Dragon Age 4: 7 Things To Expect
After a peek at Dragon Age 4's ongoing development, what can we expect next from the franchise?
Dragon Age 4 has been in the works since 2015, after Dragon Age: Inquisition won Game of the Year - also winning back the approval of fans that had been alienated by the polarising Dragon Age II.
With three (mostly) well-considered role-playing titles under the Dragon Age banner, expectations were high from the off for Dragon Age 4, especially with the bar set so high by Inquisition.
News of the next title has been remarkably sparse, and some fans even believed that BioWare had quietly scrapped or shelved the project. BioWare issued a recent statement that work was continuing of Dragon Age 4, and then, out of nowhere, they dropped a "Behind the scenes at BioWare" video during the opening night of Gamescom that gave us our most in-depth look at the title yet.
With many of the developers working on the game giving their own personal testimonials of the world of Dragon Age, we were given glimpses at concept art, some very early-stage gameplay and even a look at a few of the voice actors delivering lines for characters both old and new.
For fans of the series, the news was highly anticipated, but just what does it all mean? Well, here are some things we can hope to expect from the next chapter in the Dragon Age saga.
7. New Mechanics
Dragon Age: Origins was released in 2009, but it nailed the mechanics of an action-RPG so well that they've only been tweaked a little in each of its sequels. Inquisition was able to work those mechanics into an even larger open-world setting, but given that six years have now passed, it's fair to assume that Dragon Age 4 will play quite differently.
We've heard some of the developers working on Dragon Age 4 hinting that the choices we make this time around could carry much larger implications, with the potentially permanent death of party members cited as a possibility.
You can also catch a glimpse of the game's early-stage combat, and it seems that not only the animation will be groundbreaking, but the effects that the game employs in relation to character abilities.
Even a short clip of a character using a shield based ability is at once gorgeous and intriguing, and it's all we can do to hope that what we've seen and heard so far will make it into the finished game.