The Dragon Age series has taken a few years off since the release of the excellent Dragon Age: Inquisition, but BioWare and Electronic Arts haven’t forgotten about the swords-and-sorcery role-playing series, and a new game is in the works.
BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah confirmed work is underway on a new Dragon Age game via Twitter, adding that he is currently working on both that game and the online action-adventure Anthem, which was first shown during EA Play last summer.
It’s unclear who else is involved in the fourth Dragon Age game’s production. Inquisition‘s creative director Mike Laidlaw left BioWare in October, after also working on the Mass Effect series as well as the cult classic Jade Empire. Back in September, Laidlaw said Dragon Age 4 was “not confirmed,” so it’s possible BioWare has something else in mind for the next game, rather than a simple sequel.
Inquisition took the franchise into a more open-ended structure, with several enormous environments for players to explore and a story that tied back to previous games in the series. It seemed like a natural evolution for Dragon Age, as opposed to the regression we saw with Mass Effect: Andromeda. The latter franchise has been put on hiatus by Electronic Arts, with much of its development team moving to assist with the publisher’s other projects, instead.
Players’ confidence in BioWare — or Electronic Arts — isn’t especially high at the moment. Aside from a few of its sports titles, 2017 wasn’t kind to the company. Mass Effect: Andromeda released to brutal reviews which criticized everything from the animations to the writing, and Star Wars: Battlefront II made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The game even found Electronic Arts as the subject of investigations both in the United States and abroad, as its loot box system has been compared to gambling.
Still, we’re crossing our fingers for the new Dragon Age. It seems to be the one series EA has a good grasp on, and Inquisition set a great foundation for future games — though we are hoping to actually fight a few more dragons in the next game.
