Daniel Fedor, the lead technical artist of Dragon Age: Origins, has revealed some of the most important moments in the development of the game, including some discards they made in their day. For example, we have learned that the first entry in the franchise could have had multiplayer and dungeon master modes.
In statements to TheGamer on the occasion of reportaje The Oral History Of Dragon Age: Origins, Fedor wondered aloud what had become of Dragon Age: Origins if they hadn’t changed engines in the middle of their development.
“One thing I often wonder is what Dragon Age would have been like if we hadn’t changed engines in the middle of development. “said Fedor. “Around the time I joined BioWare in 2004, Dragon Age was being tested at E3 using a prototype they built at NeverWinter Nights. “, he continued explaining.
“I was on a separate project, the Technical Architecture Group (TAG), working on a next-gen BioWare game engine. Not long after, the Dragon Age and TAG teams merged and work began on rebuilding DA on the TAG engine. I can’t help but think that that set us back a long time. “said the creative.
El motor de NeverWinter Nights offered the team a “series of things tried in battle” like multiplayer and dungeon master modes, but those features became much more difficult in the transition to the new engine. Fedor said this left him with many “what would happen if”, especially after watching The Witcher use the NeverWinter Nights engine to great effect.
“There was a number of battle-tested things the NWN engine did that we lost, like multiplayer and dungeon master modes. “Fedor continued. “AND Seeing what CD Projekt Red did with the NWN engine in The Witcher was really inspiring. Would DAO have come out earlier? Would it have been compatible with multiplayer? Could we have reworked the rendering in the NWN engine to meet the demands of the time? It’s easy to ask these questions now, in hindsight. But I am sure that at that time, they were really tough decisions to make. “.
Despite these discarded features, Dragon Age: Origins was a success when it was first released in 2009, and spawned a franchise that is currently set to get its fourth numbered installment.
On our Dragon Age: Origins review, we said that “This is the kind of adventure fantasy RPG fans expected BioWare to deliver: a game with a lot of replayability and an incredibly vivid world which is the beginning of an impressive franchise. “.
