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BioWare On DAI: ‘We want to get back in touch with our fans’


“We look to a future… where the player has more agency.”

Those words, spoken by one BioWare developer working on Dragon Age: Inquisition, comes from a trailer for the upcoming issue of Game Informer1, containing (of course) an exclusive look into the ongoing development of the game. And it might as well be aimed squarely at people who still have a bad taste in their mouth over BioWare’s abysmal last two years.

After Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 soured what once seemed an unimpeachable brand, the company has shed all of its founders and numerous high-ranking people, and its reputation among many fans has been eviscerated. My unscientific analysis is that there are lots of people who have all but excised BioWare games from their playlist, and that’s probably due more to the way people acted toward BioWare’s critics than the problems themselves.

Take Mass Effect 3, for instance. Among the weirdest reactions was a chorus of people who scolded fans roundly for complaining about the ending, in many cases mocking them for pointing out the (arguable) removal of agency from the ending of Mass Effect trilogy. It was a weird moment in pop culture history and there are still arguments lingering from it to this day. And based on the video, BioWare knows it.

Here’s the video:

Some take-aways:

* New details about who you’ll play, confirmed to be a member of the titular Inquisition.
* Players will once again be able to choose from multiple races, not just human.
* A vast expansive open world, compared by one of the developers to a return to the thinking behind Baldur’s Gate.
* An important quote: “We want to get back in touch with our fans, and help them help us to bring the games forward.”

Of course, judging by the comments we still get on posts related to BioWare, plenty of those fans are not ready to forgive and forget. But BioWare does seem to be painfully aware of how many fences it needs to mend. Certainly, Dragon Age Inquisition is looking more and more like BioWare’s big apology for its abysmal 2011-2012.

What do you all think? Am I being over optimistic? Does the fact that Dragon Age: Inquisition won’t actually be a true sequel to the previous games sound problematic to you? Does it look like the company has learned some important lessons? Or are they perhaps being a bit too contrite? Sound off in comments.

Source: http://www.gamefront.com/bioware-on-da3-...-our-fans/