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!
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.
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.
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)
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