In a new blog post, Gary McKay announces that the fourth installment in BioWare’s RPG franchise is entering the alpha phase, that is, it has for the first time been assembled as a a build playable.
“We worked hard on the different parts of the game, but it’s only from the Alpha phase that the game starts to take shape. For the first time, we have an overview on the entire game, from the first scenes of the first mission to the end, everything is now visible, audible, playable and forms a coherent experience.
If the game is obviously not finished yet, the Alpha phase is one of the most important in the development of the game, and for several reasons. First of all, we can now tackle the aesthetic realism of the final form and the recovery of the gameplay characteristics. The big question now is: “Where should we focus our efforts?” To answer this, we consult feedback from a variety of sources, including Community Council members, who each have their own experiences and perspectives, our quality review team, and the findings of our extensive internal testing. Collecting feedback from different sources gives us a better idea of how much time and energy to put into improving the experience.
Additionally, we are now able to assess game pacing, how relationships develop over time, game progression, and narrative consistency (essentially how the plot unfolds). Starting from the story, as we wrote it, we study whether the way in which it is served by the characters, the dialogues, the cutscenes and the progression in the game, is in line with our expectations. Now that we have the ability to play a full game, we are able to rehearse and polish the points our community values the most.“