After its recent announcement and the reveal of several details on the game, we have received little information on Dragon Age 3: Inquisition. Or Dragon Age III: Inquisition, if you’re anal that way. We know that it runs on DICE’s Frostbite engine, and that it comes out next year, though.
However, last night at the Bradford Animation Festival, BioWare revealed a screenshot of the game, which was on the screen for like 3 seconds (thanks, Eurogamer!).
“That is Dragon Age: Inquisition,” said BioWare art and animation director Neil Thompson. “It’s the first time anyone has seen a frame of it outside BioWare studios.”
When asked by someone in the crowd how development at BioWare had changed thanks to the Frostbite engine- which Mass Effect 4 will also be running on, as BioWare has confirmed– Thompson said: “Mass Effect was done on Unreal of course.
Dragon Age was done on the proprietary engine Eclipse. I think anyone who played Dragon Age 2 would agree that engine was starting to creak a little bit by the time that was released.
“Obviously Frostbite is the Battlefield engine built by DICE. It’s a beautiful, beautiful engine. And what we’ve found is an improvement with DA3, is the artists who were really battling with the Eclipse engine have just embraced Frostbite. The work they’re doing now is stunning.
“I think the screenshot I showed earlier is pretty stunning. That’s unusual for pre-production. Usually you don’t get to that kind of quality until a week before gold master.
“It makes my job easier because then it’s all about discussing the aesthetic and what you want to achieve. When you’re a character artist or an environment artist you’re focusing on a small aspect of the greater whole of the game. As an art director you’re concerned about the whole, the frame and everything it contains and how everything sits and the consistency. An engine like Frostbite allows you to focus more on that rather than the technological challenges of just getting the damn thing to run.”
Get more info on Dragon Age 3 here.