gaming Dragon Age III influenced by Skyrim

[Muhammad Farrukh]

Dragon Age III influenced by Skyrim

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.

[ILikeTobacco]

Thats not a bad thing as long as they do it right. The open environment is what made Skyrim so fun so if they do anything like that, it could certainly make for a fun world.

[hooko22]

Hmm don't know what to feel about this. Always enjoyed the Dragon Age games much more then Skyrim.

[ahhell]

I'm playing DA:O now and I think it would be FAR better if you could roam around freely. I can't stand the way you "travel" in the game.

[spaceelf]

Hmm don't know what to feel about this. Always enjoyed the Dragon Age games much more then Skyrim.

Same here, but I do like some stuff about Skyrim.

The environment and exploration is fantastic.

The characters and story...meh, let them all die for all I care (not that I play that way of course, but none of them are particularly interesting.)

The overabundance of crappy items to pick up in the world could certainly go and I wouldn't feel terribly bad about it.

[TheLegendOfMart]

I really hope it is, I really enjoyed Dragon Age 2 but it was a really linear game with really only 1 or 2 big areas, all the dungeons were copy pasta and there was lots of backtracking round the same areas.

This needs to be open world, or at least have some semblance of being non-linear.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Hmm don't know what to feel about this. Always enjoyed the Dragon Age games much more then Skyrim.

Games? Dragon Age: Origins was great - one of my favourites - but Dragon Age II was terrible and is in no way comparable to a great game like Skyrim.

After the mess that was DAII there's no way I'm going to pickup DAIII at launch and I'll skip it altogether if they continue to boycott Steam, just as I had to do / will do with Mass Effect 3, SimCity, Battlefield 3, Dead Space 3 and unfortunately Crysis 3 (though the other Crysis games were released on Steam so Crysis 3 might be okay). I have no problem with EA pushing the Origin platform - much like I buy games on Steam that use UPlay and GFWL - but I like to buy my games on Steam to keep them altogether. I'll continue to boycott EA games as long as they continue to boycott Steam.

[TheLegendOfMart]

They aren't "boycotting" steam, why should they be at Valves whim on how they want to patch their games etc.. With their own platform they can do whatever they want and it wont cost them a penny.

[LaP]

Baldur's Gate should influence DA not Skyrim.

I think i'll pass.

They aren't "boycotting" steam, why should they be at Valves whim on how they want to patch their games etc.. With their own platform they can do whatever they want and it wont cost them a penny.

The problem is their platform *****.

I bought TOR from Origin and let's say i was really really surprised at how bad it is. The game was not even showing in my games list. It was not automatically updated from origin. I could not have info about the game (how many hours i played etc) from Origin client.

[TheLegendOfMart]

I seem to remember Steam being complete ***** in the beginning and now people think Valve is the second coming. Give it chance to grow, but I forgot its cool to hate EA....

[Hardcore Til I Die]

Baldur's Gate should influence DA not Skyrim.

I think i'll pass.

The problem is their platform *****.

I bought TOR from Origin and let's say i was really really surprised at how bad it is. The game was not even showing in my games list. It was not automatically updated from origin. I could not have info about the game (how many hours i played etc) from Origin client.

Baldurs gate was amazing. Played that so many times.

[ahhell]

I seem to remember Steam being complete ***** in the beginning and now people think Valve is the second coming. Give it chance to grow, but I forgot its cool to hate EA....

People have short memories. Steam, at launch, was THE WORST EVER TO HAPPEN TO PC GAMING!111 :rolleyes:

[Phouchg]

I think I've already said in another thread some time ago that I'm not so sure about this. Skyrim is an ARPG, a different type of game. Overhyped, I might add. It didn't have any competition, too. And mods pull half of the weight (if not more) of its popularity.

CRPG and open world kind of doesn't go together. It's prone to creating very unbalanced gameplay, losing most of the tactical aspect. Can remedy "pulling" (but I doubt it will), but will possibly introduce MMORPGy grinding and "twenty bear asses quests". Also, one has to fill the world somehow. DAO didn't have to, it was linear tac-crawler, but DA2 managed to totally suck at that - Sundermount was as interesting as climbing Mount Chilliad in GTA IV. And Skyrim for the most part is quite like that, too - empty. One could very well not have any story at all and player could wander around anyway.

[Argi]

DA1 was a really good game that kept me in for 40 hours. DA2 was a complete disappointment. I enjoyed Skyrim a lot, too, so that's probably a good thing.

[LaP]

People have short memories. Steam, at launch, was THE WORST EVER TO HAPPEN TO PC GAMING!111 :rolleyes:

Talk for you i always found Steam to be okay. Of course it's far better now than it was at first but i don't recall it being nothing like Origin was when i tried it last year.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

I think I've already said in another thread some time ago that I'm not so sure about this. Skyrim is an ARPG, a different type of game. Overhyped, I might add. It didn't have any competition, too. And mods pull half of the weight (if not more) of its popularity.

CRPG and open world kind of doesn't go together. It's prone to creating very unbalanced gameplay, losing most of the tactical aspect. Can remedy "pulling" (but I doubt it will), but will possibly introduce MMORPGy grinding and "twenty bear asses quests". Also, one has to fill the world somehow. DAO didn't have to, it was linear tac-crawler, but DA2 managed to totally suck at that - Sundermount was as interesting as climbing Mount Chilliad in GTA IV. And Skyrim for the most part is quite like that, too - empty. One could very well not have any story at all and player could wander around anyway.

Elder Scrolls pulls off a game where you make a character you get dropped in a world, and if feels more like your a person in a world.

I loved Dragon Age / Dragon Age Origins even though the plot and direction you go is very linear / sequential, you follow a structured story from point a -> b -> c -> d

Didn't like DAII.

Curious to what elements they exactly pull from skyrm,

[Phouchg]

I agree. But that's also where the difference between these games is - in Elder Scrolls one crafts his own little story, because otherwise it doesn't really have a good one, and no memorable characters to speak of, too (other than narm, cheese, large ham and done to death elements). In Dragon Age it's complete opposite. As Yahtzee more or less jokingly said, Dragon Age: Origins was Mass Effect "Brown Edition" - which, frankly, is spot on comparison.

Perhaps changes are a good thing, to avoid "milking the franchise" verdicts, but given how they indeed dropped the ball with DA2, it's not always for the better. Borrowing someone else's ideas rather than continuing to do what they're good at is a risky path to take.

[Gerowen]

I've decided that unless something changes, I will never buy another game from Electronic Arts. Their methods of squeezing every last dollar out of the customer is borderline robbery. They've gotten worse and worse with requiring you to pay extra to play a game online if you buy it used, leaving things out and then selling them back to you later as "DLC", etc. It seems like every EA game I've bought in the past few years has gotten progressively worse and worse, and although I almost always buy my games new and haven't personally had to shell out a bunch of extra money, the ethics of the matter just bother me too much for me to continue funding their micro-transaction business model. If I buy a game, I want the whole game, all of it, every last bit, especially at $60 a pop. If something is created later as additional content, I'll buy that, but EA has been taking things way too far in recent years in my opinion.

[Phouchg]

I've decided that unless something changes, I will never buy another game from Electronic Arts. Their methods of squeezing every last dollar out of the customer is borderline robbery. They've gotten worse and worse with requiring you to pay extra to play a game online if you buy it used, leaving things out and then selling them back to you later as "DLC", etc. It seems like every EA game I've bought in the past few years has gotten progressively worse and worse, and although I almost always buy my games new and haven't personally had to shell out a bunch of extra money, the ethics of the matter just bother me too much for me to continue funding their micro-transaction business model. If I buy a game, I want the whole game, all of it, every last bit, especially at $60 a pop. If something is created later as additional content, I'll buy that, but EA has been taking things way too far in recent years in my opinion.

True.

However, that's also quite like not going to movies because they've started charging for the popcorn (for the sake of argument let's assume that at some point they used not to).

[Gerowen]

True.

However, that's also quite like not going to movies because they've started charging for the popcorn (for the sake of argument let's assume that at some point they used not to).

I sent a nastygram to a local theater I went to in Lakewood, WA when I lived there because for one bag of popcorn, two "medium" drinks and an hour and a half of movie time for my wife and I, I paid a little over $25. There was a good hundred or so people in that theater with me alone, so if you only count the $9.50 per person ticket price, and multiply that by a hundred people, they made $950 just off the tickets sold for that one theater room, for that 1.5 hour time slot alone, not counting what everybody spent on refreshments (It was $5 for a single drink) and how many people were in the other viewing areas. I don't have a problem with companies making a profit, that's the reason they're in business, but some of them are getting a little out of control, and you'd think that in a time of economic uncertainty, they would want to encourage MORE people to come and partake of their product, not make them angry and resentful by blatantly tugging at their wallets at every turn.

Sorry, I guess I should stop ranting, /exhale :-P

[spaceelf]

I sent a nastygram to a local theater I went to in Lakewood, WA when I lived there because for one bag of popcorn, two "medium" drinks and an hour and a half of movie time for my wife and I, I paid a little over $25. There was a good hundred or so people in that theater with me alone, so if you only count the $9.50 per person ticket price, and multiply that by a hundred people, they made $950 just off the tickets sold for that one theater room, for that 1.5 hour time slot alone, not counting what everybody spent on refreshments (It was $5 for a single drink) and how many people were in the other viewing areas. I don't have a problem with companies making a profit, that's the reason they're in business, but some of them are getting a little out of control, and you'd think that in a time of economic uncertainty, they would want to encourage MORE people to come and partake of their product, not make them angry and resentful by blatantly tugging at their wallets at every turn.

Sorry, I guess I should stop ranting, /exhale :-P

They also probably want to pay rent.

[Shadrack]

I'm playing DA:O now and I think it would be FAR better if you could roam around freely. I can't stand the way you "travel" in the game.

I agree...it makes the game feel small like Fable. Just a bunch of "levels" to play through. As much as I loved Skyrim and thought that it was a game that did it mostly right, I've played quite a few of these "single player MMORPGs" that weren't so great. I wasn't very impressed by Oblivion, for instance.

[Wyn6]

I sent a nastygram to a local theater I went to in Lakewood, WA when I lived there because for one bag of popcorn, two "medium" drinks and an hour and a half of movie time for my wife and I, I paid a little over $25. There was a good hundred or so people in that theater with me alone, so if you only count the $9.50 per person ticket price, and multiply that by a hundred people, they made $950 just off the tickets sold for that one theater room, for that 1.5 hour time slot alone, not counting what everybody spent on refreshments (It was $5 for a single drink) and how many people were in the other viewing areas. I don't have a problem with companies making a profit, that's the reason they're in business, but some of them are getting a little out of control, and you'd think that in a time of economic uncertainty, they would want to encourage MORE people to come and partake of their product, not make them angry and resentful by blatantly tugging at their wallets at every turn.

Sorry, I guess I should stop ranting, /exhale :-P

Just a bit of information on the way most theaters work. Theaters make very little money off of actual box office sales. Most of that money goes to the distributors of the films. Depending on the theater and/or theater chain, they may get a dollar or so of the total ticket price.

So, how do movie theaters make their money, you may be asking. Okay. Maybe you're not asking that, plus you've probably figured it out by now. Yep. Concessions. That is why popcorn and drinks and candy cost so much at a theater because this is their bread and butter, or extra butter as it were.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not necessarily a proponent of this, but neither am I an opponent. I don't usually buy concessions when I got the movies. But, I understand for these guys to stay in business, they have to do this. Anyway, I just wanted to shed a simple overview of how this usually works. Entirely, off-topic by the way.

[Cheatyface]

I seem to remember Steam being complete ***** in the beginning and now people think Valve is the second coming. Give it chance to grow, but I forgot its cool to hate EA....

Steam made huge increases in quality over the course of it's first year. Origin has made none. It was a turd at launch and, a year later, it's still a turd.

[sanctified Veteran]

Skyrim gameplay + Dragon Age: Origins story = Winning recipe.