New footage of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has leaked, revealing a stunning new change to the gameplay.
New clips and video of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf show that the combat has shifted from a semi turn based game play style to full on action combat, similar to God of War, The Witcher 3, and the Soulsborne games.
Our source claims that Bioware’s developers deliberately used the 2018 God of War as a reference point. The Dragon Age ability wheel remains, and there is also a special bar which you fill up to pull off a special move.
It’s a dramatic change to the way Dragon Age plays, a real departure to the way combat works in Bioware games from as far back as Jade Empire. Bioware deliberately deemphasized skilled combat gameplay in their games, in favor of a broader game design that incorporated narrative choices, role playing elements, and even some mini games, to encourage less skilled players to keep playing, and explore the story by replaying their games multiple times. Given the gap between this game and Dragon Age: Inquisition, Bioware may have felt it was necessary to make this change to bring the franchise to the modern era of gaming.
The gameplay did not feature any party control of any kind. This would seem to rule out a gameplay style where you coordinate attacks between team players. It may be possible that Bioware will add a way to give commands for certain abilities later.
On the upside, the animation quality is highly improved, with fluid and responsive animation. Hair animations also looked quite impressive.
From what can be seen in the gameplay, the lead character can parry using a sword and shield, has a drop kick, and a charge sword attack.
The leak comes from an alpha tester, who decided to share a gameplay video of the alpha slice that they played. The person sharing these details on Reddit has opted not to share the full video to keep the tester safe, but went ahead with sharing clips and video, which you can see below.
EA officially confirmed that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf was nearing the end of alpha. As of last October, it could already be played from beginning to end. So, it’s likely that this footage dates all the way back to October, or even earlier. It’s likely in the middle of beta now.
We’ll definitely be hearing from EA when Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will hit gold, and eventually what platforms and release date it will have. For now, you can look at the previews trimmed from alpha gameplay footage below.
