Bioware have given up a lot of details on Dragon Age: Inquisition, and from the sounds of things, the title will bare more in common with the original Dragon Age Origins, rather than Dragon Age 2.
This is particularly true for how you are expected to deal with your followers, placing more emphasis on the weight of your decisions and interactions with your companions. This will in turn help to better define their look and their actions. Dragon Age 2 was met with some criticism upon its release, despite improvements in combat. Primarily this criticism was focused on the fact the game felt smaller, and your decisions and plot seemed to bare less importance than DA:O.
Below is a few highlights of the recent interview with Cameron Lee, Dragon Age Inquisitions Producer.
“We have this event that occurs and the world is in chaos, sure, but in Mass Effect, you always knew what the threat was, you always knew that the reapers were there. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, whilst there is a humongous tear in the sky, and all these powerful factions and nations are in chaos – all this is happening at once, and that’s a little too strange to just suddenly occur and be coincidence.
“So the player has more of an investment in uncovering what’s going on here. And it’s not necessarily about uncover some truths and get this person on side in order to deal with the thing at the end, it’s a lot more complex than that. And you know, you are a force. Yes you’re a character, but you lead this organisation, this inquisition, which has a really significant presence in the world, a presence and an influence on these different nations and factions.
“So in Mass Effect you formed factions but it was mostly on a personal scale, whereas in Inquisition you’re talking about having a personal impact, but mostly through these big crunchy, meaty decisions and impacts that the Inquisition can have on the world. It’s kind of like the difference between being a Jedi, and founding the Jedi Order.”
“Elves have been persecuted in this world, so how would a human nation feel about having an Elven inquisitor come up to them and talk to them? So there are ways that all this fits together. David Gaider and the writers are hard at work putting that together. But it’s interesting to see it all take shape.”
“It’s interesting, when you think about Dragon Age: Origins, it’s a very similar situation to what we have in Inquisition, because there’s an overarching narrative and story that takes place. In Origins you could pick your race, it’s the same in Inquisition, you pick your classes, the sorts of decisions that you make across the board are very similar in terms of scope – in Inquisition it’s probably a lot larger actually.
And there’s much more customisation in Inquisition than there was in Origins, in terms of what you can craft, how you look, how you can look after your followers and all that sort of stuff, so I think there’s more choice and more customisation and the ability for the player to feel like the character is their own.”
Dragon Age: Origins will be released in the third quarter of 2014, and its certainly one of the most anticipated games of the year. The game is sporting beautiful visuals thanks to EA’s to the Frostbite 3 engine. It’ll see releases on the PC, Ps3, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360.
For the rest of the article, head over to OXM.
