14 DAY TRIAL // Dragon Age: Inquisition developer BioWare admits that it has gone through quite a few different versions of openings for the recently released RPG before figuring out how to portray an opposition to the actions of the player without antagonizing allied characters.
Dragon Age: Inquisition launched last month and finally brought forth the medieval fantasy role-playing experience on which BioWare has worked for quite a few years. The title has since earned critical acclaim for its huge world, its variety of quests, and its diversified gameplay.
Inquisition's opening had to be rewritten seven times
However, the studio admits that the result wasn't so clear during the actual development process. Several of its representatives, including Creative Director Mike Laidlaw and Senior Writer David Gaider, admit that some sequences, such as the opening, had to be reworked many times in order to get the whole feeling right.
More specifically, during a lecture hosted by the NYU Game Center via GameSpot, the two developers relayed the difficulty of offering a decent opening to players. "That scene is one that we re-worked probably seven times over the course of the game," Laidlaw said.
Presenting an opposition to the player was hard
The main problem, according to them, was portraying an opposition to the actions of the player. In the final version, Chancellor Roderick, a bureaucrat trying to organize the troops near the Breach, expresses his reticence towards the player.
However, during some versions, party members like Cassandra or counselors like Leliana took over Roderick's role and were much harsher with the player. Some editions also saw Varric and Solas play bigger roles and express more opinions, but BioWare considered that it shouldn't overwhelm players at the beginning.
In the end, the studio decided that Roderick was going to be the opposing factor to the player and even compare him to a character from the Ghostbusters franchise.
"It needed to setup that initial opposition, we needed the sense that people weren't willing to step up and solve the problem. I remember one of my clearer pieces of direction that I said to David [Gaider] and his team was that we basically needed that guy that shuts down the Ghostbusters containment unit," Laidlaw explains.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is available across PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One platforms and BioWare has already promised that different DLC packs, with new single-player story and multiplayer campaign content, will appear in the future so that fans can spend even more time with the comprehensive RPG.
