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Dragon Age Forum News (Apr. 29, 06)

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by Eldular, Apr 29, 2006.

  1. Eldular Gems: 10/31
    Latest gem: Zircon

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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.

    David Gaider, Lead Writer

    On randomness and levels

    To be honest however, I like the levelled system in Oblivion alot. It makes the game more fun and challenging
    I would just interject with my two cents on this particular topic: I don't mind leveled encounters and loot to a point, but from my experience playing Oblivion it seems like this went a little too far. While it does service the free-roaming style of the game -- you're never forced to avoid areas because they're too difficult or too easy and thus can do absolutely anything in the game in any order you wish -- it also removed what I thought to be any sense of progression. Absolutely every creature keeps pace with you at all times, meaning you can be Arena Champion at level 1 just as those bandits you encounter at high levels now are wearing daedric armor and really should be out conquering cities rather than hanging out in caves. :)

    So I see why they did it for this kind of sandbox game, and it's not a bad system to promote exploration, but I'm not sure that we would need it to go quite so far if we had something similar in DA. Does that make sense?

    Character face-maker...

    Well, man, sorry but I really couldn't believe you don't mind what your competitors do...
    And... how did you get that impression from what I said? I meant that just because another type of game is capable of putting in a feature does not automatically mean that our game can or even should do the same. It has nothing to do with our view of the industry and our competition.

    Actually the impression I had is that what's behind the "lines" is that the game is already stone-set, that you don't like much some "potential buyers" requests, but also that you guys don't want to give much news to artificially keep the suspence...so I don't hide this to you...
    We don't take requests... from potential buyers or otherwise (unless what you're purchasing is BioWare, at which point we'll gladly take your requests) ;). Your input is welcome, however, though if you're going to blame the fact that our game might not be tailored exactly to your tastes on our marketers that seems hardly fair. But whatever.

    The fact that we announced so early and have the forum here is for us to get input like this. We're certainly not trying to "artificially keep the suspense". We're not marketing the game at all at this point. Or do you get the impression we are?

    I actually wonder what kind of share of gameplayers' market Bioware marketing guys have chosen this time... :rolleyes:
    Hopefully enough of a market share to keep us in business. If we didn't have to worry about money, then perhaps we would make niche-oriented roguelikes -- or maybe not. Are you under the impression that we don't like the games we develop, that we bitterly resent our masters in the marketing department? Because that would be... odd. :)

    Horses/Ponies!

    Lord of the Rings Trilogy without horses... has a whole new meaning...

    "Oh, look! We've come across the WALKERS of Rohan!" Also known as the Walking Lords. I don't know... it just doesn't have the same ring to it.
    And were we to do a story that had a land in it like Rohan -- and a lot of mounted troops riding around and engaging in combat -- then obviously that would be a more important feature in a game. Like I said before, if proper riding was to be done then it should play a sufficiently large role in the story and gameplay in order to justify the work involved. It won't be added as a "wouldn't it be nice" feature or something that's just there to give end users more options for modding.

    I suspect we'll get horses as ambient models, though, and perhaps even some NPC riders. I don't remember if they were on the "for sure" model list or not.

    after Oblivion

    I'd wager that 90% of the classic RPGs in the genre had little to no dialogue choices.
    I'd say this is actually true. Interactive dialogue is definitely not the norm by any stretch of the imagination.

    I'd also wager that both Morrowind and Oblivion each alone hold easily twice the dialogue of NWN.
    Hmmm. I actually doubt that, going by word count alone. It might be close, due to the sheer number of characters in Morrowind and Oblivion, but your average character in NWN had between 500 and 1000 words -- and anyone that was a quest-giver or major character went much, much higher than that.

    Regardless of what you think of the quality of said dialogue, I don't think there should be an argument that Oblivion and its ilk have dialogue that is fairly sparse.

    And if you want to debate the quality of dialogue, I'd like to point out that NWN didn't have particularly good dialogue.
    Indeed? I realize one might dismiss me as being biased (being a writer) but if I look critically at the NWN OC (which it seems we must forever do here, as if it were the only game we've ever done, but so be it) I would say that it's flaws lie in the fairly mechanical story and design, not in its dialogue (which in some places -- much of Chapter 2, for example -- was actually pretty strong.) Especially when held up in comparison to that 90% mentioned up top. I mean, say what you will, dialogue is one of our strengths.

    More:

    I feel bad slamming the dialogue to the guy who wrote it, but honestly I can't say that I was overly impressed. There are many here who seem to revere you as a designer and I don't want to create undue arguements.
    I didn't write NWN. I wrote part of it in Chapter 2, but that's about it.

    Even so, I can look at the dialogue writing in all of our games and mark the progress that it has made, especially on the technical side.

    I suspect that if you can say that Ultima VII's dialogue was actually good, then I suspect you're talking about simply how much you enjoyed the writing overall. Which, indeed, is pretty subjective.

    Even so, obviously there is room for improvement on several levels. I never suggested otherwise. All I said is that if you are going to compare the original NWN campaign to most other RPG's, in terms of dialogue it actually compares very favorably.

    No Dragon Age at E3 2006?

    Actually, I'd be quite happy if developers would stop talking about their upcoming games years in advance, so this is a positive for me. Despite wanting info on DA, myself, the little snippits of info leaking out over a loooooong period of time is just nuts. I'd much prefer a simple game announcement, list key features, screenshots of the actual game, and discuss a bit about story and gameplay elements when the game is going to be released within the year. I think a year is plenty of time to get people interested and excited about your game.

    The other side of that argument is that, perhaps, BioWare gleans a lot of good tips about what players are looking for from the forums over the years of no information. I'd expect, though, that they actually have people that know what they are about without us telling them how to do their job for those many years, and there are other sources for their info. ;)
    For those who like to stick around for the entire period, I imagine it could be a bit tiring.

    We didn't really announce to gain publicity, though. There was a short spat of it after the announcement, of course, but we expected that to go away and it has. We announced so the community would know that we do have a PC project in the wings, and a major one, and so I wouldn't have to say "I'm working on an unannounced project" for the next bazillion years (which would be boring).

    Not to mention, as has already been said, this does give us the occasional chance to get some feedback. Not that we don't have a solid idea of what we want to do (because we do) and we're not looking to take "requests from our customers" as one fellow put it... but it's been handy more than once to come here and float a question or two (real subtle-like) and see what gets said about it. It's also a good way of gauging opinions as we're working, instead of it being entirely in a vacuum (I hate toiling in silence, myself).

    But, yeah, a year or so out from release... that's when you will start hearing the PR machine roll. If the wait is tiresome, I would suggest going away and simply coming back once you start hearing it churn. Trust me, it will be quiet until then.

    So, what about the dragons?

    Okay, there are definitely going to be dragons in DA(I hope), but what are they going to be like, Majestic, intelligent, powerful, with the ability to communicate telepathically, or stupid, brute forced pets to only do their masters bidding, or treasure hording, protective idiots who hog gold and never do anything with it.
    Interesting that the other two options you provide above are so obviously negative. :)

    At any rate, no, dragons will be none of these three things. You also won't get one as a pet.

    More:

    Hey! This game is called "Dragon Age" right? Maybe its a war between the dragonlike creatures and the humans!!! Maybe we are in the age of dragons, but the humans are having a revolution against the dragons or vice versa? And that other race you can play as is a dragon not a lizard.
    Just to repeat, as it's been mentioned before, the game is not called Dragon Age because the story/world centers around dragons, but rather because that's the name of the current Age. It's about the Age and not necessarily the dragon.

    Also, so Dragons will not be wise or intelligent, this is a disappointment.
    In point of fact, one of the options you put forward was "Majestic, intelligent, powerful, with the ability to communicate telepathically" and I said it would not be that.

    We've no reason to copy dragons out of D&D or the Dragonriders of Pern just because. Our dragons will fit in with the tone of the rest of our setting.

    More:

    so its dragon AGE, so there are not neceserily any dragons?
    No, there are definitely dragons. They are simply not what the story and/or setting are all about, that's all. They're indicative of the type of age that the world is in and... well, they play a pivotal role, if not an all-encompassing one.

    I will say no more. My lips are sealed.

    Derek French, Technical Producer

    is dragon age getting developmentally shafted for mass effect?

    However, doesn't it get developmentally shifted (sic) for this new MMO game you recently announced?

    No. BioWare Austin is developing the MMO. We are up in Edmonton. Totally different teams. Totally different countries. Same company, though. :)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2018
    Eldular, Apr 29, 2006
    #1
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