Dragon Age has been in production since early 2004. And that, in an industry where development cycles are getting shorter by the year, could mean one of two things. Either the game is being polished to perfection and each and every element of it is being tweaked to perfectly reflect the intentions of the developer, or the game has hit development issues and more time is needed to address certain game problems.

As Dragon Age is the next big project coming out of BioWare, a highly acclaimed RPG developer renowned mainly for the re-invention of the genre with Baldur's Gate, we're willing to cut it some slack. And while we're at it, let's see what senior PR manager Matt Atwood of BioWare has to say about the game.

The game was initially billed as "the RPG that people have been waiting for" by the developer, and this has put a lot of pressure on the devs to create something amazing. And the amazing part apparently requires time. Which we don't mind much as long as the finished product really is worth the wait. Matt stated: "I think we're going to be extremely proud and our fans are going to be extremely excited. And you'll hear more about it pretty quick."

Details other than the title are scarce at the moment, but the game is set to be the "spiritual" successor of Baldur's Gate, much like BioShock was the spiritual successor of System Shock 2. So, interesting story lines, party creation and development together with a living, vibrant world are to be expected.

The game is currently developed for the PC and Matt Atwood revealed that if the game shapes up nicely, console ports could be created and released shortly after the game hits PC. BioWare says nothing is certain, but an April 2009 release date is considered.