Session Name: | Getting Inquisitive About the AI of 'Dragon Age Inquisition' |
Speaker(s): | Sebastian Hanlon |
Company Name(s): | BioWare |
Track / Format: | AI Summit |
Overview: | With multi-game franchises, AI is often iterated on from title to title providing a sense of continuity in development. By contrast, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the 3rd installment in the series, was the first Bioware game on the new Frostbite engine which meant the game systems and tools had to be completely rebuilt. This lecture will explain how they took this opportunity to address and improve the AI system and the challenges they faced in the process. The talk will cover the systems underlying the party AI system and how they leveraged the modular approach for constructing creature AI. Additionally, Sebastian will discuss issues surrounding working in a larger, more open, more ambient environment than existed in prior games. He will show how the end result of the new architecture is a more flexible, designer-friendly system that served the gameplay goals of the team and the title. |