Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

To be fair, we don't really know how much the 'production' time takes, or rather how much of it is optimal at this time in EA or BW or specifically in next DA. It does seem that that it's important for the game to have a proper pre-production to put stuff in place - surely that affects full production time, regardless of any other factors involved.

I guess I was thinking of game production kind of like...a housing development.  The planning (pre-production) takes years...choosing a location, getting permits, drawing blueprints, preparing the ground, laying sewer, water, power, etc., etc.,....

But once the actual, physical building (full production) starts...those things can go up in a matter of months, provided the planning was good, and they have the right people, and know their tools.

Unfortunately, I know as much about housing developments as I do about game production, so... 

EDIT:  To be clear, I'm not saying they should build the game in months.  Only that, presumably, they have a plan.  They know what they're building.  They have the tools.  And they have, or will have, the people.  Production should, in my mind, go pretty quickly.

I’ve argued this before-it doesn’t seem that they hired Lloyd (solas) for a tv spot and he tweets that he has to get back into solas mode and yet we are 3+ years away. It also contradicts what Gaider said when met Claudia Black. With Claudia black wasn’t dao already written and he had a vision for how she was going to read the lines written
There’s a formula for the process and if anything they should have a better game plan. I think we are past the stage where they have presented this to ea for approval. Weren’t they traveling to remote locations and experimenting with actors wearing the video game/green screen suits over a year ago?
They have a budget and I doubt ea said the x producer-why don’t you scout Rome-Scotland etc for set location ideas and maybe we greenlight da4

My thoughts are
Present idea With proposed cost
Greenlight
Write lines with a solid draft
Hire actors to read and record
Then cleanup and make pretty

What I don’t know is in the dai process how did dlc 1-2 work and how did that come together so quickly . Is some fly already rough drafted and if game sells does it get cleaned up

Was there dlc for andromeda that exists but rough

From what I've read in both articles on MEA and Anthem I understand BW pre-production as something more than just a 'core' and where a lot of pipelines are built to later streamline the full production. I also understood EA going all Frostbite as yet another step towards increasing streamlining of game development. Only EA knows at what stage they are in regards to FB, especially given reports on the matter - and I'm certainly not trying to claim that building games as large and complex as RPGs could now take months It's just that, given the dearth of information of where the project actually is after an already long pre-prod period and knowing little about their internal workings, I'm not really sure we can say exactly how long it may take them to create the full game. Plus, for all we know the game may as well be delayed or shifted for non-developmental reasons, like overcrowded schedule or console launch or something.

I want the preface this by saying that I already know what y’all are going to say and I don’t care. 😂

What I don’t understand is...why the feel the need to “change” it up. Inquisition went very well for them. Trespasser even more so, I think. Take the feedback and tweak it a little here and there, then basically just do the same thing again with a new story. I don’t understand why you’d take a formula that mostly worked and then completely fuck with it just for the sake of doing something new.

Inquisition was a great game for both sales and for critics, and changing it drastically just for the sake of being cutting edge seems counter productive.

If they aren’t there’s no reason for it to take six to eight years even if it did go through changes in preproduction. Dragon age 2 was released 2011. Inquisition, 2014. Anthem and Andromeda were in there but still. It just seems that if they were just using the same winning formula with the knowledge they have of frostbite...

Who knows I mean I’m not going through sit around arguing over what the hell is taking so long especially with people who seem hell bent on arguing for the sake of arguing. But that doesn’t mean I don’t wonder what the hell is taking so long. I mean they aren’t Bethesda.

I personally think they are out of preproduction, I don’t care who says they still are. If I were ea and BioWare I’d want to get a near identical but improved inquisition sequel out asap to help wash the bad taste of sci fi shooters out of consumer mouths.

I don't think anyone here suggested that DA is undergoing "drastic" change or doing it for the sake of being 'cutting edge'  ?

But I think we have to take into consideration one thing - that what they've had in Inquisition is simply not enough for the story they want to tell next. They've ditched old-gen specifically so they could make Trespasser (and Descent). Old consoles simply held them back - and in many ways the game (being the first of its kind on a new engine) was held together with string and chewing gum. And, of course, we hear already about how tough it was make it in the first place. So many changes aren't just a matter of a whim or following trends or whatever, but necessity.

And I mean, the same could have been said about DAO - it was a winning formula for them so why change that? But I think we know the question already. It's not 2009 (or 2014) anymore.

If the game has been in pre-production since 2017, it's already a year too long into pre-production and no sign from Bioware that it's leaving pre-production any time soon. Similarly, Anthem spent up to 2017 in pre-production. The game was made, through ridiculous crunch, in 18 months. If 18 months of full blown development can only net you Anthem in today's Bioware, then I can only expect another Anthem state release from a Bioware game released in 2022, if pre-production stops at least half way into 2020. If we got into full production on Monday, by Holiday 2020, we'd be at Anthem with Cataclysm state of content. Which may be OK for some. Just don't make a big deal out of it when the media, youtube and critic/user scores paint a much different picture. That's how I see it happening, any way.

Do you mean when Schrier used the term "reboot" when talking about DA4? He sort of backpedaled from that after the Bio devs tried to calm the fans panicking over the use of that word.

Really?

I'm asking if that was the case. I personally dont know

After the Crestwood attack, and you make your way through the mine and out into the snowstorm, if you can break out-of-bounds through the mountains to the south you can make your way to Skyhold - on foot. The neat thing about that is the blizzard goes with you (and it's nighttime).