Hey, remember Dragon Age: Dreadwolf ? It has been over a year now since the game's title was first revealed and almost exactly five years since the then-unnamed sequel was first announced at the 2018 Game Awards . And today, just to make sure you didn't forget about the long-in-development game completely, Bioware and EA are out with yet another teaser presaging a "full reveal" planned for summer 2024.

The short "Dragon Age Day" video, titled "Thedas Call," features unseen voiceovers speaking over airborne, still-life shots of three locations that will feature in the new game. An accompanying blog post goes into a bit more detail on the locations, describing "the desolate, beautiful badlands of the Anderfels with curtains of distant mountainous spires. The twisting channels and gleaming towers of Antiva, where Crows may lurk in any shadow. The turquoise seas of Rivain with its rushes of greenery and hardy sea-faring people."

The short teaser concludes with a statement that seemingly comes from Solas (a.k.a. Fen'harel), the Dread Wolf that will serve as the game's antagonist: "All the world will soon share the peace and comfort of my reign." And EA's blog post expands a bit on Solas' motivation as "not a man who sees himself as evil, but someone who believes he's fighting for a good cause and is willing to get his hands dirty."

Enlarge / Cast members from Star Trek: The Next Generation . (credit: CBS)

It would be hard to overstate the impact that Star Trek has had on geek culture. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when folks who spent years watching the shows pursue careers in game development, they seek out the actors from one of their favorite TV shows to bring their creations to life. From TOS to VOY, many Star Trek actors followed up their star-making screen performances with voiceover work in video games.

Of course, many of the cast members reprised their roles for licensed Star Trek games or reappearances of their Starfleet personas over the years; studios understandably don’t want to recast iconic parts if they can avoid it.

But games have also provided many of these talented actors with a chance to create new characters and explore new genres beyond the ones that made them household names. If they’re not so versatile, working in games at least meant a chance for a paycheck after the series finale aired.

Enlarge / Yet another leader behind the Dreadwolf project has left bioWare.

BioWare's Mac Walters used a LinkedIn post this weekend to announce the end of a 19-year career at the company. The move is yet another in a long line of shakeups for the leadership team behind the sprawling, long-anticipated Dragon Age: Dreadwolf , on which he served as production director.

Walters' history at BioWare was primarily focused on the Mass Effect series, where he served as a writer and designer before rising to project director for 2017's Mass Effect: Andromeda and 2021's Legendary Edition remaster. He transitioned to the Dragon Age team after Legendary Edition to serve as Dreadwolf 's production director, a role he said was akin to "both producer and director" in TV/film terms.

"So you have the vision for a product you’re helping to uphold—something you and the team want to do—but on the producer side, you are also responsible for figuring out how you’re going to support the team in creating that vision," Walters said in a May interview posted on the BioWare corporate site. "And then you work with the team to actually execute that vision.”

Enlarge / Don't worry, my sweet. BioWare Points can't hurt you anymore.

Single-player downloadable content for the PC versions of Dragon Age: Origins , Dragon Age II , Mass Effect 2 , and Mass Effect 3 will be available for free going forward. The change—which EA is announcing via apparent emails to some Origin users —comes alongside the pending shutdown of the BioWare Points digital currency system.

Those BioWare Points used to be the only way to purchase DLC for the developer's legacy titles. And because those points rarely went on sale , the price of that DLC relative to the heavily discounted base games would sometimes get a little ridiculous. As an angry change.org petition noted in 2015, "to purchase enough BioWare Points to own all DLC for the [Mass Effect] series would total $105; over 3 times the cost of all three base games."

In 2017, though, EA released moderately priced DLC bundles for its legacy BioWare titles, making it much more affordable and convenient to purchase story-based expansions and content packs that offer more character customization options.

Enlarge / Get busy imagining this logo on a box.

It's been nearly eight years since Dragon Age: Inquisition launched as the most recent full game in Bioware's acclaimed RPG series, and nearly four years since an unnamed sequel was first teased at the 2018 Game Awards . On Thursday, developer BioWare revealed an official title for that sequel— Dragon Age: Dreadwolf —and confirmed the game won't be coming until 2023 at the earliest.

In a brief blog post , BioWare confirmed the new game will focus on the antagonist Solas, the mysterious elven hedge mage who was introduced as the Dread Wolf in Inquisition . Solas was also central to that game's 2015 Trespasser DLC, and featured heavily in a four-minute Gamescom 2020 behind-the-scenes featurette on the game.

In its announcement, BioWare describes Solas as someone whose "motives are inscrutable and his methods sometimes questionable, earning him a reputation as something of a trickster deity—a player of dark and dangerous games." The developer also insists that "if you’re new to Dragon Age , you have no need to worry about not having met our antagonist just yet. He’ll properly introduce himself when the time is right."