Lesson 6 of 10
In Progress

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Matthew Colon September 23, 2020
  1. What do you think of Dragon Age Inquisition?
    1. What do you think of the prequels?
  2. What key themes did you observe?
  3. How did the pressure of making up for previous missteps help or hinder Inquisition?
    1. How do you utilize past mistakes without overreacting to them?
  4. Frostbite was a sexy new game engine with a ton of awesome features, but not designed for the title they were trying to make. Do you see people in CGDC making a similar mistake, choosing what an engine like Unity/Unreal can do instead of what it does do?
  5. “I first saw Dragon Age: Inquisition in a lavish suit at the Grand Hyatt hotel in downtown Seattle. It was August 2013, and the next day BioWare planned to show the game to fans at PAX… I watched Mark Darrah and Mike Laidlaw play through a beautiful thirty-minute demo… It all looked fantastic. None of it made it into Dragon Age: Inquisition.”
    1. What do you think about making special demos?
  6. Have you faced this choice before, and if so, what have you done?
  7. “‘I would love to have no crunch ever,’ said Flynn. ‘I think it remains to be seen whether crunching actually works. Obviously a ton of literature says it doesn’t. I think everybody finds a time in their development careers where you’re going ‘”I don’t see what options we have.”’”
    1. It’s easy to armchair quarterback and say “Crunch is bad, don’t do that!” but really, what are the alternatives when you are up against the wall?
  8. If you are against Crunch, what do you vow today to do instead?
  9. The phrase “canary in the coal mine” refers to a time when miners would take a canary with them into the mines. If the canary died while they worked, it told them dangerous undetectable gasses were present and harming them. What are key indicators of poor pre-production?
  10. Do you have any signs in your project you didn’t do enough pre-production?
  11. What lessons can you apply to your project?