Dragon Age Forum News (Apr. 11, 06)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum. 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.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

Where are the screens?

At the moment we do not have any current screen shots. There will be screenshots released in the future, but I don't have any set date of when. Stay tuned.

Technical Aspects of DA

We're not yet ready to release that info, sorry. It'll all be made known, just not yet. Stay tuned.

Scott Meadows, Programmer

MMORPG

I think the thing that you are missing is the story.

What's the one thing missing from an MMO, a strong story.

That is why you never got bored with BG2, it never let you get bored, you always had a mission that meant something.

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When did people confuse MMO for On-Line Multiplayer.
I am not saying that anyone here is, but I dislike when people try to compare the two.
I feel like I can rant a bit in this thread, hope you don't mind

On-line Multiplayer games have been around for years.
My first one, that I can recall was back in 1988.

NWN is a great On-line Multiplayer game. When I hosted my own server and 2-6 friends playing on various nights it was fun and everyone understood that if they missed a night then they had to catch up on their own time, we didn't wait for anyone and it flowed quite nice.
We enjoyed a number of the vault modules and everything was good.

It's not like we had this huge pool of people to play with. Everything was controlled and managed by the DM.
Now trying to do that in an MMO would be tough in my opinion.

Now don't get me wrong I like both types of games. I am going through Guild Wars right now and having a lot of fun.

I just wish people would stop trying to compare these two entities. They are different types of games with different types of goals.

(Whew, I feel a bit better now, thx for listening)

David Gaider, Lead Writer

Technical Aspects of DA

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Whith "stay tuned", do you mean it can happen any minute?

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No, we don't mean that. The bulk of the content for DA is in production right now, but we're still a long way off from wanting to drum up publicity for it.

Races?

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So please, Bioware developers, let there be a "Burly Scotsman" voiceset during character generation!

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Sorry. Our dwarves do not speak with a Scottish accent.

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Personally, instead of just twisting the standard races, I'd prefer to see a wholly unique set of races with unique cultures.

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That has merit... to a point.

What often ends up happening in that case, however, is you get anthropomorphic races (cat-men, lizard-men, panda-men, whatever-men, etc.) or you get something pretty bizarrely different.

Now, bizarre doesn't necessarily mean bad. But it can be pretty hard for a player to identify with. As Gromnir keeps saying (and he's absolutely right about this), the advantage of using archetypes is that you don't need to explain them. Players make certain assumptions about archetypes that allow them to fill in the blanks on their own... and when you're trying to introduce a whole new world to a player, taking advantage of archetypes allows the player to identify that much more quickly without being overwhelmed by new information. That's why most new races tend to be anthropomorphic, after all -- their characteristics are assumed (cat-men are agile, testy and sneaky... lizard-men are amphibious and creepy and strong, etc.) thus giving the race seeming depth without needing to go as much into a description.

Of course, at the other end is the point where using too many archetypes threatens to become cliche. You don't really want that, either.

So we decided that we will use some of the familiar and combine it with our own twists as well as some entirely new stuff. We decided to include our version of elves and dwarves very deliberately -- and while you (and others) might say you'd prefer to have all unique races that has to be said recognizing that they'd also be that much harder to get into.
Let's face it, after all. Nothing is more boring than listening to a player going on about his unique campaign world with all its carefully-crafted nations and races and such. It might be very good, but unless it's at least a little accessible it's a really hard sell and that applies to us as well as anyone else.

The Undead Thread

There are "undead" creatures in Dragon Age -- as in animated corpses of varying types, things that continue to move and act even though they are clearly dead.

There is a distinct rationale for how and why these creatures exist, and it provides no further proof of the divine or in the existence of souls and an afterlife than anything else, though some may choose to believe otherwise.

More:

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On another note, it seems DA is a little less steeped in religion than other fantasy settings.

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Really? That's an odd perception... and quite untrue. Just because there is no direct proof of the gods does not mean that people don't believe in them, just as they believe in an afterlife even if there is no evidence of that, either.

Such belief is the very foundation of faith, after all. What need would there be for faith if there was direct evidence of the divine? Faith would be replaced by certainty. But I've gone down this road before.

At any rate, the DA setting is very much steeped in religion.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

The usefullness of stats

We're not doing a learn-by-doing system.

If you want your character to get stronger, it won't happen by jumping around and punching trees...

As to how character generation will work, that remains to be seen... it's pretty much a given that you will be assigning values of some sort, whether they're text based or numerical.

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*shrug* If I'm playing a warrior, all things being equal I would assume that the intelligent choice for me would be to chose the armour that provides the better protection.

Leathers vs. Plate?

No brainer, even if I do look nicer in the leather... unless of course, looking good is of paramount importance to my character.

Make your choice, live with the consequence. We're not here to save you from yourself.