Presumably this part will be real-time combat only.
I’ve been hearing rumours about Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer for a few days now, and it turns out those rumours were largely correct. BioWare has announced that the game will include a Mass Effect 3 style co-operative, four player multiplayer mode.
The crucial difference, as spelled out in the official FAQ for multiplayer, appears to be that single and multiplayer have been decoupled. In Mass Effect 3, playing multiplayer increased your war assets and could influence the eventual outcome of your single player campaign. For Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare seem pretty adamant that “The SP campaign is separate from MP” and state “Our goal with Dragon Age multiplayer is not to affect your SP campaign.”
Otherwise, it’s sounding pretty similar to what Mass Effect 3 did. Co-operative, four player dungeon crawls (as opposed to straight horde waves) with player characters being ‘Agents of the Inquisition.’ The FAQ says the game will launch with 12 different characters (four from each class) and that more will be added later. If this is also like Mass Effect, it’ll be in free updates.
You unlock different characters by crafting their armour from materials acquired from the salvage of weapons and weapon mods. The latter are found in chests, which you are able to buy at the end of successful missions with earned and pilfered gold coins. Real life money can be spent on “Platinum,” which will presumably buy you more chests than mere gold coins. Again, this is like the Mass Effect 3 system and item packs.
According to BioWare “There will be no pay walls in Dragon Age multiplayer. Everything is accessible with gold coins.” It’ll just take longer, obviously. Since this is a co-op only mode, the advantage people who spend real money will get is making their existing characters more proficient (which should actually kind of help other people) and unlocking stuff faster.
Interestingly, BioWare also suggest that the leak of multiplayer-only achievements last week was false. “There will be no exclusive MP achievements,” the FAQ states.
It’s quite a lengthy piece, so if you want to know as much as possible about the multiplayer mode in Dragon Age: Inquisition, give it a read.
