Your opinion of Dragon Age 4 releasing in late 2022 (possibly early 2023)

I know fans are upset with the longer than expected launch window, but this statement should ring true for any game.

Stuck between Disappointed and Pessimistic.

Disappointed - Eights years is just a long time between installments. Especially when this is probably a continuation of the previous game.

Pessimistic - The fact that they've started over/changed direction for the third game in a row doesn't do much to cast away the 'here we go again thoughts'. I'm still not sold on the management or direction over at Bioware. If the last two games have shown anything, it's that development time in and of itself does not guarantee quality.

I am pessimistic. Simple and plain.

They had a game "on the road" already for some time. It was probably the game we all waited for, namely an single player game with some nice plot development. It was a game I was reasonably optimistic for, and was looking forward to.

But Noooo... We won't get that. They had to axe that kind of game and hammer the remains into a "Game As Service" contraption, an poison it up with Anthem core elements and assets. It's like hammering a square peg into a round hole.

The final nail would be making the game on-line multiplayer. In that case the complete plot has to be shaved to a bare minimum, because otherwise it would not fit into a multiplayer environment. And, of course, single player will become a kind of afterthought tacked-on bare minimum mode.

So - Yeah.. I'm pessimistic. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised and get it all wrong, but looking around in the present AAA game industry landscape, I say: "Oh, come on, don't be so naive you fool"....

I'm pessimistic on DA4 at this point, people can say more time the better but the last few games haven't shown that in biowares case, so I'll take their track record in mind and I won't Imagine DA4 being any different 🤷. Their management seems like utter trash and it's why their projects continue to bomb. Andromeda was a mess and legitimately ruined so much of my interest in the mass effect IP, now I'm sitting here hoping the same won't happen for DA.

Mixed.
While i obviously can't wait to experience DA4 asap like everyone here ,
a 2022/23 release for the game hopefully means there's more time for it to be polished.

On the other hand,if the game takes so much time to come out and turns out to be bad,there will be no excuses!

We have a saying here "Good stuff takes time" and i really hope that is the case

Mixed leaning into disappointed/bitter.

Obviously happy that they seem to be getting a good amount of time to work on the game (a style of and setting that the team are familiar and experienced with).

However, 8 years is just too long for a sequel. I know these sorts of decisions are made way up the food chain, but after MEA received the reception it did (yes, many people loved it, but only an idiot would think it received the near universal acclaim and success of the trilogy), they should have pivoted away from something that was totally unknown to them. Anthem was a new setting and a completely new style of game. In pure business terms, it was a risk. A very big one. I'm not saying it should have been canned - although some around here will no doubt feel that - I haven't played even a second of Anthem, so can't judge its quality. What they should have done - from a business perspective - is transfer focus to a known quantity, with a known player-base and a recognised brand. Spoiler alert - I'm talking about Dragon Age. Reclaim some goodwill from players who straddle both ME and DA. Reclaim positive buzz from the game punditry circle. Then return to the new IP, with that much more experience on Frostbite and that much more time to tinker with ideas.

So yeah, hopeful for the game it will eventually be, but a little bitter that a game as poorly received as Anthem was what caused this absurd gap between titles.

That is true, but doesn't RDR2 take place before the events of RDR?

I haven't played either, yet - waiting for 2 to be available on Steam - but that was my understanding.  So it is really a sequel as much as it is a 'follow-up', but that is really just semantics.

Taken in isolation, though, you're right - 8 years is not objectively too long for a sequel.  My point probably should have been "8 years is too long between critically acclaimed and commercially successful titles".  They should have taken the 'easy win'.  I recognise wanting to do different things from creative and technical points of view, but from a business point of view, there is a compelling argument for revisiting familiar ground sooner, rather than later, if recent efforts haven't gained the reception you hoped for.

Edit: in case this is unclear; my position on the news is contextual.  If MEA and Anthem had been met with universal acclaim, I would have sighed slightly and looked forward to 2022/23 as simply being "when it was due".  However, MEA underwhelmed - despite its proponents, of which many are here - so they should have made the decision at that point (when they decided there'd be no story DLC for MEA) to pivot to a safer bet.  Not double-down on an unknown.

I agree 8 years is a long time for a direct sequel, and I'd say the same if it were any other studio/publisher. If DA4 were a whole new chapter, or a spin off set in the DA universe (like Andromeda was for ME), I wouldn't mind so much. It's the fact DAI left a lot of lingering plot threads and narratives hanging for 8 years. That's a stretch for people to remain interested. I guess perhaps the most frustrating bit to me was that it sounds like they had a pretty good concept for DA4 ready to go that they were happy with, but it got scrapped.

In a way the Andromeda situation might've directly resulted in where we are too. The timeline is a bit uncertain at times but if they did as you were suggesting and doubled down on a 'win'...it might not have been a win. Joplin was what they were working on at the time not the current DA 4...and there was probably a reason Joplin was cancelled and retooled in the first place especially in lightof the issues with Anthem and Andromeda. So BioWare was left with a choice...do we go ahead with our bad project and tarnish Dragon Age, or do we maybe sort of hold Anthem up as a sacrificial apple while rebooting DA 4 into something more reasonable?

Perhaps it wouldn't have been a 'win'.  Everything we've heard about the early - now scrapped - version of DA4 sounded fantastic, though.  Play as a spy/agent in Tevinter.  Small, tight story, focused on replayability.  That sounds great, and in keeping with traditional Bioware 'strengths'.

Contrast that against - a new setting no-one knows anything about with gameplay that appears (from the few videos I've watched) to be a new skin of MEA without the roleplaying and the added ability to fly.  We know from the Kotaku article and Biowares response to it that Anthem was in a messy state, whereas DA4 at the time had a clear vision and set of goals.  It also had plenty of people - like us - waiting on it.

Sounds awful. Glad it was scrapped.

As underwhelming as Anthem was for me, I can't fault them for making it from a business perspective.  You can't look at it based solely on how the game turned out.  If Anthem had been released in better condition and been a hit, it would have been a continuous money maker for years, and not just a one time bump.  Companies would much rather have recurring revenue if given the choice.  It's the whole reason for this shift to live service models.  To get more money out of the games.  That's why they won't give up on Anthem as quickly as they did Andromeda.  They know if they get it fixed, it call still bring a lot of revenue over time.