Twitter’s ‘Useless’ Dragon Age Facts Shed Some New Light On The Series

If you, like many others, have been stuck waiting nearly a decade for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, you have also been living off crumbs for the series since Dragon Age: Inquisition launched in 2014. Well, thanks to the wonders of social media engagement farming, we got a few new glimpses into the development of Bioware’s fantasy role-playing games to tide us over until we get more Dreadwolf news.

It all started with a Twitter trend asking what “useless” trivia people knew about various art forms and media properties—there was “useless” video game knowledge, for instance, as well as “useless” animation facts—and eventually one was made asking people for their most useless Dragon Age facts. While some folks talked about some well-known facts, such as that the name for the series’ world, Thedas, was a code name that stood for “The Dragon Age setting” that stuck, there were a few BioWare developers who chimed in and told some behind-the-scenes stories about the RPGs’ development.

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Horses don’t actually sprint in Dragon Age: Inquistion

One of the funniest came from John Epler, currently creative director on Dreadwolf, explaining that despite having a sprint option in Dragon Age: Inquisition when riding a mount, the game doesn’t actually increase your movement speed, it just adds some effects and moves the camera slightly so the player feels like they’re going faster. It’s an illusion, and now that I’ve spent over a hundred hours in that game, it makes me feel incredibly foolish for having used the function in the first place.

Why Iron Bull’s romance scene is different than others

While some of these stories remind us that a lot of the video game experience is smoke and mirrors, some of them are genuinely interesting in how they illustrate that surprising problems require surprising solutions. For instance, Epler recounted that the romance scene you can share with Inquisition’s resident pansexual hunk Iron Bull takes place in a different tower than the scenes with other romanceable characters do. For characters like Dorian and Sera, the player meets up with their love interest in their quarters to do the horizontal tango, which is located in the central tower of the party’s home base. For Iron Bull, however, part of the scene takes place in a separate tower, and it takes a comedic turn as multiple characters walk into the room after the lovers have had their fun. Because the mocap for the scene involved your allies Josephine, Cassandra, and others walking through a doorway, the scene wouldn’t have worked in the player’s quarters, as the entrance to that room has a flight of stairs. So the developers created a special sex tower just for this scene.

Dragon Age: Inquistion’s ending had more permutations

Whether prompted by the trend or not, David Gaider, who previously acted as a writer on the series before departing in 2016, posted what was the original roadmap for Dragon Age: Inquisition’s ending. The ending that launched with the game featured a short stinger of Solas, the party member turned surprise villain, meeting with enigmatic series mainstay Flemeth and seemingly absorbing her life and power for his own. As it turns out, there was an outline for the ending that would have ended with the player or her daughter Morrigan killing her, instead. This would have been tied up in a decision earlier in the game in which the player decides to drink from the Well of Sorrows, essentially giving Flemeth control of the one who partook. The controlled character would have fought Solas on her behalf, but it seems, regardless, Solas would have left and either the player or Morrigan would have killed Flemeth. There’s not a ton of detail, but it does seem Inquisition’s finale had a lot more conflict going on at one point.

Gaider says in the thread that he was okay with how the final scene ended up, comparing it to a Marvel-style stinger that would hint at something to come, and says the team didn’t make a playable build of the original outline. Funnily enough, the player character is also present in the scene that came to be, out of shot and in the bushes. This isn’t for any narrative reason, however. Gaider speculates this is because the player had to be present in an in-game environment to play the cutscene.

As neat as it is to hear more behind-the-scenes stories about how Dragon Age: Inquisition came to be, it would be even nicer to hear more about Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. The sequel has been in the works for nearly a decade at this point. Recently, fans got a chance to experience the universe in a new way with the Dragon Age: Absolution anime on Netflix, which also included what seems to be hints toward either a new season or story beats in Dreadwolf.

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