The sprinting of the horses in Dragon Age Inquisition was actually an illusion

A fresh tidbit from Dragon Age Inquisition Studio BioWare development revealed that the game’s ability to make your horse “sprint” was actually just an illusion.

In fact, the game simply “added speed lines and changed the camera to make it feel faster,” revealed BioWare veteran John Epler.

Epler, now creative director of the upcoming Dragon Age Dreadwolf, replied via Twitter to a thread of little-known development facts, stunning fans.

“Just to make it SUPER clear, riding a horse is faster than walking,” Epler said, “but the difference between regular horse racing and horse sprinting is non-existent except that it looks faster.

“There were three days on this project where my whole job was trying to make the horse sprint go faster.”

So why the pretense? Epler blamed Frostbite, the ubiquitous EA engine originally developed by DICE for its Battlefield first-person shooters, for apparently “couldn’t stream into levels fast enough.” Therefore, the horses had to be tied up.

BioWare’s efforts to adapt Frostbite for its role-playing games has been a notable theme (looking at You, Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda) over the past decade. The upcoming Dreadwolf will also be made in Frostbite, albeit after much more experience with the engine.

That said, it’s worth noting that the studio’s more distant Mass Effect 5 will be BioWare’s return to the more industry-standard Unreal Engine used for the original Mass Effect trilogy and its recent remaster.

So, wrong horse sprints. could you notice

Personally speaking, Dragon Age Inquisition gave birth to me.