Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

Or just saying “Bad Dog!” While waving your finger at him.

That is the non-combat option.

Mary Kirby @biomarykirby
Are you sure that's a threat? I mean, @bbattye has been trying to get Letterkenny into a game for years now...

John Epler @eplerjc
It was -definitely- perceived as a threat by @sylvf1


Crystal McCord @mrscmccord
I would love to hear a totally Canadian accent on someone! But are we talking like northern Ontario Canadian accent or southern Alberta Canadian accent?

John Epler @eplerjc
Northern Ontario. So strong that even the Letterkenny guys are like 'whoa, that's a bit much.'

I feel like a rolled up newspaper should be involved in this somehow. And perhaps a squirt bottle. Or is that only for cats?

Solas:

It's the weekend. They are at home. 

Remember when BioWare came out with fun April Fool’s jokes and the fans could enjoy them because they weren’t incredibly bitter over undercooked products like Anthem and MEA? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Well, at least they actually made the Garrus body pillow.

If you take a look at the Anthem subreddit, you’ll think I am positively cheery.

I don’t feel like debating this quibble further, so I’ll acknowledge that not the fans of Anthem/Mass Effect/Dragon Age are bitter, just a large portion of them.

Okay but.

I unironically want this?

kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964
While it's about Anthem's development it has some DA4 tidbits:

"On June 29, 2017, BioWare’s Mark Darrah published a tweet that may seem odd today. He noted that he was the executive producer of the Dragon Age franchise, then gave a list of games he was not currently working on: ”Anthem; Mass Effect; Jade Empire; A DA Tactics game; Star Wars…” The implication was that Darrah was producing Dragon Age 4. At the time, this was true. This iteration of Dragon Age 4 was code-named Joplin, and those who were working on it have told me they were excited by creative director Mike Laidlaw’s vision for the project."

"But Anthem was on fire, and by October, BioWare had decided to make some massive changes. That summer, studio general manager Aaryn Flynn departed, to be replaced by a returning Casey Hudson. As part of this process, the studio canceled Joplin. Laidlaw quit shortly afterward, and BioWare restarted Dragon Age 4 with a tiny team under the code name Morrison. Meanwhile, the studio moved the bulk of Dragon Age 4’s developers to Anthem, which needed all of the company’s resources if it was going to hit the ship date that EA was demanding."

"One big change that’s already been enacted at BioWare is a new technology strategy. Developers still at the studio say that under Casey Hudson, rather than start from scratch yet again, the next Dragon Age will be built on Anthem’s codebase. (We’ll share more on that game in the near future.)"

Not really looking forward to Anthem Age.
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venturebeat.com/2019/04/02/bioware-went-rogue-on-ea-with-its-dragon-age-4-announcement/
Some more info about DA4:

"Two hours into The Game Awards 2018, organizer Geoff Keighley proudly threw to yet another one of his famous “world premieres.” Over the next 60 seconds, fans watched a vague teaser for the next entry in the Dragon Age series. The bulk of the clip focuses on a 3D render of an object called the “red lyrium idol.” And it ends with the idol fading into a mural as the character Solas repeats a line from the Trespasser expansion for Dragon Age: Inquisition.
If you watch the trailer for yourself, you may notice that it seems thin and rushed. And that’s because it was, according to sources familiar with publisher Electronic Arts and developer BioWare."

"The video is the result of EA scrambling to fulfill a promise that BioWare made. The studio made that promise even though EA’s top brass told the Mass Effect and Anthem developer not to.
And yet, in a blog post on November 29, BioWare director Casey Hudson heavily implied that Dragon Age 4 would show up at The Game Awards:
“Dragon Age is an incredibly important franchise in our studio, and we’re excited to continue its legacy. Look for more on this in the coming month (though I won’t tell you where to look…)”
When BioWare posted that tease, it left EA no choice but to play along. Dragon Age fans were now expecting … something."

"Hudson’s power move was possible in part because of EA’s current relationship with BioWare and its fans. EA brought Hudson back in 2017 (after he left in 2014) to give fans confidence in future BioWare releases after the disappointing Mass Effect: Andromeda.
But that doesn’t mean EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson took Hudson’s power move in stride. He actually flew up to Edmonton shortly after The Game Awards to do an in-person checkup on Dragon Age.
And Wilson has a lot of good reasons for skepticism regarding the progress of Dragon Age 4. BioWare is beginning to repeat its mistakes. A lot of that is due to EA, but it seems likely that BioWare’s culture is also a culprit."

“Cancel” may not imply all it may seem here.  If they were rebooting the project they would probably recycle as much of the old work as they could.  I suspect that what they mean about using Anthem’s code base is for more low level functionality like cutscenes, inventory and event triggers that is lacking at base Frostbite.