Bioware has made video games with intense action and challenging strategy, but the distinct Bioware style always stems from a well-crafted story and memorable characters. Games like Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire had astonishing plot twists, and allowed players to team up with henpecked martial arts masters, and psychotic droids. Recently, the Dragon Age franchise introduced players to the land of Thedas, a fantasy world that was populated with fascinating people and filled with adventures. Players will be able to see more of Thedas and its inhabitants as the third installment in the series, Dragon Age Inquisition, arrives today.
We put the screws to Mike Laidlaw, Creative Director of Dragon Age, and made him reveal everything he knew about Inquisition.
How would you describe Dragon Age Inquisition?
This is the Dragon Age we've always wanted to make. What we're hoping will be the new defining point for the franchise. It's a dark fantasy world, so there's still lots of magical and mythical things, but one where it's not all sunshine and roses. Power always comes at a cost, and there's a price to be paid for every gain.
Inquisition puts you in the role of The Inquisitor and gives you the fairly unique experience of uncovering what truly happened after a disaster that left the world reeling. And, rather than joining a powerful organization that already exists, but building [The Inquisition] from the ground up.
The game starts with what's usually the climax of a fantasy epic: The Player saves the world.
Dragon Age does this fundamentally. It looks at a lot of classic fantasy tropes, and turns them 90 degrees. One of the questions that Inquisition asks is "What happens after that initial push? What happens after disaster is averted?" In real life you have to find out what caused it, so you can prevent it from happening again. And that's where Inquisition takes off. It's not a story about raw heroism, it's a story about uncovering and discovering what happened to the world. Why it happened, who is behind it—you need to keep going and pursue a slightly different version of the "Hero's Tale."
The Dragon Age series has a different protagonist in each game. How is that different from telling a story in a franchise like Mass Effect where the Player always controls the same character?
This is a world which is a tapestry of stories. It's not just any one story happening, it's a rich vibrant space. Our writing team has done a lot of work to build so many possible stories into it that we wanted to explore new takes on it. You can even see that all the way back to Dragon Age Origins where you weren't just a character, you were one of six very distinct backgrounds.
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Early in the game players will meet characters from the previous games. How does it affect the storytelling when the Player knows things that their character doesn't?
It gives us a chance to explore the idea of "Perspective" and that all narration in the Dragon Age world, other than what you explicitly play, all of it is couched in the terms of "This is a story being told."
The very first line in any Dragon Age material anywhere is "The Chantry Teaches us..." It's a story that's being told about this ancient history, that's given rise to this ancient religion, but it's explicitly not absolute.
The world of Dragon Age is full of discord. How do you address happy endings or bringing a storyline to a close?
We've always approached this as an ongoing world, in the sense that you can overthrow the Emperor, but it doesn't take away the Dark Side. What we find works best especially in the gaming world is to try to pay heed to what the Player has done. The kind of choices they made, and that's one of RPG's major story strengths: You are making choices and decisions.
The approach Inquisition takes is like a big, massive aggregate accounting. These are all the things you did. Do they work well together? If they don't, you're not getting a happy ending. If they do, you're getting a cautiously happy ending. Because the Dragon Age world is never like, "And everything is great forever." Even when things are as good as they can be, there's still an army of slavering Darkspawn living underground that no one's ever cleaned up.
Some of your in-game religions bare a resemblance to real-world religions. How do you avoid people seeing too much of their own religion in the game?
We try to keep very aware of where it's different. For some, [The in-game religion] the Chantry is like Christianity. Well kind of, except that Christianity, fundamentally, is a religion based on forgiveness. But The Chantry, one of its core precepts is that humanity has done so much wrong that the Maker has turned away from us forever. That we need to apologize. That's very different. That's a religion of contrition, one about apology and fundamental sin that has never been forgiven. That changes everything.
Tell me about romance with companion characters in Inquisition.
Romance is a core part of storytelling. You love, you lose, you win. What we try to do is offer content that's optional, it's not mandatory by any means. But characters may be ones that you can court, date, flirt with, engage with. Our approach with Inquisition is that everyone has some opportunity. We're fairly equal opportunity on that front. There are characters that are gay, bi, there are characters that are straight. They all have different personalities and things that they're into. It lets you connect with them on that interesting narrative level where maybe you have a little more stake in one follower than anyone else.
How do you hide the "mini-game" mechanics of romance from the players?
Our goal is always to make it feel like part of a natural outgrowth. What you're writing when you write these characters is not a romantic character. You're trying to write a person. That person may happen to be potentially a romantic character, but the person comes first.
You see this in Dragon Age Origins. Leliana had the backstory with Marjolaine and that was something you did whether you were courting her or flirting with her or not. It was something that you could pursue and do because you may be friends. You may be interested in her mental wellbeing because she's the one firing the arrows and you want her on her game.
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So we start from there and say what does this character care about. What would this character, if they were friends with someone who was in charge of an organization that had a small standing army, what kind of thing would they ask the Inquisitor for help with?
Starting from there means that these characters, regardless of whether you're into flirting with them or not, they have an arc of their own. Then we tend to layer in the ability to flirt with them into certain moments. We have particular points where a culmination of events causes them to go, "Hold on, we need to talk." That tends to feel very natural in the way that you may be friends with someone and you both realize that there's chemistry there.
So that's what we go for, to make it feel as non-mechanical as possible. While we've had some "gamey" systems in the past we've gotten away from them. Now all we're saying is, "Either this person approves of this thing you did, or they don't." Then, if you've been flirting with them a lot, they may be interested or they may quietly take you aside and say, "I don't. I'm not really into that."
What is the new multiplayer component like?
We've added a cooperative mode to the game, where you play as the "Black Flag" elite squad of the Inquisition. They're wild cards who team up and get deployed to look after the Inquisition's interests off the stage of the core game. It's a really fun feature, and one that we're building on the success of Mass Effect 3 which had a similar mode, though it was more of a survival. This one is more of a "proceed though the dungeon."
Tell us about the future of Bioware's old franchise Jade Empire.
I was lead writer on Jade Empire. It is near and dear to my heart, we haven't really talked about anything for it but someday I would love to go back there. Right now, eyes on the prize of Inquisition. It's a big game to bring into port.
Dragon Age Inquisition is available for Xbox One, Xbox 360, Playstations 3 & 4, and PC. Players can currently explore the world of Dragon Age (and import their saved files) at ww.DragonAgeKeep.com.
Charles Battersby is a contributing writer. He tweets here.
