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Dragon Age: Shadowkeep is set to be released this fall, a full decade after the last game in the series, Inquisition. While fans are understandably upset that it took so long to get from the third to the fourth game in a successful series, members of the development team say the scale of the project warranted such a long development time.

Speaking about Dragon Age: Shadowkeep's development cycle, creative director John Epler said BioWare "wanted to make sure we got it right," calling the action-RPG "the best possible version."

According to Epler, the game's voice actors have been in the works for five years, while creative acting director Ashley Barlow said the RPG has a staggering 140,000 lines of recorded dialogue. 60,000 of those lines belong to the main character, Rook, alone, while each character variant (played by a different actor) has around 15,000 lines of dialogue.

“It takes a long time to record 700 characters, you know — 80,000 or 140,000 lines, plus all the Rook lines,” Barlow said. “It takes time to make good stuff.”

Of course, it's worth pointing out that Dragon Age: Shadowkeep's early development stages were reportedly fraught with behind-the-scenes issues and reboots, with BioWare taking some time to finalize a single-player-only vision for the game.

Regardless, the scale of Shadowkeep is undeniably massive. At over 140,000 lines of recorded dialogue, it exceeds all previous BioWare games, with Dragon Age: Inquisition having 80,000 lines and Mass Effect: Andromeda clocking in at 65,000 (which, interestingly, is more than Mass Effect 2 and 3 combined).

Dragon Age: Shadowbringer will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC this fall, and will support Steam Deck. The specific release date will be announced later this summer.