Many who didn’t like the sequel were likely ”expecting a similar experience” to Origins. Future DLC will ”actually address some” of the issues for core fans.
”I think there was actually a tremendous number of people that came into the franchise and were delighted. So there were many people who critically thought it was wonderful, and actually a lot of old fans did as well,” said BioWare’s Dr. Ray Muzyka.
”There’s no doubt that there was a polarization though. Maybe some of that can be attributed to some of the fans of Dragon Age: Origins who were maybe expecting a similar experience. But we actually innovated, we took a lot of risk, we were pushing the envelope on how we told the story, the gameplay, the action moments, the graphics - a lot of things were changed.”
”And, actually, I really believe it was the right direction,” he affirmed.
Many complained that environments were reused too much as levels got recycled with small variations between them. ”We also recognize that feedback from core fans is incredibly important, so we take that to heart,” continued the studio boss.
”We’re listening to it. We’re commercially successful, so we actually drew a lot of new fans in, exceeded our expectations, and what we want to do in the future is make sure we integrate that feedback from our core fans, so they come along with us for the journey, as we continue to build up the Dragon Age franchise and make the next ones even bigger and better so that all of our fans are delighted and surprised.”
”We think we can do that. We can actually take the best of breed features from the original game in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II and put them together; and some of the changes we made in Dragon Age II, we were proud of the team.”
”We think they were the right changes. We wanted the team to push in that direction, but we also want to integrate feedback from our core fans because they’re really important to us. So I think there’s a nice balance that can be struck to achieve that,” he said.
BioWare will keep applying lessons from fan feedback into their DLC line-up for Dragon Age II. They’re not yet ready to formally announce Dragon Age III is in development.
”We’re working on future projects in the Dragon Age franchise,” he acknowledged. ”We have some more DLC plans, that actually address some of the feedback from some of our core fans. I think that’s going to be really satisfying to fans who liked DAO and DA2.”
”We haven’t announced Dragon Age III formally at all, but we can say we’re definitely thinking about future products. There’s some cool stuff in the works there.”
Dragon Age II’s first premier piece of downloadable content was released a little while back and called Legacy, which saw Hawke able to investigate why his family is being hunted by a criminal organisation. All DLC will focus on the main character, unlike in Origins.
Has Dragon Age II disappointed you, or has it simply been a different experience?