We were already pretty sure that Dragon Age 4 will be set in the previously unseen realm of Tevinter. The Inquisitor stabs a knife directly into a map of the Tevinter Imperium at the end of the Dragon Age: Inquisition DLC Trespasser, for one thing, and BioWare pointed a finger in the same direction in 2020 with the release of a collection of short stories called Tevinter Nights.
The writing's been on the wall. But now, it's in an actual licensed book. Any doubts about the location of the new game have been dispelled by the recently released BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development, a book celebrating the studio's 25th anniversary with art, pictures, commentary, and stories. Tom Phillips of Eurogamer scored himself a copy, and found an official confirmation inside.
"As BioWare entered its twenty-fifth year, the Dragon Age team was hard at work on Morrison, the code name of the long-awaited follow-up to Dragon Age: Inquisition," an entry on page 324 called "Tevinter Bound: A sneak peek at the follow-up to Inquisition" states.
"The game, helmed by executive producer Mark Darrah, will take players to Tevinter as the events of Inquisition and Trespasser threaten to forever change Thedas."
Finally picked up the BioWare book and hey is this the first *official* confirmation Dragon Age 4 is set in Tevinter? (I know we all sort of guessed this already) pic.twitter.com/229xriPbofJanuary 24, 2021
That's not quite accurate: Darrah unexpectedly left BioWare in early December 2020, along with Mass Effect director and BioWare general manager Casey Hudson. Such is the way of lead times in book publishing. But it's reasonable to assume that Dragon Age 4's narrative direction will remain on track, even under the new leadership.
Dragon Age 4 may take players farther field than just Tevinter. The BioWare book also contains art of what is believed to be Antiva City, the capital of a region on Tevinter's eastern border, another image that may be from Nevarra on Tevinter's southern border, one of the Lords of Fortune treasure hunters' guild based in Rivain to the northeast, and one of the dwarven tunnels known as the Deep Roads.
There's apparently no sign of a release date hidden anywhere in the book, but we expect that it's still a long way off: Electronic Arts said during an October 2019 earnings call that the next game in the series "probably comes after fiscal [2022]," which puts it sometime after April 2022.
