Line #21 Trivia/DragonAge


1	See the separate trivia entries for the individual installments of the franchise:
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3	* Trivia/DragonAgeOrigins
4	* Trivia/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening
5	* Trivia/DragonAgeII
6	* Trivia/DragonAgeRedemption
7	* Trivia/DragonAgeInquisition
8	* Trivia/DragonAgeDreadwolf
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11	!!Trivia for the franchise as a whole:
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13	* DevelopmentHell: As noted in TroubledProduction below, ''VideoGame/DragonAgeDreadwolf'' has had a tumultuous development history. In [[https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2019/10/29/electronic-arts-ea-q2-2020-earnings-call-transcrip.aspx?source=awin&awc=12195_1574357127_67873b39928acde2d529e1a7fdc590cd&utm_source=aw&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=78888 an earnings report presented to investors]], EA COO[=/=]CFO Blake Jorgensen admitted the earliest DAD would conceivably be released is ''Q2 2022,'' eight years after ''Inquisition.'' Since the covid pandemic Bioware has delayed the release date several times. Even though they confirmed that the game was in Alpha in late 2022, the game was not released in 2023 and still only has a "full reveal" scheduled for 2024, all but guaranteeing a full decade between major game releases.
14	* PermanentPlaceholder: A common thing in the series, especially in regards to naming things. For instance, the name of the setting, "Thedas", was an acronym ("The Dragon Age Setting") used by the devs to refer to the world while they thought of a proper name for it. Fast forward to a few years later, and nobody even considered naming it anything else.
15	* PopCultureUrbanLegends: A rumor with some wishy-washy veracity is that the development team on ''Origins'' lost the first drafts of the Elven language. Whether this has anything to do with the language in-game being lost is even more unknown.
16	* SimilarlyNamedWorks: Dragon Age is also the name of an unrelated Manga magazine.
17	* TroubledProduction: Rather unfortunately, every game in the series since ''Origins'' has been hit with this:
18	** ''Dragon Age II'' was rushed by EA to meet a deadline of Spring 2011, even though the team were barely recovering from releasing ''Origins'' 18 months prior, and were still supporting it for much of 2010 with DLC such as the ''Awakening'' expansion. Some sources even claim that, not counting pre-production (which by all accounts was also very brief), the game was developed in the span of about ''8 months''. This led to the streamlined combat, poor level design and a rushed third act, which all contributed to the game's mixed reception.
19	** ''Inquisition'' was made on EA's Frostbite engine, which was made for beautiful shooter games... and little else. Bioware had to force the engine to work for role-playing-games and various planned features such as fortress sieges had to be cut. It also had a hellish period of crunch near the end which gave higher-ups the idea that "Bioware Magic" could save any game in its final months of development -- an act which would go on to lead to ''Mass Effect Andromeda'' and ''Anthem'' both suffering.
20	** ''Dragon Age: Dreadwolf'' hasn't even had its release date revealed and already rumors are concerning about the game. As mentioned below, Kotaku has unveiled that the game underwent a massive reboot around late 2017 that would have followed up on the sequel hook from the ''Trespasser'' expansion, but that got cancelled and rebooted. Development would then be halted so that the ''Dragon Age'' team could help try and scrap together ''Anthem'' in time for its Spring 2019 release. Several rumors indicate that Casey Hudson even went against EA's wishes when showing the ''Dread Wolf Rises'' trailer at the 2018 Game Awards. The development was then [[https://www.pcgamer.com/dragon-age-4-will-reportedly-ditch-live-service-features-and-be-singleplayer-only/ reportedly]] overhauled ''again'' in early 2021, concurrently with [=BioWare=] giving up on the ''Anthem Next'' reboot, axing live-service elements from DAD and turning it into a more traditional single-player RPG. Unfortunately, near the end of August 2023, Bioware announced they were cutting staff again, leading to several of the series writers being let go, further causing delays and issues.
21	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
22	** The first iteration of ''Dragon Age: Dreadwolf'', codenamed "Joplin", [[https://kotaku.com/the-past-and-present-of-dragon-age-4-1833913351 was to be]] about a group of spies in the Tevinter Imperium and would center on [[TheCaper heists]], which would have a lot of variability and StoryBranching, depending on how you approached them[[note]]presumably in the vein of ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''[='=]s SuicideMission[[/note]]. "Joplin", however, was canceled in October 2017 (when [=BioWare=] ordered all hands on deck to salvage ''Anthem'') and rebooted as "Project Morrison" a.k.a. "The Dread Wolf Rises". The supplemental comics ''ComicBook/KnightErrant'' and ''ComicBook/DragonAgeDeception'', both of which focused on heists, were probably leading up to "Joplin"; but tellingly, ''Deception'' was CutShort to just three issues (instead of the usual five) right around the time of the reboot.
23	** "Project Morrison" was intended to have far larger multiplayer and long-term monetization components than previous [=BioWare=] games, as part of EA's mandates to enforce their "Games as a Service" philosophy. According to Jason Scheirer, it was what drove the series' creative director Mike Laidlaw to leave the company in 2017. In the final years of TheNewTens, the great success of games like ''VideoGame/StarWarsJediFallenOrder'' despite being fully single-player and lacking live-service components, along with the utter failure of the live service and multiplayer-focused ''VideoGame/{{Anthem}}'', discredited EA's widely-mocked views on single player games as a passing fad. According to anonymous [=BioWare=] developers, in the final days of 2020, shortly before the announcement of [[UpdatedRerelease Anthem Next]]'s cancellation, EA not only allowed, but ''ordered'' [=BioWare=] to completely remove ''Dragon Age: Dreadwolf'''s multiplayer components, making it the company's first fully single-player game since ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' in 2011.
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Context Trivia / DragonAge