silksieve:

I’m reading Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, which is a direct, reporterly look at the development of several recent games, including Dragon Age: Inquisition.  The whole book is interesting and entertaining, but here is the summary on the DAI chapter: 

(I’m sure it’s been summarized elsewhere already, but it was all new to me.)

Cut for length:

– DA leadership conceived Inquisition after Origins, but only had 11 months to develop a sequel (from conception to ship!), which is why DA2 was so laser-focused on Kirkwall. DA2′s 10 year time period was the narrative result of needing to develop less art assets and reuse environments.

– The engine switch to Frostbite was the Biggest Thing.  The old DA engine was not up to modern standards, esp. graphics-wise.  Also, the ME trilogy was on a different engine than DA, which meant Bioware developers could not easily go between ME/DA, so Bioware needed a new, modern engine that could be used studio-wide.  Unfortunately, their best option, Frostbite, was not created for RPGs at all.  Things Bioware created, among others:

Conversation systems! Skill systems! The search tool! A save system! (Shooters can use a checkpoint system.) 3RD PERSON VIEW!

– Because all these systems had to be built, there was often no time to make prototypes to test ideas, and a lot of gameplay decisions had to be made quickly and/or without being able to test them to see what worked and/or without knowing how long it would take to build, if it was possible at all.  

– Because of this, the 2013 PAX demo (the one with the burning boats and a choice to save Crestwood village or keep), was a hand-scripted demo of the idea of what the developers thought might be in the game, not an actual slice of the game. As we now know, none of those panned out. (And nothing was “cut.”).

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The art team LOVED Frostbite–and were often designing art assets for empty levels because the gameplay hadn’t been worked out.

 

– DAI was developed for 5 platforms because analysts thought the XB1 and PS4 wouldn’t sell due to mobile games, and this was a huge undertaking. XB360 and PS3 hardware capabilities limited some of the things that the developers could put into the game.

– The Dragon Age team really wanted to prove themselves, especially after the negative reception of DA2.  Also, at the time at Bioware, there was the star “Mass Effect team” and “everyone else.”  

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Games are definitely a corporate product with all the negotiations inherent to a major product launch or delay.  DAI was falling behind in the schedule, and the leadership pitched playable races as something that would increase value/sales to get another year of development.  Ie. delays have to be justified with more value.  Mark Darrah on this meeting with EA leadership: “There was some yelling.”

 

– EA’s president wanted ride-able dragons.

– The prologue was rewritten at least 6 times, and the team ran out of time to spend that kind of attention on the ending.

– Jump was added in the last few months of development.

– The game was so big, it was difficult to QA everything properly. There was one bug where you could jump on Varric’s head to get to inaccessible areas.

– DAI beat EA’s sale expectations within a few weeks.