Well, well, well: Electronic Arts might have received a wake-up slap to the face after BioWare had to give up on reworking Anthem (Anthem Next)…

Bloomberg, citing „people familiar with the matter,” claims that Electronic Arts allowed BioWare’s developers to remove all the multiplayer components from Dragon Age 4 (or whatever it will be called – we have no clue yet at the moment). Previously, the game was planned to include a heavy multiplayer component but has transformed (again) into a single-player-only game.

Two games can be thanked for the change from the second concept to the third one (we’ll explain this in a bit). The first one would be Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which was a single-player game that reached over 10 million players in four months. The second game would be Anthem, which was another live service title that didn’t get anywhere, and now, its rework plans have been scrapped as well (we discussed this the other day).

So, the third concept. The first one was codenamed Joplin. It began development in 2015, but in the autumn of 2017, this concept was scrapped in favour of Morrison, which was meant to push for long-term monetization, which would require multiplayer/live service elements. This is what is getting removed now, meaning Dragon Age 4 is now in its third format in six years, which can easily be called a development hell at this point, despite the game being officially revealed in 2018, as by then, the Joplin-Morrison change has happened, requiring some rebooting. Still, some champagne is due to be sent to Respawn Entertainment, the devs of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

Dragon Age 4 has no release date announced yet, but we’d suspect an autumn 2022 launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC.

Source: Gematsu