14 DAY TRIAL // BioWare, the developer of the upcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition role-playing game, praises games like The Darkness or The Last of Us for their thorough exploration and execution of relationships, both with romance and without it, and hopes to deliver the same thing.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is BioWare's next big project and the studio is determined to make the new installment the best in the series by improving on a variety of problems and issues that affected both Origins and Dragon Age 2.
One key area where a lot of work was needed was the relationship between the player and his fellow allies. This isn't only due to the traditional romance options offered by BioWare, as Creative Director Mike Laidlaw has emphasized that the game wants to deliver great relationships overall.
He tells IGN that, while a lot of video games fail at creating meaningful relationships, there are still plenty that are quite effective in making players care about their virtual friends or loved ones.
Laidlaw even praises The Darkness, the atmospheric shooter from Starbreeze, for delivering a great romantic story that involves cliché moments.
"There are some that are really, really effective," he says about romantic moments in video games. "The most romantic moment in a video game that I’ve ever seen is when Jackie visits his girlfriend’s apartment in The Darkness. She baked me a cake, she’s moving in, and you watch possibly the entirety of To Kill a Mockingbird as she passes out on your lap because she’s tired and snuggly. That is amazing."
Another great video game that manages to forge a meaningful relationship is The Last of Us, largely because it doesn't go the romantic route, instead focusing on the father-daughter moments experienced by protagonists Joel and Ellie.
"That’s the thing I think the Last of Us goes right to elemental heartstring moments," Laidlaw says. "It says these are real people and it’s okay to care about them. I think to some degree there’s a joy to escapism when it’s okay to care. That is something that I think is kind of a single-player phenomenon."
Dragon Age: Inquisition stars the Inquisitor, a new protagonist that can have varied origins and be of different races. Throughout the journey, players will gather plenty of allies in order to stop a world-ending event, including members who'll join their party as well as those who will act as advisors for the inquisition overall.
The game is set to debut this November for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
