UPDATE:</b> Bioware General Manager Casey Hudson has said on Twitter that Dragon Age 4 will be "story & character focused", and suggests that when they say "live" they mean "designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story". This could certainly mean Online Elements, but we won't know more until Bioware fully announces more details about the Dragon Age 4 reboot.
Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on. Story & character focused.
— Casey Hudson (@CaseyDHudson) January 25, 2018
Too early to talk details, but when we talk about “live” it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.
Original Story: We have known for a while that Dragon Age 4 was being worked on at Bioware, alongside their new IP Anthem, Bioware gave their first confirmation of the game a few hours ago. Unfortunately this has been tempered by a new report that states that not only has DA4 been pushed aside in favour of Anthem, the new Dragon Age is being rebooted to incorporate more "live" elements - as per EA mandate.
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Kotaku published a report from "sources" within EA and Bioware suggested that Bioware has essentially become a "single-game studio" as pressure mounts on Anthem to perform - and it has to be out before March 2019.
Their sources say that Dragon Age 4 has received a reboot in the past year in order to implement "live" elements into the game. When EA closed Visceral and changed their Star Wars game away from being single-player, they stated that they want "to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come" as is EA's "Games as a Service" mandate - which Dragon Age previously did not fit into, even incorporating the multiplayer of Inquisition.
Their sources stressed that DA4 will still have a strong focus on characters and story, but may be more like Anthem or Destiny.
Regarding the confirmation about Dragon Age 4 being in development, executive producer Mark Darrah tweeted offhandedly:
Halfway through my trip to Barcelona!
— Mark Darrah (@BioMarkDarrah) January 24, 2018
I’m here showing Anthem internally to EA. I am EP of BOTH DA and Anthem working with @Bio_Warner as Game Director
Anthem’s up next but there are people hard at work on both franchises and I look forward to sharing more in the future
In other words, Mark Darrah knows that everyone already knows that they've got a Dragon Age game in production.
The last Dragon Age title was the Trespasser expansion for Inquisition, which ironically was more linear and brought the series back to its Origins roots - and set up Dragon Age 4. If you want an idea of the story and location Dragon Age 4 will cover, make sure to play that.
