Origins could have had multiplayer mode

The engines are the cornerstone of the development of a game. They are responsible for a large part of the basic content of a game - lighting to the detection of collisions, and can help a lot with the compatibility of the platforms forms. They leave an unmistakable mark on each game that uses it.

If you keep an eye on the Steam Greenlight a few years ago, you may already know something like that: so many games are passed through this system using the Unity engine, and these studios did not have The resources needed to completely revise visuals. As a result, Unity Games started having a separate style - a point of origin that could be recognized at a glance. Engines control so much the appearance and game of a game ... which makes the idea of ​​changing a mid-term development all the more intimidating. This riddle is the one to which the team behind Dragon Age: Origins was confronted in 2004 - and in a recent interview, we discovered what had been lost because of such a change.

Dragon prototypes: Age have been created using the Neverwinter Nights engine, which has allowed crazy things. Many Dragon Age developers were impressed by the way CD Projekt Red used the engine in their Wiccher game and wanted to see what they could do with the same tools.

But separately, BioWare also created its own engine - the same engine with which Dragon Age would end: the Eclipse engine. There was a merger of the teams working on the engine and teams working on the game, and the game engine has been modified to adapt to that. Apparently, this has been a huge setback in terms of quick output of the game, and many planned features have become less feasible - multiplayer included. Conflicting engines with certain game modes are not uncommon, so the loss

So, the upgrade was worth it? Hard to say - even the questioned developer was not sure. A loss of multiplayer is sad, but a new engine is not to make fun either. The version of Dragon Age: Origins we know would have been very different from that built in the Neverwinter Nights engine, but without side by side, it is difficult to make a strict decision.

Would [Dragon Age: Origins] came out earlier? The developer wondered. Would he have taken over the multiplayer? Would we have reworked the rendering in [Neverwinter Nights] engine to meet the requirements of the time? It's easy to ask these questions now, retrospectively. But I'm sure at the time, they were really difficult decisions to take.

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