Dragon Age Writer Claims Inquisition Going into Alpha, Content Cuts Possible

Six months away from Dragon Age: Inquisition's release, its writer reflects upon the creative process and the potential cuts that happen as a game reaches the alpha stage of development.

David Gaider, who has helped pen BioWare classics such as Baldur's Gate 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, has posted on his Tumblr page that Dragon Age: Inquisition is entering the alpha stage of development. Gaider mentions that while most new content that gets made will be to assist the parts that have already been developed, there's still a chance that large parts can be removed entirely.

Gaider mentions that, during the alpha, broad cuts can happen. These cuts can be arbitrarily done by the studio without him in the loop of things and do not always make room to maintain the logic or flow of a game's story. Furthermore, the writing team is excluded from the sound department when it comes to voiced dialogue so the script can get edited, recorded and sent to the graphics department to animate the sequences. By this point, Gaider's writing team is working on "non-VO text", which includes item/talent descriptions, GUI text, codex entries and other forms of secondary narrative content.

Dragon Age: Inquisition will be launching on Oct. 7 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.