hope its a great AAA, which rare these days.

 

[ChettManly]

Bioware is such a clown show. EA should sell them off or shut them down. 10 years to get a Dragon Age sequel. 10 YEARS. That EA bankrolls these people year after year with nothing of value to show is insane. Yet you know, you know Bioware is going to release it buggy with broken animations and then people will blame EA for not giving them enough time.

Whole industry is a joke now.

 

[ZoneDymo]

I think this is good news, from everything i have read they are taking Dragon Age seriously this time, and even brought on people from Origins again (I think).

I for one am looking forward to it, but am in no rush. Hope its a great AAA, which rare these days.

Well yeah, as if (if they have a grip on what information comes out) anything negative would have been released....pls remain skeptical, idk how many times someone has to get burned by I would say that we are far beyond that point.

 

[Space Lynx]

Well yeah, as if (if they have a grip on what information comes out) anything negative would have been released....pls remain skeptical, idk how many times someone has to get burned by I would say that we are far beyond that point.

I don't buy anything before reviews, unless its a FFXIV expansion.

 

[EatingDirt]

Bioware is such a clown show. EA should sell them off or shut them down. 10 years to get a Dragon Age sequel. 10 YEARS. That EA bankrolls these people year after year with nothing of value to show is insane. Yet you know, you know Bioware is going to release it buggy with broken animations and then people will blame EA for not giving them enough time.

Whole industry is a joke now.

Almost all the Lead designers that made Bioware special have moved on to different companies or retired. Want good CRPG's? Obsidian & Larian are your best bets.

I'd actually argue that Bioware hasn't made anything worth playing since... probably Mass Effect 3(I still haven't gotten around to it), so add at least another year, up to 11.

I'm of the mind that none of the Dragon Age's were very good.

Origin's origin stories were good, the rest of the game the "invading army" waited around while you did whatever you wanted, and the combat in Origins was simply get as many mages as possible, because that's all you really need.

I never played 2 because I didn't enjoy 1 beyond the Origin Stories.

I got Dragon Age: Inquisition for free at some point. I tried it, it wasn't good. It played like a single player MMORPG. Filled with copious amounts of fluff/fetch quests and awful hotkey-based early 00's MMO combat. I honestly knew I wasn't going to enjoy it the second it put me into combat in the tutorial.

But who knows, maybe they'll surprise us with this long delayed wolfthing.

 

[BArms]

I got Dragon Age: Inquisition for free at some point. I tried it, it wasn't good. It played like a single player MMORPG. Filled with copious amounts of fluff/fetch quests and awful hotkey-based early 00's MMO combat.

Exactly my thoughts as well. I assume they were working on an MMO at some point, cancelled it and decided to shoehorn all the assets into a Dragon Age-themed single player game instead. I quit playing early on when I saw ore nodes respawning in front of my eyes and my jaw hit the floor. What a silly game.

 

[Soul_]

Bioware is based out of Edmonton Alberta, not Calgary Alberta.

BioWare - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[TechLurker]

I have zero expectations for any current Bioware game since Fallout 4 Mass Effect 3, and yet sometimes I still end up disappointed with any of their recent games.

 

[Vayra86]

Bioware is such a clown show. EA should sell them off or shut them down. 10 years to get a Dragon Age sequel. 10 YEARS. That EA bankrolls these people year after year with nothing of value to show is insane. Yet you know, you know Bioware is going to release it buggy with broken animations and then people will blame EA for not giving them enough time.

Whole industry is a joke now.

Do you really think Bioware is able to do ANYTHING without funding and directions from EA itself?
Bioware stopped being a studio long ago, they're just a Business Unit within EA like every other one.

Like many other studios this one was run into the ground by corporate BS. Many many years ago, way prior to Andromeda. EA is happy to rip good teams apart and reorganize left & right, and that results in a motivation & talent exodus. Today many big publishers cant get their connected studios to make good games to save their lives. Why? The best talents leave these horror shows first, and they have done so a long time ago. The same applies to Ubisoft, and to Activision, and to Blizzard, although I think the latter has such strong franchise ties there is some good left - quite simply because it represents Blizzard's livelihood. But then you also see releases like Immortal that directly damage their franchises, and you can see the internal struggle.

The dynamic you get when corporate management invades creative processes and talented professionals is a pretty poisonous one. It cán work, but its a fine line indeed, and more often than not, with a lot of collateral damage along the way to a good product. Its a completely different world from project management in, say, a studio like Larian that was mentioned up here too. Its as simple as something that needs to be enforced (corporate) versus something that truly energizes people and becomes a part of them, their brain child. If a studio/team hasn't got the spirit of the latter, you can safely bet on a weak product, and we see this now daily.

I have zero expectations for any current Bioware game since Fallout 4, and yet sometimes I still end up disappointed with any of their recent games.

Fallout = Bethesda and certainly not EA related.

 

[JimmyDoogs]

As long as 10 years is it's not the end of a company. Valve took 10 years to make VR , HL: Alyx and Source 2 and those are living up to the legacy.

 

[TechLurker]

Fallout = Bethesda and certainly not EA related.

You're right, I was actually thinking of Mass Effect 3, and I screwed up both the number and game name (so much for drinking and typing). ME3 was my favorite game from them and I was devastated with Andromeda.

 

[Vayra86]

You're right, I was actually thinking of Mass Effect 3, and I screwed up both the number and game name (so much for drinking and typing). ME3 was my favorite game from them and I was devastated with Andromeda.

Did you also play ME1 and 2? Surely... and if you did... why did ME 3 stick out for you?

For me it was ME2, best of trilogy. Andromeda... yeesh. It has the same concept and therefore problems as DA Inquisition. Everything feels interchangeable in that game, you just know what you'll do on each world after you've seen the first, just with a different skin/biome... And the narrative is ridiculous. Game just about ends when you feel like you've played the prologue

 

[TechLurker]

Did you also play ME1 and 2? Surely... and if you did... why did ME 3 stick out for you?

For me it was ME2, best of trilogy. Andromeda... yeesh. It has the same concept and therefore problems as DA Inquisition. Everything feels interchangeable in that game, you just know what you'll do on each world after you've seen the first, just with a different skin/biome... And the narrative is ridiculous. Game just about ends when you feel like you've played the prologue

I did and carried over what could be carried over, but it's mostly the fact that after finishing all 3 routes and unlocking all relationship options, I enjoyed the MP side-content that slightly affected the main game's difficulty level to a limited degree (via War Assets), and the side-quests trying to max out War Assets in the main game via exploration and the like (while trying to avoid being Game Over'd by a Reaper). It was also fun playing as the bad guys and other races (mostly just skins and special abilities but otherwise same basic gunplay). The Legendary Edition did admittedly remove the MP component and make it a purer single-player game, but it was nice having "invisible allies" tweaking the main game's difficulty in the late stages in the original run.