14 DAY TRIAL // Aaryn Flynn, the general manager at the Edmonton BioWare studio, says that his team is putting together a specialized role -laying game version of the Frostbite 3 engine from DICE that will also power future Mass Effect titles.
He tells Engadget that, “More and more as we look at it, Dragon Age: Inquisition has a lot of stuff that's getting built and done satisfactorily, letting innovation happen - we couldn't have done that before because we didn't have the time.”
The engine work is important because it gives his team a stable platform that can be then used on a variety of other projects, without the need to once more re-invent base tech.
The first two Dragon Age titles used two different engines and plenty of gamers who loved the more tactical approach of the original titles complained that the sequel took them too close to the actual battles.
Flynn adds, “We've got a longer development cycle for Dragon Age, but that comes from two things: One is the investment in Frostbite to make it an RPG engine, and that's a big one for the team. They're helping eat that rock for Mass Effect.”
Dragon Age: Inquisition is being developed on the PC, the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 and current-gen home consoles and is expected to arrive at some point in the fall of 2014.
The game will take players to Orlais where they will have to deal with a tear that has been opened in the Fade, allowing demons to pour through, while quenching the battle between the Chantry, the Templars and the Mages.
A new Mass Effect video game, which will not be connected to the Commander Shepard saga, is also being developed by BioWare, but does not yet have an official launch window.