Now that I am more settled in the United States, and I’ve upgraded my general setup like this new microphone, I want to start doing more personable vlog-styled discussion videos every so often. I want to be more relatable to you guys, as we ramble about Dragon Age 4, and have much-needed conversations.
As of which, today I’m talking about Dragon Age 4’s development, exploring how the game will not share Anthem and Andromeda’s largest downfalls, that BioWare have tremendously learned from those experiences, and the future is brighter than it seems for BioWare and their upcoming titles.
Y’see, thanks to Jason Schreier’s many reports on Andromeda, Anthem and the next Dragon Age game, there are many indicators that the developers working on Dragon Age 4 will ensure that the company's previous mistakes will not be repeated this time around.
If you know anything about Anthem and Andromeda’s development hell, you’ll know that they both shared the same patterns, and mistakes that ultimately led to the game’s failure. What’re these mistakes, and how have BioWare learned from them moving forward? Well, let me tell you.
18 months of development:
The first major downfall of both Anthem and Andromeda was the fact that both games were created in only 18 months of development, due to prolonged pre-production stages.
Anthem was in development for nearly seven years but didn’t enter its production stages until the final 18 months, thanks to big narrative reboots, major design overhauls, and a leadership team said to be unable to provide a consistent vision, and unwilling to listen to feedback.
[Anthem] was in development for nearly seven years but didn’t enter production until the final 18 months, thanks to big narrative reboots, major design overhauls, and a leadership team said to be unable to provide a consistent vision and unwilling to listen to feedback. (How BioWare’s Anthem Went Wrong, Kotaku).
Whereas Mass Effect: Andromeda was in development for five years, but by most accounts, BioWare built the bulk of the game in less than 18 months, thanks to the Frostbite engine’s limitations, scrapped mechanics, internal politics between two teams, and ultimately a failed prototype.
Mass Effect: Andromeda was in development for five years, but by most accounts, BioWare built the bulk of the game in less than 18 months. This is the story of what happened. (The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development, Kotaku).
Regarding the next Dragon Age’s development, as we know (ten times over), the original iteration known as “Joplin” was rebooted to suite a “live service component built for long-term gameplay and revenue.”
This new reboot has the project codename “Morrison.” (Which is a name you should get used to when I’m talking about Dragon Age 4’s current iteration, the one that’s currently in development).
Project "Joplin" had begun its early pre-production stages in late 2015; straight after the Trespasser DLC’s release, with two years of development work invested, the project was cancelled in late 2017. Project "Morrison" will have picked up its early stages sometime after that with a skeleton crew.
In May 2019, the majority of BioWare Edmonton’s crew who’d been working on Anthem, went back to working on this new iteration of Dragon Age, as they paved their way into full-production stages, with all hands-on deck.
It’s unknown how much of "Joplin’s" work will cross over into "Morrison," if any. However, we can confirm that "Morrison" has been in development for around 3 years, given that it started in 2017. However, from late 2017 to early 2019. the work on "Morrison" was pre-production. The main production stages began in May 2019.
So, 'Morrison’ has been in pre-production for approximately 18 months, with around 15 months (in August 2020) of actual production. That’s almost more production time then Anthem and Andromeda already.
The release window for the next Dragon Age is around 2022-2023, that’s two to three years of development time left, assuming the pandemic hasn’t delayed anything.
With that development time, surely "Morrison" will not repeat the mistakes of Andromeda and Anthem as the team are already chipping away into the bulk of Dragon Age 4’s development.
The studio have a decent deadline to ensure the project can be the very best. And they have time to revisit ideas and play around with different concepts, instead of being pigeonholed into one idea because of time restraints.
This already proves that Dragon Age 4’s development will not follow its predecessors, the developers have more time on the production stages, which their currently in as we speak. Although the previous iteration was scrapped, the team learned from that process. Which brings us to the second major downfall, that BioWare have learned from going forward.
BioWare are mastering the Frostbite engine:
The next main reasons behind Andromeda and Anthem’s mistakes comes down to BioWare’s lack of knowledge and management of the Frostbite engine. In the video game industry, Frostbite is known as one of the most powerful engines out there—and one of the hardest to use.
While Frostbite is an amazing piece of software for BioWare’s artists, as they have plenty of freedoms with the engine optimised for fidelity and quality. Frostbite was originally designed for first-person shooters, and not RPG’s. To put it short, BioWare have had a hard time with this engine.
You just have to look at how long Anthem and Andromeda spent in the early pre-production phases attempting to work out how they could use Frostbite to their best advantage, and ultimately how a lot of that work ended up scrapped.
While it’s normal in games design for revisions, new prototypes and reworks. BioWare had a lot of struggles with their game production cycle as a whole, I mean Dragon Age 2 was created in just 14 months, the teams haven’t had a reasonable game cycle in recent memory, and they’ve constantly been spreading themselves thin, making fast questionable decisions in the interest of ensuring that everyone had work to do.
“Too many people were assigned to work on the game when it first started development, forcing the leadership team to spread themselves thin and make fast, questionable decisions in the interest of ensuring that everyone had work to do (work that they’d frequently have to redo later). Most notably, Inquisition was the product of the “BioWare magic” documented in our Anthem investigation.” (How BioWare’s Anthem Went Wrong, Kotaku).
And because of that, when looking at Anthem and Andromeda, these games suffered through long planning stages, yet failing to have a unified vision, decisive leadership and reasonable limitations.
For example, BioWare Montreal spent over three years on a prototype of Mass Effect: Andromeda that would’ve had the game follow a procedurally generated world with thousands of planets to explore, very much in the same vein as No Mans Sky, however, this system just couldn’t work, and the developers didn’t have the know-how to drop the project until after three years of innovation.
“The team had a backup plan if the procedurally generated planets didn’t work out—they’d just go back to the galaxy map used in previous Mass Effect games and fill it with more hand-made planets—but as they exited pre-production, they still hadn’t made a final decision. “In an ideal world you’d have one of those [planets] proven out so the process is repeatable,” said a person who worked on the game. “But we were still answering those questions of if we could do that type of thing.” (The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development, Kotaku).
Not to mention their lack of expertise with the Frostbite engine, and Mass Effect Andromeda being BioWare Montreal’s first major project since the studio’s formation in 2009.
Meanwhile, BioWare Montreal, which was founded in 2009 to develop downloadable content like Mass Effect 3’s Omega expansion, would lead production on the next Mass Effect. (The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development, Kotaku).
Now, while it sounds very much doom and gloom, that was back then, what about now? Well, BioWare actually had a completely new workflow for "Joplin," the developers already had many tools and production pipelines in place after Inquisition, ones that they hoped to improve and continue using for this new project.
They committed to prototyping ideas early and often, testing as quickly as possible rather than waiting until everything was on fire, as they had done the last time thanks to the glut of people and Frostbite’s difficulties.
The plan for Joplin was exciting, say people who worked on it. First and foremost, they already had many tools and production pipelines in place after Inquisition, ones that they hoped to improve and continue using for this new project. They committed to prototyping ideas early and often, testing as quickly as possible rather than waiting until everything was on fire, as they had done the last time thanks to the glut of people and Frostbite’s difficulties. (The Past And Present Of Dragon Age, Kotaku).
The developers were very eager to work on this project, and they had the right tools ahead of its development to tackle the Frostbite engine. They were ready for any challenge, and the Edmonton team had grown accustom to Frostbite, having created Dragon Age: Inquisition. They had the framework ready for "Joplin", so any problem could have an immediate fix.
While "Joplin" was canned, for a new iteration, the production pipelines and tools for the next Dragon Age will remain, which brings us to the last learning point of BioWare’s Frostbite developments.
Not remaking from scratch on Frostbite:
The final major downfall of Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem was the fact that each were created from scratch on DICE’s Frostbite Engine. BioWare developers were recreating assets and tools from complete scratch for each of their projects, this led to many timely difficulties.
Y’see, BioWare started using the Frostbite engine with Dragon Age: Inquisition, I personally believe they did a phenomenal job creating an RPG for the first-time with this engine. However, with Andromeda and Anthem also in the works, the developers had only built a few certain tools to make an RPG in the engine, but not all of them.
Both Anthem and Andromeda developers had to design many of their own features from scratch, including their own animation rig. This explains why systems that were incorporated into Dragon Age: Inquisition did not cross over into Mass Effect: Andromeda like its inventory and storage systems, even facial animations tools.
“By the time BioWare entered pre-production on Mass Effect: Andromeda, the Dragon Age: Inquisition team had built some of the tools that they’d need to make an RPG, but not all of them. Engineers on Andromeda had to design many of their own features from scratch, including their animation rig.” (The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development, Kotaku).
With no preset or shared tools for RPG development within the Frostbite engine, this made development across the board for Andromeda and Anthem increasingly difficult. And resulting in more time spent on production assets, that another team already created, but didn’t have the know-how to share their resources.
However, BioWare are creating Project "Morrison" on Anthem’s tools and codebase, this will save so much time for the developers. They will not be spending more production time creating new RPG tools, because Anthem’s iteration of the Frostbite engine will be built-on for the next Dragon Age game.
“A tiny team stuck around to work on a brand new Dragon Age 4, code-named Morrison, that would be built on Anthem’s tools and codebase.” (The Past And Present Of Dragon Age 4, Kotaku).
While some may fear about Anthem’s codebase relating to a multiplayer Dragon Age game, I don’t think using Anthem’s foundations is indictive of any multiplayer mode, or online world, it’s just a set of tools and presets within the Frostbite engine that will be used to build and establish the game.
It’s the exact same scenario of how Fallout 76 was creating inside Fallout 4’s engine, they used the same tools and assets, and then made it run on servers, adding a multiplayer component and what have you.
Frankly, regarding the next Dragon Age, we still don’t know what is going to happen about live service and multiplayer components, however, at this current point in development it seems that the developers themselves are still figuring this one out. So, I will let you know when we have more info on that one.
In summary, with an established engine and tool set, the know-how and management of Frostbite, and more time to develop the next Dragon Age, we can confidently say that this game will not follow suite to BioWare previous development downfalls. That Dragon Age 4 will prove that BioWare have learned from their mistakes, and history will not be repeated.
The fact that this game is coming around 2022-2023, proves that EA are not rushing the developers into a tight deadline, that instead, they’re allowing the devs to take their time, and create the best Dragon Age game possible.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was created in around 3 and a half years, whereas Dragon Age 4 will seemingly have around 3-4 years of production time, and that’s not even counting the pre-production, and Joplin’s shared work. I think it’s safe to say that Dragon Age 4 will be okay, judging their development circles as of late, and relating that to what’s going on right now.