EA says the next Dragon Age game is targeting a 2022 release, at the earliest

EA says the next Dragon Age game is targeting a 2022 release at the very earliest, as discussed in its Q2 2020 earnings call with its investors.

Dragon Age 4, if that is what it will be titled, has undergone innumerable reboots and revisions within BioWare. After creative director Mike Laidlaw departed the project, general manager Casey Hudson put on a brave face and said the team are ‘still trying to figure out what the next Dragon Age will look like.’ Back when it was announced, BioWare claimed it wouldn’t be fully formed until 2021 at the earliest. However, Hudson recently mentioned that ‘the Dread Wolf rises’ as a result of a sizeable team that are in the throes of pre-production. 

But, the words ‘Dragon’ and ‘age’ were left unuttered during the entirety of EA’s earnings call until an investor asked about it. ‘I mean you should assume that there is Dragon Age out there and we’ve talked about it publicly that it’s in the works, and it probably comes after fiscal ’22,’ chief operating officer and chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said. 

‘But we typically don’t give multi-year guidance this early in the year or multi-year guidance period. So I don’t want to start giving ’23 guidance now that I’ve started to hit on ’22,’ he rationalised. Given the swirling storms of uncertainty surrounding BioWare and the series’ future, here’s hoping that the Edmonton team have a much more definite answer. That being said, Jorgensen’s reticence does make sense as it lets the company react to shifts in the course of the game’s development that may delay production.

After leaving the project, Mark Darrah and Mike Laidlaw spoke to Kotaku and revealed what the game was shaping to become while they were at the helm. It was set in the Tevinter Imperium with heists and spies that may have riffed off of the war table missions from Inquisition. And, the team wanted to implement reactive and emergent gameplay, with ‘systemic narrative mechanics’ to create a unique story centring on player choices. This angle was scrapped, but with the extra time and resources, Dragon Age 4 could become something really special.