“One of the most intriguing places this happened was when we moved to the conversation wheel,” he says. In discussing the problem of the ‘Hinterlands prisoner’, Laidlaw makes a connection to an earlier problem: the player who bored themselves in earlier BioWare RPGs by feeling that they had to click on every single dialogue option before they could progress. It’s something I look at and go ‘that right there? That’s a lesson.’” “It was possible, as a completionist, that you could damage your own pacing. “We underestimated, to some degree, the completionist drive,” says Mike Laidlaw, creative director on the Dragon Age series. But it took PCG news editor Phil Savage and I two months to convince our editor, Samuel, to stop hunting bear claws and leave the Hinterlands. These are flavour, and should never be considered to constitute the bulk of the experience. Inquisition’s open-world spaces are peppered with numerous, lowimpact collection and fetch quests. The game has, however, presented problems to one of the playertypes that Weekes identifies: the completionist. You can see this by looking at where the Dragon Age team variously exceeded and fell short of their own standards: Inquisition succeeds enormously in terms of inclusivity, allowing the player to define their Inquisitor to a fine degree alongside companions who represent a diversity of worldviews, political beliefs, and sexualities. It is a practical fact, as much to do with the quality of a game as any other technical consideration.
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The notion that a game designer’s responsibility to create entertainment stretches into the realms of social responsibility is currently, unfortunately, a politically charged one. What does it say to a female player, or a gay player, or a straight male player? What interpretations are possible, and are we OK with that? It’s our responsibility to give that some thought.” “All it means is that, as a team, at some point we sit down and have a conversation about what the story says that we haven’t fully considered. “The thing that always gets me is that there are-let’s call them ‘fans’-out there that think it’s impossible for us to be inclusive and focus on the epic fantasy moments that we need to have,” Gaider says. For BioWare, inclusivity and social responsibility are essential to effective fantasy. Interrogating a situation from multiple points of view is a theme that links the Dragon Age team’s creative process to the kinds of scenarios presented in the game itself. By being inclusive of a larger audience, what we want to do is invite them to play.” It’s clear from talking to the team that this is a collectively held view and it defines the way they work. It’s apparent to the audience if you don’t see yourself reflected in the game. A lot of developers can-though not deliberately-narrow down who they think their audience is. You’re trying to put yourself into various mindsets at the same time.”įormer lead writer David Gaider adds: “it’s also about balancing the story we want to tell versus the responsibility we have regarding what we say about our fans. “It’s not just gay players or female players-it’s also the powergamer, the completionist, the guy that wants to search out the story. “When you’re talking about agency, you’re talking about how you’re trying to put yourselves in the shoes of various types of players,” adds Patrick Weekes, recentlyappointed lead writer on the series. “We have to keep in mind player agency,” says Dragon Age writer Sheryl Chee, identifying something integral to not only the RPG but BioWare’s creative process. One way or another, BioWare makes people care. I suspect that it has less to do with technical constraints and more to do with cultural values-so that’s where I start.
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Given the opportunity to talk to the Dragon Age: Inquisition creative team in some depth, the matter of BioWare’s idiosyncrasy is the issue I’m most keen to understand. Only Obsidian and InXile occupy a similar space, and they are bound to early BioWare by a common ancestor-Black Isle Studios-as well as being generally fluid in their adoption of different RPG styles.
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Over the years that I’ve been a fan of BioWare’s work, I’ve been waiting for another company to imitate the team’s style, their tone, their dedication to character-and that hasn’t happened. BioWare has done more than any other mainstream developer to explore the ‘heart’ part of that equation, and this effort is reflected in the studio’s passionate and diverse fanbase, in the fan art and cosplay it inspires, hell, even in the angry petitioning it sometimes inspires.
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RPGs, above all other types of games, act upon your heart as well as your head-in fact, I’d argue that this is among the better ways to redefine ‘RPG’ in a world where everything has a character progression system.