BioWare's Aaryn Flynn says it would be impossible to develop an RPG today without acknowledging and reacting to Bethesda's game.
Few concrete details are known concerning BioWare's upcoming Dragon Age III: Inquisition, but the developer has now gone on record saying it has been influenced by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Speaking to Game Informer (via Kotaku), BioWare Edmonton and Montreal general manager Aaryn Flynn said it would be impossible to create a role-playing game today without acknowledging and reacting to Bethesda's award-winning game.
"You can't look at a game like Skyrim and not think about how impressive what they've accomplished is or [think] that's an interesting new direction or that there was something that didn't work well for them that we could take in a new direction," Flynn said. "So, we're always influenced by these games, especially in a relatively tight-knit genre like RPGs."
Dragon Age III: Inquisition is the third entry in BioWare's role-playing game series. It follows 2009's Dragon Age: Origins and 2011's Dragon Age II. In all, the series has sold more than 8 million units.
Last month, BioWare released concept art for Dragon Age III: Inquisition, followed by the first, albeit blurry, screenshot.
Most recently, an EA Shanghai employee's LinkedIn resume suggested Dragon Age III: Inquisition is targeting a release for next-generation platforms in 2014.
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
what was so great about skyrim? i only saw a friend play it but it looked pretty much like fallout 3 with a fantasy theme. the graphics were mediocre (ps3), and like fallout it didn't have a lot of variation in colours. dragon age 2 looked far better. now i'm not tryin to hate, i just really want to know what people liked so much about skyrim.
Despite the great Skyrim and memorable Dragon Age, I still missed the old D&D's Neverwinter Nights.
I personally think it's time for WotC to provide the next D&D game ASAP.
@solatron It's not WotC, but Obsidian is working on their Project Eternity, which (if you haven't already heard) looks like it'll resemble older crpgs like Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate.
@TactualNick but Project Eternity does not use D&D rules set right? Oh yeah btw Obsidian's RPGs is always deep and satisfying. Can't wait for Project Eternity as well
1 Like Im just loling. Open world map with lots of bisexual companions that constantly argue about everything while u have to take a side on the templar and mage conflict.
Where are the fucking darkspawn, where is teh blight, where is my epic story, and why in the Creators name is backstab an action skill????????????
If Bioware don't go back to the roots of Origins then they are finished to me, I'll chalk them up to another studio EA has ruined. Dragon Age 2 was so bad that for me if they have any hope of redeeming themselves, Dragon Age 3 better be fucking spectacular. They seem to be losing interest in making great RPG games now and are content just giving us loads of action and titties so that we don't realise how bad the games have become.
1 Like If DA 2 is any indication, they'll just create 1 to 2 acres of scenery and just copy and paste them until they're the size of Skyrim, and spend the rest of the budget animating ridiculous twirls and spin kicks for all of the spells, with just enough left over for Flemeth's botox treatments, skimpy clothing budget, and breast enhancement surgery. The rest - amounting to a handful of pocket lint, two filthy corroded pennies, and three and a half jellybeans - will be used to pay the writing staff. If they go with the writers from DA 2, that's exactly one corroded penny and two and half jellybeans more than they deserve.
All kidding aside, I am looking forward to Dragon Age 3. If only so poor Fable 3 will have a marginally uglier friend to stand beside so as to look moderately better by juxtaposition.
Have any details come out yet about the storyline. The title "Inquisition" makes me believe it'll focus heavily on the Mages and the Templars. If that's the case, I am really hoping this isn't a direct sequel to DA2. DA2 should be buried and forgotten, erased from canon and never spoke of again. If Hawke is the main protagonist again, I won't be paying attention.
A great game is less about how 'open' and 'exploration oriented' its maps are, and more about the diversity of real, non-fake Choices it presents players with.
1 Like No, No, No .. We want expanded world , unique battle system and more story decision! not some generic bland atmosphere like Dragon Age2.
@risako9Dragon Age 2 already has what you ask for.
Although... the story ends prematurely and the different endings have less impact than they should have had.
@ZX81plus3 Probably, however, good 3D games are much more immersive than similar in comparison good 2D-s.
1 Like Kotaku goes on to summarize the Game informer interview where Flynn declares that RPG's benefit from exploration, he apparently name checks Baldur's Gate.
Honestly there's nothing wrong with a world map like DA:O had. Just add a few new systems, like passage of time and a day night cycle, more random encounters, and stat-influenced survival and discovery checks.
A trip across the world should take in-game weeks and require some planning.
The thing IMO that kinda sucks about contiguous open-world games like Skyrim is that the world is actually pretty damn small and unconvincing.
Abstract it a bit with a world map and fast-travel system and you can make a land seem truly vast and unknowable...
1 Like Personally, I'm wondering in which way Bioware's being influenced by Skyrim. I didn't play that game much. I hope it doesn't mean Dragon Age 3 will have a lot of shallow cookie-cutter style bloat like I found in Oblivion.
Most likely though, I'm thinking the world will probably be more open and non-linear, and that they'll try to make it more of a place that comes alive when you explore it.
Either that, or every single town guard will have retired from adventuring because they took an arrow in the knee. Personally, if I were Bioware, THAT would be the one feature I would add to Dragon Age from Skyrim. And the first town guard you'd find in Dragon Age 3 would be your imported Hawke from Dragon Age 2, who used to be an adventurer like you, before he/she took an arrow in the knee.
1 Like I wish they would look for inspiration from their previous works which were WAAAY better than the RPGs of today.
@Darkmoone1 YES! Masterpieces like KOTOR series (not SWTOR, which should have been KOTOR 3), Jade Empire...
Why were those games great? Mainly because they offered the player plenty of choices, leading to different endings => lots of replay value.
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@GamerMani I hope they take only the good things.I would very much like for DA3 to have Jeremy Soule as the composer.
@kartelas @GamerMani There are very few good things in Skyrim, one being the open world, some landscapes nice and worthy. The mods improve the game, too, providing way more than the devs could not (because they were lazy and greedy).
As for anything else... Leveling? Even Gothic 1 was way better. Combat? Amalur rules them all. Fighting dragons concept? Gothic 2 really knew how to do that much better in 2002. Graphics? Check Darksiders series. Character creation? See Saints Row 3. Dialogues? Check KOTOR 2. Romances? Check Mass Effect series. Overall world realism, Npcs and thier motivations? Back to Gothic 1 and 2 again. And so on...
3 Like Bioware doesn't get it! They don't have to be influenced by Skyrim! All they need to do is go back to the Origins formula.
2 Like @TimeWiseChubert I hated Origins, and absolutely LOVED the second game without a doubt.
1 Like @Armyboy5 @TimeWiseChubert I didn't hate Origins, I just liked the second one a lot more. It had its flaws (like recycled dungeons) but it was a better overall experience for me even though the setup wasn't as grand as the first one.
@master_zidane @Armyboy5 @TimeWiseChubert I concur. I prefer a faster, more action oriented combat. Besides, melee animations in Origins were a messy crap. Plus, Flemeth's tits were way more... welcoming, to say the least...
I still haven't got around to playing the second one! Loved the first game but heard the second wasn't even close, so maybe a rental is in order...
@Rysing_Furi for £7 its worth it to buy i feel and most places you can pick it up for that. Just dont approach it as if your wanting a replica of DA:O and you should at least enjoy it.
I just hope EA would leave bioware developers do the game as they want it to be.I know though that this wont happen.Look at what they did to Mass Effect.The first one was an incredible game.As soon as EA got in charge we got the travesty that is called Mass Effect 2.Same happened with DA:origins and DA2.Ah well,one can only hope.
@kartelas EA had bioware for over HALF of the first game lol, get off the EA band wagon and just say you dont like the games :P hehe
1 Like @everyday182 True they bought bioware before the first got released,BUT EAs work started to show in the next instalments wasnt it?
was not a commercial success although it did well so i doubt EA will pump anything into it :(
1 Like @lyncer777 @everyday182 It was a great game. It offered the player plenty of choices, leading to different endings. It had the great open palm vs closed fist philosophy, which was better than light side vs dark side... Also, the combat was very good and easy to grasp.
@lyncer777 @everyday182 I found it pretty mediocre. Good idea, bad execution. The combat for instance was terrible, and the story was only so-so for me.
Just seemed like a lot of stuff was too paint by numbers. Which is too bad, because I think the series has a lot of potential.
3 Like They have already said this shortly after announcing the game.It's almost like Bioware is just looking at what's popular at the time and ripping it off.For DA2 it was action games, here it is Skyrim. I don't know what to think of this game to be honest DA2 was a painful experience.
@Evilnator For some, Origins was much more painful than DA2. Origins' combat difficulty with its laughable-cursable animations were the arrow in the knee...
I was going to say that I would rather see LESS of Skyrim influencing Dragon Age, but they are both in the M so it's probably neither here nor there and I don't know which one I despise more for the botched content. I would have loved to and WOULD HAVE played both gladly had they not been rated what they were and been tainted with their exhaustive list of content no-nos. All joking aside, what in the world? Thanks for ruining another bunch of games I would have played but won't because I have a moral backbone and just won't accept garbage into my life least of all in the way of entertainment...I wish people would actually evolve and society would improve and not just make up shallow milestones as a pathetic and trivial excuse for ruining everything else important for themselves and, in this case, we the consumer and enthusiast.
@tgwolf A decade ago, Gothic 1&2 were definitely better games than Skyrim, and, arguably, better in terms of story and combat than DA Origins. The only real area where Origins is better is romance options.
1 Like Influenced and copying are different words with different meanings. Most musicians are influenced by other musicians, new and old. If you're going to shun everything else in your field then really, you're denying yourself ideas you may never have thought of and in turn can add your own touches to them to potentially make something really cool.
1 Like I really hope they learned their lesson with DA2 and hope it will be worth the money when it comes out.
1 Like it doesn't matter what influenced DA, the game start and will be a perfect, unique and a must have game!!!, I mean why not making a good game even better by adding stuff to add that have been seen in an EPIC game like Skyrim, I totally support this title and I am currently saving a spot in my heart for this game, and I'm sure it deserve it!!!
@don_saulari You speak of DA2 or its previous, Origins? DA 2 was decent. As for Origins, other than some lotr-esque cinematics and some 'not bad, could 've been better' campfire romances, Origins lacked in every other aspect when compared to plenty of past its time other games...
1 Like @don_saulari because people moan if its the same game CoD and people moan if its totally different DA:2 The moral is people are NEVER happy so they miles well do what they want lol :)
1 Like
That's not true, people are very happy when a game is good. Think of the response to games like Final Fantasy 7 back in the day, or Call of Duty 4 for instance. Or hell, even the Original Mass Effect. Or all the good/great games coming out now.
If a game is really good people won't complain about it much in general and a lot more people will sing its praises.
6 Like oh boy thats part of why people got massively disapointed in DA2 and ME3. you should lower expectations a bit.
BioWare reveals first shot for upcoming role-playing game, says Frostbite engine has allowed artists to create "stunning" work.
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