DA4 is most likely going to happen. Although DAI JUST finished, so I hope they take their time in announcing it's inception. Let's just wait for ME:A to take the spotlight for now.
Also, DA4 will also most likely be released a lot quicker than DAI just because they now have many assets already with the Frostbite engine. So no need to create many new things!
First they need to decide if they want to make a DA4 or try to make something new.
First they need to decide if they want to make a DA4 or try to make something new.
I'd guess they'd have a core group of people laying the ground work. Doubt we'll get any more real info until after MEA ships. We also know it's easier and safer to continue a franchise that create a new one.
So yeah I'd say DA4 is in a stage of development- a very early one though.
That's pretty much the consensus I've seen. They DA team is pretty much down to a core group at the moment, but you don't need programmers or environmental arts or level designers etc at this stage.
I literally just finished getting done with DA:Origins as I had been given the ultimate edition or whatever, and I think I see how people forget the issues with the sidequests in Dragon Age Origins versus Inquisition. The issue is that in Origins, the quests were considerably closer together, meaning that you could walk by and knock out 2 or 3 of them in a circle around town without even really trying as opposed to Inquisition where they seemed to be designed with some rather deranged design. Take the Hinterlands for instance, you're walking around perfectly fine doing the quest and then suddenly, the game just launches a dragon at you which you have no way of realistically fighting when you first run into it which basically tells you to go another way, and then there's a fade rift where you can possibly beat it depending on what items you've brought along and party arrangements, but is a struggle at best.
The worst part? Nothing is even close to the enemy's relative strength right there unless you sneak passed it where the enemies are even stronger after that (why!?). Quests seem to have random arbitrary lock offs at moments like Varric's lyrium quest where you simply CANNOT finish it until a certain point in the main game for no clearly explained reason from a design perspective, and no one mentions that you CAN'T finish it which can leave you foolishly jumping around like an idiot for a few moments (possibly hours). There's also the fact that sidequests in Origins are never forced on you while in Inquisition, they are. Sure, you can argue that you don't have to do many, or argue that you can circumvent some by buying the scrolls to give you some power, but it's still a bit more obnoxious about it in Inquisition than it was in Origins, which is insane, because Origins was the first in a series, and Inquisition is the third. There are definite problems in both, but Inquisitions jut out more obviously which is why people point them out. There's also the fact that maps are much, MUCH larger, so transverses across the maps are considerably longer than Origins.
In this sense, it's easy to see how someone would say "the sidequests are better in Origins." It's because they are easier to do. In Inquisition, it's almost like Bioware DOESN'T want me to do the sidequests because of how inconvenient they are. I mean, they really put more emphasis on SIDE in the word "sidequest" in Inquisition.
If is so easy to gain power in DA:I, just fraking closing rifts in a the three starter zones is enough to gain the power to get to skyhold.
It isn't like they don't want you to do side quests is actually that they DON'T want you to do side quest if you don't like them. Which is why they are 90% optional. I LIKE exploration so I enjoy doing a quest that requires me to travel through a zone. It is so easy to never do a collections quest, never run all over a zone doing a side quests. The game is a year old its is pretty bloody easy to google things, I have so much power I don't know what to do with it. You can buy 50 points of power VERY cheaply once you arrive at skyhold. The biggest problem the game had pre-trespasser was the ability to just look at your journal sternly and out level the recommended levels for the main story quests. If players can't skip side quests they are either lying because it doesn't fit their narrative just like fox news does or they lack base intelligence or education to do simple maths because the amount of power required to progress the game is woefully small compared to the amount you can acquire.
DA:I ISN'T a game for people who don't like exploration and don't like or enjoy reading. It is perfectly valid not to like the game, but they are NOT required to make DA:O2. If you look at the progression of the three industry leaders in RPGs, Bethesda, Bioware & CDPR (listed alphabetically) they have all come to almost the same place with their games from three different directions. They are have a voice protagonist they have all stated they want strong story driven narratives in their games going forward. It will be interesting to see if Bethesda delivers this in FO4 but that is their stated goal. They all are creating vast open world games or at least moving in the direction even if they haven't fully got there. This is the direction the main stream AAA, leading studios for RPG are all heading. This means if you don't like a more fixed protagonist in an open world you are going to have to look for your RPG fix from smaller or indie studios because this IS where things are going.
I have ZERO problem with running into enemies that are tougher than I am with no warning. I have zero problem with getting quests I can't finish right away until further along in the story and the game doesn't tell me. That is the nature of open world and exploration. There is a rather large market for this type of game, it is why three studios have arrived here at roughly the same time and it isn't because they are copying each other. It is because the demand is there and these are the kind of games that developers WANT to make because these are the types of games THEY like to play.
All of this "don't make DA4 like DA:I" is like people p!ssing into the wind, it was a critical success in the industry, it won numerous industry awards AND gamer choice awards as well it was a financial success. The developers are proud of their work and EA is happy with the results. Who in their rational, right mind thinks that they would just take all this success and deliberately NOT make their next game building on this outcome? What they should ignore all these metrics and listen to a few disgruntled fans? Fans are not developers and almost always make game development worse when listened to.
The biggest failing with DA:I was listening to their fans. They should have ignored them. They gave us more choice, more choice and more choice but to give us all this choice they cut the content or made it no frills. They have metrics showing that only 20% of players ever TRIED a non human character in DA:O, with a sample size in the MILLIONS, so it is statistically reliant and significant. So they spent lots of resources giving us racial choice in DA:I that most players will never use? Not a wise move because that means we got less game so a few players could play essentially humans in fantasy race suits. We have 4 voice actors to voice the protagonist, between 35-40% of all dialogue will be done by the player. You think it is high? Its probably low balled because the vast majority of conversations in the game are with the PLAYER as a participant. By doubling the cost to voice the player you either have to increase the budget by 35%-40% or you have to shrink the conversation NPCs will have with you. Budgets are finite so it isn't like these choices don't impact content, they do. They gave us 12 companions and advisors where we could have done with 6 or 7. This means the budget they set aside to pay for companion dialogue had to be split by 12 voice actors vs 6. It doesn't take advance maths to see that if you have a 100 pennies and divide then into 12 piles you'll have smaller piles then if you divided the same pennies into 6 piles. So while we got the same amount of companion content all that choice meant that any individual companion had less to say. This means you run OUT of party banter faster with a given group of characters or their story arcs are rushed and lack impact. Cullen's drug addiction is fixed in a conversation, The Iron Bull's crisis of faith the same, Cassandra also has a crisis of faith and poof resolved in the next conversation. Why? because of player choice, there was no room to allow development of a companion story.
Choice made DA:I less of a game than it should have been. Don't like that all those side quests were not voiced? Blame it on the players that demanded more choice, demanded racial choices, demanded voice choice, demanded more companion choice. Player choice costs money it is not free and choice isn't good in and of itself it should actually ADD to the gaming experience more than its inclusion costs. There was so much player choice in DA;I on multiple levels that they spread the game thin. So we got the same amount of content but it had no depth to it.
Part of the problem here, I think, is that people don't think about main quests and sidequests in the same way. Nature of the Beast, for instance, forces you through a whole bunch of trash fights with undead in the ruins that aren't relevant to much of anything, and a whole bit with a talking tree and a crazy mage. It's obvious padding.
Now, let's say all of that had been cut to a separate ruin and a separate zone in the Brecilian Forest, and entering Witherfang's HQ took you straight to level 3 instead. Would people have complained about the lame sidequests?
Well you need to speak to the Oak Tree in order to get into the Werewolves lair. I don't mind side -quests so long as they are done right.
I perter side-quests that are interesting. Not quests to where some asshat forgot to close the gate on his pen and now needs me to track down a loose Druffalo.
Well you need to speak to the Oak Tree in order to get into the Werewolves lair. I don't mind side -quests so long as they are done right.
Part of the problem here, I think, is that people don't think about main quests and sidequests in the same way. Nature of the Beast, for instance, forces you through a whole bunch of trash fights with undead in the ruins that aren't relevant to much of anything, and a whole bit with a talking tree and a crazy mage. It's obvious padding.
Now, let's say all of that had been cut to a separate ruin and a separate zone in the Brecilian Forest, and entering Witherfang's HQ took you straight to level 3 instead. Would people have complained about the lame sidequests?
About 90 per cent of the quest could have been avoided if Swiftrunner had listened to the Lady of the Forest and just talked with the Warden.
About 90 per cent of the quest could have been avoided if Swiftrunner had listened to the Lady of the Forest and just talked with the Warden.
What do you expect? Swiftrunner is a man. 
I'm sure there will be a DA4
I speculate that it will be released in late 2018. Why 2018? In one year, if everything goes well, Andromeda will be released in late 2016. I believe the new IP, whatever it is, will be released a year after Andromeda in late 2017. And then in late 2018, DA4 is released.
Part of the problem here, I think, is that people don't think about main quests and sidequests in the same way. Nature of the Beast, for instance, forces you through a whole bunch of trash fights with undead in the ruins that aren't relevant to much of anything, and a whole bit with a talking tree and a crazy mage. It's obvious padding.
About 90 per cent of the quest could have been avoided if Swiftrunner had listened to the Lady of the Forest and just talked with the Warden.
That was the second most annoying quest in DAO. Fade walking at the Tower was first.
The digression that irritates me the most is the quest for the Sacred Ashes. Not because of the contents of the quest itself, and certainly not because of the beautifully bleak frozen temple environment, but because our Warden's motivation is so poor. Sure, Eamon is important to the war effort, but when you start looking for the Ashes you have no credible evidence that they exist to be found, let alone that they can actually do what people say they can. Sten is completely right to object to what appears to be a wild goose chase. The problem is further compounded if you Warden is a dwarf or a Dalish elf and has little reason to believe in Andrastian mythology anyway.
The werewolf quest is the second-weakest part, though. I don't mind the Fade quest at all.
The digression that irritates me the most is the quest for the Sacred Ashes. Not because of the contents of the quest itself, and certainly not because of the beautifully bleak frozen temple environment, but because our Warden's motivation is so poor. Sure, Eamon is important to the war effort, but when you start looking for the Ashes you have no credible evidence that they exist to be found, let alone that they can actually do what people say they can. Sten is completely right to object to what appears to be a wild goose chase. The problem is further compounded if you Warden is a dwarf or a Dalish elf and has little reason to believe in Andrastian mythology anyway.
The werewolf quest is the second-weakest part, though. I don't mind the Fade quest at all.
Compare the druffalo quest with witcher 3 goat quest (seriously watch it on youtube it not even close. Ii like sidequests and dai had a few but they in a few cases lack depth and barely any tie into the main story.
There is a lot that has to be improved on but other threads will do it justice
They should be listening to feedback and they should be studying the competition and anticipate the future.
i want a lot more in da4 than a better polished dai
Witcher 3 works because they limit player choice, they showed and prove that player choice in an of itself isn't required to make a good game. They is no choice at all for the protagonist. You are Geralt of Rivia period, no gender, race, voice or appearance choices at all. Sure you can cut your hair or trim your beard but you can't change how Gerald looks. Companions? You don't have any except for limited times and specific quests. The amount of choice the player gets is severely limited. That said however this allowed them to focus player choice to the story elements. How WILL Geralt act? What will he say? The lack of player choice also allowed them to take all those saving from development and put them into the budget else where like the quests.
Can you imagine most gamers on the BSN giving up their "choice?" They want their cake and to eat it too and they blame bioware when they got what they wanted, more choice but it came at a cost that the side quests are not as in depth as they could be, or the companions are really shallow because you have more than you could ever use.
I am not saying Bioware should copy CDPR's limited choices for their games. I think Bioware's games work better with increased choice but DA:I fails in that it gave too much choice at too high a cost. Limit our racial choices, our companions and our protagonist voice to gender and build on the strengths establish. Do not allways try to give more and more choice to a player because choice doesn't make good games in and of itself. Skyrim companions are not better even though you have a choice of 50+ compared to Bioware's 9. This is just a single example how more choice doesn't create better games.
Regarding the engine, Frostbite seems inevitable. I do wonder what the graphic benchmarks will be like a few years down the road, and how much more they can accomplish when no longer trying to accommodate last-gen hardware in development.
I haven't played Witcher 3, but I've seen enough of it to feel confident in this assessment: saying W3 or DA:I is "better" is somewhat pointless because they are such different games in scope and aim. The chief reason I have not played W3 yet (and have played 3 full inquisitors) is that it seems lonely in comparison to a game where you are ever accompanied by three companions. As was more thoroughly discussed by Gothfather, the quality/specificity of the quests in W3 is a function of having a single protagonist with a specific set of skills. Must it be a tradeoff completely? Probably not, and I think the suggestion that Bioware look to what people loved about W3 side quests is a sound one. Ultimately, I've found one of the chief pleasures -- for me -- in playing DA:I is the companion banter, which varies greatly depending on who is in your party, how you've interacted with them, and where you are in the game. That was enough to offset the quality of the things I was doing while fighting and bantering, though I recognize why others' preferences differ.
I'm sure there will be a DA4
I speculate that it will be released in late 2018. Why 2018? In one year, if everything goes well, Andromeda will be released in late 2016. I believe the new IP, whatever it is, will be released a year after Andromeda in late 2017. And then in late 2018, DA4 is released.
This sounds reasonable, and only really disappointing insomuch as I have no idea whether I'll get into the new IP (and thus no idea how far away that extra year will feel). It's crazy to think so far down the road, though.
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