Bioware wants you to ponder in Dragon Age Inquisition

Bioware released a lot of information recently on Dragon Age Inquisition, and today we learned a bit more thanks to an interview published on Rock,Paper,Shotgun: Lead Designer Mike Laidlaw explained that the game will favor planning ahead of battles instead of just rushing into them, since wounds and injuries aren’t automatically regenerated like in many current games.

More than anything, what I want out of it is the sense that, as a player, I need to take the game seriously and consider my actions. If enemies are largely inconsequential in the course of a fight – I recover almost instantly! – then you could consider them to be bags of experience points that you want to tackle. But as soon as you introduce the idea that health is sustaining damage, you move closer to a pen and paper experience. You move closer to the more old-school, hardcore approach to role-playing.

Suddenly you’re challenging players and saying, “Well, you’re gonna go fight that dragon. Are you going to skirt around everything? Are you going to fight very carefully on your way there so you’re not low on resources or low on health when you go to fight the big guy?” That the kind of thing that I think creates really interesting challenges for the player.

It’s certainly an interesting choice and, as a fan of pen and paper roleplaying games, I can’t but welcome it with open arms. Dragon Age Inquisition will be released after a long, agonizing wait in Fall 2014 for PS3, X360, PS4, X1 and PC platforms.