EA Explains Why Dragon Age: Inquisition Isn't Dragon Age III

[Trishbot]

I just want to know if I can do what I did in Dragon Age: Origins and made a psychotic, sex-obsessed, hyper-violent Dwarf girl.

Seriously, that's how I played the game. I was a noble Dwarf princess who followed two rules the entire game: if it CAN die, I will kill it, and if I CAN sleep with it, I will. Or if I can't, try anyway.

You can only play as a Human like in DA2, this was announced on the Bioware forums ages ago. Deal with it.

Well, aren't you a rude little know-it-all. It was just an innocent question. I'm not some hardcore fan that checks the Bioware forums every second of the day to see every little bit of detail about a franchise I'm only mildly familiar with. I never even touched the second game.

Seriously, some fans... I'm almost scared now to ask how Morrigan is alive in this game if I got her killed...

 

[oldtaku]

If it's decent, can we just call it Dragon Age 2 and rename the last one to Dragon Age: Cityville?

Seriously, I don't care what they call it, just don't rush it again.

 

[neppakyo]

Well, if you are only stuck playing as a human, I am not going to even look at it. Fuck that shit. I want a RPG with selectable races. Make it a cRPG, and I'll think of looking at it.

They might as well call it Dragon Effect: Shepards Medieval Inquisition.

 

[mad825]

I just want to know if I can do what I did in Dragon Age: Origins and made a psychotic, sex-obsessed, hyper-violent Dwarf girl.

Seriously, that's how I played the game. I was a noble Dwarf princess who followed two rules the entire game: if it CAN die, I will kill it, and if I CAN sleep with it, I will. Or if I can't, try anyway.

You can only play as a Human like in DA2, this was announced on the Bioware forums ages ago. Deal with it.

Well, aren't you a rude little know-it-all. It was just an innocent question. I'm not some hardcore fan that checks the Bioware forums every second of the day to see every little bit of detail about a franchise I'm only mildly familiar with. I never even touched the second game.

Seriously, some fans... I'm almost scared now to ask how Morrigan is alive in this game if I got her killed...

Considering that the news is 8 moths old [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/371/index/14604410]. I was less blunt and rude

Either way, only expect crushing despair and disappointment. Even Gaider himself admitted that Morrigan child is going to have less impact than expected. Oh, did you stab Morrigan in Witch hunt? Retcon!

 

[DarkhoIlow]

So it has Varric and Cassandra from DA2 and Morrigan from DAO and it's not called DA3, okay? It really doesn't matter when you look at it, people still think it as DA3 regardless if you put a title or a number on it. This is the same case as Thief 4 which will never be called Thief from fans of the original game (that would be heresy).

With that said, I am waiting to see more of this game, especially gameplay before I make my decision to purchase. They screwed it up pretty badly with DA2 and ME3 ending and this is their last chance to prove themselves (at least to me) that they can take it all back and make a great game like DAO was, because they are taking their time developing it.

Time will tell how will it fare.

 

[HK-A6A7]

Seriously, what on Earth are you thinking EA? Dragon Age II had nothing but a few tangential link to Origins yet you still called it Dragon Age II. Now this game is (supposedly) dealing with a conflict that was established in the last game and is going to feature prominent characters present in both games. Unless this trailer is a lie, how is this not a sequel!?

Actually, the Mage-Templar war it's just a part of the game's conflict...
The real and biggest problem that we are going to deal on this game has not been "offically" revealed (There's a leak, you can find it easily if you look around).

Also, they have always been saying that Dragon Age was a bunch of semi independent stories that take place on the world of Thedas during the age of the Dragon.
But for a strange reason, they've messed things up by calling the 2° game DAII instead of something like Dragon Age: Kirkwall.
They know that numbering a game was a mistake and now BW is trying to fix it by removing the "3" from Inquisition.

 

[Falseprophet]

But for a strange reason, they've messed things up by calling the 2° game DAII instead of something like Dragon Age: Kirkwall.
They know that numbering a game was a mistake and now BW is trying to fix it by removing the "3" from Inquisition.

I think the mentality was more, "We didn't expect Dragon Age: Origins to be such a success. Let's rush the sequel and put a big fat '2' on it so everyone knows it's more Dragon Age!" even though the original was already getting into ridiculous colonitis territory with "Dragon Age : Origins : Awakening".

But now the thinking is "the last two games we made with numbers in the title were public relations disasters. Let's disassociate ourselves from that. Plus apparently numbered sequels are passé anyway". As are colons, if the Inquisition title banner is any indication:

 

[Frotality]

well as a publisher decision as opposed to a developer decision, the only reasons to drop the III i can think of is so people cant really get upset when its rushed out the door buggy and cheaply made, because its just a spin-off after all, no need for the fanboys to rage.

its never a good thing when you want to distance your product from the last release to share its name. also mostly futile. like everybody will look at the shelf and say, "hey, a new dragon age... i dont see a 3 though, it must not have anything to do with dragon age 2. i guess i should ignore everything bad and good about DA2 and purchase this blindly with no expectations!"

 

[1337mokro]

So let me get this straight...

Game that only tangentially relates to the previous game where most of the action happens far away from the front-lines of the first game in a remote city totally isolated from anywhere else.

Whilst this game which plays directly into the Qunari troubles of the previous game, whilst bringing back characters and plot elements from the first game game is not a sequel?

 

[Trueflame]

I see what they did there.

Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age II
Dragon Age: Inquisition

See the connection? They're going to pretend like Dragon Age II never even happened, which let's face it, is for the better as far as anyone is concerned.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

According to Electronic Arts this was the result of a deliberate decision top drop the number from the game's title.

"We felt like we wanted to bring more attention to the word Inquisition. According to Gibeau the move was also made to help drive home that Inquisition will be less of a direct sequel and more of a new story taking place in the Dragon Age universe. "We just wanted to draw more attention to the fact that Inquisition is an all-new chapter inside of the Dragon Age universe, as opposed to people expecting a follow-on to Dragon Age 1 and 2 in a literal, linear sense."

And here I thought Bioware had complete creative control?

It's entirely possible that old Franky boy is just relaying Bioware's reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is EA interfering.

You tell 'em Captcha!

 

[Tien Shen]

I got a bad feeling about this. Dropping the 'III' means that they are trying to cut links to DA:O and DAII, which enables them to handwave away having to deal with importing save game decisions from the previous games. I expect a lot of our choices in the two previous games are going to be ignored with the excuse that 'that's for the REAL DAIII'.

This would make sense if they didn't already talk about save importing.


OT: I have no issue with this. It distances it from II and it establishes itself as it's own thing. My main issue with two is it's rushed nature, they don't seem to be doing that this time, with it slated to come out after just under 4 years of development.

I am aware that the save importing is still in Inquisition. What I meant was that by not marketing Inquisition as a close sequel to DA:O and DA:II this frees Bioware from potentially having to honor or wrap up many of the choices in imported saves. So you can still import your saves, it's just that now I don't expect them to cover most of my choices with the excuse that Inquisition is more a independent and separate tale from the two previous titles.

 

[Ishigami]

Hhmm the only thing I wonder about is why BioWare didn't stick to their concept art of Morrigan?
I know they modelled her after some actress in the end but even then they missed the mark quite considerably...
I'm currently replaying DA:O and with some mods I think I got a good balance.
Concept:

Ingame:

That is the face morph Morrigan Lore Version 3 from Dragon Age Redesigned combined with the robe from Concept Art Morrigan.
Considering this pretty good result I don't get why BW felt they had to change so much not to mention they made it even worse in DA:I.
Oh well.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Hhmm the only thing I wonder about is why BioWare didn't stick to their concept art of Morrigan?
I know they modelled her after some actress in the end but even then they missed the mark quite considerably...
I'm currently replaying DA:O and with some mods I think I got a good balance.
Concept:

Ingame:

That is the face morph Morrigan Lore Version 3 from Dragon Age Redesigned combined with the robe from Concept Art Morrigan.
Considering this pretty good result I don't get why BW felt they had to change so much not to mention they made it even worse in DA:I.
Oh well.

You do realise that modding will most likely get you banned from Origin and loss of all your games?

Gotta sell DLC somehow!

 

[Ishigami]

You do realise that modding will most likely get you banned from Origin and loss of all your games?

Gotta sell DLC somehow!

No it won't.
I was not able to find any evidence that this ever occurred. Unless you have prove I would like you to refrain from such baseless accusations.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

You do realise that modding will most likely get you banned from Origin and loss of all your games?

Gotta sell DLC somehow!

No it won't.
I was not able to find any evidence that this ever occurred. Unless you have prove I would like you to refrain from such baseless accusations.

Knowing EA there will be a multiplayer portion because reasons.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/10/05/battlefield-3-color-mod-could-get-you-banned-but-in-skyrim-you-can-go-to-super-mario-land/

That and EA already has a shitty relationship with modders.

 

[Chris Tian]

This is just marketing BS to make the title look more like Dragon Age: Origins and less like Dragon Age II, so people will have more subconscious associations with the former than with the later.

But the "its not a sequel its a new story arc" bit is what really annoyes me. So you mean to tell me that four open story arcs: Mage vs. Templar War, Darkspawn, Old God Child and the Qunari Threat are not enough?

Oh boy, every bit of news about this game makes my hopes drop a notch.

 

[Ishigami]

Knowing EA there will be a multiplayer portion because reasons.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/10/05/battlefield-3-color-mod-could-get-you-banned-but-in-skyrim-you-can-go-to-super-mario-land/

That and EA already has a shitty relationship with modders.

I think some sort of multiplayer has already been confirmed for DA:I? - We have yet to see if it is competitive, coop and even tracked to a degree that anti cheat tools are even necessary.

Regarding said news: A developer and publisher has to draw a line somewhere to differentiate between a mod and a cheat.
Afaik in the end no one got banned for using mentioned BF3 mod and DICE even added a console command to deactivate the colour gradient in the vanilla BF3. (Note: I have not been following BF3)
Turns out that was not as bad as it seemed.

The problem however remains. A cheat is a mod after all.
For example you could replace the default textures in CS with something really bright e.g. neon red for enemy player models.
This is technically a texture mod but it also is a cheat since it highlights enemies.
You can't have such thing in a competitive multiplayer environment.

I think people shouldn't expect too much of mods for DA:I anyway since I doubt that BioWare will release a toolset for it.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

I remember people getting upset DA2 wasn't subtitled, now people are going to get upset the next game isn't numbered, and will follow the patten of every other title in the setting.

Do some people just want to be angry, or a, I reading too much into this? Likely a bit of both.

You're reading too much into it. Really, the problem is that EA is saying something. What they are saying makes sense, and seems to indicate that they learned from their mistakes with DAII. But people don't want that. They like to complain about EA, and they find this as a reason for it to show that Bioware is just another zombie victim of EA.

 

[el_kabong]

I remember when Dragon Age 2 came out, the unwashed masses were all, "This is hardly a sequel to Dragon Age. I hate that it's called Dragon Age 2." Now, when EA drops the sequel numbering, there's all these complaints that they should have named it as a direct sequel.

EA has shown a recent trend of actually trying to improve its worth in the eyes of their customers (most likely in an effort to avoid being voted "worst company" again). Don't be mad because they saw what previous fans were getting upset about and took steps to alleviate it.

Also, while it looks from the trailer there may be more than tangential links between Inquisition and the previous installments (with Varic and Morrigan both making appearances), there's also plenty in that trailer that seems to be completely disconnected from what we've previously seen. It looks like a demonic incursion (on the scale of the 40K universe) is happening. While demons have played a factor in previous games, we've never seen anything like what they were showing in the trailers (or, at least, not on a grand scale). While this new threat may have roots in previous adventures, I don't think that they are going to be tied in with each other as much as everyone is stating.

At the end of the day, who should really care? They dropped a 3 from the name. It's not exactly like their renaming it Dragon Age: The Quest to Slay Boner Farts.