LogInIn a recent interview, the former General Manager at BioWare, Aaron Flynn, explained why CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3 "was better" than BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition referring to the cross-gen development and the game engine.
The former General Manager at BioWare Aaron Flynn recently admitted that CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3 "was better" than BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition referring to the mistakes the team and the publisher (Electronic Arts) made.
Speaking to GLHF for an article on USA Today's For The Win, Flynn told about the "biggest compromise" that the developers of Dragon Age: Inquisition had to make. According to Flynn, Dragon Age: Inquisition suffered the most from the cross-gen development – the game was to be launched not only on PS4 and Xbox One, but also on PS3 and Xbox 360.
He went on to explain that this decision "crushed so many ambitions" as the development team wasn't big enough to deliver a high-quality game on both console generations. "So, you had to kind of develop the lowest common denominator," Flynn said. "And as that came in, that certainly beat out some expectations and ambitions we had for certain fun features in gameplay."
The Witcher 3, another massive RPG that came out just a few months later, however, didn't face that problem as CD Projekt RED decided to focus on the latest consoles at the time, and as Flynn believes, the game only benefited from it.
Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Former BioWare's head also noted that one of the biggest issues was also related to Frostbite, the proprietary engine owned by EA. "Being a programmer, I underestimated the difficulty that Frostbite was presenting to our dev teams, and I wish I wish I’ve done a better job of communicating that to the top brass at EA," said Flynn.
As the engine was originally created to support DICE's Battlefield games, the team struggled with it as it required "Herculean effort" to transition to the engine. "To bend it to make RPG elements was certainly a challenge,” Flynn explained. "It resulted in compromises and things that we certainly didn’t want to do if it weren’t for the technology limitations."
Dragon Age: Inquisition debuted in November 2014 on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Despite critical acclaim, strong sales, and prestigious awards, the game fell short of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in the eyes of the public.
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