Details on Dragon Age 4 - or more properly, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf - have been few and far between, but thankfully a new blog post has offered some insight into how the game's skill trees and class customization are being designed.
Systems designer Luke Barrett says that allowing you to reach your “player fantasy” is core to how the skill system is going to be designed. Barrett says that "because we're supporting so many choices, we've designed something that can be customized widely, as opposed to a more linear progression system."
An early version of the skill tree design shows a sort of snowflake, with purchasable skill nodes at each intersection point. The tree shows six different color-coded sets of skills, seemingly representing different sorts of class specializations. It looks like you'll be able to freely cross the bounds between different specializations, purchasing skill upgrades that effectively let you do multiclass builds.
It's worth bearing in mind, of course, that we're seeing /very/ early versions of the design here, and every detail is subject to change ahead of its implementation in the final game. The devs hint that this design has already gotten multiple revisions from what we're seeing, but it sounds like those points about customization and freedom remain core to the whole idea.
UX designer Bruno Porrio explains that "after multiple rounds of iteration and validation, we landed on the finalized design of the skill tree (which we can’t wait to show you). It was very important to us that the fantasy of playing a certain class and the customization options would come across clearly and at a glance without overwhelming the player."
It's unclear how any of this fits in with the earlier Dragon Age 4 gameplay leaks. One of those sent players speculating about a class system based on the in-game faction you choose to join.
We don't for sure know when Dreadwolf is set to launch, but it could be one of the biggest new games for 2023.
