Remember when Bioware said Dragon Age: Inquisition would be an open-world title? Well, according to Mike Laidlaw, it will be more along the lines of a “multi-region” world instead.
In conversation with Rock Paper Shotgun, Laidlaw talked about whether Inquisition was considered an open world experience. “‘Open world’ I think is a really loaded term, because everyone immediately thinks of Skyrim and assumes everything will be exactly like Skyrim. In our case, there are extremely large regions you can explore.
“It’s a multi-region game, which means that you’ll travelling with a world map. You’re travelling across this chunk of the continent in which the game is set. And each of the regions is purposeful. It has a reason you would be brought here. It ties back to the story, or at least to the overall themes of the game. These are my enemies and they’re very active here. I should find out why.
“That kind of stuff. That means that they aren’t necessarily laden with story, because story is the antithesis of discovery, right? It tends to lead you along. But when you’re discovering things, you should feel like they’re part of the overall game and not random. I would say that it has elements of open world for sure, but it’s something closer to the feel we had in the Baldur’s Gate games or in Origins, even, where it’s larger areas, big spaces, and the chance for you to move around and see a wide variety of different terrains and locales and so on.”
So essentially it won’t be like Skyrim, but there will still be plenty in the game to explore. Sounds about right, but we’ll see if it makes for a compelling RPG when Dragon Age: Inquisition releases in Q3 2014 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC.