By Zaid at Tuesday, November 04, 2014 7:13:00 AM

During it gestational development cycle, Bioware was originally building Dragon Age: Inquisition to be a game that was going to be full-on multiplayer. It might've ensured the failure of the game, given that fans have always played Dragon Age because it delivers such an exceptional single-player role-playing game experience.

Joining the Party

During a recent interview on GamesIndustry the game's Executive Producer Mark Darrah revealed how Dragon Age: Inquisition was originally designed with the intention to be a multiplayer-only game. The game's addition of co-op multiplayer elements, as it turns out, wasn't an addition as such, but a return to the original design document. As Darrah revealed, Inquisition started out as a multiplayer-only affair in the vein of Baldur's Gate's multiplayer mode and was originally code-named Blackfoot.



"We actually had a project code-named Blackfoot which was the first game we had that was looking at Frostbite," Darrah recalled. "It was a Dragon Age game, multiplayer only, that was in development before Dragon Age II came out. That became the core of what became Dragon Age Inquisition, the techlines, more than any of the development, so we've actually been looking at this a long time.



"At its roots, role-playing is a multiplayer experience. It's sitting at a table with your friends and playing a pen and paper experience. It's been a single player experience on computers for a long time, but Baldur's Gate had multiplayer co-op through the story. This is an attempt to get that feeling back, something you can do, get a fantasy experience, but much more bite-size."

The Legacy of Ages

In the same interview Darrah also discussed how Dragon Age II feedback influenced BioWare and their approach to future games. While the team listened, they were careful not to be "enslaved" by it. Dragon Age II was a very polarizing game and Darrah was candid enough to admit that some parts of that game were ill-conceived.

"Dragon Age II had a lot of experiments in it, some of which I'm glad we did but some of which were very big mistakes. Dragon Age II had some very experimental storytelling in terms of the very personal story, not a big, threatening overarching villain. I'm glad we did that but those are all very challenging from a storytelling perspective."



But while Dragon Age and Dragon Age II obviously had an influence on the current game, Inquisition was also impacted by another juggernaut in the western RPG library. Probably the Juggernaut of western RPGs. The game that gave the team lots to think about was Bethesda uber-successful RPG, Skyrim.



"Skyrim changed the landscape for role-playing games completely. I mean Oblivion probably sold six million units, basically that range, Skyrim sold 20 million. So that, to some degree, changes everything.



"Now the expectations of your other fans, they're changing too. People age, they typically have less time for games, so it changes their expectations in terms of gameplay segments. It also results in some nostalgia. so they may become even more firm in their attachment to previous features. Now suddenly you have 15 million people that have basically had the first RPG they've ever played as Skyrim. They have totally different expectations of what storytelling is, what exploration is, and I think exploration is really where we've seen the biggest change."

Would you play Inquisition if it was only a multiplayer game?



Source: GamesIndustry

Pre-order Dragon Age: Inquisition from kalahari.com

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