Dragon Age News Thread

I’d personally hope that the element they wouldn’t take from Anthem is having the MP integration. It’d mean the removal of both the pause system, as well as (likely) companions on the field.

That's not how you spell Immersion Breaking... 

What does dual protagonist have to do with multiplayer stuff being included in the story? That is what "MP in the critical path" meant when you said it, right? Or am I missing something?

The issue that I see with your scenario is that the two players wouldn't spend a lot of time together, which is one of the main appeals of a MP game. It sounds like you would have your main character in Val Royeaux, for example, while the other character is in the Hinterlands collecting elfroot, essentially playing two different games simultaneously. While it could be a cool idea, I'm not sure how many players would consider that a true MP experience.

In theory, you could set MP up like the Baldur's Gate series where one player is the designated "main character" and any other players would take up companion slots and/or control any NPC companions. While any player can interact with NPCs in the game, the "main character" is always considered the party leader and the only one capable of initiating a romance. Since BG has parties of six, you could still have a decent amount of NPC companion interaction (as much as BG has, anyway) while still adventuring with a couple of real life friends, but DA's four-person party system makes recreating that dynamic a bit more challenging.

Also, adding MP to the story doesn't have to eliminate pausing. I think in BG you can choose whether or not to enable pausing for all players or just the party leader. I know whenever I played with my dad we both had the ability to pause the game, which did lead to a lot of yelling through the wall of who was going to unpause the game after we set up all our attacks.  This probably isn't ideal for how most people play MP games today, but it would be cool if they left the option in for those who prefer a more tactical style even when playing with others. If MP does eliminate pausing altogether, however, it would definitely move DA4 into the "wait until the game goes on sale" category for me.

It's possible that whatever aspects are affected by the "reboot" of DA4 to incorporate live services aren't all nailed down yet.

I like to think that Hudson is just so disengaged with DA that he doesn't really know what's going on with it. I remember thinking that prior to that brief hullabaloo about what live service meant he never mentioned it, just ME and Anthem.

I think it was around the same time Mike Laidlaw left. There was a Kotaku article and Casey Hudson tweeted a statement downplaying it.

From the Kotaku article (Jan. 24/18)...

Disappointing news. Sounds like DA4 is still years off and mass effect an eternity off, that’s if all eggs in horrid anthem doesn’t fail hard.

I hope not, since it’d delay DA4 a lot, regardless of which path is picked.
I don’t know how the Anthem system would work in DA while mantaining some of the game’s traditional features, like party system and a pause system. Also, it’d likely mean a use of a reflex based system in combat, since I doubt they’d repeat the DAI MP situation, which wasn’t much appreciated.

My favorite scenario would be of having Anthem focusing on all the live/online features while giving space for a more traditional approach for DA, but that interview kind of put a stop on that theory, since it seems live elements will be present either way.

Regardless, it’ll be a year at least before we’d know anything about it.