November 3, 2019, marked the ten-year anniversary of Dragon Age with the release of Dragon Age: Origins back in 2009. There have been two games since then with Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition. In celebration of the anniversary, BioWare tweeted out something and may have teased a new look at the upcoming Dragon Age 4.
Recently, in an EA earnings call, the CFO for EA said that the game is likely two or more years away and that it would likely be released after the fiscal year of 2022. EA’s fiscal year 2022 is from April 1, 2021-March 31, 2022. Other than this news and the trailer announcement at the Game Awards 2018, not much is known about the sequel, but it seems like all hands are on deck for the game as there have been numerous reports about BioWare developers shifting their focus from Anthem to work on Dragon Age 4. Earlier this year, the game’s Lead Producer Fernando Melo left BioWare. In April, Kotaku published report about the development of the game and the many iterations that it has gone through. Development of Dragon Age 4 started as something small in scope but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth.
The story for this first version had players play as a group of spies in Tevinter Imperium and the goal of the game was to focus on choice and consequence. This was canceled as the team who was making this had to move on to help work on Mass Effect: Andromeda. Then, Anthem was being developed. The Dragon Age that is being made today is being built using Anthem‘s tools and codebase and will have a live service component built for long-term gameplay and revenue. What that looks like may get revealed on December 4, but after the announcement of a release date around 2022, that seems unlikely. Whatever the case, it looks like we’ll get some news regarding Dragon Age 4 next month.