Continuing its exclusive coverage of BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisiation, Game Informer published a new video over the weekend featuring a behind the scenes the look at the development process. Titled "The Combat of Dragon Age: Inquisition" the clip includes several of the game's lead developers discussing the combat mechanics, and shows off an assortment of early gameplay bits and pieces in the workflow of the Frostbite 2 engine. Check it out below.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is due in Autumn 2014 (Northern Fall) on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
So do they have a massive magnet on their backs for the sword to stick to? Perhaps they should consider scabbards..
No excuse for a AAA title, with massive budget to not have the little details like scabbards.
So do they have a massive magnet on their backs for the sword to stick to? Perhaps they should consider scabbards.. No excuse for a AAA title, with massive budget to not have the little details like scabbards.
It took me ages to realise that the swords on the back in DA didn't quite make sense, but it's pretty much the norm across their and other's products (guns in ME, swords in The Old Republic, bows and two-handed in skyrim). It's actually not a trivial challenge to make backscabbards work with every sword design and armour type, and to get the sword to go into the scabbard. Would prefer they focused on things like smooth gameplay and big worlds.
I prefer that they worked on smooth gameplay, big worlds and the little details. It's the little details that elevate a game from good to excellent.
A simple system of an anchor point or node or whatever they are called, plus some fancy mathematical calculations for dynamically altering a generic sheething animation and creating a scabbard along with each weapon. :D
It's not so much the getting the sword in the scabbard (though that would be pretty hard too, could lead to some weird inverse kinematics stuff), it's the way that these studios tend to do clothing, where it isn't really a wrapping approach where you just attach items onto a body, but rather they remake different parts of the body depending on what's worn in that slot (so an armour that shows skin would actually be creating the skin again, or using a clone of the original but then they can never make changes to the original again, which seems oddly inefficient to me, and prevents doing stuff like body modifications such as weight in character design because the armour actually creates a new body piece for the character rather than wrapping around an original one). Their production process and methods don't really seem open to things like dynamic scabbard'y-things being worn.
The video seemed to talk about one thing (party based tactics) and show the direct opposite to me.
I don't know if I like it or dislike it, but I do know that the visuals are showing the opposite to what the voice says. I'm hoping that it'll be more isometric party based then it looks, ever since baldurs I've loved the whole party system, shooting fireballs and storms into rooms of enemies, etc.
So do they have a massive magnet on their backs for the sword to stick to? Perhaps they should consider scabbards..
Did you miss the bit where the guy said the art was temp placeholder stuff, and the big "PRE-ALPHA FOOTAGE" banners that showed up multiple times throughout the video? Why not complain about how the enemy's shield was just a big green rectangle?
I like what I'm seeing so far too, reminds me of Kotor style combat with a bit of Mass Effect on the side.
“It’s actually bigger than all of Dragon Age II put together,” he said.
AHahah, DAII was 'big' only because it re-used soooo many assets, an inexcusable amount really.
Hopefully they took that lesson on the chin and won't be doing it again for this DA, until it actually hits the shelves and people play it I don't rate it much at all.
If they truly are taking lessons though, then perhaps it can rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of the dregs that was DAII.
Posted 11:41am 19/8/13
Posted 02:13pm 19/8/13
No excuse for a AAA title, with massive budget to not have the little details like scabbards.
Posted 02:36pm 19/8/13
Posted 03:47pm 19/8/13
It took me ages to realise that the swords on the back in DA didn't quite make sense, but it's pretty much the norm across their and other's products (guns in ME, swords in The Old Republic, bows and two-handed in skyrim). It's actually not a trivial challenge to make backscabbards work with every sword design and armour type, and to get the sword to go into the scabbard. Would prefer they focused on things like smooth gameplay and big worlds.
Posted 04:12pm 19/8/13
A simple system of an anchor point or node or whatever they are called, plus some fancy mathematical calculations for dynamically altering a generic sheething animation and creating a scabbard along with each weapon. :D
Posted 05:30pm 19/8/13
The video seemed to talk about one thing (party based tactics) and show the direct opposite to me.
Posted 05:54pm 19/8/13
Maybe it becomes too much work for the result across how ever many weapons they will have in the game?
Posted 06:51pm 19/8/13
More like "DAO could be played real time and so can this."
Posted 07:37pm 19/8/13
Posted 07:49pm 19/8/13
Posted 12:24am 20/8/13
Did you miss the bit where the guy said the art was temp placeholder stuff, and the big "PRE-ALPHA FOOTAGE" banners that showed up multiple times throughout the video? Why not complain about how the enemy's shield was just a big green rectangle?
I like what I'm seeing so far too, reminds me of Kotor style combat with a bit of Mass Effect on the side.
Posted 10:03am 20/8/13
Nerf, if you love that sorts of stuff you need to check out (if you haven't already) both Project Eternity and Wasteland 2.
Posted 01:53pm 20/8/13
Posted 03:00pm 20/8/13
Posted 04:02pm 20/8/13
Posted 04:36pm 20/8/13
Project Eternity is going to be similar to Baldur's Gate.
Posted 01:50pm 22/8/13
Posted 07:14pm 01/9/13
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/09/the-next-dragon-age-is-crazy-ambitious/
Posted 07:21pm 01/9/13
AHahah, DAII was 'big' only because it re-used soooo many assets, an inexcusable amount really.
Hopefully they took that lesson on the chin and won't be doing it again for this DA, until it actually hits the shelves and people play it I don't rate it much at all.
If they truly are taking lessons though, then perhaps it can rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of the dregs that was DAII.
Posted 09:42pm 01/9/13
also, here's some footage:
Posted 10:50pm 01/9/13