Dragon Age News Thread

The new cinematic that came out on December 4th was more than he had expected to see on Dragon Age Day (were there to be something at TGA that is). "The fact that the teaser for DA:D was as big as it was at DA Day would be an indication, that would be evidence that they wouldn't be at TGA." If they were planning to be there, he would have expected to see less on DA Day. That teaser wasn't enough for TGA and they wouldn't release something like screenshots of DA:D at TGA. "If that's all they have I could see them doing that on DA Day and having nothing at TGA"

A possible reason for BioWare/Dragon Age: Dreadwolf to not be at TGA this year would be that they don't want to put a date on the DA:D release yet, to give themselves the flexibility to move it (and due to not wanting to put a trailer without a "call to action" in it out). A date in a trailer is a form of call to action, and without a date there isn't really a call to action as you can't open pre-orders in Europe without that. "If they're wanting to keep their date open, then they might not be [there]". They were unlikely to date at TGA, "even if they [had] a trailer. The only reason to date this early would be to open up pre-orders"

There has been a move towards shorter PR and marketing cycles and a move towards this as a new policy in the video game industry recently, which in the case of DA:D could be an argument for appearing at E3 next year. So another possible reason that DA:D wouldn't be at TGA is "we're just going to shorter and shorter marketing campaigns. That would be a reason not to be there"

It's also possible that EA doesn't want DA:D marketing to undermine marketing for Jedi: Survivor, which comes out in March. "You could definitely make an argument that you want Jedi: Survivor to be here at TGA, and so you're not starting the DA marketing campaign up again until Jedi: Survivor launches"

When asked in chat "is it necessarily bad for BioWare if Dreadwolf doesn't feature tonight?" he said "no. If they're not here it's because they're waiting til E3 to give themselves more flexibility next year"

When asked in chat "considering Dragon Age is not at Game Awards, do you think EA is using the same marketing strategy they used for NFS Unbound? That game was sent to die and it's so cool! It barely had any marketing" he said "No. They've literally moved to shorter marketing campaigns, so no, I don't think so"

He thought them not being explicit about not being there ("closing out the year" seemed like specifically-chosen language) was weird, as they have been explicit about not being there in the past

He would have been very surprised if Mass Effect was there, even if DA:D wasn't there. The Next Mass Effect appearing last year was more about providing confidence that they were still working on it and that it existed - the same reason why they kept sneaking Dragon Age into things then, to prove that it was existing. A lot of things they did with Dragon Age then was to make it real enough so that EA wouldn't be willing to cancel it: "we were really afraid at certain times that it, it was gonna get - EA doesn't really cancel things - starved to death, shall we say". 'Starving out' would have involved tightening the financial reins until it withered away

When asked in chat "how much of the past Dragon Age teasers was just to allay vocal fan fears that DA:D was going to be cancelled?" he said that it was partially to make fans confident that it still existed, but it was actually also like, to hold EA hostage, because once something's announced, it's a lot harder to cancel. Like, it can be, but.

"One thing I can say is EA really, really wants Dreadwolf to be good, which is a definite sea change compared to the attitudes towards BioWare games in the past" ("sea change" is an expression denoting a substantial change in perspective)

When asked in chat "do you think [EA really wanting DA:D to be good] is to do with the recent success we've seen in the singeplayer realm with EA's Jedi: Fallen Order and games like God of War?" he said "Absolutely. Jedi: Fallen Order and Anthem together made a big impression on EA for sure"

He still thinks DA:D is coming out probably late next year (2023), or early 2024. "I don't think it's gonna be 2024. If it's 2024 it'll be January, February or March. I think it'll be 2023". "They would definitely want it to be end of 2023, but as I said I think they are focused quality-first so whether or not they'll hold to that will be dependent on quality". They would push it beyond 2023 if they had to, but they wouldn't want to. "They are definitely gonna wanna be in fiscal 24, which means before March of 2024, and Q4 sucks so they're gonna want Q3. But if they're not here at TGA it's because they're wanting to keep their options open for slipping into 2024"

When asked in chat "does the show Dragon Age: Absolution coming out without a lot of game marketing around it feel worrying to you at all?" he said no, that he doesn't think so and it's more just the way that marketing works these days. He said they're maybe a bit worried that Absolution might not hit super well. ("It does nicely continue the pattern of all of the subtitles starting with vowels til Dreadwolf" though.) There has been a lot of marketing for Dragon Age: Absolution, albeit mainly on social media, but it isn't integrated with DA:D, as it's too early to integrate it with DA:D. For that to be useful they would have to date the game, and he thinks they are waiting to date the game (see above)

Also regarding Absolution, he said that there is an argument to be made "that all the content, that Absolution is a beat, so you don't want everything stepping on itself, I think that's very true. They haven't built it to build upon itself"

They do try to tie the outside stuff into the game so "I would expect some of the characters in Absolution, not the major ones, but some of the other ones, to be relevant" in DA:D. Absolution will "probably be canon, we'll see, yeah". "They'll bring in old characters, they'll introduce characters that will appear in DA:D, probably"

"The lead time for Absolution was really long, so they were trying to be close to DA:D's release [with Absolution's release], then things just moved, with Anthem and other stuff. They just missed. I mean it's close, ish"

When asked in chat if Dreadwolf was already the name of the game when he was still at BioWare, he said they had not yet actually landed on Dreadwolf at that point, but it was on the list. When he was leaving the game was way pre-Alpha, it had not yet entered proper production (but was just about to). "There's an early production phase after pre-production, it was in that phase"

If they ever remastered Dragon Age II he doubts that they would put scrapped quests back in, but he personally would rename it "Dragon Age: Exodus"

It sounded like he was agreeing with chat that the EA Play 2020 teaser was from the early-production phase, and agreeing that the reason for showing a cinematic from the game rather than an actual trailer on DA Day was because of the aforementioned move to shorter marketing cycles

When asked in chat about the accuracy of leakers and insiders like Jeff Grubb, he said "the answer to how accurate the leaks are, it really depends on who his contact is, because often the person thinks they're telling the truth and they might be wrong. That's what often, when the leaks are wrong, it's not because they didn't have a contact, it's because their contact was wrong". Also on Grubb and DA:D, he said "He's probably right. He's usually right"

He specifically didn't ask his former colleagues if there would be a DA:D trailer at TGA, just so he could speculate. He could have found out but didn't

The goal with the loot system in DAMP was to try to fix the 'spend $300 to get everything' problem with ME3 MP, but the end result was that it just destroyed progression, it was "all a mistake there. There were better answers to that than what DAMP did"

"[BioWare] did have a trailer just 4 days ago [the new cinematic], it was a trailer that wouldn't have gotten, Geoff would not have put that on TGA, so it was too small for TGA and too big to be [inaudible]". He said it would have been a lot at one time to show the new cinematic on DA Day, Absolution releasing and to be at TGA. On why that video was chosen, he said probably because it was done, or close to done

When another game was announced and gave a date in its announcement during the world premieres, he said "Yeah, see, they're literally dating and announcing at the same time, Dragon Age might be thinking of doing the same thing"

When asked in chat "​does this mean we're getting DA:D in 2024 tops? Not even late 2023?" he said "no, it doesn't mean that, it means they're keeping their options open and they're just planning to spend their money over their summer, like they're just compressing their marketing so they can have a louder campaign, it doesn't mean anything. It means you're not gonna see it [it's not going to release] in the summer [of 2023], but you were never gonna see it in the summer. 'Cause they have one more big beat. They could drop a big trailer at E3, that's June, if they come out in November that's still tons of time. We'll see something from them in the summer, unless something goes horribly wrong they would have to do something in the summer. I still think they're targeting November 2023, like, eleven months from now. They would do it [push to 2024 if they had to], their financial year ends at the end of March, but the reason they would delay it is for quality reasons, EA wouldn't push it for any other reason"

He said "I don't know, but I doubt DA:D will have a multiplayer at all". Chat asked "the mandate from EA to make DA4 MP when you were running it, did you think it would eventually shape up and work, or was it a bad idea from the start?" and he said "it could have worked, but it was the right choice to move away from it. [...] It could have been made to work, there was work yet to be done there and definitely there wasn't perfect alignment on it. [...] The team wasn't really on-board with multiplayer so it would've been uphill. If the team doesn't wanna do it, it's basically a virtual impossibility to get them to do it effectively and make it good"

He doesn't think the temporal gap between DA:I and DA:D matters really, if the game is good, though "you're definitely not building on momentum. It's a standing start, for sure". "2016 was the best time to release another Dragon Age, but after 2016 you largely lost that moment". Mass Effect is going to have the same situation obviously - "there's enough time between them. [though] it can actually work in your favor because you don't have any drag either"

When asked in chat "wonder if BioWare could have afforded to release DA spin offs in between DA:I and DA:D. Heck why not have some other studio make something? Lack of resources?" he said "EA doesn't like spending money"

"RPGs are expensive and they take a long time". "Probably we need to get used to long development times, but I do think the industry knows, we haven't figured out a way out the other side yet. I think the answer is more true sequels and more [asset] reuse, but there is an active [gaming] community backlash against that sort of thing, so". Not reusing assets much between DA games has happened "for stupider reasons than concern about fan backlash" though

"You just have to treat Frostbite with respect. BioWare has not built upon itself [re: Frostbite] as effectively as it could have unfortunately"

When asked in chat "what did the Dragon Age 'finalling team' do in Mass Effect: Andromeda?" he said "lots of things. The DA team helped shipped ME:A, they came up pretty late, helped with triage, helped with bug-fixing, some level, I think one level was made by that team"

The Alpha phase is much later than two years out from release

"I don't know what it's gonna be like playing DA:D [himself], because there will definitely be stuff in there that was there when I was working on it, so it'll be really weird, I think"

He's not covered by any NDA from BioWare about any upcoming news, but he doesn't ask them for things that he wouldn't want to talk about, because otherwise they would stop telling him things

One of his pitches for Joplin was "no DLC and to make another game in 18 months"

Expansions and DLCs are things you can have devs working on while you're waiting for the next franchise to pick them up. When asked in chat "​why were DAI DLCs so short compared to games like The Witcher 3 DLC? Any reason in particular?" he said that the DA DLCs were trying to be more focused, while The Witcher 3 DLCs were stretching up towards expansion packs and CDPR had/has different terminology for things like patch vs DLC vs expansion pack

When asked in chat "has the origin of the Blight plot been modified since DA:O or did the team stick with the original vision?" he said "the idea is always to leave those threads as open as possible so that they can be tied into a lot of different places, so. Broad strokes are still the same, yeah"

"If we don't see DA:D today we won't see it til EA Play or E3, because that would be as late as you could go in date for pre-orders. I doubt we would see anything between now and then, anything like a trailer at least"

Mark and Matthew Goldman were working together on the DA:D teaser trailer from 2018. "More Matt than me, because I was already taking over Anthem at that point". Mark's talked a few times to Matt since he left BioWare. Matt was only on Twitter because of his role in BioWare and is still in game development

For voice acting in DA, Kate Mulgrew became expensive after Orange is the New Black (which released in 2013)

When chat said "I think it would be a bit late to change DA4 based on Absolution's reception" he said "they wouldn't change it based on its reception but they could change their positioning"

When chat said "maybe they want to give some time between showing Absolution and the trailer for DA:D just in case, since new fans may judge DA:D by Absolution" he said "yeah, that's the thing, they might be holding, they might be keeping some powder dry in case, if Absolution stinks they have something to, a palate cleanser. I think that's reasonable thinking"