Dragon Age 4 - Writing the Next Dragon Age

Eurogamer chats with the Sunless Sea creator Alexis Kennedy and ask how things are going on Dragon Age 4.

His appointment was notable for a couple of reasons. Sure, it was tacit confirmation the Dragon Age team was beginning to staff up. But Kennedy himself had secured a unique position. BioWare is a Canadian company, headquartered in Edmonton. He is British, based in Greenwich, and has not relocated for the job. BioWare does not often employ remote workers, and almost never remote writers: the people who lay down the earliest brushstrokes of a game's world and its characters during the earliest and most formative of its stages.

All the better for us, though, that we could catch up with Kennedy and see how things were going. It has, to address the elephant in the room, been a trying period for his new employer. BioWare is still licking its wounds from the recent, bruising reaction to Mass Effect Andromeda. The company's next project to release will be its recently-delayed and untested new IP, codenamed Dylan. Meanwhile, Dragon Age is still in its early stages. How was he fitting in?

"It's an unusual arrangement," Kennedy admits, chatting via video call from his London home. As a (very) remote worker, Skype is something of a necessity for him - although with different divisions dotted across North America, it's not unusual for BioWare to communicate with its staff from afar. "It's a multi-studio company spread across Edmonton, Montreal [which developed Mass Effect Andromeda] and Austin [home to Star Wars: The Old Republic]," he continues, "though yes - it doesn't have guest writers, as a rule."

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I wish him luck since he will need it!

Loved DA1 and even enjoyed DA2 lot compared to most people here but DA3 ruined it for me. After having spent 100 hours+ I was bored out of my head. Part of it is the way I played it but I do blame lot of the design decisions on BW as well.

I think DA3 has great RPG inside it but I wish BW or someone will mod it and get rid of all the filler crap out of it and get the pacing right, then it will be a great game.

After DA3, I am not really looking forward to DA4 but the setting of the world still intrigues me so we will see…

If you spent 100+ hours on it it can't have been THAT bad? Personally I felt disillusioned after DA:O so didn't play any of the sequels.

Edit: Has ME:A sold badly? I know they took flak but I still thought it would sell like crazy.

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
If you spent 100+ hours on it it can't have been THAT bad? Personally I felt disillusioned after DA:O so didn't play any of the sequels.

Edit: Has ME:A sold badly? I know they took flak but I still thought it would sell like crazy.

Its not a "crap" game and it started really well. The first 30/40 hours were solid but soon after I began to see the hollow MMO stuff. You spot the "pattern" and the "grind" and saying to yourself that its going to be more of the same from now on. Other than the story, there were no "hooks" to look forward to.

Its bit like dating a hot girl and realising that she is ugly underneath once the make up comes off!

Why the 100+ hours? Well I really tried to play it few times from the start hoping that I can skip lot of the "grind" and have tight gaming experience but after a point I felt I can't skip without gimping some aspect. I wanted to keep up with the story and the lore but right now i feel I am better off reading spoilers.

Edit: Has ME:A sold badly? I know they took flak but I still thought it would sell like crazy.

I don't believe its a flop but it did not sell as much as EA hoped for so the whole franchise is on ice for now.

Originally Posted by lostforever
I don't believe its a flop but it did not sell as much as EA hoped for so the whole franchise is on ice for now.

EA hoped it would sold 3m in the first week (that's less than ME3 and DAI for the records, EA never expected MEA to outsold those games), and going by the stats we have (from UK charts and US charts for March which exclude PC), the game sold at least that on console in the days it had in March so they were not that far off. One Montréal BioWare employee also said it was a financial success a few weeks back too.

As for "being put on the ice", I think people are trying to find a reason to call MEA a failure because EA won't, but unfortunately for them DAI give all the signals to have been been put on the ice despite being BioWare best selling game. They are just now starting to staff the project. I'll remind people that DAI released in November 2014 (last DLC in 2015 but MEA has a DLC team right now, they are recording VO in fact), that we are in 2017 and that pre-production doesn't last 2 years (usually it's ~3 months).

Dragon Age 4

Definitely still interested in DA world. Hope they will drop the MMO grind like quests and fix up the combat mechanics - I would much more prefer DA:O like combat vs DA2/3.

I keep seeing the 'MMO' nature of DA:I being mentioned, but I don't personally find DA:I (or ME:A) very MMO-like. I'm very much not a fan or MMO's.

Is it possible that people mean more the 'open world' nature of these games, or at least how BioWare has tried doing open world?

The endless grinding and time filler complaints, from me, are largely due to trying to make a huge, 'explorable' world with 'tons to do in it' and such. What drags those games, what makes me never finish a Bethesda Elders Scrolls game (can you 'finish' them? - main story aside) is that I, personally, am about as much a fan of open world as I am of MMO.

I like a self-contained story, with a limited play run, and clear objectives. I do like choice, but meaningful choices (I'd rather have like 3-4 big, important story choices rather than dozens of meaningless fluff choices) - and I absolutely hate travel time, wasting my 'gaming' time moving a digital avatar from one side of a map to another. It's like a virtual road-trip with no worthwhile destination - not my idea of fun, IRL or virtually.

But all that's just my view of things.

ME4 didn't sell bad, but it didn't break any record to bragg about. If EA expected some recordbreaker, I can't think of any possible reason they thought will pwn the market.
I mean, for example Mako mining? What kind of CEO could think such mechanics sells a game?

About a possible problem with openworlds, it would probably derail the thread. There is not one type of openworld design. I don't think we had a separate thread about openworlds in general, will try to find if there is one already, if not, I'll make one. Or perhaps better, you do it as I might start it "the wrong way".

Originally Posted by Merin
I keep seeing the 'MMO' nature of DA:I being mentioned, but I don't personally find DA:I (or ME:A) very MMO-like. I'm very much not a fan or MMO's.

Is it possible that people mean more the 'open world' nature of these games, or at least how BioWare has tried doing open world?

The endless grinding and time filler complaints, from me, are largely due to trying to make a huge, 'explorable' world with 'tons to do in it' and such. What drags those games, what makes me never finish a Bethesda Elders Scrolls game (can you 'finish' them? - main story aside) is that I, personally, am about as much a fan of open world as I am of MMO.

When I say MMO, I mean the "check list" nature of the game. For example, all the fetch quest, kill 10 rat types of quests, close the oblivion gates, collect x amount of that, liberate y amount of this etc. None these are bad per se but its the degree to which you use them is the issue. In DAI they went ape shite and added zillions of these to make their so called open world feel open and big. I think these are all pointless in a single player game.

A recent open world game is HZD and it has all of the above but it never feel like chore since they keep the above aspects to a minimum and the game finishes around the 50 hour mark. HZD was paced perfectly as far as I am concerned. The devs of HZD knew when to stop but BW didn't in DA3.

I like a self-contained story, with a limited play run, and clear objectives. I do like choice, but meaningful choices (I'd rather have like 3-4 big, important story choices rather than dozens of meaningless fluff choices) - and I absolutely hate travel time, wasting my 'gaming' time moving a digital avatar from one side of a map to another. It's like a virtual road-trip with no worthwhile destination - not my idea of fun, IRL or virtually.

But all that's just my view of things.

I liked previous BW games exactly for the reasons you mention above. BW first open world game is DA3 and they messed it up.

Also I don't believe every game has to be large open world to be good even for exploration. Gothic 2 and Risen 1 and 2 were small and self contained open worlds and I had lots of fun exploring them than say DA3 open world or Witcher 3 or even Skyrim etc.

I'm also one that liked DA:O, enjoyed DA2 even with its problems, but didn't care for DA3 at all (I also played it for a long while until I realized I was forcing myself to play it).
Suggestion for MA4: Make it more focused, less 'open' areas… square mileage is not a reflection of how good a game is.

I have zero investment in DA but Kennedy is a real writer. It would be interesting to see the result of inviting a professional to work on an established series (or any RPG for that matter).

Originally Posted by azarhal
As for "being put on the ice", I think people are trying to find a reason to call MEA a failure because EA won't

Of course EA won't publicly call it a failure anytime soon (if ever) regardless of what happens, that's just not how those companies work. But it's unquestionably a failure as far as the critical reception was concerned. Sitting at a 70 on Metacritic for the PS4 where it's got the most reviews (73 on PC and 77 on Xbox One where there's far less reviews). EA would have been hoping for at least 20 points higher than that.

DAI was grindy and full of MMO content, sure, but it was miles ahead of MEA in terms of writing and characterization. I hope he does a good work.

The egghead could be one of more interesting villains, but whole series ( and BW, in general) seems to be having some kind of identity crisis. Type of combat? Open world or not? Mono or multi sexual party?
Just pick one option and go with it!

I didn't know they officially announced DA4 existed. Or did they? I missed it, although I knew it was rumored.

Less relationship bullcrap more RPG.

Huh, didn't even know another one was planned. I only bought and played the first game (which was awesome) but the second one scared me off permanently.

I'll say my standard joke: Maybe this time they can go full SJW, finally, and make every character be a tranny, pardon me, I meant transgender, and/or gay. Hell, go further, and excise all Evil White People from the game, and their damn privilege along with it!
This is the only way (in video games, at least) to fight against this overwhelming oppression in the world…

But seriously, if they get a real writer, and apparently they have, and go back to old school basics, then I'm interested. I may have talked smack about Bioware and EA in the past, but all will be forgiven if they make an old school inspired rpg!

Just as long as it's bear-heavy. If I'm not savaged by at least 5 bears during the tutorial, I'm out.

Originally Posted by ChaosTheory
Just as long as it's bear-heavy. If I'm not savaged by at least 5 bears during the tutorial, I'm out.

Bears meaning hairy gay men, of course.

(Admit it, it's not out of the question in a new BioWare game.)