Dragon Age: Inquisition Interview
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One of the things BioWare RPGs are known for is their romance scenes, particularly the PG-13 camera angles and the soft focus Cinemax style approach. Has that changed at all?
We certainly could push those romance scenes in any direction we wanted really. Something that didn't work well is that we tried more, well I won't say graphic, but in Dragon Age: Origins we had characters crawling around in their underwear and it looked weird because they were wearing these lacy Victoria Secret panties and outfits which looked out of place. Certainly when you have these characters interacting with each other in such an intimate way it's incredibly expensive in terms of animation fidelity and getting it to look like they are really there and touching each other. I think Mass Effect's scenes were done really well and I think we will take Inquisition's scenes in that direction. You might have a nude character but they are framed in such a way that parts of them are in shadow, or having characters in various states of undress.
We also want to focus not just on the sex itself, but also that this is the culmination of spending a lot of time with a character and getting to know them, and so we're giving scenes a mature and tasteful treatment I guess. We'll see where it goes for Dragon Age: Inquisition, it's something that we're working on right now so we'll see how these scenes pan out.
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Dragon Age has its fair share of beloved characters, but in Inquisition it seems Leliana, Morrigan and Alastair only have bit parts to play, whereas Varric is actually a party member. Why did BioWare make that decision?
That's a really good question and we haven't announced all the party members yet so who knows who could come back. I think that because we have a different protagonist sometimes it came be perceived as weird if party members return. Even in Dragon Age: Origins to Dragon Age II, Alastair was somebody who you go adventuring with. You have all these experiences with him and that's kind of a cool thing you remember as a warden you had a relationship with Alastair and you helped him reclaim the throne potentially. Then to have him stroll in with Hawke, saying '˜Hey I was just hanging out with the Warden but he died so I'm going to go quest with you' (laughs), it would be a little weird. We do have a lot of characters that we want to pull back in as long as it makes sense in the narrative. Varric and Cassandra working together as part of the Inquisition is a really interesting twist. In Dragon Age II we had all these situations with them in that dark room, where she's interrogating Varric, and he's just spinning these wild tales! So I think it's an interesting contrast to have them working together to achieve a common goal. Where possible we try to bring characters back, as long as it makes sense.
