4 Ways Dragon Age 3: Inquisition Is Going To Blow Your Mind

By Clayton Ofbricks / September 19, 2012

So, as we here at What Culture recently relayed to you, our wonderous and obsessive readers, BioWare has made an official announcement of Dragon Age 3. There had been rumors circling the web for several months now, and BioWare had made no secret of the fact that they planned on making Dragon Age 3, but today we know it for sure. But, that isn't the really awesome news. The really awesome news is that BioWare has promised us that Dragon Age 3 will be so radically different from the previous title that it may very well barely fit the qualification of sequel. Don't worry, reader. I am here to tell you that that's good news, really good news. Why? Well, first because Dragon Age 2 just plain sucked ass. I mean really? It was little more than a random mob violence simulator set in Castle Racism. Second, and more importantly, it's good news because Dragon Age in general didn't really give all that much to the genre. It was, in fact, just another BioWare style RPG. Dragon Age 3, however, is not. It is something entirely new. It's something that is going to make you want to drop down on your knees and beg my wife to let me buy it. I'm assuming that you love me enough to do that small favor, at least.

4. Dragon Age 3 Will Be Open World

Now, this is based on more than just rumours. This is based on the words of the BioWare co-founders in a panel discussion. DA3 developers and the BioWare upper management have admitted to spending quite a bit of time checking out Bethesda's massively successful Skyrim. Who can blame them? And since Bethesda's open-world style of gameplay has been raking them in a veritable mountain of cash, BioWare has decided to go ahead and hop on that wagon. How does this change things? Were you listening? Dragon Age, Dragon Age 2, and pretty much every Bioware RPG made since the Infinity Engine follow the same model. Oh sure, the visuals have changed, but the gameplay has not. Players were pretty much pushed into a series of scripted events that would lead them to a series of more scripted events. In between, they would bash groups of enemies to pieces. A whole lot of this process was dictated by the technology used to make games like Neverwinter Nights, which allowed for some awesome feeling cities, but just couldn't handle building an entire nation's worth of open land. More on that later. Get the Klenex, cuz here it comes... Open world for Bethesda means one thing, player agency. People can go wherever they hell they feel like going. Want to spend 8 hours collecting all of the pants in Skyrim? Go for it. Want to fill an entire lake with skulls? Go for it? But, none of it is going to matter, because people don't really notice what you do in Skyrim. Bioware, however, is famous for making sure games react to the player's decisions and the world and story change based on those reactions. An open world in a Dragon Age doesn't mean the ability to buy or sell your junk at any store at any time, it means the ability to find, interact with, and change the story lines of NPCs anywhere in the game world at any time! It means the fundamental rewriting of how Bioware games operate. It means, I'm hyperventilating.