Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

‘Mass Effect 4’ and ‘Dragon Age 3’ will embrace the next-gen consoles with next-gen graphics

Anthony John Agnello
By
Dragon Age 3
Image used with permission by copyright holder

BioWare, Electronic Arts’ role-playing game mill, has its nose to the grindstone with the next round of sequels to its most recent series. Mass Effect 4 is on the way (only it won’t really be Mass Effect 4). Dragon Age 3: Inquisition has been in a variety of production stages over the past two years, and all that’s clear is that EA and BioWare want to tailor it to whatever customers say they want. What consoles will these games be on, though? Maybe PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, maybe the PlayStation 4 and Next Xbox, definitely PCs? Definitely the latter three based on word from BioWare.

The next Mass Effect game and Dragon Age 3: Inquisition will both run on DICE’s shiny new Frostbite 3 engine. Those games didn’t put in an appearance at GDC 2013 when DICE debuted Battlefield 4, but the studio’s new general manager Aaryn Flynn confirmed on Twitter that those sequels will use the same tech. 

Recommended Videos

“For everyone who’s been asking after the BF4 reveal, DA3 and the next Mass Effect are also using Frostbite 3,” said Flynn, “It’s awesome.”

Related

Prior to Flynn’s announcement, all that was known was that these sequels would use a new engine. Dragon Age 3 at least started out using Frostbite 2, though. “We are working on a new engine which we believe will allow us to deliver a more expansive world, better visuals, more reactivity to player choices, and more customization,” said producer Mark Darrah in December, “We’ve started with Frostbite 2 from DICE as a foundation to accomplish this.”

If the engine technology has changed yet again, it’s questionable whether or not these games will make it out to current consoles after all. One thing, at least, seems like a guarantee. Mass Effect 3 on Wii U won’t be followed by the next Mass Effect game. DICE confirmed for Eurogamer during a GDC interview that the Frostbite 3 engine does not support Nintendo’s new console. “The biggest problem we have right now is we don’t want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines,” said DICE’s Patrick Bach, “We right now don’t have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time.” That’s bad news for the Wii U’s future prospects, as Epic Games also confirmed to us that the Wii U would not run Unreal 4 either.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Anthony John Agnello
Anthony John Agnello
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…
All Baobab Tree locations in Tales of Kenzera
Zau fights a dragon in Tales of Kenzera: Zau.

While it wasn't marketed as being a particularly punishing game, Tales of Kenzera: Zau is by no means easy. You will have plenty of environmental challenges that can instantly sap your life, and the enemies you face -- especially the bosses -- are no slouches. When you first begin, it will only take a couple of bad hits to send Zau to the land of the dead himself. Alongside the Trinkets you can unlock through hidden challenges around the map, there are also Baobab Trees where Zau can stop to reflect on his journey thus far, have a short dialogue with Kalunga, and get a small addition to his health bar. Like everything in the game, these trees aren't prohibitively hidden, but you could easily pass one by and have no idea where it was when trying to backtrack. These are all the Baobab Tree locations so you can max out your health bar.
All Baobab Tree locations
There are six Baobab Trees to find in Tales of Kenzera: Zau and each adds a small segment of health to your total. When you collect them all, you will roughly double your HP bar. Here are each of their locations in the rough order you should naturally find them in. Most can be picked up on your first time through that area.
Ikakaramba

This one is very hard to miss as it is directly on your critical path. If you do, you can fast travel to the nearby campfire to grab it.
The Great Cliffs

Read more
All Fallout games, ranked
The courier in his nuclear gear and holding his gun in Fallout: New Vegas key art.

Who would've thought the post-apocalypse could be such a fun time? The Fallout franchise has taken the idea of a Mad Max-like future and not only made it into a wildly popular game franchise but also a hit TV series. The core franchise has been around since the late '90s, and yet we've had only a handful of mainline entries in the series since it was revived by Bethesda with Fallout 3. With Starfield in the rearview mirror and the next Elder Scrolls title currently being the dev team's focus, it could be close to another decade before we can set foot in the wasteland ourselves once again. What better time, then, to look back at the franchise and rank all the games from best to worst?

Fallout: New Vegas

Read more
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble is as fun to watch as it is to play
Monkeys race one another in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble.

I couldn’t tell you what the last Super Monkey Ball game I played was, but I can still talk your ear off about the series. That’s thanks to the speedrunning community that has formed around the franchise, making it into the most exciting game to watch when it's played at a high level. After spending close to a decade watching old games turned inside and out, I’m ready to finally dig into a new entry for myself.

Thankfully, I’m getting that chance on June 25 when Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble launches on Nintendo Switch. The latest entry in Sega’s precise platforming series comes loaded with content, from an adventure mode with 200 stages to multiple 16-player multiplayer modes. That’s all exciting, but my attention was on one question when I sat down to demo all of that last week: How fun will it be to watch players master it?

Read more