#what an uneventful year for DA fans 😂

[mrs-gauche]

Here’s a little summary of all DA4 news we got in 2021, because I feel the need to kind of collect my thoughts at the end of the year. But please feel free to add anything I might have forgotten, even though the year didn't seem to have much to offer in terms of official new info, there still were a few crumbs here and there and some big unofficial stuff. :D

- Apparently, DA4 is purely Singleplayer now

(THE BULLET WE DODGED, thanks to the huge success of Jedi Fallen Order and the flop of Anthem, we'll honor your sacrifice. You died so DA4 Singleplayer could live. 🙏)

No but in all honesty, as much as I feel for all devs involved who put so much work into Anthem.. I was honestly relieved to hear they'd let it go completely in order to fully focus on DA4 and here's hoping that they learned from their mistakes in the Andromeda/Anthem development mess and don't have DA4 "suffer" because of the next Mass Effect (or the other way around, like pulling devs from one project to help on another.)

- 5 new concept art pieces + 2 new illustrations along with 2 new short stories on DA Day

You know, as much as I love these little nuggets of art and stuff, at some point of this year, I was like "Can't they just release DA4 as a picture book already with the amount of concept art they've put out now?" 😂

Though there seems to be a certain pattern in the concepts they reveiled, with each of them matching perfectly with the shots in the teaser on last year's VGAs, so maybe a hint and something to speculate about!

Additionally, one of the short stories does hint at a potential eight year timeskip since the events of Trespasser, which is a huge deal. What could it mean for the Inquisitor and their efforts? The Qunari invasion? The one who was left in the Fade in Here Lies the Abyss? The Warden if they’re alive? Solas’ plan? I’m not that surprised actually, given how he already hinted at “a few more years of relative peace” in Trespasser, until the Veil comes down. Almost ten years between the events in the game and the release of DA4 in real life would allow the devs to establish a new world state for old as well as new players to the series.

- Lots of new people hired, especially in the animation department!

This might be a good reminder for some that BioWare, despite creating Triple A titles, is.. actually not that big of a studio. 😅 At least not in comparison to other Triple A developers like Ubisoft for example. I feel like people tend to forget about that when setting the bar for expectations and how much budget and resources are involved. I don't know much about game development, but from what I understand, in the grand scheme of the EA catalog, BioWare is like that weird little nerdy child that they adopted in 2007, when EA's interest seemed to be anything BUT singleplayer story focused RPG games. 😂 So please guys, keep in mind that there might be only a handful of people on some of these teams right now.

- Long time veterans Matthew Goldman and Caroline Livingstone leaving BW

On that front, not to sound dramatic but.. does the DA4 team have a Creative Director right now? *nervous laughter*

There still hasn't been any official statement from neither BW or Matthew Goldman and the nature of his departure was strange, to say the least.. Like, if it hadn't been for this e-mail leak, we wouldn't even know about it.. I mean, they don't owe us a statement or anything and departures happen all the time for all sorts of reasons and it’s none of our business, but I feel like for such an important position on the team to just be gone like that after 20+ years at BW without any kind of farewell, when it wasn't even a transitional thing like with Darrah and Hudson and he always seemed so enthusiastic about DA and his work and engaged a lot with the fans on Twitter until very recently before his departure... Idk, it just doesn't feel good. :/

Caroline Livingstone, former Performance Director/VA Producer, will be working with Casey Hudson's new studio now. She was always highly praised by the VAs and the devs and always seemed to get out the best of any VAs performance, so it’s a bit sad to see her go! We don't really know how much she was even involved in DA4's development.. How much of the voice acting is done at this point? 👀

- Christian Dailey took fully over from Mark Darrah as DA4 Executive Producer

“Employee Nr. 35″ officially left BW as well in February of this year and I will miss his frustratingly vague and teasing DA4 tweets. He was literally there from the beginning. On the other hand, we now get to hear his side of game development in a really informative way on his own YouTube channel!

- A very insightful presentation on the challenges of production during the pandemic by Scylla Costa, DA4 Lead Producer at BIG Festival 2021

Here we got a little glimpse of some MoCap/Pcap sessions, as well as what I assume has to be the writer’s room? 👀 It’s a really interesting presentation and it’s kind of crazy how BioWare basically went into work from home the day after they had gathered the whole team to review DA4′s story and how they never really had the chance to settle in the new Epcor Tower place.

- In a shocking revelation, the Veil is a thong

I think watching the Gamers for Groceries stream was definitely the most I laughed throughout the whole year. Thank you, Patrick, I’m still in tears.

- DA4 might be released in 2023

If this is true, we could expect them to kick off the marketing in earnest next year! And given their blog message on DA Day, I think we can definitely look forward to finally get some substantial stuff in 2022! :D

- Elven bum for DA4 confirmed

We may not even have a title for this game, but rest assured, there will be booty.