Though some fans started to see the warning signs with Mass Effect 3, for many, Dragon Age: Inquisition represented the last great video game built by BioWare magic – a phrase that former Dragon Age producer Mark Darrah loathes, as he reflects on Inquisition's development and how it heralded BioWare's problems that came after. In many ways, the success of Dragon Age: Inquisition was an unlikely miracle as the developers struggled to adapt the Frostbite Engine to fit a fantasy role-playing game mold.

Players often wondered why the developers at BioWare chose to build Dragon Age: Inquisition on Frostbite, with many speculating that Electronic Arts forced their hand, while others thinking the decision was made of BioWare's own accord. According to Darrah in his new video, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. BioWare was encouraged to use Frostbite due to Patrick Soderlund's stance on Electronic Arts having its own in-house engine, and the publisher offered to either fully support Dragon Age: Inquisition on Frosbite, or to have BioWare build it on the Eclipse Engine used for Dragon Age: Origins. With no easier alternatives made available such as Unreal Engine, BioWare's path forward was clear.

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Adapting to Frostbite Engine tasked the development team severely, as Inquisition didn't even have a save game system in the entirety of its Alpha. Darrah went on to say that developing the tools for Frostbite took up about a third of the project's development time, and that having to support PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Dragon Age: Inquisition ended up being more trouble than it was worth. Curiously, BioWare agreed to complete Inquisition by 2013, fully knowing that Electronic Arts would have to delay the game by a year because the production on Frostbite demanded so much.

Therein lay the problem, as the tools developed for Dragon Age: Inquisition on Frostbite were never used for Mass Effect: Andromeda or Anthem. The development teams in charge of those two games eschewed the work built by the Dragon Age team in favor of creating their own tools, but unfortunately the miracle (and long hours of crunch) which allowed Inquisition to emerge as 2014's Game of the Year didn't translate to the BioWare games that came after. Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem were declared disappointments, and BioWare found itself at a crossroads.

With Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in the middle of its development, Darrah believes that the tactical camera featured in the franchise will not be making a return to the sequel, nor will Inquisition's vast, yet often empty open world. The developers of Dragon Age learned too late that quantity did not always translate into quality, and chasing the size of Skyrim's playable area ultimately caused Dragon Age: Inquisition to feel diluted at times. There is a lot of optimism that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will take the lessons learned from the development of Inquisition, and the tools built for Anthem, as opposed to relying on BioWare magic to succeed.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is currently available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

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