Dragon Age: Inquisition Interview
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BioWare producer Cameron Lee took some time out of his fantasy-filled day to answer a handful of questions about Dragon Age: Inquisition for the folks over at AusGamers. Topics include the game's scope, improved AI, character customization, mod support, and more:
AusGamers: Do the AI and environments evolve over time? Say I've got a town that is mine, then I go off and come back to it, will things have changed there?
Cameron: It would depend on the area. There's a part of the game. well there's many parts, but one part in particular that I can recall: when you first go in there, it's part of Orlais and there's a lot of rebels, and you can do various side quests -- fight them, and clear them out -- that then brings in another faction that sort of takes their place almost, then you can do the same thing again, and something else occurs.
There's another area which is like a complete enemy stronghold -- in terms of the whole region is a stronghold -- and you can come in and bring your Inquisition Forces in and almost fight this dynamic battle as you push the enemy back. You can send your soldiers in to defend this tower and stuff like that. So the world is quite dynamic.
We don't want it to be just time-based, we want it to be more based on the player's actions, so if you as a player decide that you're going to abandon this crew, then something is going to happen, but not just because you haven't done anything. Because you don't know how people will. they might be busy doing other stories and side-quests.
AusGamers: I wanted to talk about the tactics and the game and the way you make up your party. Have you guys set-up specific fights in a way that people can theorycraft it? So this fight is setup in a way that you have this kind of party composition, or is it more like you're going to be able to get through, you've just gotta figure it out for your party?
Cameron: It's kind of a combination of the two. We design the fights and the encounters, for the most part, assuming that there's probably going to be a warrior, a mage and a rogue. So that's three of the four [party members] that you can have. So the fourth one provides a little bit more flexibility to be whatever you want.
So we generally design them like that, but that's not to say that you can't go in there with four mages, because you totally can. If you decide to do that, I'm sure you'll be able to do it, but you've got to think about how to do it.
The combat systems and the creatures and the enemy abilities, it's so bloody complex that it's almost impossible to create fixed encounters, so we just do it with a broad sense of assuming that there's one of each class, and if they want to do all rogues, or all mages, or all warriors, or whatever combination, then have fun; go mental. If you want to do four mages, it's great fun, I'll tell you that [laughs].
