BioWare veteran Mark Darrah revealed an internal pitch for Dragon Age 4 that was never shared with fans.
This speech was shared in the form of a book that Darrah said was distributed within BioWare and to senior EA officials. The idea behind the book was to “stay relevant” with the publisher and try to get early funding and new hires for the project.
“There’s always a fear, and I think a legitimate fear, within a major publishing house that you’ll be canceled or, in EA’s case, you’ll just be allowed to stay on a starvation diet to the point where you can’t continue,” Darrah said in a new video posted to his YouTube channel.
“That’s where this book is ultimately born,” he continued. “This was done in mid-2016 to be something that I could give to the team, but also something that I could give to the higher-ups in the EA organization to say, ‘Look, we’re making a Dragon Age. Remember, Dragon Age: Inquisition was a great game that sold really well, so you want another one, right?'”
The book focuses on what was then called Joplin, the original plan for a fourth Dragon Age game. This was later canceled in favor of a Dragon Age 4 live service, which in turn, was partially scrapped and revamped into the single-player mode Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
As for Joplin, this book gives us an idea of what BioWare was planning behind the scenes. For starters, we can see that there was a chapter about the game having a “reactive world”. However, in The Veilguard, reactions to decisions made in previous games have been almost completely scrapped.
Darrah also shared that BioWare envisioned destructible environments, dynamic weather conditions, and social interactions that went beyond standard BioWare conversations. There’s even a reference to the player participating in heists, something we’ve never seen in the series before.
That said, Darrah admitted that many of these features would have been abandoned even if development had gone well. In fact, BioWare was in the process of phasing out Heists in 2017. But this shows us the vision BioWare was pursuing, with the desire to make the series much more immersive than previous entries.
Although Darrah failed to reveal the full contents of the books, he did share the opening he wrote in 2016:
“Dragon Age: Inquisition has transformed what the franchise is and how it is perceived by audiences. As we move forward, we have a great opportunity to continue the breakthrough we started.
“We’re building on the foundation laid by Dragon Age: Inquisition. A foundation that allows us to see beyond. To see the things that didn’t work and fix them, to see the things that worked and make them better.
“The Dragon Age team will create a more immersive, interactive world with people who act and react like real people. We have a lot of work to do, but never has a Dragon Age game started in a stronger place. This document represents our current thinking about the next steps for the franchise.”
Needless to say, the developers didn’t get the development cycle they were hoping for. Instead, Joplin was abandoned and Dragon Age stagnated to make way for Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. The Dragon Age series was put on ice after The Veilguard failed to meet EA’s sales goals.
Today, BioWare was shut down by EA. Many fans are fighting to save BioWare’s work, especially the now-canceled Mass Effect universe, but we certainly shouldn’t expect any developments in the Dragon Age series anytime soon.
Rhiannon (she/her) is a freelance journalist who has worked in the industry since 2019. She won MCV’s Women in Games award in 2025 and loves RPGs. You can follow her on Bluesky at @rhithewitch.
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