Dragon Age: Inquisition heading to alpha, content cuts may happen, says Gaider
Dragon Age: Inquisition writer David Gaider has penned a blog post confirming that Dragon Age: Inquisition is 'content complete,' meaning that it's now on its way to alpha. He's shed some light on the process that follows in a new post.
It follows this new round of Dragon Age: Inquisition screenshots.
Over on Gaider's blog, he wrote, "So there's still new content being created, but at this point it's more about dealing with the content we have and getting it all to work. This is also the stage where most of the big cuts happen, since we can still create new content to deal with those cuts (as in 'change the writing to accommodate a change in the story flow').
"Once we hit Alpha, cuts are generally things that are simply excised in their entirety, without any ability to really work around them for the sake of logic or flow."
Gaider explained that the cutting stage is when a team weeds out weaker ideas to give the strong ones more space to shine, rather than simply saturating a title with concepts of varying quality. While he couldn't say what might be cut specifically, he did offer some insight into the process.
"The writing team is mostly out of the pool insofar as voiced dialogue goes. So the last of it can go through the pipeline and get edited, recorded and localized before being passed on to the cinematics people. At this point we're mostly working on what we call 'non-VO text' ...the codex entries, item and talent descriptions, GUI text. Pretty much anything that needs words.
"Still, we have to handle all bugs that come our way, and be responsive to any cuts that are occurring. This is a pretty stressful time for everyone. Every cut feels like it's reducing the overall quality of the game, until there are so many of them you feel like you're producing a piece of crap - until you remind yourself that every game goes through this, and the alternative is shipping late or not at all.
"It's not a process that any fan will truly understand. They're usually oblivious to what's going on, harping on what color the sails should be while the hull is rapidly leaking water. Which is a strange dissonance from our perspective, let me tell you."
We'll have more on Dragon Age: Inquisition as it drops. Stay tuned.
Via OXM.