Today I’m delving into many major news updates on the next Dragon Age project prior to The Game Awards 2020. If you somehow don’t already know, Geoff Keighley confirmed on Twitter that the next Dragon Age will be revealed at The Game Awards which is on December 10th, at 7pm EST.
I’ll talk about expectations for the event later on, however, we have a lot of updates to go through, so without further ado.
Mark Darrah & Casey Hudson:
The first major story I’m touching on - I’ve seen blown out of proportion with unsourced speculation and rampant remarks on BioWare’s inevitable demise. With that said, let’s rationally break down the facts on Dragon Age’s Executive Producer Mark Darrah and BioWare’s General Manager Casey Hudson’s retirement from the studio after each serving 20 plus years.
First of all, can I just say how grateful I am for both Mark and Casey’s dedication over the past two decades at BioWare. It is very sad to see both of them leaving, and I will miss the heck out of Mark Darrah and his constant twitter teasing.
With that said, in a BioWare blog post by Chief Studios Officer, Laura Miele, she shared that Mark Darrah and Casey Hudson are moving on from BioWare. Casey wants to rediscover his creative passion through more personal work, and Mark is looking forward to what’s next, while staying optimistic for the next Dragon Age.
In his own blog post, Mark Darrah said: “BioWare has always been about telling emotional stories through characters. We have wandered away from this central guiding pillar at times, but I am confident that the next Dragon Age will show that we remain committed to this kind of game. We will have a lot to show you.”
Replacing Mark’s role, will be none other than BioWare Austin’s Studio Director Christian Dailey who was overseeing the development of Anthem 2.0. However, he is now in charge of the next Dragon Age.
Mark continued: “Christian Dailey is a strong leader and will provide great insight into the rest of the Dragon Age leadership who remain. This is a team that includes people with decades of experience at BioWare. I am confident that, together, this is the team that can make this Dragon Age the best one yet.”
And, Mark isn’t wrong. If you think that all of BioWare’s talent are gone, you’d be sorely mistaken. Plenty of BioWare veterans are still in the studio, working on the next Dragon Age title, to name a few:
Matthew Goldman (20 years), Patrick Weekes (15 years), John Epler (13 years), Caroline Livingstone (12 years), Mary Kirby (13 years), Graham Scott (13 years), Parrish Ley (14 years), Lucas Krisjanson (22 years), Matt Rhodes (15 years), and many more legacy developers!
Even so, the next Dragon Age’s success isn’t dependant on how many BioWare veterans are still in the studio anyway, the Dragon Age team is huge with many people all-hands on deck. I’d say to anyone who believes that the retirement of two management developers will end BioWare - completely and utterly discredits the animators, programmers, writers, designers, artists, producers, and everyone else in the studio who’re working their butts off every day to ensure this project sees the light of day.
I’ll come back to this topic shortly, nevertheless.
In his own blog post, Casey Hudson said: “There are so many people I want to thank for sharing in this journey: Our players, who inspire us and make it all possible. Electronic Arts, which has given us a stable and supportive environment to keep making games even in the most unstable times. And the many amazing people that I’ve had the honor of working with and learning from over the years.”
To quickly add to this, Casey Hudson very recently shared BioWare’s new vision in the Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development. He talked about how the BioWare of old is gone, and how their working to redefine the company.
To paraphrase, Casey said that BioWare can’t go back to where they’ve been – the way that they worked with crunching projects for six weeks. That’s not where the studio is headed. BioWare used to exemplify humility and integrity with a passion for excellence and courageous creativity. However, they were courageous because they didn’t know better.
The team would try things and fail and try something else until they got it right, it was very experimental. Once they met the consequences of failure, they discovered they could very easily start retreating. And at that point, they realised it takes courage to put yourself out there and try something new.
BioWare are not super young and inexperienced anymore. They do know better, but they still have to try and do some crazy stuff anyway.
With such a focus on redefining what BioWare is, going forward, and moving on from the past. Casey Hudson has set a new standard for the studio’s vision – to eradicate crunch, be creatively courageous, while learning from previous mistakes, but not letting the past stop you from taking a chance on something.
I can’t answer as to why the two have both left at this time, however, I can say that Casey and Mark have both left a strong precedent for the studio going forward. Perhaps someone new as General Manager and Executive Producer is what BioWare needs for the future, new talent to bring forth a new generation for the company.
Casey ended his blog post on the notion that: “Gary McKay, BioWare’s Interim Studio General Manager and Christian Dailey, Dragon Age’s new Executive Producer will have the support of an experienced group of project and department leaders who are ready to guide BioWare into the future.”
New Executive Producer:
Speaking of which, Dragon Age’s new Executive Producer Christian Dailey shared a few words in his own BioWare blog post.
Christian said: “Obviously stepping into this role on Dragon Age after Mark is a bit humbling. Mark is someone that I look up to and is a true BioWare legend. We all hope to make him proud as we look to deliver the best Dragon Age story yet, otherwise we know we’ll hear about it….
I am really looking forward to getting to know all of you and sharing insights into the development as we move into next year. If you already follow me on Twitter, you know I like to share details throughout the dev process and I hope to do the same as we continue our work on Dragon Age.”
Already I am very excited to see what Christian and the entire Dragon Age team have in store for us. When Christian was on Anthem 2.0, he shared weekly insights into that project’s development, showcasing concept art and small gameplay snippets every Friday.
While it’s great being excited about that, Christian has actually, already started teasing us with new Dragon Age insights. On Dragon Age Day, Chrisitan revealed a brand-new conceptual art piece relating to the next game.
The beautiful artwork has no doubt been created by Matt Rhodes, the Art Director on the next Dragon Age. I suspect this piece to be concept art, and therefore treated as much. In any event, donning the tinfoil hat for a second, this beautiful piece requires a breakdown.
Straight away, there’s a Grey Warden warrior right in the middle, perhaps Davrin, one of the two new characters we know exist so far, thanks to the reveal at Gamescom.
To the left, we can see a very familiar-looking Antivan Crow rogue. She looks exactly like the lady Crow shown in the Behind-the-scenes trailer, however, this time around she has a bow, and not a rapier. Perhaps she’s more of a reality now, given that she’s appeared in two separate conceptual pieces?
To the right of the piece, a new character appears, one not seen in the behind-the-scenes trailer. He’s wearing very fine-tailored Tevinter robes, holding a staff and has a small book on his hip. If he is not from Tevinter I’ll eat my tinfoil hat.
The group are fighting hordes of darkspawn, as blight is spread throughout the artwork.
The centrepiece of this shot are the dragons, or archdemons. Either this dragon has two heads on a single body in a twisted form. Or it’s two separate dragons with their opposing wing hidden.
To me it looks more like a two-headed dragon, so I’m going with that. Perhaps this beast represents a double blight?
As we know, Two Old Gods, Razikale, the Dragon of Mystery, and Lusacan, the Dragon of Night are still sleeping, meaning there are still two more blights led by Archdemons left for Thedas. Perhaps we’re going to witness a blighted awakening of two old gods in the next game?
Alternatively, another quick tinfoil. Falon’Din and Dirthamen are both twin elven gods, if the Old Gods represent the Elven Gods, perhaps this is a double blight with the two elven twins at the helm, sharing the body of a dragon, with two heads.
But honestly, that’s just some quick-fire tinfoil, so who really knows? At this point it's stunning conceptual work showing one potential vision for the next Dragon Age game.
Anyhow, if this is what we can expect from Christian Dailey going forward, then I’m stoked because we’re going to have a lot more frequent Dragon Age updates in the new year!
So, putting the Mark Darrah and Casey Hudson’s retirement situation to bed, while it’s incredibly sad that two phenomenal developers are leaving BioWare, the studio and the working projects will be absolutely okay. Mark’s Executive Producer role has already been fulfilled, and BioWare are on the hunt for a new GM. However, if you don’t take my word for it, let me share what a few developers have said.
On the morning before the retirement announcement was made, Patrick Weekes tweeted about the process of creating the character Solas. They said that the writing of Solas was done by themselves, David Gaider and other writers in some places. Editing was Cori Nicole, the voice was sexy-man Gareth David-Lloyd. Art was Nick Thornborrow, with the art team for implementation. Performance direction was Caroline Livingstone and team. And Animation was Johnathan Epp, John Epler and team.
“It’s always a team effort.” Patrick said: “(And even this doesn't count the level designers who made his logic work for which scenes fired when or his personal plot, the Quality Analysts who caught all the bugs, the audio devs who processed vocals, and a hundred other things. Everything in Dragon Age is a team effort.)”
Following that, Andy McNamara Director of Comms Strategy at Electronic Arts said: “Reading a lot of doom and gloom comments about the changes happening at BioWare, and that EA is doing this or that... Do you really think games with the pedigree of Dragon Age or Mass Effect with their legions of fans are going away? Come on. Game development is a journey for massive teams of talented people, & I have met and worked with people all across BioWare & EA these last few months who are passionate about the games & making them great. It is sad to lose team members but don’t assume the studios are done for.”
So, the ball is in your court on how you’re feeling about this situation, I completely understand if you’re worried or sad, that’s warranted given both of these departures. I’m sad that Mark Darrah won’t be in-studio when the game launches, and we won’t have his teases carrying us until that point. However, as we have been told, the team will endure, and the following projects will be the best they’ve ever been. This is not the end of BioWare.
Also, for anyone believing conspiracies or drama about Mark Darrah’s retirement. Developer Allan Schumacher tweeted: “If Mark was ousted why was he in a zoom meeting with us at work today?”
Dragon Age Website Update:
Moving on to a lighter note, I recently covered a story about Mark Darrah tweeting about the team working on a new Dragon Age website, that’s not ready to go live just yet. Instead of sharing a link to this new website, Mark sent a link to Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up.
While we were rick-rolled in October, Mark wasn’t joking about this new website. On Dragon Age Day, BioWare’s Dragon Age website was updated.
The new home page brought four new short stories from writers on the next Dragon Age accompanied with beautiful art pieces.
In order, the stories are:
“The Next One” by Brianna Battye – A Grey Warden stands his ground against the dark.
“Ruins of Reality” by John Dombrow – Elves discover something has gone wrong in Arlathan Forest.
“The Wake” by Mary Kirby – Members of the Crows grieve the loss of a friend.
“Minrathous Shadows” by Sheryl Chee – A high-stake game of cards ends in a shocking revelation.
The artwork shown revealed many insights, and I’m inclined to believe that these pieces are not concept art, but official imagery for these stories.
“Minrathous Shadows” showcased the highly gothic-styled nation of Tevinter, as a dark robed, ominous figure engaged in a card game.
“The Wake” revealed three Antivan figures atop the city heights of Antiva, surrounded by beautiful structures. The lady figure is Teia, revealed in this story and previously seen in Tevinter Nights, and Dragon Age: Deception.
I would say while Teia looks like the Antivan Crow lady concept art shown before, in “The Wake” art piece, her dress is very different than the heavily armoured Crow. Teia has no mask or pauldrons, the hair length and colour between the two is staggering. And we’re dealing with concept art, so anything can change. So, while I would love the concept art Crow to be Teia, and I’m not saying it isn’t her, we’ve got to be aware that, at this point in development, anything could change.
And the other two figures are Viago carrying a very drunk Illario. Both characters mentioned in Tevinter Nights, as well as Viago appearing physically in Dragon Age: Deception.
“Ruins of Reality” revealed a beautiful piece set in the Arlathan Forest, as the silver haired, Starkhaven elf known as Strife, made his appearance again since Tevinter Nights. Strife is looking at an illusion of himself, as powerful magic cursed the forest, all the while a silhouette of a female figure watches him. No doubt, Irelin, his shapeshifting elf companion.
One thing in particular I noticed is that Strife’s cloak has floating triangles that bear similar to the concept art piece revealed at Gamescom with hooded figures using these triangles as a barrier, and a bow.
The most ominous thing about these triangles is that they bear the same appearance as The Executor’s logo - “a downward-pointed triangle with two wavy lines drawn through it.” However, Strife’s cloak doesn’t bear any similarities to the description of The Executors. So, it’s hard to say what’s really at play here...
“A figure covered head to toe in dark robes of Vyrantium samite, with a thin mesh dropping down to cover the hood. The dark robes were trimmed in a pattern Charter had never seen, twisting shapes that curled to points in places that made her eyes hurt.” (Tevinter Nights).
And, “The Next One” has a beautiful piece of a Grey Warden fighting a blighted brute with two mouths.
Even further than these amazing stories, the website updated with a new synopsis on the next Dragon Age:
“Welcome to Dragon Age. Enter Thedas, a vibrant world of rugged wilderness, treacherous labyrinths, and glittering cities. The Dragon Age is a time of warring nations, savage combat, and secret magics. Now, the fate of this world teeters on a knife's edge.”
“Thedas needs a new hero; one they'll never see coming. Forge a courageous fellowship to challenge the gathering storm. Friendship, drama, and romance abound as you bring striking individuals together into an extraordinary team. Become the hero and light the beacon of hope in their darkest moments.”
BioWare Postponed Stream:
Moving on, if you caught any of my streams last week, you would’ve heard me waffle on about an official BioWare stream planned for Dragon Age Day, however, the stream was officially postponed for reasons unknown.
Regardless, whenever we hear about this stream’s rescheduling, I’ll let you know. Or you can follow the BioWare Gear Store on Twitter with notifications on, for more announcements to be made.
Game Awards:
And finally, as we already know, the next Dragon Age is getting a special look during The Game Awards on December 10th, the show starts at 7pm EST/1am CEST. I'm streaming the event, so we can all freak out together, I am so excited! Turn notifications on and check out the livestream link in the description below so you can catch us the second we go live.
In terms of what we can expect to see, someone on Twitter asked “is it going to be one of those videos showing artists at their desks saying how much they love Dragon Age.”
And, Lead Producer, Scylla Costa replied: “nope.”
I mean, to be honest, more concept art is amazing for us anyways, but it sounds like we should expect something bigger than before. I’m placing my bets at a title reveal trailer, and I feel very confident in that.
Hopefully, by the end of this week, we’ll know the title of the next Dragon Age game, alongside a brand-new look at it. I am so exhilarated for the show! So, make sure you tune in and we can all enjoy this reveal together!
Comments