As many will surely know, Dragon Age 4 he has not yet shown himself in a truly official way, albeit at the Gamescom 2020 an interesting developer diary has been released to show you how BioWare is working on the title. We had given you a little advance in our dedicated article, where we had begun to theorize the narrative direction of the title. However, the information released during the event is of a completely different nature, more technical if we want, but certainly very important to understand the software house's approach to production. Indeed, the team is aware of the fact that after the freezing of the saga of Mass Effect and the little success of Anthem, the Dragon Age brand is an ace in the hole that absolutely cannot go wrong, especially because in the event of a product not up to par for the home it could, as he would say Soles, fall night.
The first details, however, give us hope, given that BioWare seems to want to give more depth to all the aspects that made the saga great. The arrival of the game, although still without a release date, is expected on the next generation consoles, and this should already make it clear how much ambition the team is putting into its latest project.
A new adventure
Let's start by examining what little we know about the plot, details that can still help put the first pieces in a much more complex puzzle. Central to the events this time seems to be Solas, a character already known to fans and who seems to be ready to collect different narrative legacies, such as the inquisition, the red Lyrium and notorious ancient mysteries that could finally come out, marking an indelible mark on Thedas. Some rumors would like a more gory and complex narrative than in the past, but net of these rumors there have been developers who have also spoken officially. In fact, during a recent interview, BioWare said the story will be centered around the absence of powers, more precisely what happens when you don't have the "power". Although there have been no further elucidations in this regard, what has been stated seems to take a clear distance from the old Dragon Age. Also according to the software house, moreover, we can expect stories that will mainly focus on the surrounding characters, on the families and friends that you will be able to meet during the adventure, hopefully all deep and multifaceted, in such a way that the player himself can go and weave real relationships with them.
Although these are the only information regarding the narrative sector, we can already draw the first sums to try to understand where the production will go. The game, in addition to the settings and the fantasy characters that have characterized the series since the beginning, will grant the user a great choice on the decisions to be made during the adventure, as per natural tradition. Although in recent years more and more games have taken up this mechanics of choices, in this Dragon Age, also thanks to the generational shift, we expect a system that can guarantee a different experience for each player. Our eye inevitably rests also in the final artwork presented at the end of the movie, where they can be seen clearly eight classes, which in all probability will be the ones we will be able to choose at the beginning of the adventure.
The gameplay is there but you can't see it
Okay, the title of this paragraph might be quite misleading, but basically it is. The one shown by BioWare during Gamescom are just small hints of gameplay, therefore the information shown below is mainly the result of direct declarations by the software house. But let's start from the concrete: the movie clearly shows some models of monsters that we will meet during the story. These creatures come in different sizes, from the largest to the smallest. To mark the action component in the title more concretely, a dodge system has also been included, which as in many games involves a somersault. Despite this, however, the combat system will appear familiar, without failing to present important innovations. In particular, there is talk of unpublished submarine environments, which will introduce fans to new peoples and stories of the complex and rich lore of the title.
In a game world that seems to be richer and bigger than any other title in the series - and among us already Inquisition seen in these terms still does not fear rivals - It is also reasonable to expect new types of missions. Also on this the developers come to meet us, confirming the expansion of the general quest design, introducing investigative missions in a completely new guise. Last but not least, the aforementioned choices will have their roots in government problems and power relations. Both of these issues have always been addressed in the past, but also in this sense BioWare has great news promises.
Conclusions
The only certain things are doubts, and we have not even seen Dragon Age 4 running on its game engine. The Gamesom footage showed unripe work still in progress, very far from the quality that, we hope, can have the final product. However it must be said that it is really very difficult to get an idea of the technical capabilities of the work, even though the Frostbite graphics engine has always been synonymous with quality; we hope that the experience accumulated with Inquisition can bear fruit also with this new chapter.
In conclusion, we still don't know much about the work, but our expectations are already very high. BioWare, after the success of Inquisition, really has a lot of responsibility for the brand, and this time they can't allow themselves the slightest mistake. We hope to receive more concrete information on Dragon Age 4 already in the near future, but in the current state of things we do not believe that the title will be released before 2022. It will then be up to understand how the work will position itself on the market, because as we write this article, in the works there are super-famous games like Fable and the new The Elder Scrolls that in the future will return to be talked about, competing works whose conflict is best avoided. As usual, however, we have confidence in the development house and we are strongly convinced that this new fourth episode will surprise us positively.
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