DA4 Won't Come Out Until 2021??

There's a saying in project management: you can't hire 9 women to have a baby in 1 month.

At a certain point, adding extra people doesn't add any extra speed. The tasks can't be subdivided any further, and the overhead of subdividing them outweighs any benefits from having more people working on them. That goes double if a project is already in progress - for their first few months, new hires are a drain on productivity, because others need to help them get up to speed.

Good one! I hadn't heard that before, and I thought I'd heard everything that's a derivative of the Mythical Man-Month.

Nevertheless, DA team is hiring level designers, as announced in several of their twitter feeds. This is how we know that DA4 is funded as a project. They couldn't hire full-timers without funding for at least the first stage of production work.

I think I've heard that Dylan will debut at E3 2017 in June. 

You know, I would deeply enjoy a fairytale about the Mythical Man-Month. I'm picturing a beast stitched of human parts, spreadsheets, and burndown-graph wings that sneaks into offices and punishes project managers for their hubris.

*the Mythical Man-Month opens its mouth, flies and worms pouring out*

*the manager pales, but she lofts her mousepad like a shield*

*behind her, the engineers smash their keyboards against the devouring swarm, bugs falling left and right*

"You can't touch us, monster! We hired a dozen new coders just this week!"

*its jaw unhinges, and a deep laugh boils out*

"AHAHAHAHA, FOOLISH MORTAL! WHERE DO YOU THINK THESE CAME FROM?"

*behind her, her army dissolves, becoming clouds of bugs themselves*

*at once, they fall upon the kanban board, tearing it to ribbons*

"No! My estimates!"

"DELIIIIIIIICIOUS."

2020-2021 still too long. Bioware has lost it frankly, remember when they made a game within 18months? What happened? Obviously a loss of talent and when da4 releases it will probably be weak sauce like DAI.

I enjoyed it more than DAI tbqh.

Mass Effect 2 took barely over 2 years though

MEA had to go from scratch though with a new engine. That was the same with DAI, which I thought was the reason it took so long. So in theory, using the same engine and with the basic storyline already in place, DA4 ought to have a shorter development time.

Previously they were releasing ME and DA games in alternate years. So ME1: 2008; DAO: 2009; ME2: 2010; (they also managed to fit DAA in 2010 as well); DA2: 2011; ME3 2012. Then they broke the pattern with DAI: 2014 - 2 years from last ME game and 3 years from DA2 but like I say they had to cope with an entirely new engine. Then MEA didn't come out until this year, which was 3 years after the last DA game and 5 years after the last ME game. However, it was an entirely new storyline and with a new engine (for ME), so without the ME tag it could have been seen as an entirely new game.

DA4 is different. We know that DAI only comprised half the story that should have been told. They don't have to come up with something completely new; it is a continuation of the previous plotline both from DAI and the earlier games. This is why having such a long break between games is peculiar, particularly when you consider that there is a ready made customer base eager to play it because they want to see where the plot goes next. Even if it came out in 2018 that would be 4 years from the original game release and 3 years from the last DLC. I wouldn't want them to rush it and ruin it but I think they should get their priorities right. Sadly it would seem that either Bioware or more likely EA seem to favour multi-player over single player when it comes to prioritising development and that will likely also be the case even with DA4. Wasn't DAI delayed because of the multi-player element?

Some have argued that those additions weren't good ones however...

Of course it is all relative, a 2020/2021 release is perfectly fine...and frankly expected by me.

No reason to rush Dragon Age, after all. 

I fear that Bioware is putting all it's eggs in the Dylan basket at the expense of all it's other games. MEA is proof of that. If Dylan only gets a mixed reception, I can see EA putting Bioware on ice and we may never see DA4.

I have zero interest in Dylan. The longer I have to wait on them putting out a game I'm interested in, the more likely I will just move on and not bother with them. I have pretty much washed my hands of the ME series and now I'm just waiting to see what happens with DA4. Make me wait another 5 yrs and I will probably just say the heck with it and be done with Bioware completely.

To be fair, nobody who's not bound by an NDA knows what Dylan is. All we've been told is that it's not an RPG but apparently it's like an RPG, and that multiplayer is going to be core to its experience, which has most people figgering it's a Destiny knockoff. Whether it is or not, and how it all pans out, remains to be seen.

As for the wait for DA4, I don't mind it per se, except for the current state of the series. Cliffhangers only hold excitement for so long, after that, they tend to backfire. I've long since grown bored with the Inquisition's cliffhanger ending, to the point that I'm really, really, really hoping that it's mostly just a subplot to DA4 (which, to be fair, there's precedent for, just as the cliffhanger in DA2 was mostly just a subplot in DAI), but I'm a little worried, I admit it. That's a big part of the reason I'm hoping they go back to endings like Origins had, come the next game.