A few screens and a brief bit of combat footage leaked for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf a few days ago.

I’m not here to judge alpha footage for a game that doesn’t even have a release date but the internet’s reaction to that footage got me thinking. It mostly came in two flavors: “that doesn’t look like Dragon Age” and “it looks like God of War.”

Sure, maybe. Speaking of, God of War (2018) doesn’t play like its immediate predecessor, God of War: Ascension. But that franchise took a long break! Yeah, there was a five year gap between them. Dragon Age: Inquisition came out in 2014 and it seems unlikely BioWare will deliver Dreadwolf this year. But Dreadwolf isn’t a reboot! It isn’t, but a decade is a long time; a lot has changed in gaming.

Should core gameplay only be revisited when a franchise is rebooted? That feels rather dogmatic to me. What if change enhances the experience? BioWare evolved Mass Effect‘s gameplay over the course of its trilogy, dragging each entry closer to pure third person action. The releases were closer to each other, so the nudges were gradual. After five years and a soft reboot, Andromeda evolved the gameplay even further, taking a larger leap than any of its predecessors. Dragon Age has followed its own pull towards action gameplay, with gaps between its first three releases similar to Mass Effect.

Now, Dreadwolf faces a break twice as long as Andromeda‘s. A lot of high quality, innovative action RPGs have come and gone since. Is more of the same—or similar—the right choice? Maybe, maybe not. After all, Deadwolf isn’t a reboot. However, a decade is a long time.