According an insider report from Bloomberg, (which fails to name sources, and doesn’t seem to understand what “games-as-a-service” are, so take with a few grains of salt) Dragon Age 4 is being retooled as a single-player only RPG.

This apparently comes as a result of both the success of Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order–an exclusively single-player title, which EA even admitted at the time was more successful than they expected–and the failure of Anthem, which recently had previous plans to revamp many of its problems, cancelled.

Is EA learning from past mistakes?

It’s hard to say. The Anthem NEXT cancellation is disappointing, though, hardly surprising. But the apparent renewed interest in single-player titles is a good thing, as modern “games-as-a-service” tend to come across more exploitative than fun. I think we can agree the most recent travesty; the Square Enix developed, Marvel’s Avengers game was an absolute abomination, and should serve as an example of what not to do with a popular IP.

This also comes as a quite a turnaround from the previous (2019) insider description of the game as, “Anthem with dragons,” asserting the game would have a heavy multiplayer focus. This was supposedly a significant reason for departure of long-time BioWare legend, Mike Laidlaw in 2017.

So… maybe?

We can only hope a single-player Dragon Age 4 won’t include a cash shop or paid loot-boxes, but that’s probably a bit too optimistic for an EA publish.

/gameon