#draon age origins

[knuttydraws]

Art Summary 2022 My first full year of arting!

Thanks to everyone who left nice comments and tags (im seeing you and i adore you all!), who were brave enough to commission me or take part in an art trade, everyone who encouraged me publicly or in private - this really would not happen without you. I can't wait to see what next year brings ❤

[squidmayo]

✩‧₊˚  King Alistair and Queen Jolene Cousland  ˚₊‧✩

‘tis finally done _(:3 」∠)_

Click for quality   (｢• ω •)｢

[blatterburystreet]

This is a desperate attempt to draw my Warden Eugene in battle with blood effects and red eyes because, you know, he’s a berserker (or a reaver). But I suck with dynamic poses. So I’ll just try to do my best. 

[oogiesboogie]

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“ Grey Warden “

(TW: FL)

[jackdawyt]

Most of you will have heard about this recent article by Jason Schreier as he comments on the current state of BioWare, Anthemand the next Dragon Age game's development. I'm glossing over the whole 'Anthem is a mess' narrative, and jumping straight to the important juicy Dragon Age news.

So, without further ado, it's imperative that we just jump straight into this story from the very start! So let's crack on with it!

The production on Dragon Age 4 {title still not announced} reportedly started in 2017, under the leadership of Mark Darrah and veteran Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw.

With the departure of studio general manager Aaron Flynn and Anthem in a desperate state, Darrah was parachuted into theAnthem team as executive producer.

This iteration of Dragon Age 4 was code-named Joplin, and those who were working on it have stated that they were excited by creative director Mike Laidlaw’s vision for the project.

The project was named after Janis Joplin as the game aims to be revolutionary for the Role-Playing Game genre, proving to be a landmark on the franchise.

The next Dragon Age will also be the fourth installment in the series following in the same vein as Janis Joplin and her massive success with her fourth album launch, BioWare felt inspired to name the project after Janis' achievements.

However, Anthem received flack, by October, it was on fire. BioWare had decided to make some massive changes.

That summer, studio general manager Aaryn Flynn departed, to be replaced by a returning Casey Hudson.

As part of this process, the studio canceled Joplin. Laidlaw quit shortly afterward, and BioWare restarted Dragon Age 4 with a tiny team under the code name 'Morrison'.

The code name Morrison is a call back to Jim Morrison, a legendary American songwriter renowned for being an influential front-man in rock history. He went on to create the rock band - The Doors.

This is what was meant when we heard the news that the next Dragon Age project had been 'rebooted', the fact that Laidlaw left, with his creative vision.

Morrison is seemingly what remains of the skeleton team working on Dragon Age 4, the likes of Patrick Weekes, John Epler, Mark Darrah, Nick Thornborrow, etc. Each of these developers are Dragon Age franchise veterans.

Meanwhile, the studio moved the bulk of Dragon Age 4’s developers to Anthem, which needed all of the company’s resources if it was going to hit the ship date that EA was demanding.

One big change that’s already been enacted at BioWare is a new technology strategy.

Developers still at the studio say that under Casey Hudson, rather than start from scratch yet again, the next Dragon Age will be built on Anthem’s codebase.

BioWare have stated that they will share more on what this means for the game in the near future.

Parts of 'sharing Anthem's codebase' mean that BioWare will avoid throwing out huge amounts of work developers put into adapting Frostbite.

Jason Schereir has confirmed on Reddit that we'll be getting an updated news story hopefully this week regarding Dragon Age 4 in the near future.

Of course, you're already in the right place when the second that information drops, which should be this week!

Okay so opinion time!

The fact that Dragon Age was pushed aside for the likes of Anthem is upsetting to all BioWare fans, however, I feel this isn't the most pressing news to be alarmed about.

Regarding the whole, Dragon Age 4 will share the same codebase as Anthem, all this means is that the next Dragon Age will build on the existing tech used for Anthem. This is exactly what I mentioned in my previous video, the idea that sharing resources on the Frostbite Engine would be handy for BioWare given the trouble with the Frostbite engine.

Sharing the same codebase is in no way, shape or form declaring that the next Dragon Age game will be multiplayer, we already know that their working on a separate multiplayer feature for the game, as they've hired a new, side team to embark on that task alongside the development of the main game.

How I envision Dragon Age 4 basing it's codebase on Anthem's is simply by using it's most upgraded presets within the Frostbite engine as BioWare have constantly innovated it with three previous games, each systematically adding and changing mechanics within the software.

Dragon Age: Inquisition layered the foundations for their first role-playing game in the Frostbite engine, Mass Effect Andromedastretched out the engine with larger maps and fast vehicle usage, and Anthem innovated with it's flying mechanics with a streamed-in world.

I've seen a lot of people worried about using Anthem's codebase and what could this mean, and by a lot of people I mean Reddit. One particular comment I noted said, why don't BioWare just use the same codebase as Dragon Age: Inquisition since that was the previous RPG title that the team is most comfortable with.

Well, if you think about it, the codebase for Inquisition is at least 5 years old now, and not to mention a large part of that games was brought down due to previous game-generation limitations, as Inquisition released on both PS3 and Xbox 360. It's probably a super outdated preset on the Frostbite engine, whereas Anthem's codebase is higher tech, more developed and not to mention super recent.

It makes sense for Dragon Age 4 to share the same codebase and resources as Anthem, this is in no way saying that the next Dragon Age is going to be stickily multiplayer, it's just an improvement regarding the tech of the Frostbite engine.

I feel a lot of these confessed mistakes for Anthem's developments show an optimistic light for the next Dragon Age game, BioWare are embracing their mistakes once more, this time with Anthem and BioWare's A team.

They've learned throughout the course of creating three games on the Frostbite engine, each from scratch is a very hard thing to do. So instead, they've decided only now for the next Dragon Age, they're going to share the presets from their most recent, previous title.

This is exactly the same situation as how Fallout 4 is built upon Skyrim's engine, they ported the presets of their tech for Skyrim into a next generation level of the Creation Engine and then began creating Fallout 4. If anything, I see this as a positive, it shows that BioWare have learned how chaotic the Frostbite engine is, and now they've decided to make their lives easier, they can actually speed up development on new projects because they'll have a template and needn't start from scratch.

And judging my Anthem's latest tech within the engine, the gameplay is super fun, the world is streamed in and allows for tight flight controls whilst looking beautiful all at the same time. I've made a video literally explaining the Frostbite engine's developments with Anthem, and how they pave the way for Dragon Age 4.

Using previous games as build templates just sounds like a typical games design motto, I feel perhaps this gets bad press because Anthem wasn't a BioWare epic and it's an always online multiplayer experience, however, the motivation is still the same.

Moving on, It's disheartening to see that BioWare have responded with an underwhelming, lacking reply which attempts to throw shade at the likes of Jason Schreier who're just showcasing the mistakes of Anthem, so BioWare can learn.

It's almost hypercritical, it's like we, as a studio can call our games a mistake, but how dare you point out the flaws and call it journalism.

To nip this in the bud, I feel like there are two teams within BioWare, the sympathetic developers who deeply love their games, and will actually come out and say when something went wrong, as noted by Jason's sources.

And then there's the EA side in BioWare, who're conflicted against them, controlling every word from the studio and not accepting room for growth or improvement.

We can see from Jason's article that plenty of the BioWare developers have spoke out, regarding the studio and Anthem's developments, there not all EA puppets. So, there's seemingly a few decent bunch in the studio who care for sharing the studio's current state to the public.

Trying to end this positively, the fact that the next Dragon Age has been 'rebooted' shows that the studio hasn't given up on this franchise, that there trying to work it out in the best way possible, that they will give the game it's due time and care. And lets not forget the masterminds working on the project as mentioned before!

If the title had merely been a failure without Mike Laidlaw's vision, they'd have given up on the game, but no, there's still hope for the future of this franchise. They've found a way to reboot the project, following a different vision and seemingly unique enough to be given a new project title.

It doesn't seem like it'll be that long before we hear what this could potential mean, and how the next Dragon Age as been rebooted, examining what the differences are between project Joplin and Morrison.

Sheer speculation on my part, but other than Jason delving into when we'll hear from Dragon Age next, I feel he could have a bigger story on the horizon.

[purplemeow12345]

Happy Valentine’s Day  for Dragon Age ^^

Zevran/Fenris/Solas 

[trashychann]

"𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖆 𝖑𝖆𝖉𝖞 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗. 𝖘𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖉 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖓𝖔 𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖉"

[remai16-blog]

Final Battle

[loohconrado]

its so hard to find air related things...........

[frogei]

[crystalbull]

Disliking certain characters or disliking the actions or traits in said characters in the Dragon Age fandom is almost considered blasphemy. You confess to not liking someone or certain personality traits and people look at you like you just confessed to supporting dog fighting.

For example, I say that I don’t like Anders (DA2 Anders anyway) and people act like I’ve committed a heinous crime. I can say that I hate how rude Sera is to people who believe in the Elvhen gods and how she will literally make you choose her or your faith/ culture if you romance her as an elf, and I get accused of hating lesbians.

On the other side, liking fan hated characters is similar. For example, I like Meredith as a villian, but of course the fandom would rip me apart for it. I can say I like Empress Celene and people would get so pissed at me for it.

Look, it’s fiction. I’ll confess that I take it a bit too seriously at times as well, but don’t go out of your way to harass and attack someone just because they like or dislike a character. 

[blatterburystreet]

Ok, but consider: 

Eugene Cousland the Hero  Nose of Ferelden

[jackdawyt]

ICYMI: Gamescom is just around the corner, and so is Pax East!

[walk-the-fade]

Elves Purr?!

So this morning I discovered a head canon that elves can purr, while they are  happy or content! And I accept this fully lol because i’m trash and its cute (Especially imagining Fenris, Merrill, and my Inqy) And I think it goes well with my head canon that elves can have fangs, Soooo I went and told my dad  whos also an avid player of the DA series (he’s beaten all the games at least 5 times) and explained it and he immediately shook his head and went no thats weird- and i said something like “Imagine Zev tho??” (one of his favorites) and he was like “If Zevran ever started purring I would knock him out and tell him he ain’t no cat” ~ To which I lost my shit lol But what do you think? Can Elves purr?

[ask-kurt-wagnerandrpwithhim]

Many Midgardian battles have been lead by Deities in the past: If Ana played her cards right, she would've been able to do so too. Many wouldn't go against it either if along came a dragon like Tina *turns to Tina* I'm sure you'd be able to pull the fearsome and convincing kind of faces made for those situations but that's besides the point. *addressing Kurt* I can safely say you very much don't know what you're getting yourself into. _Loki

I probably don't, but you just talked to a dragon zhat I vatched chase a mouse like a giant cat earlier zhis veek, so I'm not really sure eizher of us really knows vhat zhey are doing in life.

To be fair, Tina can hold a conversation as well as any mute individual, she just also has more animalistic tendancies, like any of her breed. Cat nip does not work on dragons, though, much to the disappointment of some of your students I've encountered. Dragon nip is a totally different plant, and has different chemical properties that create a similar outcome. If there were any surviving manuscripts, I would advise reading the Dragon Manual of Berk, rewritten by a chief who spent much of his life studdying dragons such as Tina. If any coppies survived the ages, the first place I'd look is Strange's library, the second would be Asgard. If I recall correctly, they had a hand written copy at one point, not the original however. Or, if you'd prefer, you could go digging deep into the underground study of Dragonology, but you'd have to enroll in a school for that and those schools are very secretive and protect the knowledge of dragons very closely, you would have to keep a journal but if you ever decide to drop out they've recently changed to assassination rather than vows of secrecy, as the last individual they gave that privilege to tried to take over the world and kill very powerful dragons. That field of study also only focuses on speaking dragon, draons capable of human speach rather than animalistic sounds, so your information would be limited to newer breeds.

How zhe fuck can ypu go from sounding like an idiot one moment and a professor zhe next?

Practice, Kurt, there are times where if you sound too smart or too stupid you'll be killed, I have a tendancy to waver between the two when not in any imminent danger.

*Tina rolls her eyes and shakes her head, walking over to look at some of the artifacts around the sanctum*

[remai16-blog]

In peace, vigilance In war, victory In death, sacrifice