BioWare Announces Dragon Age 3

Fan feedback has played a major role in this role playing game.

Although Dragon Age 2 saw critical and commercial success, it was hard to deny that it was missing a lot of the magic that Dragon Age: Origins had. BioWare has been very transparent in their desire to take fan feedback to heart, which was most obvious when they changed the controversial ending to Mass Effect 3 earlier this year. The RPG developer has been asking the fans of Dragon Age for input on the series for months now, with the first results being a new approach to party member armor sets. This lead people to speculate that a third Dragon Age was in the works, and today BioWare confirmed that Dragon Age 3: Inquisition is in development.

In addition to a formal press release, Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah wrote an open letter to the Dragon Age community. According to Darrah, the team has been working on Dragon Age 3 in some form for two years, which would put early development beginning right as the second game was wrapping up. He goes on to say that the project stepped up production in the past 18 months.

Set for a “late 2013” release, Dragon Age 3 is being developed on DICE’s popular Frostbite 2 engine. Non-RPG fanatics will recognize Frostbite 2 as the impressive graphics engine that powered Battlefield 3. This has led to some speculation that Inquisition could be in the works for next-gen systems, as a platform was not specified in the press release. Frostbite 2 is a very scalable engine, and BioWare hopes it will be a good fit for the Dragon Age series.

The majority of the design team for Inquisition has been with the series since the outset, and even though story or setting hasn’t been broached at this time Mark Darrah said that the title should give some clues. Players may remember the Seeker for the Chantry from the second game who spends the story questioning the dwarf Varric. Could this be an indication that the story of Hawke continues, or will players be controlling another new avatar? Only time will tell, and we will be following the development of Dragon Age 3 closely.

Our Take

Julian Titus Senior Editor

09/18/2012 at 12:20 PM

To steal a bit from When Harry Met Sally: "YES! YES! OH GOD, YES!"

Angelo Grant Staff Writer

09/18/2012 at 05:43 PM

Has this changed now that the doctors have gone?

09/18/2012 at 05:51 PM

A little bit. But honestly (and I bring this up on NWP this week) I feel like EA had poked their head into the BioWare works so much that the doctors probably didn't have much say in the way things were going. The producer on Dragon Age has been around since the Baldur's Gate days so the game is in good hands. Especially since it's not a quick 18 month turnaround, which again I'm sure was an EA mandate.

Michael117

09/18/2012 at 06:27 PM

It's EA's fault, they took the fun out of it. Ray and Greg use to be passionate about game design and now they say they will be passionate fans instead. Greg is more passionate about craft beer now than making great games. Craft beer is okay I guess, but when craft beer becomes more interesting than designing video games, I can see why it would be time for him to retire. Ray is talking all about freedom, entrepreneurship, and civil liberties, so maybe he wasn't getting those things under EA. The section in Ray's blog where he goes on to thank EA and it's big wigs seemed a little generic and forced, but maybe that's just my bias and the way I see it.

Anytime Ray mentioned Bioware it was always, "Bioware and EA" as if Bioware isn't even it's own thing anymore, it's own culture, or in control of anything. Bioware should get free from EA like Bungie got free from Microsoft.

09/18/2012 at 02:13 PM

I have faith in Bioware to make a really fun DA3. How long did they work on DA2 when they rushed it, wasn't it like 18 months? DA3's time in the oven is already going to be far longer than that. They are getting more time to make this game and they are plugged into their Dragon Age fanbase, so this game has a good chance to appease a lot of the fans who had problems with the second game. As long as the majority of the creative input and feedback is coming from the development team and from the DA community, and not EA, I'll be happy.

Using Frostbite 2 as their foundation and building onto it is an interesting choice that I'm intrigued by. I want to see how much they modify it and what they actually do with it. Will the overhead camera perspective change a bit? What about the collision detection? Will it be easier to open chests and interact with objects? Will there be more destructible objects? Will it influence the way they design dungeons, the flow in explorable areas, and the quests?

PixlBit