For the first time in several years, we’ve finally gotten a look at the next Dragon Age game with the help of a Dragon Age 4 trailer shown off at Gamescom during their opening night presentation. However, despite showing plenty of concept art, we didn’t get very much gameplay out of it.
Much like BioWare’s trailers for Mass Effect Andromeda, the trailer mainly focuses on a variety of BioWare employees describing what they do at BioWare and how they’ve seen the company grow. However, there are a few little tidbits of information that do give us some information on what the game will be like.
It’s been speculated for a long time that the next Dragon Age game would take us to a place we’ve never been to before in the form of the Tevinter Imperium, the sinister mage-run empire that wars ceaselessly with the Qunari and which caused the Blights.
The Dragon Age 4 trailer seems to support this theory, especially considering players will apparently start as people very low on the social totem pole and having to work their way up to glory through their adventures. We’ve also learned the names of at least two party members, Davrin and Bellara.
Solas, our elven party member from Dragon Age Inquisition, will also be reappearing, likely now fully into his role of bringing down the wall between the Fade and the real world and returning elvenkind to its former glory.
Much like other BioWare characters, particular focus is being made to the game’s characters so that players can either fall in love with them or want to kill them (or in Solas’s case, both). With two party members already named, only time will tell how colorful the rest of the cast will be.
Of course, while the Dragon Age 4 trailer shows a good bit of promise, that’s no guarantee of quality. BioWare’s last two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, have both not only been either mediocre or outright bad, but the tell-all exposé by Jason Schreier brought the toxic working environment of the studio to the fore.
Hopefully during the game’s development BioWare will have woken up and realized they have to put more effort into one of their flagship franchises and also will treat their employees better, but we can’t really figure that out until the game releases. Until that happens, you can see the trailer for yourself here.
