14 DAY TRIAL // BioWare has talked a bit about Dragon Age: Inquisition, its next big role-playing game, and how it focused on several different key aspects, from the story to the teamwork in combat and the exploration of the open world.
Dragon Age: Inquisition promises to get the medieval fantasy RPG back on track after the not so successful Dragon Age 2 and to evoke more of the critically acclaimed Dragon Age: Origins.
The game will star a new protagonist, in the form of the Inquisitor, and BioWare has used the new Frostbite 3 technology to revisit some of the key pillars of the series and to make sure that they're still relevant and attractive to players.
According to Dragon Age: Inquisition Creative Director Marc Laidlaw, the focus will be placed on the teamwork between players and their companions, not to mention on the exploration and the story.
"The focus is on team work, the combat being presented as a puzzle for you to solve, having a number of tools at your disposal, a big, epic story," Laidlaw told Kotaku.
"But now [there is also] the introduction of exploration, of being able to go to places where there's real, earnest, wonder—the same feeling you get when you headed off the east side of a map on Baldur's Gate 1, and you ended up on the west side of the next map—that was cool! We want to make sure we get that back as well. So, reengineering is kind of considerable work, but also opportunity."
The fact that Inquisition uses a brand new engine, in the form of Frostbite 3, also forced BioWare to examine all of its different mechanics and to make sure that it can deliver a great RPG experience, not just pretty visuals.
"I think at the features that we have on Inquisition…in large part, it's an opportunity that we took when we moved engines, to the Frostbite 3 engine—it does some stuff right out of the box, like amazing graphics, and dynamic lighting," Laidlaw added.
"We had to do a vast amount of reengineering [with the new engine]...when you're able to start from the ground up, and kind of from a fresh start, and you look at the time you have and the resources you have, then you build a game that, you know, you're going to be proud of and that fits."
Dragon Age: Inquisition is set to debut later this year on October 7 for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.