It’s no secret that BioWare has a lot riding onDragon Age 4. After the disappointments ofMass Effect: AndromedaandAnthem, the nextDragon Agegame will need to win fans over with a truly next-generational role-playing experience.
Dragon Age 4made an appearance at Gamescom last week that took some fans by surprise. The developers revealed that the upcoming RPG would take a very different path toInquisitionand could establish a pattern that reveals the true arc of the series.
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The Organizations of Dragon Age
Dragon Age 4’s Gamescom videorevealed that the game’s protagonist was designed with a main objective in mind, exploring what happens “when you don’t have power.” This is a stark contrast to the player character inDragon Age: Inquisition, who after the end of the game’s first few hours is already being called The Herald of Andraste and is instated as the leader of the Inquisition.
This reveals a pattern that was hereto invisible in theDragon Agefranchise. InDragon Age: Origins, the character is part of a group, theGrey Wardens. Most of the Wardens are killed, but the party the player ends up travelling with remains more essentially tied together than the player’s companions inDragon Age 2, and more clearly has the Warden as their leader. In the second game, the companions are all involved in Hawke’s life, but Hawke is not their official leader and they aren’t a single unit as inDragon Age: Origins, even though many of the characters interact.
TheDragon Age 4Gamescom video appears to reveal thatDragon Age 4will be more similar toDragon Age 2in this regard than it is toOriginsorInquisition. If BioWare is truly interested in fully exploring what it’s like when the player character doesn’t have power, then the player character is far more likely to resemble Hawke, a refugee with no organizational ties, than the Warden or the Inquisitor, both of whom are also “chosen” in some sense and have unique magical abilities and relationships with their main villain.
AlthoughDragon Age 2was not as well receivedas the other games in the franchise, there are ways that this approach could be good forDragon Age 4, especially when it comes to the player’s relationships with their companions. InInquisitionin particular, the companions’ lives essentially and necessarily revolve around the Inquisitor and their orders.
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What This Could Mean for Dragon Age 4
InDragon Age 4, fans could see companions who treat the player character as far less unique. This could go a long way to makingDragon Age 4’s main characterfeeling less like a video game protagonist and more like a genuinely organic part of the world as they player explores it.
AlthoughDragon Age: Originsultimately made the Warden the leader who was able to make all of the key decisions at the end of the game, the player character is not singled out as unique in any particular way at the start of the game. Alistair’s presence even strips the uniqueness of being a Grey Warden away fromthe Wardenalone, which helps make the player character feel like one of many characters in the world rather than a focal point for the story to revolve around like the Inquisitor can feel like inInquisition.
Dragon Age 4may be able to make the player character feel just as much a part of the world as their companions but not having them be part of any organization. It could also do this by having those companions live their own lives just as they did around the city ofKirkwall inDragon Age 2while also having as strong as main story asOrigins. If the game can pull that off, there’s a chance BioWare will be able to reinvigorate the franchise and its own reputation as one of the top Western RPG studios.
Dragon Age 4is currently in development.
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