Is Dragon Age Open World?
Dragon Age is a franchise of RPGs (role-playing games), known for their high fantasy elements and branching dialogues. Dragon Age video games have been praised for their atmosphere, immersion, lore, branching dialogues and gameplay. The first Dragon Age video game, Dragon Age: Origins (2009), was developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. Considering that many AAA video games feature open world design, and also considering the popularity of the Dragon Age video games, players and RPG fans may wonder whether the Dragon Age video games are considered open world in their design and gameplay.
In general, most Dragon Age video games are not open world. Instead, they are RPGs with large environments, separated by loading screens and transitions.
The Environments of Dragon Age Video Games
Dragon Age video games are known to feature several distinct environments. In these video games, the main characters are able to adventure in multiple locations, including forests, mountains, cities and dungeons. While there is an impressive variety to the locations presented in Dragon Age video games, these locations and environments are most often than not separated by transitions such as loading screens, a characteristic of many classic RPGs, but not of traditional open world video games such as Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Moreover, the different locations in early Dragon Age video games are traversed through an overworld map, which is unlike traditional open world video games such as Assassin's Creed and GTA, in which the different regions are traversed through seamless first-person or third-person roaming in the open world environment.
More Details on the Differences Between Early Dragon Age Video Games and Traditional Open World Video Games
Dragon Age video games feature large and interconnected environments, often separated by loading screens and transitions, such as other mainstream RPG video games of the 2000s and early 2010s. Traditional open world video games,such as, for example, Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), Just Cause (2006), Assassin's Creed (2007) and Prototype (2009), feature some distinct characteristics, although there are also some similarities between the early Dragon Age video games and these traditional open world video games.
Characteristics of Traditional Open World Video Games (e.g. GTA, Just Cause)
- Possibility of free-roaming in many directions in an expansive environment
- First-person or third-person camera perspective
- No loading screens or transitions between different regions
- Day and night cycle
- Weather effects
Characteristics of Early Dragon Age Video Games [Dragon Age: Origins (2009), Dragon Age II (2011), Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)]
- Limited free-roaming
- First-person or third-person camera perspective
- Loading screens or transitions between different regions
- Weather effects
As it can be seen by comparing these two lists, early Dragon Age video games do have some characteristics of traditional open world video games, such as first-person or third-person camera perspective, as well as weather effects. However, these video games do not have some of the most important characteristics of traditional open world video games, such as the possibility of free-roaming in an expansive environment, as environments in Dragon Age video games have many restrictions, and also the characteristic of the absense of loading screens or transitions between different regions and locations, which are present in Dragon Age video games. For these reasons, while Dragon Age video games indeed have some similarities with traditional open world video games, they do not feature seamless open world game environments, which is the reason why I would not describe them as traditional open world video games in the same sense as, for example, Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), Just Cause (2006), Assassin's Creed (2007) and Prototype (2009). Instead, they are RPG video games with diverse and large environments, such as Diablo II (2000), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), Mass Effect (2007), The Witcher (2007) and other RPG video games of the 2000s
Open World Design in Mainstream RPG Video Games of the 2000s and Early 2010s
The presence of large, separated environments in RPG video games is not unusual. Many mainstream RPGs of the 2000s and early 2010s have this characteristic, including, for example, Diablo II (2000), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), Mass Effect (2007), The Witcher (2007), among others. During the 2000s decade, very few mainstream single player RPG video games would feature a seamless open world, such as Gothic (2001), The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002), The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). At this time, while open world design was already well-known due to the success of Grand Theft Auto III (2001), it was still not as prevalent in many different video games genres as it became during the 2010s. During the 2000s, open world design was more prevalent in traditional open world video games, such as, for example, Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), Just Cause (2006), Assassin's Creed (2007) and Prototype (2009). At this time, open world design was also seen in many MMORPGs, but quite rarely in single player RPG video games.
Open World as Gameplay Design and as Video Game Genre - The Case of Dragon Age
There is often debate as to whether certain video games could be described as open world. The nature of this debate is due to the fact that there is not a single concept of what open world in video games means. Some consider open world in video games the possibility of the character roaming in many different directions. Others consider open world to be a seamless open world game environment, with the absense of loading screens and transitions. In these regards, the early Dragon Age video games indeed allow the main characters to move in many different directions, with multiple accessible and large environments throughout the gameplay. In this sense, Dragon Age video games could be considered open world in the same sense as Diablo II (2000), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), Mass Effect (2007), The Witcher (2007) and other RPG video games of the 2000s. However, Dragon Age video games do not feature a seamless open world such as traditional open world video games, such as, for example, Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), Just Cause (2006), Assassin's Creed (2007) and Prototype (2009). Environments in early Dragon Age video games are separated by loading screens and transitions.
Sources of Research: