14 DAY TRIAL // We might not know everything about the story or the main mechanics of the new Dragon Age: Inquisition at the moment but BioWare is keen to make sure that players get more details about one of the areas that they will be able to explore in the coming role playing game.
The Exalted Plains of the Dales received a few screenshots earlier during the week but now an official blog post from the studio delivers more details on how the zone was conceived, with quotes from one of the developers that shaped it.
Andrew Farrell, the senior environment artist, states, "The first thing we did was try to portray the civil war and the impact it’s having on the environment and the people of that region. In these spaces, we try to provide opportunities for the Inquisition to come in and make its mark on the area. Then the people there rally around that."
The moment when the player arrives in the Exalted Plains sees a pause in the combat between the elves and the human armies, linked to a mysterious force that has made the bodies of fallen soldier rise from the ground and attack both sides.
The Elves have retreated to a safer location and the player will have to eliminate the undead in order to be able to control the area.
Ben McGrath, the leader environment artist working on Dragon Age: Inquisition, says that water is one of the elements of the game that was significantly enhanced by the use of the all new Frostbite 3 engine.
He adds, "Displacement mapping adds a new level of realism to the environment. Normal maps [in previous-gen technology] brought great detail to surfaces, but displacement mapping actually pushes those details out so you can see them in the silhouette. The place where it’s probably the most noticeable is on terrain."
BioWare has added more details to each zone included in the game and has also been able to create a more complex ecosystem.
For the Exalted Plains of the Dales that means gamers will be able to see halla, various types of birds and wolves that roam free, while delving deeper they will also meet drakes, dragonlings and dragonkin, which pose more of a threat.
Dragon Age: Inquisition will be out on the PC, the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One and current gen consoles at some point in the fall of this year.