Dragon Age Dreadwolf Development so far.

I still want to know what they meant by this:

If you’re new to Dragon Age, you have no need to worry about not having met our antagonist just yet. He’ll properly introduce himself when the time is right, but we did hint at his return when we announced #TheDreadWolfRises back in 2018.

Did they simply wish to show how long Solas has been the focus of the game, which is why they didn't reference the later trailer in 2020 which did more than hint? Or is it a case of wanting to play down the importance of the 2020 trailer because much of what we saw there is not going to feature in the single player game?    It is also strange phrasing because they were referring to new players and yet anyone who had not played the games would not know that Solas was a returning character.      For anyone who had played Trespasser, there was little doubt that Solas would be returning at some point and the 2018 trailer just seemed a reassurance that would be the case.

What does link the 2018 trailer and the latest information is that backdrop to the logo; the strange circle with 7 small half circles around the edge, 5 of which are blacked out.    Again, this ignores what seemed to be the new version of the logo in the 2020 trailer.    Meanwhile, the purple colour scheme does seem to be the standard one for associated products, with it also appearing in the Netflix trailer, as opposed to the black and gold of 2020, although the Neflix logo does have the gold lettering.     

I suppose what all 3 trailers' logos have in common are circles.   

My guess is they just wanted to call back to the original announcement from 2018, but I agree the phrasing was odd because as I've said they have teased his return on many occasions, not just then. But I guess that was the first post-DAI tease and when they started #TheDreadWolfRises hashtag so it probably makes sense to reference that.

I think the 2020 teaser is still relevant but honestly it was vague enough that even if they changed directions that could still largely be true. 

One notable thing is the official website (https://www.ea.com/games/dragon-age) has not been updated with the "Dreadwolf" title/logo. It still appears as it has since the Dec 2020 teaser with same text description, images, trailers, etc. They haven't added a page yet for "Dragon Age: Dreadwolf" like the other games. Maybe they are waiting for something larger like a trailer before they update again but I found it a bit odd they wouldn't put the new title there. Could just be an oversight as well...how many people even check the site? Especially if the title reveal was mostly to avoid confusion with the Absolution announcement.

Exactly.

I think I did cover the part about Trespasser in my post.

If they didn't finish the base game, then they won't be aware of who Solas is, so that would come as a complete surprise to them. In fact, they might not even make the connection between the elf on one side of the image (who doesn't actually look bald but apparently that is shadow so he is) and the Dread Wolf image on the other. They would recognise Solas' voice but why would they imagine he was the antagonist next game? It looks in the image as though he is in opposition to the big bad wolf. So the 2018 trailer may have alerted them to the fact that Solas was returning but they wouldn't know why and might even imagine he was still going to help us.

I suppose it depends on what you call a casual player. I would define it as anyone who just plays the game but doesn't immerse themselves in the lore, associated media or comes to these boards. As I pointed out in my previous post, I agree that they often don't bother with the DLC but may well have completed the base game. To give an example, I know a player who is happy to complete the game once and doesn't buy DLC on principle since they feel that it shouldn't be necessary to complete the story. In the case of DAO and DA2 this was true, although the sight of Corypheus didn't have the same impact on them as it did on me since they had never met him. I suggested they might want to play Trespasser because it was like an extended epilogue to the main game or a prequel to the next but they couldn't because they had an old console and at the time weren't planning on upgrading just to play one DLC. It was rather odd that after making the other DLC available to everyone, when the content wasn't that important to the story going forward (well the Descent might be) they didn't do that for the one DLC that was.

Anyway, my point remains that the comment about the 2018 was directed towards new players, for whom Solas would mean nothing, or possibly casual players who would only know him as the apostate elf with extensive knowledge of the Fade, if they didn't finish the game, or as Fen'Harel who killed Flemeth if they did. They will have absolutely no idea of what Solas had done in the past or what he intended to do in the future. So let's hope they do have some way of bringing all these players up to speed on these issues. May be it will just be through pre-release information or codices.

I'm casual. I played DAO with all dlc (complete edition) once.
Discontinued DA 2 before Deep Roads. 
Finished DAI once - only base game. 

I have no idea what Evanuris are and by now I really wonder why we still don't know about the fate of magisters and instead were sent for two games on the goose chase for some dude with power fantasies. I hhhave no clue what a Fen Harel is and generally think the elves are not very interesting in DA world. 4 games and will the secret of the tainted guys be lifted? Is it disease? A virus? Magic thing? Or will we be cliffhanged with just another goose chase for something completely different?
Truth is that I just dont care a bit. I dont think it is anything for me and it'd be a pain to get back into with these winding  sidestuff developments.

I don't know about that. If they have played previous games, then the fact the next one is allegedly being set in Tevinter might be enough to entice them back. I suppose a lot will depend on the marketing and initial reviews.

Anyway, they still fall under the category of new players in that they won't even know that Solas killed off Flemeth or that he is the Dread Wolf, so the 2018 trailer wouldn't have meant that much to them.

Pretty much. I tried DAI because it was Frostbyte and we knew the next Mass Effect would run on Frostbyte. I didnt know Kass or the bare-chested dwarf whose name I have forgotten (his DPS in DAI sucked balls and I stopped using him as companion and picked Sera as ranged). I remember some stuff faintly about Fen Harel and some trickster god but it was left all vague and what I really always wanted to know was what's with the Blight and what have the Dragons to do with it?
In itself DAI had the initial story thing closed with the crystal man being overcome but the big picture, what is that?

I did acknowledge the possibility, which is why I went with "unlikely". No, I don't blame them, but I also don't see why should developers base any major decisions on the existence of half-way quitters.

Imagine the writing board for a movie sequel. The first guy starts throwing in some ideas on how to follow up on the world changing events from the ending of the previous movie, but then he is interrupted by another writer saying "But Dave, some people may have walked out of the theater when they watched the first one! They don't know who Evil McStache is or why it matters to find Billy. Should we really have the trailer focus on them? Hell, maybe we should rewrite the story a little because people who only saw the first 15 minutes don't know who these people are!"

I never felt like a sequel -to anything- must bear the responsibility for those who skipped previous installments. Its only job is to make enough sense to follow the general premise. This dude is curious about Solas? Then he should go back and play the older games, google it, do something. Wait... he doesn't know and doesn't care? Then nothing needs to be done at all.

The main difference between Mass Effect and Dragon Age is the protagonist. In Mass Effect this is Shepard. Now it is perfectly possible to step in at a later stage without playing the previous games but the great part was that if you had played from the beginning there was this continuity between each episode in the story and choices you made, even back in ME1 could become important in ME3. So, whilst each game had its own resolution, which made it satisfying in its own right, there was also the ongoing narrative to keep you engaged.

Now each Dragon Age had its own protagonist and to be honest, I was happy with the idea that there should be no carry over from one game to another, even as a cameo role. I think a problem occurred in that Hawke's story should have been tied off with the Exalted March DLC, which in terms of scope was probably going to be more along the lines of the expansion Awakening. When that was cancelled, Hawke was brought into the next story in a rather unsatisfactory way but on the whole this didn't detract from the main protagonist, the Herald/Inquisitor. As far as I was concerned, their story was done with that final balcony shot at the end of the game. If Trespasser had dealt solely with explaining how they ceased to be Lord Inquisitor of Thedas, that would have achieved its alleged aim, that is to tie off their story.

How can it not be a sequel? What was strange about Trespasser was to use it to introduce Solas as a major antagonist and then end that DLC with the PC aware of that fact. That wasn't the case with Hawke and Corypheus. Hawke genuinely thought they had dealt with the threat in Legacy. Essentially, instead of getting a final resolution to the story we had followed in DAI, how you built up an organisation from scratch, became one of the most powerful figures in Thedas and then why it all ended, they decided to tack on the confrontation with Solas, which basically started a whole new episode with him as the antagonist. As a player we already knew about Solas' identity from the final scene of DAI. Our PC didn't need to know. We could have discovered all that elven lore without our PC being aware it was directly connected to our former ally. May be I am in a minority about this, or even a lone voice, but if they weren't planning on continuing the story with the Inquisitor, why have that confrontation with him at all?

This is why I say that the 2018 trailer only really meant something to old established players who had played all the games and DLC. Then they say that they hinted at Solas' return in that trailer. Which I find rather odd because they had more than hinted in that confrontation in Trespasser.

So, it is true that you can come to the game without having played any previous ones, particularly because we know it is going to feature a new protagonist. It is for this reason that I feel that I would have to ignore everything I know from previous games unless someone else tells me or I could reasonably know it as someone from that world, thus putting my PC in exactly the same position as if I were a new player. However, for those people who have played the games, including Trespasser, they are going to have to make a coherent narrative that respects the fact that you did. As I have pointed out above, if the idol is going to feature in the game, this is going to be something of a surprise to people who have not read associated books and comics, even though that was also hinted at in the 2018 trailer, because the last we knew of the idol, it had been melted down and reformed into a sword. Obviously, it will mean nothing to new players.