Dragon Age Inquisition News Update (September 25th)

It has been awhile since my last update and at last information is spilling out.  Beware of spoilers below and if you notice any errors or omissions, please let me know!

 

Shortly after my latest news update more information dropped about the war table.  Cameron Lee offered one new piece of information:

There are over 300 missions and operations available on the war table, and they can change depending on your previous choices and actions in the game. There's a range of types: scouting missions to establish the first camp in a new area you'd like to explore, building missions to raise structures in the areas you've being exploring, recruitment missions to bring expertise into the inquisition, treaties, resource-gathering, political assassinations, and many, many more.

So that gives us the range of mission on offer (300 is huge).  Cameron Lee also confirmed that when our Inquisitor dispenses justice execution is an option.

 

 

Joe Juba had an interview follow-up for Game Informer and around the 9 minute mark of the video we see our first live action shots of Skyhold (his specific comments just recap what he said in the interview I talked about in my previous post).

Information on all class specializations are out now via the official website and here's the overview of each:

Mage

Knight Enchanter: These rare mages received special dispensation from the Chantry to serve in battle. They summon blades from the Fade and are experts in protection and defense.

Necromancer: These mages specialize in binding spirits that are drawn to death. They can put the fear of death into enemies, bring spirits to fight on their behalf, and even cause devastating explosions when their enemies die.

Rift Mage: These mages draw upon the force of the Fade, either pulling matter from the Fade to attack or twisting the Veil itself into a weapon to stagger or crush their enemies.

Warrior

Champion: These powerful defenders protect their allies from harm, standing strong against devastating blows with expert training and fierce determination. Enemies can't kill them—and usually can't survive them.

Reaver: As the battle gets bloodier, these vicious and deadly warriors get even more brutal. Hurting them just makes them mad, a mistake most enemies don't live to repeat.

Templar: These unrelenting warriors specialise in fighting mages and demons. No enemy's magic can withstand them, and they inspire and protect their allies with their righteous power.

Rogue

Artificer: These specialists control the battlefield with deadly traps. Neither they nor their explosive mines are ever where the enemy expects them to be.

Assassin: Any rogue can kill a target, but assassins make death into an art form. They specialise in quick, deadly kills that let them slide back into the shadows undetected, or indirect kills that eliminate targets while the assassin is safely away.

Tempest: These unpredictable experts specialise in using alchemical mixtures that wreathe them in frost or flame. Fast, chaotic, and possibly mad, they wade into the fight and dare enemies to face the storm.

 

Speaking of things from the official website, the Qunari racial benefit has changed from +50 health to +10% melee defense.  I saw this rumoured a week or two ago, but it's now official.

 

Going back to Lee, he reaffirmed to PlayStation Life that the AI in the game will be more intelligent than in previous installments.

 

There is no definitive word yet on the game's resolution, although the team is working to maximize the potential of each platform.

 

 

EGX hosted a Developer Session on Twitch that included Neil Thompson from BioWare (around 11:30 of the video; his appearance lasts until around 46:00) that included some new shots of the game.  Poor Neil could have used a snare drum for his jokes (his audience was not laughing, alas), but provides an interesting walkthrough with the art direction for DAI.  Below are some of most interesting shots [the Youtube version is now up]:

 

 

This shot of the Fade includes what looks like a chair and a desk behind a huge container--I have no idea what it represents, but something pseudo-domestic (if that's possible there).

 



 

Here's an updated shot of the Fade rift (presumably at Haven). 

 

 

I think this is Cassandra, Varric, Solas, and our Inquisitor heading towards the breach shown above.

 

 

Varric standing somewhere with a Dwarven statue in the foreground.

 

 

A Dalish entrance to...somewhere.

 

 

Solas, Cole, Blackwall, and our Inquisitor atop a high keep...it could be the ruin of Skyhold, but it's hard to say.

 

 

A nice shot from an Orlesian ball.

 

 

Here's a look at some of the colour-cues within the game.

 

 

This isn't a new shot, other than it's clarity, as this image was part of the 2012 survey leak, but I wanted to point out the few differences between companion concepts then to now: 1) Dorian's staff has changed, 2) Iron Bull no longer uses a sword, 3) Sera's hair is shorter, and 4) Vivienne's ethnicity has changed.

 

The winners of Take Your Place had a video posted of them doing their work with shots of their characters.

 

A Reddit poll looking at player preferences in DAI had similar results as the BSN one from not long ago.  Humans were the most popular race (44%; Elves were 30%, Qunari 22%, and Dwarves 4%), and Mage is the most popular class (50%; Rogue and Warrior had 25% each).  Additional questions that were not included in the BSN poll were styles of Warrior (two-handed beat sword and shield 57% to 43%, while dual-dagger beat bow-using Rogues 65% to 35%), along with the following:

Favoured Companions (divided by class)

Warrior: Cassandra (34%), Iron Bull (33%), Blackwall (17%), and no selection (17%)

Rogue: Varric (47%), Sera (23%), Cole (16%), and no selection (14%)

Mage: Dorian (36%), Solas/Vivienne (20% each), and no selection (23%)

I think this fit quite well with the exposure of the referenced characters (both the amount and what's been learned of them within that).

Romances

No selection (25%), Cassandra (22%), Josephine (11%), Sera (10%), Cullen/Dorian (8%), Iron Bull (7%), Blackwall/Solas/no one (3%).

This is also not surprising, although Josephine's relatively high number is interesting since we know virtually nothing about her.

The poll also asked which system people would choose and PC was the overwhelming favourite (65%), with PS4 a distant second (16%). 

 

AvtrSpirit takes a look at the pros and cons of DA2 and explores how well DAI will tread the line of appealing to fans of both installments.  I agree with a lot of what's said (although the sentiment about missing traps puzzles me quite a bit, and for the most part I much preferred the pacing of the second game as opposed to DAO), particularly that the companions in DA2 were much better realised.

The first DA lore video from ShoddyCast is up since their Patreon push back in July; it's a prologue and set-up to their upcoming videos and is up to their usual standards.

 

Youtuber Against the Grain talked about why he's excited about DAI after having muted responses to DAO and DA2 (the main draw for him is the open world-concept and the amount of gameplay on offer).

 

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

Dragon Age Inquisition News Update (September 15th)

News for DAI has been slow since PAX, but here's the latest update.  As always, be aware of spoilers below and if you notice any errors or omissions, please let me know!

 

Mike Laidlaw finally revealed the last of the romances and Blackwall is the final piece (confirming rumours that have been floating around for awhile; Cullen was confirmed to be the other race-gated character, only available to Humans and Elves).  He had some words to say along with the list:

We’ve come to realize, however, that for many players, romances are an incredibly important feature—one in which we’ve invested a great deal of development time—and they prefer a heads-up to having their hearts set on a particular character, only to end up disappointed. To preface this information, a few words on our design goals for romances: First, we want to offer choice to our players. This doesn’t mean that all choices are available to everyone—it means that no matter what type of character you choose to play, more than one possible romance option will be available. This doesn’t guarantee that a player will find a particular character to be personally appealing—which could be the case even if every character in the game could be romanced by anyone—but it ideally lets each player know they’re not an afterthought in our development process. Second, we want our characters to be internally consistent. Every major DA:I character has a story arc, personal goals, and thoughts on how your journey together has evolved; sometimes a romance arc doesn’t make sense for them, sometimes it does. Either way, we aren’t trying to justify why a character can’t be romanced—we’re looking at how a romance with that character would make sense according to the rest of their story, and why that romance will strengthen an interesting story arc. Finally, a character being eligible for a romance doesn’t necessarily guarantee that they will be successfully won over. These characters have their own agendas and opinions, and the choices a player makes during the game have a definite impact on their affections. That’s intentional.

So the breakdown is as follows:

Female-only: Blackwall, Sera, Cullen (Humans/Elves), Solas (Elves only)

Male-only: Dorian, Cassandra

Bi: Iron Bull, Josephine

 

Interestingly enough, Laidlaw said that the romances with both Solas and Cullen were something added with the extra time the game was given (he's not referring to the extra six weeks from October to November, but the 2014 release date as opposed to 2013).  I'm surprised Cullen wasn't part of the original mix given his popularity and his original inclusion as a companion (back in 2012, as can be seen via the survey leak).

 

The frequently mentioned Joe Juba (at Game Informer) offers us our first full look at Skyhold and his article includes excellent images of our base.  It's a long article, but these are the parts that stood out to me:

You don’t start the game with Skyhold as your base of operations. For the early part of the adventure – before the Inquisition is even properly formed – you and your allies gather at the village of Haven. Even once you move the Inquisition to Skyhold, the castle isn’t exactly in prime condition. “When you first reach Skyhold, it’s not in good shape,” Laidlaw says. “There are holes in the roofs, it’s wrecked, you can’t even go to the entire castle because they haven’t cleared out the rubble yet.”

I take this to mean Skyhold is near Haven.  The fact that the keep is a fixer-upper is something I'd always assumed and it sounds like we'll have fun making it our own.

 

In many ways, looking around your castle allows you to gauge your progress. Additionally, because you are able to dictate how certain things are rebuilt and decorated, the team at BioWare wants you to have a sense of ownership over your version of Skyhold. “Over time, as you progress through the story, you get to see it rebuilt and more areas open up,” Laidlaw says. “It goes from ‘kind of wrecked castle’ to ‘your castle.’ The walls are fixed. Your soldiers are patrolling. You see your support staff growing in number. Merchants come to set up station. You get that feeling of it becoming a grand, central hub.”

The layout of Skyhold is generally standard, but the Inquisitor makes decision regarding the décor and other elements of the renovation process. For example, if a tower needs to be rebuilt, you can decide if it is outfitted to accommodate mages or Templars, depending on your allegiance. Or, if your character is a Dalish elf, you can furnish the castle with Dalish woodcarving. “As you explore the world and play different quests and side content, you gain access to, say, different thrones you can put in place. Different decorations, different heraldry and symbology,” Lee says. “So you can customize and make it grow based on your choices and actions.”

I'll be interested to see how much difference it will make if the Inquisitor chooses to side with either the mages or templars.

 

 

Feel free to choose whatever appeals to you, because the customization of Skyhold doesn’t carry over into your Inquisitor’s stats. “The problem with going too heavy with game mechanics on that is, suddenly, you’re min-maxing your base,” Laidlaw says. “If we did a system where ‘this outfit does this, and it’s the best outfit,’ well, now I have to wear that outfit or sacrifice my gameplay. So, something like what banner or carpentry I use, to me, doesn’t have to have a gameplay effect. If you’re into it, I don’t want you to feel like you’re being penalized.” In other words, the rewards for your customization are found solely in having a base that reflects your decisions and preferences, but that doesn’t mean that Skyhold is lacking in ways to make you more powerful.

I like this decision.

 

Skyhold also is the place where you determine where and how your Inquisition expands. Using the war table, you determine where the Inquisitor’s attention is most required, choosing which areas to unlock and where to send your agents.

When it comes to expanding your Inquisition, you need to track three different resources. The first is influence, which is effectively like your Inquisition’s XP, and it grows as you adventure and complete tasks. When the Inquisition reaches a new level, you can spend points on global upgrades like the ability to carry more potions or the chance to harvest extra crafting materials. The second resource is power. While influence constantly grows, power is more of a currency that you earn and spend down. Power is used to advance the main story, but also to unlock optional areas at the war table. The third resource is time. The Inquisitor doesn’t handle every problem personally, so special missions called operations (also unlocked with power) allow you to send agents to finish them in real time. After a set amount of time passes (some operations can take a full day or more), the mission is complete and you get your reward. Some operations are even multi-part affairs that require input from the Inquisitor on how situations should be resolved once the dust settles. ... Earning and expending these three resources forms the core of Inquisition's structure. Whether you're completing sidequests, gathering crafting materials, or exploring different zones, everything you accomplish feeds into your overall progress.

It's incredible that some of the operations could take a full day of real time to be resolved--it's a strong mechanic to make game time seem more realistic.

 

[Y]ou can wander around the grounds and find all of your allies. They all find their own corners and make themselves at home; Leliana can be found in the rookery, for example, while Sera is more comfortable in the bar. “You get to see their spaces become theirs – they kind of personalize them,” Laidlaw says. “Some degree of their demeanor comes through, like Dorian with a massive leather-backed chair.” Not only are these characters hanging around, but players’ interactions with them in this situation are deeper than they were in Dragon Age II.

“A lot of our fans missed the ability to interact with their party members and close friends, and just say ‘Hi, how are you?’ like in Origins,” Laidlaw says. “Many of them will be delighted to know that that is back, full force, in Skyhold. You walk up, ‘Hey Varric, how’s things? Tell me about Kirkwall.’ Getting a sense of their character, digging in. You can just go, ‘Plant one on me,’ which is pretty satisfying in a weird way.” In some cases, your main avenue to interact with your romantic interest is also at Skyhold. Your advisors Cullen and Josephine don’t travel with you as fighting companions, but they are still potential love interests. How you use your time at Skyhold with them can shape the direction your relationship takes.

I'm curious to find out how many of these interactions are tied to events in the story and how many a simply talking of their past (as in, can players spam click the companion to get their full story?).

 

 

“Judgments serve two purposes. One is feeling in command, but they also provide a way for us to wrap up some of the loose ends,” Laidlaw says. “They’re never just arbitrary. Because you did X, or because you dealt with Y, then the characters are brought before you. As a result, you already have the context. You have been dealing with these guys – or opposing them in many cases – and now they are brought before you.”

Each of these scenarios is deliberately crafted, so you won’t get a non-stop stream of them that repeat themselves. Because there aren’t a ton of them in the game, the judgments you see should stick in your memory. “My favorite one is definitely the goat,” Lee says. “The chieftain you kill in the Fallow Mire, his father turns up at your castle and is laying siege with a dead goat. Hitting the walls in a ritualistic insult. And you have a variety of options, but I think you can make him an ambassador.”

“One that I enjoy is a character who, over the course of the game and depending on what you do, it’s possible to almost talk them down rather than going into direct conflict,” Laidlaw says. “Sort of a social victory. I don’t want to into details as to how, but that character is then brought to you for trial. In terms of consequences, that character has a ton of information and could end up working with your spies, making them globally more effective. It is also possible, depending on your mood, to sentence that character to permanently become your court jester.”

As I've said before, I like that there are characters who can be overcome with something other than combat.

 

 

Though Lee and Laidlaw enjoy discussing the more lighthearted examples, not all judgments end with a smile. You can exile characters and execute them, and in one case, you can sentence a mage to Tranquility.

That's pretty incredible--a sentence of Tranquility is one of those great moral quandaries.

 

Cameron Lee lists most of the areas in Skyhold: tavern, dungeon, throne room, library, garden, vault, kitchen, guard tower, rookery, training ground, and war table.

 

Alessio Palumbo writes about DAI and mentions that it's possible a companion could betray the Inquisitor, which is very interesting and not something I'd heard before.

 

Ramon Tikaram has been revealed as the voice of Dorian, meaning only Blackwall's remains to be unveiled.

Within her recap of PAX, Ashe had one piece of information I've seen nowhere else: we will be able to swim [this is apparently in error as Mike Laidlaw said there would be no swimming over a month ago].

 

There have been gradual reveals of various abilities this past week (three per class), with likely more to come.

 

God is a Geek posted video of his playthrough from GamesCom along with thoughts on the game itself.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

Dragon Age Inquisition News Update (September 1)

 

PAX has come and gone and with it more DAI news.  As always, be aware of spoilers below, and if you spot any errors or omissions please let me know!

 

Wired posted a two-part interview with Mike Laidlaw and Mark Darrah about DAI (here's part two ) and both had interesting things to say.  First from Darrah about design principles:

The nice thing about when we went into this game is that we knew what our three big factors were: that we wanted to make a Dragon Age game, we wanted to make it with Frostbite, and we wanted to make something could be played on older gen consoles, new gen consoles, and PCs. The next thing is that we already have the 'PC as a powerhouse versus the Xbox' conflict already in our DNA so it didn't take a lot of mental jumping on our part. What we did, and Frostbite does this very well, is build our systems to be scalable. The number of creatures that exist in an area, how much wildlife and stuff there is, can scale dynamically based on the platform. It also scales based on what effects you have had on the environment. So if there's Fade rifts open and a bunch of demons wandering around, there will not be much wildlife about. Once you close them down, you'll see nature start to reappear. Maybe you're out hunting bears for their leather, you need to shut down rifts to improve the spawn rate for bears. The end result is that we set a target of gameplay parity across all the platforms and I think we've hit that very well, but it's the visual fidelity that can scale up and down. The older consoles are not going to put forward the fidelity of a PC, and definitely not what the Xbox One or PS4 can do. If the system scales well, and it does, then you can end up in a place where it's like "well, this is my older platform but I'm still getting the same game," which I think is very important.

This suggests that visual fidelity is the major difference across platforms (with a hint that perhaps fewer creatures, particularly background ones like wildlife, would be generated on the older consoles, but that's just speculation).  Laidlaw then talked about how they keep track of lore in the franchise:

We hired a crime reporter. We actually did. One of our editors is someone we brought on initially as a contractor and then hired full-time because he's fantastic. He is a research specialist and was a crime reporter with the Edmonton newspaper. He's very dedicated and very thorough -- crime isn't something you want to mis-report -- and what he'd do is comb through everything in Origins, everything in the novels, everything in Dawn of the Seeker, the comics, all the different products. We've developed this internal wiki that tracks the states of all the characters. There are various fields for the characters: Dead, Alive, and Quantum, for characters like Alistair who may or may not be alive depending on player choice. Within the entry, it explicitly says "If Dead: This. If Alive: This". So we have that as our internal reference, and while the fans maintain a really good one, they can't put notes about what's coming, so we have to have our own. That's helped us organise things because there are a lot of products. We've announced our fifth novel, there are four out at the moment and a lot of the characters from the novels get referenced in Inquisition. The script-writing team will go and reference that. Being able to copy a noteworthy paragraph from a book that describes a location and then send it to a concept artist when they start to draw it for the game, that's invaluable. That's how we keep it all on track.

This is a pretty cool way for them to have nailed down what will appear in the Keep and figure out all their logic problems for DAI.  It also suggests that the effort to track the lore wasn't made in earnest until after DA2.  In part two Laidlaw indicates there are two ways of using the Keep--simply selecting (ala the leaked screen shots) or through an interactive story which he compares to Pottermore (something revealed in the PAX demo, see below).  Your choices are then grabbed when you log-in to your Origin account and that becomes your world state.

 

Both Laidlaw and Darrah talked about the scaling of the game:

[ML] We do still have easy mode -- it's not a pure story mode in that there's zero combat, but it's not super-challenging. We have normal mode, which is a lot like Dragon Age 2. ... [MD] We want normal mode to be a little more challenging than DA2 because sometimes that felt trivial. The problem there is that if it feels trivial and then you hit a boss, you haven't developed any skills for handling tough enemies. We want normal mode to teach you things, like to recognise when an enemy's telegraphing a move and you should not be under his giant club-arm, because he will crush you. Easy will be more forgiving but on normal you'll have to dodge, but it won't be hard to dodge. The team will also help. We took a look at some of the changes our guys made in Mass Effect 3 in terms of how characters interact, and we thought that we could make things more challenging but also keep them fair with things like telegraphs. They also go faster on the higher difficulties. If a guy roars and holds his arm up for a couple beats on normal, on hard he just goes "wham!" and you need to be dodging as he lifts. You can't afford that wait.

This gives an idea of what to expect in terms from levels of difficulty.

Evan Lahti was given the chance to play parts of DAI and was relieved to find that the game isn't simply a Skyrim-clone nor adding the open world element purely to follow a trend:

Yes, BioWare has built an awfully large house for you to raise a loving RPG family in, but more importantly it’s furnished the hell out of it. Let’s take inventory: Inquisition gives you a handsome, customizable castle-base, within which you craft weapons, chat up companions, and manage your organization. ... There are nine potential companions, but despite the effort they took to design, voice, and write, you can skip meeting or recruiting most of them entirely, and they can be dismissed at any time. ... It’s a kitchen-sink approach to RPG design in some ways, but the relationships between these features are encouraging, especially in how they support your role as an Inquisitor within the metagame. It isn’t scale for scale’s sake, from what I’ve played. When I ask BioWare what’s interesting about its biggest RPG ever beyond being a useful marketing line, executive producer Mark Darrah brings up something he calls “intrinsic storytelling.”

“Big levels obviously can’t narrate themselves; that’s impossible. The scope of that is too big. They need to give the player opportunities to tell their own stories and ultimately that’s what comes from exploring this open-world gameplay."

The comment about being able to skip meeting or recruiting most of the companions has been made before, but we still haven't been given the specific details (other than Cole being optional).  Lahti also spent time playing in the Dales Highlands, which he describes as his favourite experience:

The intro to the Dales is incredibly light. An arcane, malicious blizzard has grasped the area’s rough, typically-thawed cliffs, icing the river that nearby Sarhnia depends on for food and trade. What I notice throughout this area, and appreciate, is the lack of heavy-handed exposition about who, what, where, and why: the theme of the Highlands, as I discover simply by fighting through it, is driving out an invader and advancing the frontline. The Red Templars (a faction of rebel, overzealous Templars) are to blame for the magic winter, and I see their signature pocking the cliffs as I climb: red lyrium. This potent, dangerous anti-magic substance is the source of the corruption that’s tainted these Templars, and huge crystalline shards of it are piercing the Highlands. I cleave and shield-bash through a fourth pack of the misguided knights in an ice tunnel; the whole screen is a glow of blue light filtered through pristine ice and unnatural, saturated red emanating from the lyrium. These colors tell the story as well as any dialogue. Further up, I fight a Red Templar Behemoth, less a soldier and more a 15-foot-tall, faceless lump of bipedal lyrium. For the first time I have to toggle-on Dragon Age’s tactical camera, renovated for Inquisition, to kite the monster and deliberately spend my party’s abilities [Lahti doesn't indicate what difficulty he was playing on]. It’s here that I realize how comfortable Inquisition feels when played as a real-time action-RPG; even more than it did in DA2. Broadly, the combat isn’t as demanding as a conventional action game—there’s auto-attack—but it also never drifts into, say, over-generous hit detection or the disconnected ‘combat dancing’ of some MMOs. After I clear the Red Templars from the first part of the Highlands, a floating context cue invites me to build an Inquisition camp. The screen fades out and in, revealing new tents and rudimentary defenses. A few Inquisition scouts mingle. I can replenish my potions, and the camp is a fast travel point. I earn power, a resource I can spend to complete operations, the main course of Inquisition’s metagame. And a blocked gate is cleared, granting access to another part of the Highlands.

This is confirmation (if it was needed) that the camps we establish enable fast travel within regions.  The Highlands weren't the only area Lahti experienced:

By the end of the demo, I’ve seen a spectrum of biomes. I wade through the Ferelden Bogs, an inky undead swamp that could’ve been borrowed from Resident Evil or Diablo. I close Fade Rifts on the Exalted Plains, which resemble Norway on steroids, the wooden bones of abandoned forts punctuating its rolling grassland. I first tiptoe, then blast, my way through the Still Ruins, a crumbling temple where demons are frozen in stasis alongside Venatori cultists... until I retrieve a staff at the end of the level and have to fight my way back through these reanimated mobs.

 

Lahti also experienced what Skyhold can do for him:

A stone bridge called Judicael’s Crossing is snapped in half. I tap a key to mark the busted infrastructure as an operation point for my Inquisition, then fast-travel back to Skyhold, my castle, and Inquisition’s answer to the Normandy in Mass Effect. It’s detailed, cavernous, but more importantly, there’s more stuff you can do in Skyhold than on Commander Shepard’s ship. Past the tavern, stables, courtyard, kitchen, and dungeon (for imprisoning people, not slaying rats, I learn), I step to the War Table. Here, a dozen or so operation markers populate a world map: scouting missions, a task to gain the friendship of the dwarven kingdom of Orzammar or to recruit an arcanist. You complete these micro-quests entirely through the menu, and they grant modest benefits: gold, loot, resources, or adding more ‘agents’ who join the Inquisition. But some, like addressing the Chantry in Val Royeux, are tied to the main plot.

This echoes what we've heard before and it will be interesting to see how many tasks are "off the page" and how many require the direct hand of the Inquisitor.

There was yet more confirmation that the mage-templar conflict is solved early in DAI via Cameron Lee (which explains why elements of that conclusion were shown at E3).  The same blog indicates we'll have a "creature research team" at Skyhold, whose purpose may be figuring what's needed for the crafting system (and/or possibly to gain mounts).

 

While the official release date for the Dragon Age Keep has not yet been announced, we now know it will be sometime in October.  Oddly, the official reveal of the Keep was made via a 15-minute live presentation from Fernando Melo to several Youtubers (eg Scottish Warrior).  I wish Melo had used a script for his presentation and there are sound issues when he starts playing the Brian Bloom-narrated elements of the Keep, so I hope a cleaned-up version comes out after PAX.

 

 

Meanwhile, the Inquisitor's backgrounds were revealed (I've edited out repetition where it occurs):

Human mage: Born to the Trevelyan noble family of Ostwick in the Free Marches, you were originally intended for a life of privilege—until magical abilities surfaced at a young age and you were forced into a life of confinement within Ostwick's Circle of Magi. Protected but stifled, educated but isolated, the Circle would have been your entire future had the mages not rebelled against Chantry rule. Like it or not, you had to fight for your life against templars hunting down all "free" mages. You joined the delegation of mages attending a Chantry conclave in hopes of negotiating peace with the templars. It didn't go well.

Human warrior/rogue: As the youngest child of the Trevelyan noble house, you grew up in the Free Marcher city of Ostwick and have enjoyed a life of privilege. With close family ties to the Chantry, and many relatives among the priesthood and the templars, you were always expected to follow a similar path in service of the Maker—regardless of how you feel about the matter personally. Willing or unwilling, you were sent to the Chantry's conclave to assist relatives who sought to make peace between the templars and mages. It didn't go well.

Dwarven warrior/rogue: The dwarves of Thedas are known for their once-vast underground empire and guilds of merchants and warriors held in high esteem by the other races of Thedas. Not you. A cast-off "surfacer," unwelcome among the dwarves or most humans, you have scraped by as part of a criminal fraternity known as the Carta, smuggling magical ore known as lyrium. As part of the ruthless Cadash crime family, you spent your life on the streets of various Free Marcher city-states—until you were sent to the Chantry conclave as a spy and everything changed.

Elven mage: Enslaved long ago by humans, most elves still live as second-class citizens within human cities. Elves who reject this life are known as the Dalish: nomadic wanderers who strive to keep the ancient elven religion and traditions alive. You grew up in the wilderness, a member of the Lavellan Dalish clan and apprentice to its leader and guide, the Keeper. The clan wandered the northern Free Marches, and you had little need to interact with humans—until the Keeper sent you to the Chantry's conclave as a spy. What happened there, she said, would impact not only the Dalish but indeed all elves. She could not have known how right she was.

Elven warrior/rogue: You were raised in the wilderness to be a hunter, relied upon by the Lavellan clan for food and protection. The clan wandered the northern Free Marches and had little need to interact with humans—until the clan's Keeper sent you to the Chantry's conclave as a spy. What happened there, she said, would impact not only the Dalish but indeed all elves. She could not have known how right she was.

Qunari mage: Followers of the strict religious philosophy of the Qun, the Qunari appeared like a tidal wave to the north of Thedas three hundred years ago. You are Tal-Vashoth, a Qunari who has rejected the Qun and never even lived in Qunari lands. You have earned a place within the Valo-kas mercenary company as its mage, possessing abilities that would have made you a pet slave among your own people, ignoring the fearful looks you receive from those around you. Most recently the company was sent to the Chantry conclave, hired swords meant to keep the peace—a task that has gone horribly wrong.

Qunari warrior/rogue: As part of the Valo-kas mercenary company, you have earned a living by your own wits and the strength of your blade, ignoring the fearful looks you receive from those around you. Most recently the company was sent to the Chantry conclave as hired swords meant to keep the peace between mages and templars—a task that has gone horribly wrong.

 

We can speculate a little bit about how these backgrounds might play into connections to our companions:

-a Human mage likely knows (or knows of) Vivienne

-the mercenary element for the Qunari could be a connection point to Iron Bull

-both Elven and Dwarven Inquisitors are spying; the racial or criminal connections might provide a link to Sera

-the Carta connection may also link us to Varric

There's no requirement for the backgrounds to create these connections, but it's interesting food for thought nonetheless.

 

Speaking of Varric, Mike Laidlaw broke some hearts by confirming our favourite dwarf is not a romance option.  While not a huge surprise, I'm puzzled why this wasn't announced months ago, but I'm sure everyone who wanted a shot at Varric will survive the trauma.  Solas, incidentally, was confirmed as an elf-only, female-only romance, leaving just one more love-interest to be revealed.

 

 

David Gaider has confirmed that astronomy will be a factor in the game:

this will come up— at length— when you play DAI

I'm not entirely sure in what manner this will impact the game, but presumably celestial objects will matter in some way (I've heard this may have been revealed or hinted at via the leaked achievement list).  I find it an intriguing element, if not quite decipherable.

 

We had the war nug confirmed as a mount (this was hinted at back in June).

 

For PC users, a screenshot was released of the interface and there seems to be mild controversy over the fact that players choose from eight abilities for each character in their party, meaning they "only" have 32 deployable abilities during combat.  I'm a bit lost on why this is an issue, but I've never played DA on PC so I might be missing something.

 

DAI multiplayer was announced, but as it will operate separately from the campaign, there's nothing story-related to glean from it (Joe Juba offers a succinct overview of it, while Greg Tito offers an early review).

 

Jacques Lebrun wrote about the reasons behind choosing the Frostbite Engine for the game and the technical challenges in converting it for DAI:

We started with an independent evaluation of engine technologies. We looked at an upgrade to our own Eclipse engine, at third-party game engines, and at game engines developed within EA, including DICE’s Frostbite. After a three-month evaluation, we chose Frostbite as our preferred technology for BioWare’s next generation of titles. There was no corporate mandate; this was decided unanimously within our studio. The timing was perfect because the Frostbite team was already making plans to break out into an independent engine team. Frostbite gives us best-of-class visuals, far more advanced than anything seen in a BioWare title. We typically focus our technology efforts on improving storytelling and gameplay, so pairing up with a team obsessed with physically accurate rendering was a great fit. We were also impressed by Frostbite’s capabilities for creating massive environments, with powerful terrain generation tools and flexible streaming options. Frostbite is also highly scalable, letting games optimize quality settings to suit the capabilities of a wide range of hardware. We faced the significant challenge of developing a game that would target the old and new generations of game consoles. We wanted to develop Inquisition for the new consoles first and foremost, and the scalability of the engine let us get as much as we could out of the previous generation while still providing a gameplay experience on par with the new generation’s offerings.

BioWare games are known for developing its characters and story through cinematics and interactive dialogue. We’ve spent years developing a powerful suite of tools for writing and scripting conversations into a cinematic experience that interacts with a complex plot structure, while feeding into the pipeline for voice-over recording and localization. Many of these tools wouldn’t integrate with the Frostbite tool chain, so we rewrote them for the new framework. It was a massive undertaking we wanted to do only once for all of our future games. Accordingly, we collaborated with the Frostbite animation team to develop engine improvements that would support rapid creation of cinematic content. We also worked with the teams for the next Mass Effect game and the unannounced IP [Shadow Realms] to incorporate the cinematic authoring tools into the workflows for conversation scripting and localization. Another major undertaking was creating a next-generation RPG combat system. We created new workflows in the Frostbite toolset for visualizing animations with visual effects, sound effects, and gameplay scripts. This visual workflow has allowed our designers to create hundreds of unique spells and abilities along with a wide variety of interesting and challenging enemies. The dragons that you’ll encounter emphasize the complexity that we can now get from our combat systems. These apex predators showcase targetable limbs and a component system that lets designers reconfigure each dragon to take on a unique set of behaviors.

One of the screen caps included in the blog includes Cullen telling an angry mage that he isn't a templar any longer, which isn't a huge surprise given the events of Inquisition, but I don't remember seeing that spelled out elsewhere.

 

 

There was a poll run on the BSN forum to see what kind of Inquisitor the fans there wanted to play and I thought it was a fun thing to quickly explore.  With close to 1,000 responses (947 at last check) here's a quick breakdown of the choices:

Race

1. Human (46%)

2. Elven (25%)

3. Qunari (21%)

4. Dwarven (6%)

Interestingly in terms of gender, other than Human the female variants were significantly more popular (so for Elves, Qunari, and Dwarves; 59%); the reverse is true for Humans (61%).  A full quarter of those choosing race & gender went for male human (Dwarven males were the least popular).

Class

1. Mage (44%)

2. Rogue (28%)

3. Warrior (26%)
We know from DA's telemetrics that rogue is the least-played class among the general player base, so there's a slight difference here.

 

While not directly-related to DAI, Anita Sarkeesian included DAO in her latest video and David Gaider gave this response:

While I don’t always agree with her conclusions, I tend to agree more often than not… and, even if I didn’t, I fully support her right to ask these questions even about games on which I’ve worked or which I love.

Speaking of tangential, Ask a Dev has a great article looking at what makes for angry/enraged gamers and there are two pieces of advice (out of four) to community managers that I think would be more effective if utilized:

Whatever you do, don’t shame them even more. If you can look up their account behavior, posting history, or gaming history and use it to shame them, don’t. They’re human beings, and as satisfying as it might be to see someone who annoys you get some comeuppance, you really have to take the higher road.

Head off the unhelpful fanboys. It might give an ego boost to have the fans “on your side”, but don’t encourage them too much - they can easily incite the angry gamer response almost as easily as you can. If they are posting to taunt or further shame the angry gamers, start giving warnings or lock

These simple tools do defuse most of the explosion of anger that can come from within gaming communities, but I rarely see them followed.

 

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)