BioWare talks up Dragon Age

By Robert Purchese Published 14 March, 2008

"The RPG people have been waiting for."

BioWare has told Eurogamer that its upcoming role-playing game Dragon Age will be what fans have been "wanting forever".

Senior PR manager for the company Matt Atwood restated the promise that it would be out before April 2009, and said more information would be released soon.

"When you make a statement like 'this is the RPG that people have been waiting for', then you better back it up and you better spend a hell of a lot of time on it," Atwood told Eurogamer.

"I think we're going to be extremely proud and our fans are going to be extremely excited. And you'll hear more about it pretty quick."

Dragon Age is said to be a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, and first showed its face in 2004 before fairly sharply ducking away from public view.

However, although there were "times with less resources and with more resources", Atwood assures us it has been consistently worked on since then.

So far it has only been linked with PC, but when quizzed about it Atwood didn't rule out the possibility of it popping up on other platforms.

"It is for the PC, but as far as exclusivity we haven't said anything on that," he revealed.

Look out for our full interview with Matt Atwood soon, where he talks about the upcoming PC conversion of Mass Effect and how you will be "extremely captivated immediately" by Mass Effect 2.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (35) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Nylkran #1 4 years ago

    Well BioWare, so far it sounds like your full of it, (they didnt say why this the RPG we have all been waiting for), but based on your past works, I'll reserve judgement until its out, before making anymore comments.

  • Hunam #2 4 years ago

    No no, they mean that its been like 3 years since they announced it and we are all still fucking waiting for it to turn up!

  • Gurrah #3 4 years ago

    As long as they don't start tweaking it to be accessible for consoles, I am hinting at you there Bethesda, I'm happy.

  • Tomnd #4 4 years ago

    looks pretty awsome though, there is a preview (from a year ago) up on C&VG. They had some guys do nothing else but write the history for the world for 4 years.

  • RickHard #5 4 years ago

    April 2009 !!! God, that's still a long way to go :-(

    I secretly hoped to play it this year...

  • prolific8 #6 4 years ago

    This isn't Kotor 3, so who cares?

  • UncleLou #7 4 years ago

    This isn't Kotor 3, so who cares?

    I do, because Kotor was pants.

  • theleif #8 4 years ago

    Yes, pretty please! I know i have waited for a Baldurs Gate 3 since i finished the second for the 3:rd or 4:th time.

    "This isn't kotor 3, so who cares"? - Spoken like a true console gamer.

  • M83J01P97 #9 4 years ago

    This is the RPG with a world where magic doesn't excist isn't it?

    Hmm... I am sure BioWare will do a good job. I hope anyway...

  • Ryltar #10 4 years ago

    This is the game that every Baldurs Gate fan has been looking forward to. I personally hope it lives up to our expectations. *crosses fingers*

  • L42yB #11 4 years ago

    April 2009! :'(

    But I've been waiting since BG2 dammit!

    I reckon this will be awsome. Bioware have an excellent track record and they've been spending *ages* on this game. Of course, it does have a LOT to live up to...

  • _Price_ #12 4 years ago

    If this doesn't cure cancer/aids/Alzhiemers or something I'll be serverely disappointed.

    And yes, give me KotOR III or give me....well....this, seemingly.

  • ronuds #13 4 years ago

    EA + BioWare = tragedy

    Sorry, but Bioware is dead. R.I.P. - it was fun while it lasted.

  • Xerx3s #14 4 years ago

    "It is for the PC, but as far as exclusivity we haven't said anything on that," he revealed.

    iow: "We wanted to do pc only game that really took advantage of being a pc game but our new overlords have forced us to completely dumb down the game and release it on every platform ever made."

  • hiddenranbir #15 4 years ago

    Given the ending up with higher than acceptable expectations for Mass Effect - I'm gonna wait before I get too excited.

    I got way too excited for ME.

    --"It is for the PC, but as far as exclusivity we haven't said anything on that," he revealed.--

    Ah, that's a lot better than; Never on another platform, ooyeah.
    Edited by 1 at 14/03/08 @ 19:41

  • Ryuken #16 4 years ago

    Less NWN/JE/KotOR/ME, more BG-style = all I want from Bioware. Hopefully they still know what made their first RPG's so good and what made their newest titles so poor.

  • VMerken #17 4 years ago

    Looks like EA's new quality philosophy is paying off.

  • ronuds #18 4 years ago

    Hopefully at some point the BioWare guys will realize that they'll never get any true credibility working for EA and they'll jump ship to start their own dev house.

    /crosses fingers against hope

  • marilena #19 4 years ago

    I hate all retards that keep banging about EA buying and ruining Bioware.

    That is all.

  • riz23 #20 4 years ago

    Amen to that Marilena. This game will be awesome. Fact.

  • marilena #21 4 years ago

    (I don't know if the game will be awesome. But Bioware has always worked like a big corporation and I don't think they'll be different under EA, especially as their former publishers haven't really been great anyway. Also, nothing has happened yet, so how can people already know the result?)

  • SilasMalkav #22 4 years ago

    "They had some guys do nothing else but write the history for the world for 4 years. "

    Oh good god, like Bioware games aren't wordy enough. I love rpgs to bits, but people need to learn that a thousand words aren't better than a hundred. Just tell me who I need to get the sacred item from and shut up, if I want to know the back story I'll read more, but not all at bloody once.

  • Orange #23 4 years ago

    Now this is the bioware game I've been waiting for, hopefully a return to old form rather than the watered down console shit.

    Only one type of magic in the game apparently, which i think is good. I prefer the fantasy where magic is more unique and not splashed around all ove the place.

  • Wyrm #24 4 years ago

    'Dragon Age is said to be a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.'

    That's enough to get me hard.

  • Krun #25 4 years ago

    Is anyone who worked on Baldur's Gate, actually still working for Bioware?

  • threefortrouble #26 4 years ago

    Not excited by it at all. Is it PC only?
    Only 12 months away, they should have some new screenshots but nothing...

  • riz23 #27 4 years ago

    Jeez what a miserable bunch! Sure maybe Baldurs Gate is the pinnacle of Biowares output but everything they have done has been of high quality and better than most of the competition. They are more sure of their capabilities and likely to deliver than most devcos, easily in the top ten and when it comes to RPG's there are few if any better. This will be quality regardless of who publishes it.
    Edited by 1 at 15/03/08 @ 20:56

  • Orange #28 4 years ago

    There are original Baldur's Gate devs working on dragon age, I know at least one is for sure but I'm sure there's others as well. Although some people, including the BG2 director, did leave for Obsidian.

    I'm just delighted to hear more news about it, and with an approximate timescale for a release as well.

  • Drakron #29 4 years ago

    3 Years?

    Nope, it was announced around the same time as KotOR ... it have been in development so long a lot of us have forgotten it even "exist".

    That is also a indication of Development Hell, if thing were normal it would been released around the same time as Jade Empire PC ... EA might whip then into a release but ... do we really want buy a game rushed into release? most of NwN faults were caused by Atari rushing the release...

  • marilena #30 4 years ago

    So, because it took a long time, your conclusion is that it's rushed?

    If I'd have to guess, I'd say that the project was put on hold for long periods of time when other, more pressing projects, needed extra staff. And now they must have decided that its turn has come to be the pressing one.

    Baldur's Gate design staff that, from checking Mobygames, I would say (without 100% confidence) still work for Bioware: James Ohlen (Lead Designer for Baldur's Gate, now Design Director), Rob Bartel, Lukas Kristjanson, Ray Muzyka (doh). 4 out of 7, or 3 out of 6 if you want to discount Muzyka. From Baldur's Gate II almost all of them seem to still be there, with two or three exceptions. Now that I look at it, Bioware seems to be a pretty stable place.

    I'm not saying the game will be great, in fact I always thought that Bioware was inferior to Black Isle in all regards but marketing, and even Baldur's Gate can't touch on the true greats (Torment, Fallout), but most of the arguments in this thread are rubbish.

  • bionutz #31 4 years ago

    Well, I liked BG more than any other RPG. I played it only once, but it was the only game I played consistently for 1 year so I did all the side quests, I enjoyed the dialogues and I could safely say, it taught me a good chunk of my good English. I played Torment (v. good too) and Fallout (not so good), but I was already spoiled by BG. I really felt I was a part of that universe, I am keenly waiting for a new story from the same.
    *so excited*

  • mkreku #32 4 years ago

    marilena: I hate all retards that keep banging about EA buying and ruining Bioware.

    marilena: (Bioware has always worked like a big corporation and I don't think they'll be different under EA, especially as their former publishers haven't really been great anyway. Also, nothing has happened yet, so how can people already know the result?)

    Well, marilena, some of us have had favourite game developers before that have been destroyed by EA. Saying that "nothing has happened yet" is as naive as standing in an execution line, see the three people in front of you get shot in the head, and still expect nothing to happen when the gun turns to you. Read up on a little history, young one.

    Personally, I think you'd have to be a retard to expect nothing to happen. AGAIN.

  • marilena #33 4 years ago

    Nice bit of patronizing there, but it doesn't change the fact that you are simple and shallow (not to mention probably younger than me). EA is not a person, it doesn't have a stable personality, to be expected to behave in the same way over and over again. And I think that if you take it case by case, you will not find many cases where EA actually destroyed a studio. Origin is the stand out case, but with the rest there are a lot of shades of gray and often very little actually lost.

    Also, there are others of us that have had favorite developers destroyed by other publishers, this is not an exclusive ability of EA.

  • Nilsy #34 4 years ago

    Bioware... When are they gonna stop making rpg“s and focus more on what the people really want: Golf-based kart racers

  • prolific8 #35 4 years ago

    ""This isn't kotor 3, so who cares"? - Spoken like a true console gamer. "

    Actually, I played both on the PC, so, yeah. Sorry.