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

[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.

 

[RJ 17]

But didn't the trailer have Varric in it? And Morrigan? And referred to Morrigan's, err... offspring?

For that matter, what happens if neither you nor Alistair bumped uglies with Morrigan? Are they just going to retcon it and say "Nah, she's got a god-baby. It happened."

OT: I can understand wanting to get away from DA II given that it was quite poorly received, but this is still going to be a sequel. I mean come on EA, the game takes place during the Magic Civil War which officially started at the end of DA2. Hell, that was the entire point of the story behind DA2: to show us the events that led up to this civil war, to show us how it all started and set up the 3rd game to take place in this massive, bloody conflict. To say "It's going to be a new story in the Dragon Age universe" is like saying "Return of the Jedi isn't going to be a sequel to Empire Strikes Back, it's going to be a whole new story in the Star Wars universe."

Soooooo yeah, I'm just chalking this up to "Dumb EA guy is dumb" in that he apparently has no idea what he's talking about. If the game takes place during the civil war that was set up in the 2nd game, has one of the main characters - the frickin' narrator - of the 2nd game, and brings back a very prominent and important character from the first game...it's a frickin' sequel. So yeah, they're either trying to say "This one isn't going to be like DA2 since most everyone hated it" or the teaser really ISN'T anything to go off of and this game really will have very little, if anything, to do with the first two...and that'll likely piss fans of the series off even more if they don't get to set what happens during the war that DA2 spent it's entire game building up to.

 

[Legion]

It's good to see them trying to distance themselves fro, DA:2 as much as possible. Hopefully they will ban the team members who suggested the following....

1) No selectable races; - Confirmed to be a human player
2) Voiced protagonist; - Confirmed to being voiced
3) Dialogue wheel; - Confirmed to still being in it
4) Morrigan looking tamed;
5) Trying to apply a Mass Effect combat template to a tactical RPG;
6) Anyone who suggested many of the other numerous stupid changes that occured between DA:O & DA:2.

They are pretty adamant about keeping all of that stuff in there. The first one I can understand to an extent, as it requires significantly more work to include other races if you want it to actually make a difference. Especially seeing as the humans in the DA universe are not very friendly to non-humans. Being a part of the Inquisition probably requires you to be human, so I imagine it's also a story based decision, like how the Hawke and Amell family are human.

The voiced protagonist decision bothers me more because I am getting tired of the way they use it to increase immersion, while breaking it for many people due to the characters saying things that go against the players head-canon of the character or sounding completely different from how they imagined.

The dialogue wheel doesn't bother me as an idea, just how it's used in conjunction with the voiced protagonist. If the dialogue wheel had full sentences, and the character actually said the full sentences it wouldn't be a problem. The paraphrasing always works poorly because there are always a handful of conversations where what the wheel says and what the character says appear to be completely unrelated.

Morrigan could be changed seeing as the game hasn't got any in-game footage shown yet. She changed from the DA:O trailers compared to the final game as well.

I disliked this too. I felt like the game was pretty much trying to be a parallel to Mass Effect except in a fantasy setting. Although at least you could still control your party members.

David Gaider doesn't take criticism well. I partially blame the irrational Bioware fans on the forums, because I'd get pissed off with them as well, but he also seems to get awfully defensive about even the worst ideas they have used, and that doesn't necessarily bode well for Inquisition.

 

[WeepingAngels]

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.

Probably not the same people.

Personally, I can't be bothered to remember the correct order of every movie and game franchise that uses subtitles instead of numbers.