Dragon Age: Inquisition Interviews
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Quite a few Dragon Age: Inquisition-themed interview have been released together with the the game's release date and a new trailer, and we did our best to round them up in this newspost for your reading convenience.
PC Gamer:
PC Gamer: What has creating this new protagonist, the inquisitor, given you the opportunity to do or change that you couldn't have with the warden, or with Hawke, or with a previous Dragon Age lead?
Mark Darrah: One of the reasons that we've decided to do that in the Dragon Age series is that it lets us explore a lot more themes. Hawke's story, it's not done, but the most important event of his life is essentially what's happening in Dragon Age 2. With the warden from Dragon Age: Origins he carries a lot of very divergent baggage. Anything from he could be dead to maybe there's a kid in the picture, maybe he's actually ruling Ferelden with Anora.
He's a very difficult character to proceed with because the universe is in very different places based on the events of the Dragon Age: Origins. Just reflecting those changes in the future games is a big challenge. To actually have him as a playable character is just it would tie our hands too much. It would require us to make a story that was too constrained.
When we started this franchise, what we really wanted to always be doing was telling the story of the world, as opposed to the story of a single character. When we have a character, these events are big and world-shaking. We basically are trying to tell the story in the best way possible, rather than trying to have an arc for a single character.
PC Gamer: What is different about the inquisitor? In each case, the player puts a tremendous stamp on who they are. Hawke is not necessarily the warden. They have specific ways in which they have their own identity.
Mark Darrah: Because we're going back to full races there's going to be a significant difference in background between the different potential inquisitors. In Dragon Age: Origins you are a member of the wardens, but in a lot of ways you are the last surviving warden or at least the last surviving warden on the ground when he's needed. I mean Alistair is there.
PC Gamer: Yes, apart from Alistair.
Mark Darrah: Apart from Alistair, who doesn't want to pick up the mantle for his own reasons.
PC Gamer: Sure, of course.
Mark Darrah: In Dragon Age 2 Hawke is really a leaf in the wind. The story is very much about him reacting to the world pushing on him. In this case it's much more about putting the inquisitor at the head of an organization that you're reestablishing. This isn't about being a Jedi, this is about founding the Jedi order.
You're definitely much more of an actor. You're the tip of the spear. You aren't waiting for the world to act upon you. You are acting upon it, both because you have an organization at your back. This gives you greater reach. You're not walking into a camp and begging for help. You're pounding down the gates of a castle and demanding that they come onto your side.
Also, surviving this calamity has actually given you powers that other people don't have. You have a remnant of this explosion in your hand that actually allows you to close these fade rifts that are around the world. This gives you additional influence on the world and additional ability to demand respect, demand that people listen to you, because you can do something no one else can. You can actually put a stop to this.
"The focus is on team work, the combat being presented as a puzzle for you to solve, having a number of tools at your disposal, a big, epic story," Laidlaw says. "But now [there is also] the introduction of exploration, of being able to go to places where there's real, earnest, wonder the same feeling you get when you headed off the east side of a map on Baldur's Gate 1, and you ended up on the west side of the next map that was cool!" Laidlaw exclaims. "We want to make sure we get that back as well. So, reengineering is kind of considerable work, but also opportunity."
In some ways, looking at the things BioWare is highlighting, it almost seems as if Dragon Age: Inquisition is catering almost entirely to hardcore fans but that's not actually the case. Inquisition still allows you to play the entire thing as an action game, sure, but it's still hoping to make the entire experience a bit more cerebral for everyone. The trick is not compromising anyone's experience.
"We really want you to be able to play your way.there are, absolutely, some things that skew more hardcore, like the health not regenerating and so on, but they're also skewed to be more sensible, and to introduce a challenge.they reward moment to moment smarter play," Laidlaw explains.
"I wouldn't say there is any effort being made to alienate people, but I think it's gotta be a game that's true to itself," Laidlaw says. "There will be things like difficulty, and there will be elements that you can customize your play, the same way you can customize your character and your race. You can do everything you can do in tactical [view] in real time as well," Laidlaw says. Ideally, you'd be going between the tactical mode and action mode seamlessly and effortlessly, depending on what you want to do.
How do you preserve the ability to tell a gripping story when you let people wander off the path?
It's one of the challenges of this type of game. You could spend dozens of hours in just one location. But there are a couple things we do. The story itself, the overarching story is talking about particular themes and we reflect those themes across the entire game world. And when you make changes both in the game world and in the strong narrative areas, they all have impact, they all flow together and connect.
As an example, if I decided to save or bring the mage faction into my Inquisition at the expense of something else, I would start to see more mages in my forces around the world, patrolling worlds and things like that. But I would also start seeing another faction become an enemy faction and start to cause problems throughout the world. That's the kind of linked narrative you can do.
The vast majority of side content throughout the game, even in the wilderness areas, is themed for you and your Inquisition. It's a mechanism by which you can grow your Inquisition and strengthen the Inquisition's influence. It's not like, 'Go and save the kitten out of the tree'. It's more like, 'We've got an opportunity here to collect ancient elven swords for our soldiers.' So let's go into the dungeon and do that.
How will the open world change based on your decisions?
There are lots of small not just decisions but actions, physical actions that the player can take, that have small impacts throughout the world. There will be hundreds and hundreds of those.
Then there are the big, epic, sweeping changes, like if you decide to bring the mages in rather than the Templars. That has dramatic consequences to the world and your Inquisition.
Then there is emergent behavior in the world. So if I came into the forest area of the game and started slaughtering all the bandits in that area, other factions can start to come into place. Then if you kill all of those a different faction comes in, and you can have different relations with those and take different sides.
There's a lot of dynamicism in the life of the world as well as the meta-story and factions. Then there are other areas where you can physically change the world. There's a moving battlefront, so as I move to the battlefront I can start to take over guard towers, bring my soldiers forward, set up barricades, push back the enemy defenders.
Then eventually I can take the castle, and if I do that I can get this mission on the war table to send my Inquisition in to repair this big bridge. By doing so now I get access to another part of the area that I didn't have before.
That's also the kind of dynamicism you can create, and that's in the player's control. There's a variety of those aspects and areas in the game. We don't want a static world. When we look at RPGs going back a number of years, our games, other games, you're given a world. And, sure, you can make changes to the story, you take actions that affect some of the NPCs.
But generally they're still relatively static. And not all of your decisions have a consequence. We've been guilty of this as much as anyone else. We see part of the future of RPGs being about making your world not just a stage any more. It's about a world that can shift and change and be modified by you as a player rather than a static world. That's one of the things we're aiming for with this game.
Speaking of the player's role as the inquisitor, Darrah told me, "The burden of leadership is one of the themes of the game. This is the first time we've really put you in a leadership position. We've put you in, kind of, command positions in the past, but not really in a place where you're actually in control of an organization that has to go out and do things."
I was trying to visualize what it would mean in gameplay terms to lead the inquisition, and asked him if being in control meant that you could choose to tackle a quest yourself or instead send a group of agents to take care of it for you.
"You're still the tip of the spear," he said. "You're the one doing the dangerous things. It's more about using the power of the inquisition to do things that are beyond the capability of a single person. So, for example, you might find a place where a bridge is broken and then you can actually use the inquisition to do an operation to repair that bridge. Or, for the critical path, you need to have a meeting with the Templars. They don't want to talk to you, so you're gonna use your agents to gather up the support of local nobility to essentially increase the weight of your presence, because now it's not just you, a ragtag party of guys. It's you and powerful nobles. It becomes much more difficult to ignore you. So that's really what you use your inquisition for more. It's about that next level of ability. You're still the one going and doing most of the fighting. You're using them more as the force that comes in behind you to hold the territory, to clean up, and give you that extra bit of oomph when you need it."
IGN concludes our round-up with some dragon combat action:
(There will be multiple, different types of dragons with different breath attacks, elemental attacks...some dragons are more armored than others,) Lee said. (That difference in elements, armor types, and properties of the dragon definitely inform how you approach them from a combat perspective. The team synergy, the party synergy, the difference in abilities in combat can strengthen your ability to fight this thing.)
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(They definitely spend a lot more time flying in combat, leaping around the battlefield, so they're not that typical, static kind of creature anymore. They'll charge at you, pounce around the battlefield, take off, do strafing runs, they'll come back. There's a whole different suite of locomotion mechanics and movement mechanics, which are a challenge.) Those behaviors, it appears, could change if players disable legs, wings, or other dragon parts.
