Dragon Age Forum News (Apr. 02, 05)

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Here are today's Dragon Age 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.

David Gaider, Designer

Goals of Dragon Age: Quick Money or a Game for the Ages?

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I choose the latter. As they say, fortune favors the bold!

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How nice of you to volunteer us for such boldness, especially when you have nothing personally at stake.

I find it interesting that these are the two options you present. Is that it? Just one or the other? If it's not a valiant and daring "game for the ages" made solely to stoke our prestige it's therefore a short-sighted and calculated, small-scale game made solely for profit?

That seems a little extreme, don't you think?

If this was directed at me instead of an appeal to the fans out there, I would call it a very loaded question.

BG2 level interaction?
Umm... yeah.

How about no?

Just sayin'.

Story Blueprint and DA

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it would seem that revisionist history is unavoidable.

*shrug*

is no question that the pleadings for durlag's tower type stuff an an end to largely vacant maps with a handful of fed-ex quests were legion. but folks likes to 'member stuff as they will.

would be interesting to see how the developers recall.

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That's pretty much what I recall, too.

Formuliac Story Telling: Take 2
No one's taking over the world in DA, either. Though as this lecture goes on I swear I am getting strongly tempted to add it in sheerly out of maliciousness.

Goals of Dragon Age: Quick Money or a Game for the Ages?

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the games rocked. the downside is they were full of bugs, sadly. i bet if there werent showstopper bugs, overall less bugs the games would sell better and they would still do business.

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I'm not so sure about that. Troika might have acquired a reputation for its games being less polished (which is arguable), but I don't think they were particularly more buggy than, say, NWN or BG2.

Perhaps it's a sad thing to say, but I don't think there's much evidence that bugs have a very large effect on how a game sells. Some, perhaps, in the extreme cases, but not much.

Formuliac Story Telling: Take 2
I would quite agree with that, Catcher. We had the advantage in the BG series of cutscenes that easily allowed us to cut away from the player and highlight things that were happening elsewhere, such as with Irenicus.

It was an ability that was missed a lot in NWN. We eventually got some cutscene ability by SoU and (moreso) HotU, and much more with KotOR, allowing for some actual exposition. Making the antagonists much more personally relatable to the player is something we're very much focusing on for DA.

Goals of Dragon Age: Quick Money or a Game for the Ages?
Well, I believe that Bioware tends to do a lot of the patching on our own dime (such as with the Live Team)... which is more than most developers can realistically afford. While we don't make any profit doing it, one could argue that it helps our reputation and extends the lives of our games, I suppose.

Yet another question from yours truly...

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I hope they have more substance that what Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil had.

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If you want to compare the two, the ToEE vignettes were pretty short. Pretty much it just set up a quick backstory for the party that gave them a reason for coming to Hommlet that conformed with their alignment.

The DA origin preludes are much, much longer. Unique areas. Plot. Combat. Lots of dialogue. Essentially a small chapter. They also have a big affect on the rest of the game, both in terms of dialogue as well as plot (like, say, characters from your past showing up later on).

They are also not the tutorial. Not except in the story sense in that the world is introduced to the player therein.