BioWare went Down Under for PAX Australia 2013. At the team’s panel, they divulged (and avoided divulging) information about the upcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition . Perhaps the juiciest scrap the BioWare team let fall from their table is the information that all of the choices you made in previous games will matter in Inquisition.
When a fan asked the panel if they knew how the game-save transitions would work, Cameron Lee, a producer at BioWare, responded with, “Yeah, we know, but we’re not going to talk about it yet.” (The room filled with laughter at his response.) But he did give the fan confirmation that the decisions made in previous games “will carry” over to and “absolutely come across” in Inquisition.
Although this might give fans hope for a Mass Effect- style accumulation of events that culminate in widely divergent games depending on choices made, some of the other quotes given at the panel implied that the connection between games will be relegated to the role of peripheral characters and Easter eggs.
BioWare’s Community Coordinator Chris Priestly, in response to a fan question about the story connection between the games, said that BioWare designed Dragon Age to be a story about a world, not any single plotline or character within that world: “ Dragon Age Origins was the story of the Warden, and Dragon Age 2 was the story of Hawke. In Dragon Age 3 , it’s going to be the story of the Inquisition.” If, to borrow the team’s phrasing, the inclusion of previous game choices gets relegated to “corner stones that you touch” that make you go “OK, I get that,” BioWare might have to once again go on a PR war against disgruntled fans.
Not every piece of information revealed at the PAX panel revolved around the Dragon Age: Inquisition story. Patrick Weekes, a BioWare writer who has worked primarily on Mass Effect but will be working on Inquisition , said that he “doesn’t see [BioWare] going back to a silent protagonist.” For fans of Mass Effect and Dragon Age II, this will be welcome news.
Weekes also dropped a hint at a gameplay style that should satisfy fans who prefer the old-school fight mechanics of Dragon Age: Origins to the hack-and-slash feel of the second installment: “What I would want to do is make sure that [ Inquisition ] allows the more tactical options that Origins had.” Although not a flop, many fans found Dragon Age II to be a lesser product than the original, so they should be intrigued by BioWare’s willingness to revisit certain gameplay mechanics found in Origins that they abandoned for II.
All in all, BioWare’s panel revealed the company to be good humored, open to criticism, and passionate about their work. When asked about the polarizing ending to Mass Effect 3 , the BioWare team, before giving a well-reasoned response, let out a vocal groan. “I knew it was coming!” Priestly exclaimed. Weekes followed this with, “Everyone do a shot!”