BioWare ‘making progress’ on Dragon Age 4 but ‘working from home is harder’

BioWare has confirmed that it’s still working on Dragon Age 4, although development has been complicated by this year’s switch to remote working.

In a social media update, BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah said the studio is “making progress” on the game but that “working from home is harder” than it is at the office.

In June EA offered the first look at some of its in-development projects for next-gen consoles. A work-in-progress video was used to tease new fantasy worlds from BioWare, Battlefield 6, and Criterion’s next-gen Need for Speed.

EA said last October that it doesn’t expect to release the next Dragon Age game before its fiscal year 2023, which begins on April 1, 2022.

“You should assume that Dragon Age—it’s out there, we’ve talked about it publicly that it’s in the works—it probably comes after fiscal 22,” EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said.

“But we typically don’t give multi-year guidance this early in the year, or multi-year guidance period,” he added, “so I don’t want to start giving [fiscal] 23 guidance now that I’ve started to hint on 22, but you should assume it’s out there and plans are underway for that product.”

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In early 2018, it was reported that BioWare had rebooted Dragon Age 4 and that its replacement would be a “live service” game.

Studio GM Casey Hudson responded to the report on Twitter: “Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on,” he wrote.

“Story & character focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about ‘live’ it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.”

EA officially teased the game with a vague trailer at The Game Awards in December 2018. In an accompanying blog post, BioWare said: “We’ve gathered our strongest team yet and are venturing forth on the most epic quest ever.”

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