Skyrim is the Wrong Place to Look for Dragon Age III Inspiration

It’s been a few months since BioWare’s Ray Muzyka suggested that Skyrim was a basis of inspiration for Dragon Age III, but it wasn’t until today that Kotaku addressed that notion, as well as some of what the company has been revealing about their future Dragon Age plans, in a new community-driven “Speak Up” editorial. In short, the author doesn’t think that chasing “the hottest new thing on the block” is in BioWare’s best interest:

On their forums they’ve confirmed that the dreaded dialogue wheel, and the even more dreaded paraphrasing system, will return, along with a voiced main character. Now, I won’t spend too much time ranting about the dialogue wheel, because we all have experienced it enough to know it’s pro’s and con’s (namely that it automatically highlights the “Good” and the “Bad” options in dialogue and reduces the amount of meaningful decision making), and we all know why the paraphrasing system is bad.

Of course, BioWare remains entirely unapologetic in this regard, insisting that there is no chance of a full text dialogue system because of problems involved when having a voiced character. They also, of course, state that a voiced character is all but guaranteed and that arguing against it is pointless because they’ve “weighed” the choices.

Now, there’s something to be said about the voiced character. The biggest thing that comes to mind is: How are they going to voice a main character and allow different races/origins? One of the fairly large complaints weighed against DAII before and after release (And with BioWare insisting before release that they knew best and that we should trust them, glad that one worked out) was that being forced into the role of “Hawke” was not Dragon Age, and abandoned one of the coolest features of DAO.

Other things to note is that they are, by their own word, looking at Skyrim for inspiration. Yea…. So, I’ll preface this one by saying I love Skyrim, because I do. But here’s the thing: Skyrim is the last place they should look for inspiration for a Dragon Age title. Hell, Skyrim is in the exact opposite direction. When we have dozens of tactical RPG’s over the years to look at, why in god’s name would they look at an Action RPG with an open world? More action is the direction DAII went, and we all know DAII did much worse commercially than DAO, and did worse critically than DAO. But, instead of looking at the classics like they should, BioWare is looking at the hottest new thing on the block trying to capitalize on its success.