Dragon Age: The Veilguard won't suffer from Inquisition's weird camera issues, because the guy who made it is creative director now, and he "heard the feedback"
Aug. 7, 2024“It did what we needed it to do, but we heard the feedback loud and clear”
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Dragon Age: The Veilguard shouldn’t suffer from the same camera issues that plagued some of Inquisition’s conversations.
In a recent Q&A on Discord (shared byBioWareexpert Kala Elizabeth onTwitter)Dragon Age: The Veilguardcreative director John Epler was asked whether in-game conversations would “be zoomed in like a cutscene […] or zoomed out like in DAI?”
That question seems to be referring to the way the camera worked in certain conversations in Inquisition. If you were talking with a character who didn’t necessarily warrant a full-fledged cutscene - like a trader, for instance - the camera would zoom out. The intention was clearly to offer some degree of framing for both characters, but the camera didn’t always seem to have the player character’s best angles in mind. That could occasionally result in conversations playing out like this one:
It was a notable bugbear for the Inquisition community, and plenty of mods surfaced aiming to help fix the issue. Thankfully, it doesn’t appear to be returning in The Veilguard. Epler explains that this kind of conversation will still feature, but that they will now “use a more traditional over-the-shoulder cinematic camera.”
Epler goes on to admit that the issues in Inquisition were his fault: “I created the simple conversation system in DAI,” he explains. Epler was a cinematic designer on Inquisition, and moved up into a lead role for two of the RPG’s DLC releases - The Trespasser and Jaws of Hakkon - before stepping up to creative director for The Veilguard. While he offers some defense of his camera system - “it did what we needed it to do”, he also suggests that he knows it was unpopular, saying BioWare “heard the feedback on the camera loud and clear.” Hopefully, you’ll now be much more likely to capture your good side when chatting with a merchant.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a title speaks to what I love most about BioWare’s RPGs.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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