Dragon Age 3 - Interview @ CVG

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CVG has posted a new interview with BioWare's General Manager Aaryn Flynn about Dragon Age: Inquisition.
How ambitious are you being with the open-world design?

Oh pretty ambitious! That comes down to some of the feedback from Dragon Age II and wanting to give people a lot more exploration. That's one of the reasons why we chose Frostbite as an engine, because we went through a big review of that.

We knew that our own engine Eclipse that did Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age II was getting pretty long in the tooth. Continuing to develop on that engine would've taken a lot of investment and time. But when we lined up a lot of the opportunities for engines, one of the things that we loved about Frostbite was that it did terrain streaming and big open environments quite well.
So we thought that if we could take that and then layer on beautiful open-world systems and quests, that would be a pretty killer combination. That was a big priority for us.

The first and second Dragon Age titles are quite different games. How are you going to balance Inquisition in terms of incorporating various elements from those games?

The idea for 3 is obviously that the medium has moved ahead again. So we have to take advantage of that and figure out first and foremost where the medium is going. Then from there based on where we see it going, which is to bigger, open areas and more things to do, we then have to decide what from Origins and Dragon Age II we're going to bring in to that.

Each game has things that we like. For example, Origins has a great, tactical combat feel. I personally like that Dragon Age II has a faster, more action feel to it. So we want to blend those and bring them in to Dragon Age: Inquisition and then have it play out in larger, open spaces.

Will player choices from the previous two games factor in the Inquisition story?

Certainly we want to respect the investment that people have made in the first to games. We don't have a specific comment yet on how we're going to do that, but it's become a really big 'BioWare-ism' to do that so want to keep it going. We just don't know how we're going to do it yet so we can't comment.
More information.
 
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"Each game has things that we like. For example, Origins has a great, tactical combat feel. I personally like that Dragon Age II has a faster, more action feel to it. So we want to blend those and bring them in to Dragon Age: Inquisition and then have it play out in larger, open spaces."

Very skeptical about this. I have a feeling they will go even more action based but I'd love to be wrong.
 
I'll have to play a demo to see just what they are changing before I buy this. I played the Dragon Age II demo and it felt like I was playing God of War. Needless to say I was quite disappointed with the changes they made after Origins.
 
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If it has the tactical combat view provided in the PC version of DAO, I'll consider it. If not, well, that really says it all about whether they're going for flash or substance.
 
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Tbh I never minded the combat much one way or the other. What I did mind was the narrow tunnels of a world and in DA2 they very awkward storytelling.
 
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Agreed elikal, combat was not one of main complains I had about DA2.
 
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As much as I liked combat in DA - it wasn't all that great, because it had a serious lack of variety. Also, it had an insane amount of filler combat - like all Bioware games do.

After a while, all fights felt basically identical - and your tactical setup would be able to overcome the vast majority of them.

I don't think that's all that exciting, really.

DA2 had better character development options (at least as a non-mage) - and the combat system was entertaining and I didn't mind that it was fast. The big issue was the abysmal spawning enemies mechanic, which completely destroyed my enjoyment of the experience.

If they took that out - and made it slightly more tactical and with a slighly slower pace - that could work really well.
 
This business of "tactical combat feel", as compared to "a faster, more action feel" is worrisome. In particular although action and speed of CRPG combat might appropriately be described as feeling or impressionistic characteristics, its difficult to understand how tactical aspects of combat can be viewed in the same light.

In general, I personally felt that DA2 had a more cartoon-like, childish feel as compared to a more realistic, adult oriented DAO. This description of DA3 combat as having a tactical feel suggests the developers might have opted for simple, non-tactical combat that somehow feels tactical, to appeal to a younger audience. For me, the attractiveness of DA2's shiny and fast combat wore off quickly, while the complexity and depth of DAO's combat/character design and choice offerings kept pulling me back into the game.

__
 
This has console game written all over it. Moving on…

lol. But I have a bad feeling your prediction may turn out to be right.
 
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DA2 had... childish feel as compared to a more realistic, adult oriented DAO
Exactly. Maybe they thought it'll sell better that way. And maybe it did sell better, but in the long run, who will preorder DA3 now? I won't.

IIRC DA2 lead designer left Bioware after the audience expressed the disappointment all over internet.
 
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Exactly. Maybe they thought it'll sell better that way. And maybe it did sell better, but in the long run, who will preorder DA3 now? I won't.

IIRC DA2 lead designer left Bioware after the audience expressed the disappointment all over internet.

I agree I stopped pre-ordering before I get more information on their games now.

Also Bioware just finalized the design script for the next Mass Effect and their using the same engine and mechanics from Dragon Age Inquisition.

BND0_JMCcAIFDWV.jpg.pagespeed.ce.oXbSlbTvl1.jpg

Bioware Montréal head, Yanick Roy has released a picture on twitter showing the design document of the game. It’s a pretty thick binder, and it looks like may be years away from completion. However, Yanick says “Don’t worry: we have a large and talented team, we started a while ago, and we are ‘borrowing’ a lot of game systems from DA3.”
Please let their next games be good.:please:
 
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I really quite enjoyed DA:O but never got DA2 because of the negative feedback here and elsewhere. It would be nice to see the series get back to form with this installment, but I'll definitely wait for reviews before I consider buying it.
 
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I really quite enjoyed DA:O but never got DA2 because of the negative feedback here and elsewhere. It would be nice to see the series get back to form with this installment, but I'll definitely wait for reviews before I consider buying it.

Same here. No pre orders this time. I've learned my lesson =)
 
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GBG, Yme, buy it on sale, DA2 is not an utter rubbish and is worth a few bucks. But not more than that.
 
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Anything from Bioware used to be a day-one, instant buy from me. But, now, i will wait for the reviews to come out before even thinking about buying their games. They are such a disappointment.
 
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Yeah, Bioware were always day one purchases for me until DAII. DAII showed to me that Bioware was taking rpg gaming in a different direction to the one I wanted.

To be honest, I over-reacted a bit at the time - mainly because I couldn't really see much of a future for my kind of rpg if Bioware were going down an action / voiced main character / simplified character development / corridor progression / star-rated items etc route. Since then, KS has thrown up exciting possibilities (not to mention non-KS games like Chaos Chronicles), so I'm finding that I'm less bothered about what Bioware are doing.

I might pick it up if rpgwatchers start raving about it, and the things that bugged me about DAII (and MEIII to be honest) seem to have been resolved.
 
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DA2 combat was ok even as I preferred DAO. However, normal was too easy. The only difficulty worth it imho is nightmare level. But the arbitrary immunities (bandits immune to fire) and the enemies popping in from nowhere just stops me from continuing with my succeeding playthrough attempts
 
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This business of "tactical combat feel", as compared to "a faster, more action feel" is worrisome. In particular although action and speed of CRPG combat might appropriately be described as feeling or impressionistic characteristics, its difficult to understand how tactical aspects of combat can be viewed in the same light.

In general, I personally felt that DA2 had a more cartoon-like, childish feel as compared to a more realistic, adult oriented DAO. This description of DA3 combat as having a tactical feel suggests the developers might have opted for simple, non-tactical combat that somehow feels tactical, to appeal to a younger audience. For me, the attractiveness of DA2's shiny and fast combat wore off quickly, while the complexity and depth of DAO's combat/character design and choice offerings kept pulling me back into the game.

__

If you're hoping for straight up tactical combat like Baldur's Gate, it's not likely to happen on a multi-platform release. As Pongo said above, look to Kickstarter - there's a whole slew of PC-only indie RPGs on the horizon that are based on the Infinity Engine.

Like most of the recent big budget multi-plat games (Witcher 2, Dark Souls, Skyrim, etc), the combat will almost certainly have an action component, and that's not necessarily a bad thing if they can manage to do it right. Action combat with tactical elements can/could be a lot of fun.

The combat of Dragon Age 2 wouldn't have been bad had they nixed that awful wave combat style. DA:O was tactical but clunky. A mix of the best features of each could work. I'd be happy if they kept the pause mechanic for giving tactics for those who want to do so, and bring back the ability to zoom out to an overhead position during battles.
 
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