Dragon Age 4’s latest trailer was released at The Game Awards this month. The brand new video showed the next game’s player character explore the dark streets of a mysterious city that appeared to be in the Tevinter Imperium.
Dragon Age has already had a game focused on a single urban setting, Dragon Age 2. The second game took place almost exclusively in the city state of Kirkwall in the Free Marches and the surrounding areas. If Dragon Age 4 decides to return the player to a city setting, here are some ways its new city could outshine Kirkwall.
If Dragon Age 4 is going to take place around one city, then the bigger that city is, the better. Kirkwall was an interesting setting, but there was far too much repetitive scenery over the course of Dragon Age 2. Not only did players find themselves returning to the same areas over and over again, but other areas like caves and dungeons were reused, making Kirkwall feel both small and repetitive.
The capital of the Tevinter Imperium is Minrathous, the biggest city on the entire continent of Thedas, located on an island with a single bridge leading to and from the city. Dragon Age 4 gives BioWare the opportunity to use Minrathous as its world map, but by making the city a more realistic size the game could still have an in-game world to rival the size of Dragon Age: Origins, if not the significantly larger world BioWare went for with Inquisition.
There is a huge amount of diversity that the player could find in a Tevinter city. Kirkwall’s alienage – where the town’s elves are forced to live – is essentially just a single small square, smaller than the alienage in Dragon Age: Origins’ Denerim. Minrathous could have fully fleshed out neighborhoods that feel cultural and economically distinct from one another.
Tevinter society has several levels, and the intense differences between these distinctions could be the basis for regions of the city. First, there’s the wealth divide – much like Kirkwall the city in Dragon Age 4 should have some areas that are far richer than others. Next, there’s the racial divide that separates the humans from the elves, dwarves, and qunari. Then there’s political divisions – Dorian mentions joining a group of reformist Magisters, who might be more likely to meet in a run-down inn downtown that in the towers that dot the city skyline.
The distinction between magical areas and non-magical areas could also be interesting. The Dragon Age 4 trailer shows one part of the city floating above the rest, and magic being used for technological purposes, such as creating brightly lit multicolored storefront signs. Some areas of the city are likely to have far more access to magic and magical infrastructure than others, which could make for a unique geographic divide. Tevinter also still practices slavery, and many of the elven slaves are among the most susceptible to conversion by the qunari, adding an element of religious divide to the city as well.
In other words, there are a huge amount of different demographics who could influence the architecture and general feel of different districts of the city. Kirkwall may have had a clear class divide and a troubled legacy of slavery, but the city didn’t realize that with very clear distinctions between its districts. Though Kirkwall’s Lowtown was implicitly poorer, this wasn’t very well realized in the densely packed living or culture of the people living in that area. There could be entire areas of Minrathous that an upper class Tevinter magistrate like Dorian Pavus, even a progressive one, would never have visited, and which have extremely distinct cultures as a result.
Size doesn’t mean everything in RPGs, and Inquisition’s large open world, particularly areas like the Hinterlands in Ferelden, were too sparsely populated for the tastes of many fans of the franchise. However, if BioWare limits its scope to a single city again like in Dragon Age 2, the in-game world could take advantage of that singular setting to create a more realistically sized city than players have seen in the series so far. Players should risk getting lost, not getting bored.
Kirkwall was a relatively simple city, and while more areas became unlocked over the course of the story, unlocking them wasn’t particularly exciting. Dragon Age 2 had three main acts, each of which saw some changes come to the city and certain quests progress or become inaccessible. Dragon Age 4’s city could have more opportunities for exploration right away, with plenty of quests that aren’t to do with the main quest and which help the player character feel at home in their city.
Different districts of the city could even be the starting points of different character origins like the ones in the first Dragon Age. Players could choose a new perspective on the city each time – some might start being trained by the mages in one of Tevinter’s floating courtyards, others might dredge themselves out of poverty in the alienage, or begin the game as a slave.
It’s also possible that Dragon Age 4 could take place across multiple cities in the Tevinter Imperium while still keeping a greater focus on its urban areas than the countryside surrounding them. While settlements in previous games have often felt tacked on to areas and unrealistically tiny, developing several cities could give players a better idea of the Tevinter Imperium as a whole and the ways the dynamics between its conflicting cultures play out across the empire. One city with a large elven slave population, for example, might be far more susceptible to the Dread Wolf and his plan to recreate the elven empire by destroying the Veil.
The trailer events hints that Dragon Age 4‘s city may have a more vertical aspect. The clip of a character sitting on a rooftop overlooking the city could even imply Assassin’s Creed-style climbing or parkour mechanics.
Tevinter is the oldest and most advanced human empire in Thedas, and a great opportunity for BioWare to show players cities on a scale they never have before. Many fans will be hoping that the game doesn’t limit the player to just a few key locations like Dragon Age 2, but if BioWare does decide to go down that route there are still plenty of ways Dragon Age 4’s cities could be richer and riper for roleplay.
Dragon Age 4 is in development.
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