Dragon Age: Dreadwolf would be nice to learn from its most distant predecessor, especially when it comes to the cult system of relationships. Fans expect a lot from the upcoming fourth installment of the cult fantasy role-playing game BioWare, especially after the murderous cliffhanger Dragon Age: Inquisition: Trespasser. If there’s one thing the sequel should expand on compared to previous games, it’s the long-standing moral choice system.
What set Dragon Age: Origins apart from other role-playing games with moral choice systems, such as its much more popular sister series Mass Effect, was its approach to the then-respected tradition of game design. Although there are traditional choices in these games, such as choosing sides to magicians or templars, instead of these choices affecting the overall slider that determines the overall morale of the player, these choices affect the relationship with fellow players. This contributed to making more strategic decisions along the course of the plot, depending on who was with the player at the moment, and this should be repeated for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.
No matter how solid this system is, there are new places in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf where it can be used. There is no better example of this than Fallout: New Vegas, which did something similar to Dragon Age with its reputation system. This example should be followed when the Inquisitor enters Tevinter in search of the Terrible Wolf.
The Dragon Age: Dreadwolf relationship system should extend to city leaders and other non-player characters
Unlike previous games, which took place in countries located in the same time zone, so Inquisition may feature such regulars of the series as Morrigan, Dreadwolf will take place in the previously unseen Empire of Tevinter. The Inquisitor, the main character of the Inquisition, specially chose this place to find an advantage over a friend who has become an enemy of Solas, whom he does not suspect. This means that the Inquisitor will enter this hostile land without friends, without allies and with very few connections.
With that in mind, it provides an opportunity to expand the relationship system in a way that Origins teased but never fully adhered to, and Fallout: New Vegas never really realized the potential: expanding the relationship system to include city leaders and other important NPCs. There are many things that have held back Dragon Age compared to role-playing games, such as The Witcher, but one thing is that its first part is the only one that took his ideas and really used them as far as it was possible for that time. Having to keep track of what every city leader in Tevinter thinks about the player’s character and how much they can be relied upon when the time comes would be a great way to develop what Origins has built into its relationship system.
The Dragon Age series has become simpler and simpler due to the fact that it is more focused on the console release compared to Origins, as well as due to EA’s intervention in development. Dragon Age: Deadwolf, which is supposed to be released at the end of 2023, has a chance to fix this by expanding the relationship system to include a wide range of characters in the game who will participate in the final confrontation. With any luck, this will be the most difficult of the four games at the moment.
