BioWare Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Scott Greig, DA Project Director/Producer

Scott's Story

Hello, Scott! From your Bioware title, it looks as though you're in charge of Dragon Age. Is that true? If so, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Well, technically I'm in charge but a project like this starts to develop a life of it's own We have built a very strong team here and there is serious collaboration on every aspect of the game. As far as myself, I was BioWare's first official employee (that was over eight years ago) and I was the lead programmer on both Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

Species: open vs. closed

I had thought from brief info that I read elsewhere in previews that these races would be like elves, dwarves, and humans but that they wouldn't actually be those races.

That was actually a misquote. I was present for that interview and what was said was something like: "The races in the game will be familiar to fans but will have some interesting features that will make them unique the the Dragon Age world." I can easily see how this was misinterpreted. Sorry about the confusion.

'Origin' stories

my question is: how far is does your choice of 'origin' story tie you to a particular set of characteristics for your PC, i.e. will it be broadly generic (e.g. or ) or tediously detailed (e.g. happy-go-lucky 28-year-old vagabond thief named Sneaky Sam with red hair, freckles, and a rat named Whiskers)?

Think of them more as character archetypes. You will still be able to customize your character's name, appearance, sex, stats etc. Our goal here is to allow you to play the game with the fantasy character type of your choice. We won't of course be able to hit all of the permutations but the broad categories should be covered and there will be lot of room for guiding your destiny as the game progresses.

and can you forgo an origin story altogether and simply play as an unknown without any substantial ties to the story/setting?

There will always be the option of the "Mysterious Stranger" for those of you that don't want to pick defined origin story. This will still have the same level of story involvement and interaction. The npc's will just react to your character as if your background was unknown.

Scripting Language

On the other hand, a good friend of mine said that some EA guy once said "Rule #1, don't invent your own Scripting Language".

Rule #2, is don't allow user created scripts to crash the game. We actually used Lua for MDK2. When we started NWN we decided to create our own scripting language because we wanted to protect the server as much as possible from runaway scripts. Of course this caused an entirely different set of problems....

Single Player Experience

With all the work going into creating the new worlds, rulesystem, etc., a new engine and providing us with a toolset once again as well, will there be any time left to provide us with a decent single-player game. I know MP is the (not so) new (anymore) way to go and will deffinatly outsell a singe-player game, but I buy my RPG's for the single-player story mostly.

Our goal from day one is to deliver the best single player experience that we can. My personal opinion is that Dragon Age will be our best single player game to date, but I am a little biased You will just have to judge for yourself how well we do.

Live Team Role

Scott, is it too early to comment on what the Live Team's role will be with respect to the overall development of Dragon Age?

All of the nuts and bolts work will be done by the project team. That said, the live team is definitely involved in the planning and execution of the various features.

David Gaider, Designer

Writing Team

In that Gamespy article they mentioned that "We've even hired more and better writers.", I hope this includes David Gaider, he's put humour, romance and intrigue into every game he's worked on since Baldur's Gate. No one can bring party members to life like him...

Wow, thanks for the compliment. I am, indeed, the senior writer working on Dragon Age.

Languages

We are quite serious about these languages not only having a serious place in our world but also in our game mechanic. If nothing else, it will add some logic to how things and people are named in our world aside from just pulling something "fantasy-ish" off the top of my head.

Expectations

I agree with much of what Grom has said, a few things I don't so much. Either way, without going into detail we have taken the opportunity to make some things about our world very different from the "generic fantasy norm" that some call D&D and its published campaign worlds. Why wouldn't we, after all?We didn't make things different, however, just for the sake of making them different. I like what we've done (and am naturally biased) and also think we've made sure that every part of the background world is someplace that would be interesting to visit and adventure in. The setting and history accomodates our classes and system in a logical way and also sets up an interesting dynamic... overall, we strove to make it a place that we would really want to GM a group of players in.

So we haven't gone the same old route, we've taken a few chances, but from the point of view that this is supposed to be both a place to game in as well as a place that inspires storytelling. The details will all come in the future, I think, but I thought you might be interested to know from which angle we approached our world creation.

Multiplayer Combat

Hmm... how does it work in multiplayer? Can one player still control a full party during a DM'd session, or even in a persistant world if those will be possible?

How multiplayer functions is something we can't discuss just yet, I'm afraid.

More: It will be real time but can be paused to issue orders... "pause and play" as many of our other games have been.

Species: open vs. closed

I had thought from brief info that I read elsewhere in previews that these races would be like elves, dwarves, and humans but that they wouldn't actually be those races. Unfortunately, calling them by those names means that we are going to be bringing along all the baggage that those names have generated from all their many uses throughout fantasy literature, regardless of how they are designed in DA.

True, and we've thought of that. Details will be forthcoming in the future, but I can safely say that these races are familiar... and yet also quite different from what you would expect (in good and intriguing ways, I hope). They are also not alone.

More: Our world has its own specific races with their own cultures, so by your definition I guess that's closed? How modifiable races would be via the toolset, however, is yet to be determined.

Cynicism

Why? ToB was a disappointment as well as the NWN OC. SoU was palatable and HotU was okay at best. KotOR was good but had no replay value beyond twice. I think my cynicism is well placed.

I don't think your cynicism is misplaced, either. Whether or not you feel we have feet of clay is a result of your own viewpoint on our games to date, but either way I wouldn't expect unquestioning adulation from anyone. That said, recognize that having our own IP gives us certain freedoms that we didn't have before and we fully intend to capitalize on that freedom big-time with, I think, our best effort yet. Whether or not we will deliver on that promise is certainly up for debate, naturally.

One thing to keep in mind, as well, is part of the argument for us making this kind of spiritual successor in the first place: anyone else doing a NWN-ish type of game is going to have to go through all the pitfalls and mistakes that we did. It is not, I assure you, a matter of looking at the end product and saying "Oh, I can do better than that." We learned a lot the first time out and perhaps we can capitalize on what we learned successfully. That's the idea, anyhow.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Armour

We're still figuring out how armor effects a person in combat. It's a huge balancing act that needs to consider many factors. What chance does someone have to hit someone else? How much damage should they do? How much should armor protect someone, and should diffrent armor protect against diffrent types of attacks? What sort of cost to the player should be incured for armor? Gold, weight, speed. If armor is very protective then should a player have to develop skill in it? All these things are still being worked out between our technical designers, and QA.

Combat

Very true, and it all depends on how much you want to use your imagination to justify a rule, or how detailed you want to make the rules so they seem "realistic". In the example you provided we could define basic human traits with a speed statistic, an accuracy statistic, strength, reflexes, arm reach, balance, stamina. But as the body doesn't act without the mind we could also include an intuition stat, to represent the player's ability to take in lots of information and make the right choice quickly. A wit stat that represents the player's quickness of mind. and other mental type characteristics. Then on top of all that they need skill as you say. So a very skilled, but slower, weaker, and dumber guy, could beat down a fast, strong, novice.

More on Strength: It depends on how basic you want the rules. If the only way to measure someone's natual potential in combat is with a "strenght" statistic, then you would have to infer that strength also means accuracy. We're currently testing the rules system in a simulator. The idea is that speed, strength, and skill are the biggest factors in hitting, and damaging your opponent.

Dragon Age Action Figures?

Anything is possible regarding original and creative IP. But it all depends on demand from the public. If people want books, toys, other types of video games, cars, t-shirts, posters, stuffed toys, lead figures, soundtracks, plates, water bottles, freezy pops, lunch boxes, juice, computer cases, saturday morning T.V. show (which we'll get Dave Gaider to write ), then we'll do it.

Computer Rules

The rule system, (classes, combat, spells, skills) and the world, (it's races, culture, history, monsters, etc.) Will be completely made up from the mad minds of the writters and designers we have chained to their desk.None of it will be based on DnD, or d20. We're desinging a system that works inside a computer.

Finally some 'real' information!!! Nice! Does 'inside a computer' mean it's more real-time system like JE? Actually I like that idea. Just don't make it that you only control one main character in pseudo-real time system like NWN. In my opinion, that was somewhat boring.

When I say inside a computer, I just mean the diffrence between a PnP game, and a computer game. We don't know at the moment if we will port it to other consoles but we are developing it for use on a personal computer.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Troubleshooting:

Are you running the game in 16M texture compatibilty mode with Environment mapping turned off? If so try toggling one of those options on/off, it should fix the problem.