Dragon Age: Inquisition was a popular and critically well-received game, but it was not without some serious flaws. The design of the game's open world, and in particular the way that design affected questing, should be avoided in the next game if Dragon Age 4 is going to take the series to new heights.
Dragon Age 4 will take players to the Tevinter Imperium for the first time, an expansive and ancient northern empire much-discussed in the series' lore, but never seen in-game. Tevinter's size presents opportunities for a massive in-game world and a huge number of quests. When it comes to its world and quest design, however, Dragon Age 4 should look to Mass Effect and other older BioWare games, not Inquisition.
Inquisition's Questing Problem
Dragon Age: Inquisition is full of side quests, but the vast majority of them play far more like a quest from an MMORPG than the story-driven missions found in other BioWare RPGs. This left some of the huge areas created for Inquisition like the Hinterlands looking great but ultimately feeling shallow, at least outside of the main story.
In MMOs players have motivation to "grind" through relatively tedious quests because they form arbitrary objectives around which player relationships can be formed. Slowly poisoning pumpkins in World of Warcraft's Tirisfal Glades could be boring by itself, but getting help from another player and getting to know them adds a whole extra dimension to the game. Similarly, the multiplayer aspect creates a competitiveness that motivates players to strive beyond just getting the loot and experience they need, instead pushing them to go above and beyond to keep up with and impress their fellow players, motivating them in a way most single-player games can't.
In Dragon Age: Inquisition, players were offered little incentive to complete many of the game's side quests. There was loot, experience, and the occasional interesting nugget of Dragon Age lore, but not much to draw most players away from the game's main story. Dragon Age: Inquisition can be finished with relative ease without completing the vast majority of these side quests, and with little story motivation to drive them many players left most of these missions behind.
In fact, many of Inquisition's side quests felt strangely immersion-breaking at times. Why is the Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste, the only person able to close the rifts in the Veil, commander of an army and judge over the life and death of those the Inquisition captures now completing the sort of side quest a random mercenary might pick up for coin? That might make sense in series like The Witcher where the side quests are part of the player character's profession, but not in Inquisition.
Dragon Age: Inquisition's huge, semi-open world had some very impressive areas, but once the player had completed the main quest there were few reasons to stay beyond the view. Part of the problem was that most of the game's many side quests were completely detached from the main quests. In older BioWare RPGs — and even well-designed MMOs — the player arrives at a hub because of the main quest, and then picks up several story-driven side quests along the way. These side quests may then have relevance in some of the areas players end up visiting while dealing with the main quest, continuing the main story while finding out more about their surroundings.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is a reminder of just how well BioWare can design these kind of questing areas. On Noveria, for example, most of the missions that the player picks up in the labs at the start then have objectives which are on Shepard's journey once the player and their squad have used the Mako to venture beyond the base. This focus is possible in part because Mass Effect has fewer side quests than Dragon Age: Inquisition, but that isn't a bad thing.
Changing Questing In Dragon Age 4
There are even examples of better side quest design in earlier Dragon Age games. The quest to help the Mabari war-hound in Ostagar, for example, ties back into the main quest when the dog follows the player following the battle, and becomes a part of their group. In both Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins the player feels compelled to complete many of the side quests they come across because they might have implications for the player's journey through the main story.
In Dragon Age: Inquisition, it quickly becomes apparent that many of the side quests have little to contribute to the main story, and aside from the few side quests with compelling and self-contained stories of their own, there's a massive lack of urgency when it comes to anything other than the fight against Corypheus.
Dragon Age 4 needs side quests which feel integrated into the main quest, even if that means the game will have a smaller world. The next Dragon Age game is set to take place in the Tevinter Imperium, but that doesn't mean that players should have access to the entirety of the region. If they do, it's likely BioWare will end up repeating the same mistakes from Inquisition. Previous BioWare games have found success cultivating smaller quest hubs that the player goes to for a main mission, where the side missions both flesh out the setting's story and can be conveniently completed while focusing primarily on the main quest. Inquisition's larger world leaves its questing feeling spread very thin.
It could be risky for Dragon Age 4 to take the series back from a semi-open world to a series of segmented quest hubs, but if Dragon Age 4 ends up feeling as unfocused as Inquisition can at times the Dread Wolf plot could end up feeling distant. BioWare's exact design philosophy for Dragon Age 4 has yet to be seen, but hopefully when fans get more news about the game that news will include a dialing back of some of Inquisition's more experimental and less successful design features.
Dragon Age 4 is in development.