Dragon Age: Inquisition developer BioWare is making some changes to the dialogue system seen in the studio's previous games but isn't getting rid of it, said Inquisition's developers during a PAX Australia panel today, as reported by one of the attendees on the BioWare forums.
Inquisition will still contain the moral choice system BioWare is known for, but writer Patrick Weekes said he thought that over the years, Mass Effect turned into a pick-the-red-or-blue-option-to-win experience. For Inquisition, the studio is looking to include elements aside from the player's decisions that influence the dialogue trees, such as the player's statistics or the companions they have present during a conversation. However, BioWare rejected the idea of introducing some statistical randomness into dialogue outcomes.
The developers also acknowledged that in Dragon Age 2, the tenor of a character's statement didn't always jibe with the dialogue option that a player picked to say it. They said they're keeping the difficulty of paraphrasing in mind for Inquisition.
In addition, BioWare reiterated its promise that Iniquisition will have much more varied environments than its predecessor, and that the new game will mark a return to the studio's history of exploration-focused games.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is set for release in fall 2014 on Windows PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. You can check out its E3 2013 trailer below.
Update: This article originally referred to Patrick Weekes as the lead writer for Dragon Age: Inquisition. He is one of the game's writers, but not its lead writer. We've edited the article above to reflect this.