Fans have been looking forward to what BioWare’s now calling Dragon Age: Dreadwolf since developers teased it at the end of Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC. However, seven years after Trespasser’s release, many unanswered questions remain about the upcoming game. Among them is if and how Dragon Age: Dreadwolf might continue the tradition of Origin Stories.
While Origins were present in both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age Inquisition, each game tackled them in very different ways, and some felt Inquisition’s Origins left much to be desired. Still, the original game’s fully playable prologues also represent a significant investment of time and money that developers might not consider worthwhile. Nevertheless, there are ways that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf might improve on Inquisition’s Origins without breaking the bank.
Origins in Dragon Age: Inquisition
Character Origins did not play as significant a role in Dragon Age: Inquisition as they did in Origins, and it’s understandable why some fans were not impressed by this version of the feature. There is one each for Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Elves, Dwarves, and the newly playable Qunari, with Humans getting either the Mage or Noble backstory. Instead of a playable prologue, players would get a brief summary of their character’s backstory followed by a short chain of War Table missions later in the game.
However, these Missions were easily missed, especially by anyone who wasn’t fond of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s War Table. Also, unlike other choices in Dragon Age: Inquisition, the outcome of these missions don’t meaningfully impact the rest of the game, even when it seems like they should have. For example, the Elven Inquisitor’s entire clan can die during one of Inquisition’s War Table Missions, but it goes completely unremarked upon by them or any other main character. Limiting the Origin Stories to text boxes also makes them feel less important and personal than they did in the original game.
Origins in Dragon Age: Origins
Compared to Inquisition, it’s easy to see why some might prefer Dragon Age: Origins’ playable prologues. The player’s choice of Dragon Age’s Races and Classes determined which of the six different opening chapters they could choose from. These prologues helped to establish various places, people, concepts, and plot points for later in the game, with each Origin having at least one point where it intersects with the main story. Players get Origin-specific dialogue during these scenes in addition to the added context provided by each of the six prologues. These origins stories are also great for role players since it gives them context to build their character’s personalities around.
However, Dragon Age: Origins’ approach also represents a lot of content that not every player will see. While BioWare can get away with reusing assets and sometimes entire locations for some of the Origins, it still takes time and money to code and record dialogue for each of them. Adding to that, 80% of Dragon Age: Origins players chose Human characters according to a comment by former Dragon Age Writer David Gaider on the now-defunct BioWare Social Network. This implies that relatively few people experienced all six prologues. Thus, it may not make sense to devote so many resources to Origin Stories instead of working on other parts of the game.
What Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Could Do
Assuming that a fully playable in-game prologue is off the table, there still are a few options that might allow Dragon Age: Dreadwolf to improve upon Inquisition’s Origins. In fact, some of these possibilities are things BioWare has already done with some of their earlier games.
The most straightforward option might be to follow Mass Effect’s lead. For those who don’t remember, Mass Effect had players determine Shepard’s backstory by choosing a Pre-Service History and Psychological Profile during character creation. These would unlock and significantly alter certain side quests in Mass Effect 1, all of which served to flesh out Shepard’s backstory. Developers could copy this system almost one-to-one in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf by giving players one unique quest for each race and another based on the character’s class.
Alternatively, BioWare could get a bit more creative with how it incorporates Origins into Dragon Age: Dreadwolf’s prologue. For example, Obsidian Entertainment’s 2016 RPG Tyranny featured a unique interactive prologue where players made choices on a map of the game’s setting. This allowed Tyranny’s introduction to cover a significant amount of time very quickly while letting players decide which choices their characters made at each junction. While this technique might suit some stories better than others, it is something developers could think about.
Dragon Age Keep May Hold The Answer
Other options might be to open the game with something like Mass Effect: Genesis or Dragon Age: The Last Court. Genesis was a comic-book style DLC for Mass Effect 2 that recapped the previous game’s events and let the player make important decisions from that game. Meanwhile, The Last Court was a text adventure from Sunless Sea developer Failbetter Games, which served as an official prologue to Inquisition.
However, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf’s best bet might come from the Dragon Age Keep website. In addition to letting players record their decisions from across the Dragon Age franchise, it also featured an interactive animated short film narrated by the fan-favorite recurring character Varric. Like ME2’s Genesis comic, it allowed players to make important decisions from the previous game. It wouldn’t be impossible for BioWare to create something similar that would function as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf’s in-game prologue. Perhaps its artwork could take inspiration from in-universe artwork, such as the ancient Elven murals seen in Trespasser and featured heavily in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf’s earlier promotional content.
Ideally, the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf would refer back to these decisions later in the game, perhaps even having origin-specific side quests. However, even on its own, a Dragon Age Keep-inspired prologue might serve as a unique and memorable introduction to the game, especially for anyone coming to Dragon Age for the first time. If nothing else, it would be a significant improvement over how Dragon Age: Inquisition handled its Origin Stories.
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is in development.