Dragon Age: Inquisition Combining Story and Systems GDC 2015 Presentation Video

In a GDC talk from 2015, BioWare lead technical designer Mark Wilson and lead narrative designer Kaelin Lavallee discussed the approach the team took to combine storytelling and game design in Dragon Age: Inquisition, from the very inception of the project. The talk briefly delves into subjects such as how the team was structured and the overall goals, before offering examples from the broad spectrum of the experience, like the puzzles that litter the areas or the new dynamic banter system that replaced the triggered banter from Origin and Dragon Age 2.

The “20 to 200 hours” philosophy that imbued the title from the start was clearly a challenge from the team, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the source of many of the problems I have with the title: