Electronic Arts didn’t just announce the delay of Battlefield Hardline on Tuesday, but also BioWare’s Dragon Age: Inquisition . The highly anticipated role-playing title for the PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC only received a slight slip in comparison, but still one that will add to the agony of the wait for some anxious gamers.
Dragon Age: Inquisiton was originally scheduled to release on October 7. An update from BioWare reveals a delay of almost a month and a half.
“I’m writing to let you know that Dragon Age: Inquisition has a new release date of November 18, 2014 in North America (November 21st in EU),” Executive Producer Mark Darrah wrote on the game’s official site . “We appreciate the enormous support we’ve received from all of you to get to this point, and while this extra few weeks may not seem like a lot, I know the game you’ll play will be all the better for it.”
“Since we began working on Dragon Age: Inquisition almost four years ago, our goal was to create the best Dragon Age experience ever,” Darrah continued. “It was that goal that motivated many of our decisions: moving to Frostbite, bringing race choice and customization back, improving tactical camera, building a team of characters whose relationships evolve based on your actions, and most importantly, crafting an epic, nation-spanning story that both draws upon past games and takes you to many new places in the realm of Thedas.”
So what will BioWare work on in those critical extra few weeks? According to Darrah, it will be to polish the entire Dragon Age: Inquisition experience.
That Inquisition would need some extra time for polishing is not a surprise. The Frostbite 3-powered game is the largest created yet. It’s not quite the open-world experience of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , but is divided into several different zones that make up the entire continent of Thedas. Just one of these zones is said to be four to five times larger than the entire map of the first game in the series, Dragon Age: Origins .
The decision to delay Dragon Age: Inquisition can only be seen as a positive from a gamer perspective, just like the delay of Battlefield: Hardline . It also helps the reputation of both Electronic Arts and BioWare. Dragon Age 2 was not well-received by fans of Origin s , and Electronic Arts’ reputation has suffered from series of buggy releases.
Reaction to the Dragon Age delay was mixed, but most seem to be more concerned about having to wait a little over a month to get their fix.
They pushed back the @dragonage release by a month [dramatically throws myself onto the bed and weeps]
— Laura Donut (@lauraismeat) July 22, 2014
@nkjemisin I concur, but a month delay for a game is hardly a delay. It’s just more time to revisit Dragon Age: uno y dos.
— Jason Jackson (@JasonJackson151) July 22, 2014
Super sad that DAI has gotten delayed, but it’ll totally be worth the wait. @dragonage
— kelby (@kelbyraea) July 22, 2014