The upcoming entry of the Dragon Age series from BioWare reportedly got a reboot in 2017, and many people believed that it is greatly influenced by an abandoned project in 2015.
According to Kotaku, the codename for Dragon Age 4 is “Morrison”, while the scratched project was “Joplin”. Morrison is allegedly created using the codebase and tools from Anthem. In fact, they planned to give it a “live service component” design to preserve the revenue and gameplay in the long term. Dragon Age 4 is being developed within Edmonton offices - BioWare’s primary ones.
BioWare developers already stated the possibility of Dragon Age to obtain an offline structure. Although the game is likely going to be exclusively online, it still has single-player potential. Therefore, multiplayer elements can keep the players around after the launch, alongside the single-player experience from the main story.
Here's the Dragon Age Dread Wolf Rises Teaser Trailer at The Game Awards 2018:
There are some predictions for the multiplayer aspect in Dragon Age 4. Some typical ideas include player-control companions, drop-out fashion and quests that change in accordance with player’s choices. There are so many questions without a clear answer just yet, although things will change before the official launch.
Original "Joplin" development
As a matter of fact, “Joplin” didn’t have such multiplayer components previously. It was under perfect development until they got into trouble developing Anthem. Joplin’s development phase began way back in 2015, after the completion of Trespasser expansion from Inquisition. After that, a part of Inquisition’s team went on with "Joplin", while many others moved to Mass Effect: Andromeda.
“Joplin” originally had players running a group of spies in Tevinter Imerium. It was the oldest human nation remaining in Thedas, which is now under wizards’ control. “Joplin” focused on choices and consequences and the project put heavy emphasis on replay value. For instance, areas and missions will change over time accordingly to decisions from players.
The main content will center around heists. The development team was really into having players attempt to persuade and/or extort guards in a systematic narrative mechanic.
From what IGN news reported, the next Dragon Age will be a "Live" game
"Joplin" unfortunate interruption
The team behind Joplin allegedly included Mark Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, Dragon Age franchise’ executive producer and creative director, respectively. The whole team worked with adequate tools, having a feasible scope as well as exciting ideas on their mind. Their leaders also tried their best not to make the same mistakes during Inquisition’s development.
A former developer from BioWare considered “Joplin” to as a project among “some of the best work experiences”. They were proud to work on something “very cool” and extremely reactive.
Unfortunately, BioWare stopped “Joplin” in 2016 after moving the team towards Andromeda’s development in the last couple of months. Joplin was officially canceled in Oct 2017, moving most of its staff to Anthem.
On the other hand, “Morrison” seemed to adopt some of “Joplin” vision within its development. After the 2017 reboot, Laidlaw left alongside many Dragon Age staff, which led Matt Goldman to be the creative director.
If Kotaku's report is to be trusted, “Morrison” should be officially named Dragon Age 4: The Dread Wolf Rises. BioWare teased about it last year at The Game Awards with a blog post. A year after, Casey Hudson from BioWare stated that Dragon Age 4 would be “a live game”, ensuring its high quality story-wise and character-wise. It’s too early for him to talk more into details, but he talked people through on how Dragon Age 4 focuses on storytelling in addition to the main story.
Comments