Dragon Age III: Inquisition Officially Announced

Excuse me while I jump up and down from happiness for a few minutes! It hasn’t really been a secret that the Bioware team has been working on the game since March of this year, and they still don’t have a lot of details about the game today, other than to confirm the name. The news was announced by Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah on the Bioware blog, and this is what Darrah was able to confirm so far:

• The next game will be called Dragon Age III: Inquisition.

• We won’t be talking about the story of the game today. Though you can make some guesses from the title.

• This game is being made by a lot of the same team that has been working on Dragon Age since Dragon Age: Origins. It’s composed of both experienced BioWare veterans and talented new developers.

• We are working on a new engine which we believe will allow us to deliver a more expansive world, better visuals, more reactivity to player choices, and more customization. At PAX East, we talked about armor and followers… Yeah, that kind of customization. We’ve started with Frostbite 2 from DICE as a foundation to accomplish this.

The most interesting bits of new from this release is that they will be using a new engine — The Frostbite 2 engine has most recently been used on Battlefield 3, and here’s what that puppy looks like:

So it looks like the game may be departing from the hyper-stylized look from 2 and returning to a hyper-realistic feel. Another thing that has fans talking about this announcement is whether or not the game will have online multiplayer. Darrah does not address it here, but Bioware’s parent company, EA, recently said that all their future titles would have this feature. Personally, I’m not sure how well it would work for the Dragon Age franchise, as the things that people like the most about this game — namely the character interactions, party banter, and choices with consequences — have no place in  a multiplayer setting. I’m interested to see what they come up with if this is the case, but I don’t know if I would ever play it.

The game is set to be released “late next year.” Anyway, that’s all that has been announced for now — they don’t even have any trailers or screenshots for us yet. But rest assured, Paper Droids will be on the top of the story, and you’ll know more when we know more.