The long awaited Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has randomly popped up on the official Xbox app for pre-download.
It was first spotted by a user Mr Evil 37 on ResetEra who commented: “By the way, you can predownload Dreadwolf on Xbox using the phone app. It’s obviously just a placeholder file, but still cool.”
Another user then verified this later in the thread.
Shinobi602, a well-known and very reliable source of insider information, also comment in the same thread, seemingly teasing something. He simply posted the old GIF of Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart telling his warriors to “HOOOOOOLD!”
Wanting some further proof I ventured onto the Xbox app and sure enough, Dreadwolf can by found by searching for it and is available to pre-download right now. The screenshots below were taken on my phone.
This has obviously sparked a discussion as to whether Dragon Age: Dreadwolf may releasing quite soon, perhaps by the end of the year.
The game’s last trailer was released 5 months and told players that a full reveal would be coming in Summer 2024, which will be just in time for Summer Game Fest.
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf’s development has been a tad rough over the years. It was reported to have entered into production in 2015, but problems began when staff kept being moved away to focus on Mass Effect: Andromeda which BioWare was also developing at the time. At one point, it was put on hold entirely, and then was cancelled in 2017, apparently because EA thought it had no room for a live-service component. It got fired back up again in 2018 with live-service elements. Those live service pieces were again removed, partially due the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fall Order and the failure of Anthem.
None of these things mean the final product will be bad, but it certainly doesn’t paint a great picture. BioWare are under a lot of pressure. The once great studio has struggled in recent years, putting out Anthem in 2019 which failed to meet EA’s expectations. A reworking of the game was planned but dropped entirely because of low player counts. Before that, 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda actually did okay in sales and seemed to meet EA’s expectations of it, but overall fan and critical reception was quite poor.
BioWare could certainly do with a solid win at this point to regain a little of their lost reputation.
