Dragon Age 4 Trailer Showcases Classic BioWare RPG

During the Gamescom opening ceremony, BioWare surprisingly showcased an extensive breakdown of Dragon Age 4.

The footage in question is largely a blend of developer interviews and very early test footage. We’re going to emphasize “early” here as it seems that BioWare is very much still working on Dragon Age 4 and that you shouldn’t expect to play the game for a long time.

The heart of the matter, though, is that it sounds like BioWare intends for Dragon Age 4 to be a return to RPG form for the company after they’ve spent the last few years controversially working on Anthem and other titles that many felt was below their historic standards.

At the heart of that potential return to form is the idea that Dragon Age 4 will rely heavily on player choice. BioWare says that choices in Dragon Age 4 be drastic enough to potentially dictate whether or not a part member lives or dies. While that’s fairly standard in terms of our expectations of the Dragon Age franchise, it’s again one of those signs that BioWare is seemingly approaching this like one of their classic studio RPGs and doesn’t intend to try to pull a fast one by turning Dragon Age into (just for example) a Destiny rip-off live service game.

Speaking of party members, a particular emphasis is placed on the design and value of the game’s characters. BioWare clearly intends to build a sizeable roster of fully-realized characters that will range from friend to foe and everything in-between. We really only get to see some concept art of these characters and a few clips of behind-the-scenes voice acting sessions, but again the right ideas and the spirit of the franchise seem to be in what few glimpses we are afforded of the development process.

Interestingly, BioWare also notes that Dragon Age 4‘s story will focus on incompetent leaders and people without power. It’s not entirely clear what that means in terms of specifics, and it’s also not clear how the events of the previous game will factor into the specifics of this story. Again, though, as you’ll see in the work-in-progress footage featured in this trailer, Dragon Age 4 is still being molded:

So when can we expect to play Dragon Age 4? That’s tough to say for sure, but it will absolutely be a next-gen game at this point. If pressed to guess, we’d say late 2021 or 2022 seems likely, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated on this project as soon as we learn more about it.