14 DAY TRIAL // Dragon Age: Inquisition will feature non-regenerative health for players, meaning once a battle is over their health won't magically be replenished, in order to add consequences to their actions.
Dragon Age games in the past allowed for players to engage in as many battles as possible, as their health immediately regenerated once a fight sequence was over and the last enemy slain.
While this didn't make the game more realistic, it prompted players to just rush into fights without worrying about their resources or what awaited them ahead.
In order to dissuade players from using the same strategy in Dragon Age: Inquisition, developer BioWare has added a non-regenerative health system that emphasizes not just survival but also strategic thinking.
"I wouldn’t say survival is the key, but it’s certainly a factor as part of that," the game's Designer, Mike Laidlaw, told RPS. "More than anything, what I want out of it is the sense that, as a player, I need to take the game seriously and consider my actions."
"If enemies are largely inconsequential in the course of a fight – I recover almost instantly! – then you could consider them to be bags of experience points that you want to tackle. But as soon as you introduce the idea that health is sustaining damage, you move closer to a pen and paper experience. You move closer to the more old-school, hardcore approach to role-playing."
Tactical thinking and planning will be required if players want to survive their encounters and the ones that follow through plot lines or other such things.
"Suddenly you’re challenging players and saying, 'Well, you’re going to go fight that dragon. Are you going to skirt around everything? Are you going to fight very carefully on your way there so you’re not low on resources or low on health when you go to fight the big guy?' That the kind of thing that I think creates really interesting challenges for the player."
"So I don’t see a situation where, necessarily, you’ll be so worn down by the game that you won’t be able to get home. That kind of thing, that works really well, but it’s not really key to the experience that we want. It’s more about thinking long term and planning ahead, rather than planning backwards."
Dragon Age: Inquisition is set to make its debut in fall of 2014 for PC, PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One.