DAD's extended development cycle

I really think the ultimate answer to this question won't come until after release. How will all these 'content changes' effect things? How will the extended develiopment effect them? Is it a sign they are taking their time to get it right or a sign of listless wandering and will lead eventually to a rush?

Given Bio's track record I have to almost be confident in the final product but it is still worth wondering and pointing out that a long dev cycle does not gurantee a good game. That being said I voted 'yes, but begrugingly so'.

"No, because I don't think it will amount to anything" sums it up about right. It's not like they used this time to make a magnum opus, it's more like 2 steps forward and 3 back all while bleeding talent and probably having EA breathing down their necks.

I was just commenting to my wife a few days ago that maybe I should buy a PC now in case the China vs Taiwan situation escalates ...

The thing is, new consoles are quite the heavy target. You have 8 cores and 16GB of memory with _really fast_ SSD and almost top of the line GPU.
I do wonder how this translates to PC, will the minimum be 8 cores, at least 12GB memory with fast SSD and at least middle of line GPU? My PS5 is much faster than my desktop PC is now.

On the original subject: Well I waited a long time for the first Dragon Age and it was awesome. I'm willing to wait for the next and hope that it is also awesome.

On PC's consoles etc: It's (probably) not worth buying something now for a game that may be two years away. However if you need (or want) something new now then you need it now.

Consoles are a great bang for the buck option if all you are looking at is gaming. If you still need a PC/laptop for other things then the equation gets poorer. Modern PC's, if decently specced come with storage that is just as fast as consoles so that isn't a selling point. PC's don't have to share memory between CPU and GPU so they'll always be better there. As to CPU cores, 4 is enough, 6 is good and 8 allows extra headroom at the moment. More than 8 is not likely to matter to gaming for quite a while, although other tasks (like video encoding or Blender for example) can use them if you have them.

PC's of course have more games available and the games are generally cheaper, but at the end of the day your own personal circumstances are what must dictate your purchases, not what any forum hive mind dictates.

Then all we would get would be games like Dragon Age 2.  That is an unrealistic goal for game development with what is expected a game deliver anymore.  Most games take 3 to 4 years if they aren't open world and 4 to 5 if they are open world.  Personally putting some unrealistic goal for development just makes a game like Cyberpunk 2077 or Anthem because they had to rush to get it out the door to meet that deadline.

They've just started advertising for the team leads for the project. Which means the initial direction is set and they probably have the outline of a 'bible', but not much more.

It's more that they're really fumbling the ball with direction. Management keeps on changing what they want from the development team who then have to start from the beginning again.

I no expert in GameDev management, but Strategy would come from the top, so EA. Probably wanting Bioware to incorporate elements of what is the current trend, whether it be MMO, MOBA, Shooter or whatever that they believe they can monetise. Instead I would hope that Bioware would be allowed to play to their own traditions and sink or swim based on that. That would then be up to the Bioware management to commission something that their devs are good at, whilst still giving punters something they will enjoy. So the devs have to provide some new things, cos relying on grognards will send you out of business, while playing to their own strengths.

Clearly you haven't understood my comment!

My point wasn't that the entire development cycle needs to be 2-3 years like it was with DA2 (it was shorter than that, but whatever). My point was, that if you spent 3 years in pre-production, throwing concepts and mechanics on the wall to see what sticks, instead of investing that time carefully to build up a product, then your project have no direction and vision, and you better off redirecting your focus and starting over on a new project, one that you can visualize and materialize a lot better.

Anthem's development took 7 years. 5 years of which were spent in pre-production, essentially not producing anything substantial.

Andromeda's development took 5 years, 3 years of which were spent in pre-production, essentially not producing anything substantial.

I can imagine Dragon Age 4 having similar background history as these. 


That is a problem. You said it yourself, you should be making the entire game in 3-5 years. Not be in a pre-production stage for 3-5 years. And that was my point. Saying that these efforts of forcing an old project to work are in vain, and they're better off spent working out a new idea. 

Imagine if they didn't force Anthem to work (it never did, but w/e). We could've gotten 2 games that had development cycle of 4 and 3 years in that time period. That is literally what I meant.

Hopefully you understand it now.