Fans have been looking forward to what BioWare is now going to call Dragon Age: Dreadwolf since the developers teased it at the end of this Inquisition‘s Offender DLC. But seven years later Offender‘s release, there are still many unanswered questions about the upcoming game. Among them is whether and how Dragon Age: Dreadwolf could continue the tradition of Origin Stories.
While Origins was present in both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age Inquisition, each game tackled them in very different ways, and some felt that Inquisition’s Origins left a lot to be desired. Still, the original game’s fully playable prologues also represent a significant investment of time and money that developers may not consider worth it. However, there are ways to Dragon Age: Dreadwolf could improve Inquisition‘s Origins without breaking the bank.
Origins in Dragon Age: Inquisition
Character Origins didn’t play such an important role in Dragon Age: Inquisition like they did in Origin, and it’s understandable why some fans weren’t impressed with this version of the feature. There’s one for everyone Dragon Age: Inquisition‘s Elves, Dwarves and the newly playable Qunari, with Humans getting either the Mage or Noble backstory. Instead of a playable prologue, players were given a brief summary of their character’s backstory, followed by a short series of War Table missions later in the game.
However, these missions were easily missed, especially by anyone who wasn’t fond of Dragon Age: Inquisition‘s War Table. Also, unlike other choices in Dragon Age: Inquisition, the outcome of these missions doesn’t meaningfully affect the rest of the game, even if it seems like they should have. For example, the entire Elven Inquisitor clan can die during one of: Inquisition‘s War Table Missions, but it goes completely unnoticed by them or any other main character. Limiting the Origin Stories to text boxes also makes them feel less important and personal than in the original game.
Origin in Dragon Age: Origin
As compared to Inquisitionit’s easy to see why some prefer it Dragon Age: Originsplayable prologues. The player’s choice of dragon era‘s Races and Classes decided which of the six different opening chapters they could choose from. These prologues helped establish different places, people, concepts, and plot points for later in the game, with each Origin having at least one point where it intersects with the main story. Players are given Origin-specific dialogue during these scenes, in addition to the added context provided by each of the six prologues. These origin stories are also great for role players as it gives them context to build their character’s personalities.
However, Dragon Age: Origins‘ approach also represents a lot of content that not every player will see. While BioWare can get away with reusing assets and sometimes entire locations for some Origins, it still takes time and money to code and record dialogue for each of them. In addition, 80% of Dragon Age: Origins players chose human characters according to a comment from former Dragon Age Writer David Gaider on the now-defunct BioWare Social Network. This means that relatively few people have experienced all six prologues. So it might not make sense to spend so many resources on Origin Stories instead of working on other parts of the game.
What Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Could Do?
Assuming a fully playable in-game prologue is off the table, there are still a few options that make this possible Dragon Age: Dreadwolf improve Inquisition‘s Origin. In fact, some of these capabilities are things BioWare has already done with some of their previous games.
The most obvious option might be to follow Mass effect‘s lead. For those who don’t remember, Mass effect had players determine Shepard’s backstory by choosing a pre-service history and psychological profile during character creation. These would unlock certain side missions and change them significantly into Mass effect 1, all of which served to flesh out Shepard’s backstory. Developers could almost copy this system one-to-one in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf by giving players a unique quest for each race and another based on the character’s class.
Alternatively, BioWare could get a little more creative with how it incorporates Origins into Dragon Age: Dreadwolfthe prologue. For example, Obsidian Entertainment’s 2016 RPG Tyranny featured a unique interactive prologue in which players made choices on a map of the game’s setting. This allowed Tyranny‘s introduction to cover a significant amount of time very quickly while allowing players to decide what choices their characters have made at each intersection. While this technique works better with some stories than others, it’s something developers can think about.
Dragon Age Keep may hold the answer
Other options could be to open the game with something like Mass Effect: Genesis or Dragon Age: The Last Court. Genesis was a comic book style DLC for Mass Effect 2 which summarized the events of the previous game and allowed the player to make important decisions from that game. In the meantime, The last court was a text adventure of Sunless Sea developer Failbetter Games, which served as the official prologue to Inquisition.
However, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf‘s best guess could come from the Dragon Age Keep website. In addition to allowing players to record their decisions from around the world, dragon era franchise, it also featured an interactive animated short, narrated by favorite recurring character Varric. Like ME2‘s Genesis comic, it allowed players to make important decisions from the previous game. It wouldn’t be impossible for BioWare to create something similar that would function as: Dragon Age: Dreadwolfin-game prologue. Perhaps its artwork can be inspired by works of art in the universe, such as the ancient Elven murals seen in Offender and came in heavy Dragon Age: Dreadwolf‘s previous promotional content.
Ideally, the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf would refer to these decisions later in the game, perhaps even with origin-specific side quests. But even on its own, a Dragon Age Keep-inspired prologue can serve as a unique and memorable introduction to the game, especially for anyone watching dragon era For the first time. If nothing else, it would be a significant improvement over how Dragon Age: Inquisition covered his Origin Stories.
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is under development.
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