BioWare has 'evolving plan' for Dragon Age 4, 5 and beyond

Even though a sequel to 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition is yet to be officially announced it appears that developer BioWare has big plans for the fantasy series.

Responding to a fan on Twitter, Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw confirmed that there is "no planned ending" for the RPG franchise and that the team already has "theoretical" ideas for a fourth and fifth instalment, and beyond.

"There is an evolving plan that tends to look two games ahead or so," Laidlaw said. "Thus, I could tell you what could be in a theoretical game 5, if there were a theoretical game 4 happening."

He also suggested that BioWare approaches Dragon Age with some amount of flexibility as far as plotting out sequels goes, stating: "I strongly believe that if you try to hold to a rigid plan that is a decade old by the time you reach the end, you are wasting [opportunities]."

Inquisition, which was the first Dragon Age game to launch on modern consoles, was warmly received by critics and fans, with most praising the title as a return to form after Dragon Age 2's smaller scope proved divisive. A follow-up was teased in June when Laidlaw revealed that "something is happening with Dragon Age" on an episode of the 1099 podcast.

There were some who were hopeful that 'Dragon Age 4' would be unveiled at EA's E3 2017 presentation, but while BioWare did feature heavily in the publisher's E3 plans, it was the studio's brand new IP Anthem that made its grand debut.

The sci-fi epic was briefly teased at EA Play before receiving a full reveal at Microsoft's conference to talk up the game's graphical pizzazz when running on the newly announced Xbox One X console.

Also releasing on PS4 and PC, Anthem follows the lead of Destiny and The Division by focusing on online co-operative play, with players jetting around a lush post-apocalyptic sandbox in futuristic exo-suits and, judging from what we have seen so far, shooting anything that gets in their way.

Anthem is the latest game from the team at BioWare's flagship studio in Edmonton that was famously responsible for the original Mass Effect trilogy. A separate team at the Canadian wing has historically worked on the Dragon Age franchise.

Anthem will also be the first game to come from BioWare since the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda in March — a sequel/soft reboot by BioWare Montreal that was broadly considered to be a disappointment at launch.

As a result BioWare shelved plans for a sequel and any possible single-player DLC (we miss you, Quarians) and put the popular franchise as a whole on ice. Andromeda's development team was also moved to projects at BioWare Austin before the sub-studio was eventually folded into EA subsidiary Motive Studios to work on Star Wars Battlefront 2 and other Star Wars-licenced titles.