Yeah, it's hard to be particularly excited about either Dragon Age 4 or Mass Effect 4. Both were announced way too early, with DA4 being announced 6 years before it's likely Holiday 2024 release date, and Mass Effect 4 seemingly being announced more like 8-9 years before it's release date (if it releases at all). There was massive turnover at Bioware during DA4's development, with longtime series veterans like Mike Laidlaw, Mark Darrah, and Matthew Goldman all leaving over the course of it's development, and the current build of the game going through 3 different directors over it's 5 years of development so far, though Darrah did at least return to Bioware to act as a consultant on DA4 earlier this year. Bioware Austin was forced to drop SWTOR development to come work on Dragon Age 4 and Mass Effect 4 which reportedly made many at the studio angry, not a good recipe for success, having bitter developers working on your game. Then we had the recent 50 person layoffs at Bioware.
We did hear that they decided to remove all GaaS elements from DA4 and make it a singleplayer game at least, after EA saw the success of Jedi Fallen Order, but at the same time, we've also seen in job listings that DA4 is likely open world with linear dungeons, which didn't really work for DA:I because Bioware just doesn't know how to make a good open world.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 09 September 2023