Dragon Age Forum News (Sep. 14, 04)

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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

Found out more about the world...

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What one unique concept of DA (other than own IP) brings the smiles to the Dev team, even over past Bio games?

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I really, really wish I could answer this one. As it is, I'll go for my second favorite, which is the ability to write adult plotlines without flinching.

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In the world of DA, do people do any of the following? Ride on a creature, wearing a cloak, with a robe, an open faced helm, traversing the landscape in more direction than left, right, forward or back?

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Probably. Whether or not you will meet any of them remains to be seen.

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I thought you stopped answering questions, David.

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I did, but I am fickle.

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What historical setting (period of time and geographical location) from our own world of reality does the setting of Dragon Age correspond to the MOST?

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Each nation/culture in DA is a little bit different. The art team is going through right now and making up the look & feel of each one. So it's quite a jumble, especially with regards to geographical references.

The setting of our story is a bit narrower in focus, but I'm going to have to wait to talk about it. Time-wise I'd say it's safe to say pre-Renaissance, but not by much.

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Now, more seriously, will there a total or substantial "divine/arcane" magic split as is frequently common in CRPGs?

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No. Tsuga has it pretty close, though there are a few additional elements thrown in for good measure.

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How many (so far) different currencies are there?

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Each nation has its own (if they use currency at all), but some currencies are accepted universally.

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Weightless gold/currency? Instant funds-transferrence and universal banks?

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I don't think that's been decided. Probably.

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Are there areas where there is no currency, but rather a barter system?

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Yes, but they will accept coins from the outside if they trade with those places (or at least the ones in the current story do).

Dev's fav RPGs?

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Oh and as a related thing, any of you Devs that have played through BG2, what was the one thing about BG2 (can be dialog, story situation, feature, class or whatever) that you think was the coolest or most essential thing about it?

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The interaction with your party members and the interaction between the party members themselves. The party NPC's were the life of the game. Writing banter has got to be the single funnest part of my job. Ever.

Don't be outdone by the community...
I look upon this sort of thing the same way I did when I made the Ascension mod for BG2:ToB. There's no way that Bioware could operate in the way I made the mod. I took my own sweet time, testing and re-writing things over many months. I think I took just about as long to make Ascension, in fact, as we had in the entire schedule for ToB to begin with. That would be unsupportable on a larger scale. The community modder also doesn't have to worry about approvals or how widespread the use of his mod is going to be or how he is going to support it. He also doesn't have to worry about a budget. The fact that the modders for NWN are so prolific and some of them are so talented and able to turn out such excellent work is great. It's not really something Bioware could replicate, however, and I think that's fine... it's not a competition.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Z-axis...How important is it in an RPG?
At this time, I can say that we have no plans to impliment a z-axis in Dragon age.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Orcs and goblins

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I'm not really worried whether DA will have Orcs or not. What I'm more worried about is if DA will have the same old unintelligent, cannon fodder enemies that appear in every fantasy setting. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any at all in THEDAS, but they shouldn't be the main type of "bad guys". I for one hope to go against some intelligent creatures/people (with legitimate reasons for being where they are, not just because the PC needs a living obstacle to overcome) this time around.

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Through my experience tells me that a lot of people enjoy whacking their way to a wave of poor enemies every once in a while - I mean, if every single monster would be up to the PC's mental capabilties, he will probably start to fight with inferiority complexes sooner or later

Jokes aside, I think the chances that you will see some kind of "not so bright minion type" of opponent in DA are pretty good, but that doesn't mean that every monster has to be this way or that there can be no "bright minion type" monsters as well. I'd really be careful with all those calls of abandoning everything established in the name of innovation, certain elements are quite important to a high fantasy games, even if they don't seem like this in the first place.

The stupid mass attacking minion/monster serves several quite important purposes, both from a gameplay design perspective (allow player to display their power every once in a while, inspire the feeling of superiority into the player, soften up the player for a tougher encounter ahead, depleting the players resources while luring him into a trap, etc) as well as from a story perspective. You are also weakening the impact of your really bad powerful guys if the player is already challenged by the small ones.

I really wouldn't like to play a game where every monster is highly intelligent and there is nothing to mow through from time to time.

That said, if you take, i.e. NWN, there is no difference in the mental capabilities of monsters. They all run the same AI, their difficulty was purely the question whether or not they outmatch the player in the ability to deliver or take damage.

With HotU we added custom AI for certain boss battles and certain kinds of creatures and I think the DA design team is going further on this route, so expect some noticeable difference between certain kinds of encounters.

Actions and consequences (was: Target Audience)
It's a matter of choice ... I would actually say the henchmen in BG were somewhat cruical to gameplay - and at least some of them were tied in the story so even if you didn't like them, they still had their role (i.e. Imoen), without henchmen you would miss a lot of different plots, banter, information, as the game was really meant to be played with henchmen.

To my understanding people who played BG2 without henchmen were mainly doing it for the challenge, which is a nice option to have, especially if you don't like managing a whole party - but that was by no means anywhere close to the game experience BG2 was designed to be - a party based CRPG.

Short: You can still make a game where the henchmen are very important to the story, even if you don't force the player to take them. Memorable characters to interact with, especially henchmen are one of the features we consider "core" for our games, so don't expect DA to be anywhere as much fun without henchmen as it will be with henchmen (even if we might not force them on you, nothing decided there).

One DA feature confirmed: pants are in
Bah spam and quoted out of context, I was talking about NWN.

I think it's too early to speculate about the inclusion of pants in DA, as this feature may not carry the story forward and as such could be seen as "expendable".

Z-axis...How important is it in an RPG?

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Which is a shame, no offence. But a dragon looming on the towers on some dark mountain fortress spreading itsd wings sweeping right down to you wiht brath of fire, landing on the scorched earth and starting to bite claw and slash away is always something nice. Same for subterran monsters, mimics, uber hulks burrowing through walls, pase spiders, of course, but it simply isn't that impressive.

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All of this does not need the kind of "z-" axis support that is talked about here.

Dragon Age's graphics...... and other games
Morrowind had awesome graphics and it still didn't prevent NWN from selling 2 million copies, so what's the point?

Look, there is no point in discussing the graphics of any game that is several years out. DA is several years out, ES4 is several years out and the kind of graphics hardware that will be optimal to run those games is at least one or two years out. Hence, talking about "screenshots" and getting worried is a waste of time, as they can't reflect how a game is going to look like in the future.

The Elder scroll games are quite different from the what we are trying to do in DA, different point of view, party vs. single player, huge mass battles in DA (can't remember any in Morrowind). Our engine will be optimized for a large number of enemies on the screen and party control, so it will naturally look different than what you see in ES.

I was sure Duke Nukem Forever was going to rock halflife when I saw the screenshots.... oh well, thought me not to worry about these things till a game is released.

And seriously I think Doom 3 has awesome graphics, but then again, it never has more then 4 creatures on the screen at one time - now compare that to i.e. Rome:Total war which has something like 10.000 creatures on the screen. Both are different in gameplay and presentation but they are both also extremely beautiful games.

Anyway, DA will have state of the art graphics from our kickass graphics programmers, but making comparisons between games that are 2+ years out is plain pointless.

Dev's fav RPGs?
Really, do you want to play him BG or finish DA? eh?

For impatient fans your priorities are kind of screwed me thinks

James Henley - Technical Designer

Dev's fav RPGs?

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In an RPG, I suppose I just prefer to have my own character (which doesn't explain Shining Force, but oh well).

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Actually, I'm kinda happy you said this, because I prefer that also and am glad that theres a confirmed somebody who understands that is on the DA team. PS:T was great but if I had one gripe it would be that you weren't your own character but rather somebody else's...

So any more out there or have I run outa Devs? I know some of you like an RPG that you're afraid to admit to, a guilty pleasure if you will, like Diablo or something?

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I'll stand by that, and that's naturally what attracted me to Neverwinter Nights in the first place. Granted, a really solid story with a specific character can be a lot of fun to play as you watch things unfold, but that's more like an interactive movie than a game.

As for Diablo 2...well, I'll put my neck on the block long enough to say that it's a prior addiction of mine.

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Any of you out there into Secret of Mana? Any chance you could make DA like it?

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Secret of Mana, as in the old SNES game? That was a classic, most definitely. Whether or not DA will be like it, however, I can't say. Only time will tell there.

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No Baldur's Gate?

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I never actually played Baldur's Gate 2. I only played the original, and I played it long after its time. It was a good game, but I never made it very far because I was always starting over, trying to make the perfect character. Since I never made it far, I didn't really see enough of it to put it in that list.

I'll have to remedy that one day, I'm certain.

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BG2 is the standard by which other rpgs are judged (just my flimsy opinion of course) thus you must play that game James.

And congratulations on the position. I take it you were just recently hired?

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Yeah, I'm still trying to get ahold of a copy of BG2.

Thanks for the congrats! I just started yesterday, actually. I have a proverbial mile-high stack of documents to wade through already.

More: You'd be surprised at how hard it is to get ahold of a game that everyone loves that much. The supplies have long since been ransacked, before I ever got here.

More: I'm certainly not about to go digging around looking for it. I'll find a copy somewhere, buried, I'm sure. I'm in no hurry anyways. There's more than enough work to keep me occupied, afterall.

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This is kinda odd, but if you were to classify WarCraft3 as an RPG, would anyone put it into their top 10 list?

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While it wouldn't necessarily rank in my top 10 list, it wouldn't be far off of it. Overall, it was a pretty solid game. The heroes added a nice dimension, and the ability to find items that made them stronger was good. And hey...you can't go wrong with mortar/rifle packing dwarves, right?

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James, just get your computer sent up and I'll drop off the Baldurs Gate 2 collection on Friday.

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Hey, that would be awesome! Well, with any luck, it'll be sent here soon. The app I put in for an apartment today looks pretty positive, and they'll let me move in on saturday if it's approved. Here's to hoping!

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And Xenogears(sorta final fantasy ish... with a more grownup feel to it.)

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I only ever played the demo of that, but it seemed pretty interesting. I was broke when it came out though, so I didn't get around to actually buying it.

DA magic sug visible?
I believe what he means is that the spell being cast should be obvious to the person casting it, but to non-magical characters, there shouldn't be the obvious visual cues.

While I can see that making sense for spells of a subtle nature, killer visual effects are too integrally a part of what makes a game enjoyable to just give them up for the sake of realism. I think this is one case where you have to weigh it; realism or fun. Personally, I lean towards fun.

If anybody wants to lean towards realism too heavily, I'll just take this moment to remind you about a certain dinosaur park franchised game...Yeah, I'm sure you know the one I'm thinking about, without me having to utter the name. That's the ultimate example of realism killing anything that even remotely resembles enjoyment in a game.

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What? Dragon Age won't have realistic physics? And I was oh so hoping for the crate stacking puzzles . . .

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Now I never said it wouldn't have realistic physics, only that there's a balance to be maintained between realism and fun. Of course, I haven't said there WILL be realistic physics either...

Oh, how cryptic it all is!

[ September 16, 2004, 20:17: Message edited by: chevalier ]