Dragon Age Forum News (Dec. 09, 05)

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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

Class restrictions based on stereotypes?

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Why create pointless tedium by forcing the players to hang out in town waiting for that mana bar to refresh??

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Um... who said we would do that?

Those areas don't even have to be hard to reach if we don't want to... as far as you know, reaching "camp" could be as easy as going back to the Ebon Hawk in KotOR. Please don't assume anything.

As far as "tedium" goes, I think a little bit of time management is no crime. We're not going to have "mana areas" and likely no mana potions either -- they don't exist in the world and we're not going to insert them just because it's nifty -- so we're going to balance the levels of time and mana management that a player has to deal with until we get the mix right. Certainly it's not something that's intended to be inflicted on the player -- there are other reasons why we might want to use a camp area, and having reasons to go there might just be a good thing, after all. You just don't know, do you?

Save the world? -Again-? No thanks.

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Does this mean the fate of the world is in our characters hands?

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Nope. I said a long time ago that you don't save the world in DA (though epic events are indeed in the offing). Which makes the discussion moot, but that's never stopped anyone before.

More:

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I'm talking about the way everyone you meet immediately opens up to you, tells you their problems, sends you to go get item x, talk to person y, or slay monster z. Make it so that you have to do things to earn respect, and prove you are capable of handling problems, before they trust you with all their hopes and dreams.

Other games have tried it, but its always seemed extremely transparent... a person would say "I have a great big huge problem, and I need a hero... and I'll let you try, but only if you take this worthless piece of junk to the neighbouring town's mayor, turn around three times and squak like a chicken. Then I'll KNOW you are a capable hero and let you in on my big problem." *Hands PC worthless piece of junk and chicken hat*

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So... you're saying that in NWN2 the player starts off as a nobody and everyone refuses to talk to him or give him any quests?

Hmmm. That would make it easier to write dialogue for, I suppose.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

NPCs with Hidden Traits/Characteristics/Stories
Oh, didn't we mention? There are oodles of things about the NPC's you'll never ever find out... in fact there's totally like a million things in their backgrounds that you can't ever find out...

Okay, but seriously... that's just silly.

As for NPC's actually having personalities and making some of their own decisions... I'm not sure what level of autonomy is planned for the various NPC's in the story.

However, as mentioned above, I'm not sure we'd want to negatively impact a combat situation without giving the player a heads up first...

So if we had a system like that and your hypothetical mage was deathly afraid of Dragons, he'd probably mention it before you went off to slay the beastie...

The other things don't sound all that different from some of the situations that we've done in the past with NPC's, so it's probably not outside the realm of probability.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

Videos
Although we have "something" up our sleaves, I wouldn't be holding my breath for any movies.

More: I have said too much already.