Dragon Age: Inquisition estimated at 150 hours of play, 55 being story

During its gamescom press conference, EA addressed Dragon Age: Inquisition’s estimated play time, saying that a recent play test topped off at 150 hours.

Producer Cameron Lee confirmed to Joystiq that the figure comes from near-100 percent completion—the storyline, exploration of all areas and their side content, and companion content. Impressively, though, the main story itself still clocks in well above the 30-hour mark.

“You’ve got a main plot, with branching decisions and exclusive content,” Lee said. “And then you’ve got exploration. The way we merge those two things together is through the Inquisition, [which is] your organization, and the War Table …

“Players now have the freedom in Inquisition to get involved in the story whenever they want, or not. They can use the War Table to go and explore a new area. They could spend 15 hours in that area if they wanted to. They could come back and go, ‘Okay, now I want to get involved in the story again’ and go do part of the story.”

Lee also noted that the world does not automatically scale to the player’s level, and that some areas instead change as the player becomes stronger. The Hinterlands, for example, will eventually be inhabited by powerful dragons not present at the start of the game.

BioWare Canada general manager Aaryn Flynn told Destructoid that “if you took on the story and nothing else, roughly 55 hours is the time we’ve achieved during our playtests.”

[Joystiq, Destructoid]