Gamers will be able to watch the emotion of characters

Oct 15, 2013 08:54 GMT  ·  By

The development team at BioWare is currently using the extra power offered by the new Frostbite 3 engine in order to create a system of intelligent cameras that will show players the most important game moments and the beauty of the world.

Jonathan Perry, the cinematic director working on Dragon Age: Inquisition, tells Gamerzines that, “so if you’re really upsetting somebody or the relationship is taking a turn for the worse we can start to drop the camera down or pitch it up, so it feels a bit more hostile, or if you’re making all the right moves in that romance conversation, flirting back and forth, we can have the camera push in.”

This is part of a wider trend in the game that aims to suggest to players how they are performing without inundating them with numbers that can pull them out of the immersion.

The developer adds, “Previously when a character said a line they would always have the same emotion, but now we have systems depending on how you’ve been treating that person. They could say the same line, but have a stern look or a happy look based on how the conversation is going or what has come before that.”

Perry goes on to offer a clear look at the process that BioWare uses to create its cutscenes, with clear directions for each character and attention to detail.

He says that the most important cinematic sequences are hand-crafted to make sure that they deliver emotion in addition to exposition.

The Frostbite 3 engine has been created by DICE for the new Battlefield 4 first-person shooter and Electronic Arts has adopted it for a number of its future titles.

Dragon Age: Inquisition will be launched on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and current-gen consoles in late 2014.