A former BioWare developer has revealed a mid-2016 internal pitch for Dragon Age 4, giving Dragon Age: The Veilguard players a look at the studio's early design goals for its next RPG.
The book circulated within BioWare and among senior EA staff. Its purpose was to keep Dragon Age on the publisher's agenda and help secure early funding and new hires for the team.
The developer described a concern behind that effort: a publisher could cancel a project or leave it without enough resources to continue. The pitch was part creative plan, part argument for supporting the team.
Its introduction used Dragon Age: Inquisition as the starting point for the next game, arguing that BioWare could build on its strengths while fixing what had not worked. The document presented the team's thinking at that stage.
A reactive world, from conversations to weather
The pitch's central ambition was a world that responded more deeply to player actions. Its proposed systems covered both character interactions and the environment:
- Social interactions: Exchanges that went beyond BioWare's standard conversations, with people behaving and reacting more naturally.
- Environmental changes: Destructible surroundings and dynamic weather, including mud that players could sink into.
- Player-driven consequences: Actions such as heists could affect the world around the player.
Those ideas were planning goals, not guaranteed features. The former developer described the book as “propaganda” aimed at EA decision-makers and said some proposals would have faced opposition within the team for discipline-specific reasons.
