Dragon Age Forum News (Jan. 07, 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

Day and Night Cycle!!!!
I'm not going to argue the point further. There is plenty of control in the player's hands, and if we do decide not to have a day/night cycle it's not just so we writers can "force" you down any particular path. As a matter of fact, I find that idea a bit funny as the writing team has been performing cartwheels due to the fact that so many options are available. If you choose to not believe me and instead believe that we're heading down some sinister path that will rob the player of all choices due to the mention of a few things the game doesn't have (as opposed to all the things it does), that's just fine by me. Morrowind's a fine game and it's style is perfectly legitimate, but it is so not the type of game we're making. This does not, however, make DA the equivalent of reading a book.

More: Gothic & Gothic2 are games that are very much in the same vein as Morrowind: they focus much more on world simulation and exploration. Naturally there are going to be people who prefer the focus to lie there. I certainly got a visceral thrill from watching the people in a Gothic town go to work and then go to bed and such. But that's far from the only way of doing an RPG, as Georg mentions.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Anyone has a "log" of decided features?

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(Said long time ago, not sure if it's still going to be in the game)
Characters will be able to wear 10 rings and not 2.

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Nope, just two.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Day and Night Cycle!!!!
Speaking of Day/Night cycles and recent/upcoming RPGs

KotOR: - no
Vampire: Bloodlines - no (thank god!)
Jade Empire: - no

These games do not have day/night cycles in favour of a tighter control of the atmosphere (i.e. the Ocean house mission in Vampire would not have been very interesting at all during day).

Another interesting one:
World of Warcraft - yes, but completely without any impact on gameplay at all.

I'm not against day & night cycles, in fact I like them because I tend to be a bit more on the "simulationist" side, it's just an artistic / game design decision to have them in your game or not - there is not global "a CRPG needs to have a day / night cycle otherwise it's crap" rule.

You have a meeting, you discuss the pros and cons and then you make a decision, which will depend a lot on what kind of game you want to make.

That said, at this point it is not known whether or not there will be day / night cycles in DA, so feel free to voice your opinion in this thread - after all, that's what these forums are for.