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Dragon Age Forum News

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Aug 24, 2004.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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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

    Singleplayer or… Singleplayer
    IIRC (and I might not :) ) Bio said that we WOULD get to create a PARTY, per Icewind Dale.
    Sorry, but you do not recall correctly. I don't know how it's going to work for the multiplayer campaign insofar as the possibility of creating & controlling multiple PC's, but for the singleplayer game at least you're creating one character only.

    More:
    Then perhaps your DA FAQ needs updating:
    Hmmm. I suppose I could be wrong. It could be, as well, that the FAQ is referring to the multiplayer campaign with the "or more" part of that.

    How about... ahem... riders?
    Even if there aren't any ridable horses for the PC, how about enemies with horses?
    That is certainly a possibility as well, far less expensive than PC-ridable horses. You essentially would have an enemy creature that was horse-and-rider with unique attack and death animations.

    More:
    Yes, but that is the lame way to go.
    I know everyone would love to have a fully-implemented riding & combat system, but given the choice between NPC-only riders (for mass combat, at least) and nothing at all I think it's safe to put in the former, provided you don't end up with horses everywhere that the player just can't use at all. That would be lame, indeed. But I was only talking options.

    How will Dragon Age stand out?
    I just hope Darcy and David make it that it has some features to the game that will make it stand out, at least against NWN2.
    You think so? Gosh, thanks for the tip! ;)

    More:
    Well, so far I haven't seen any except the original world/rules system and thats covered by TES IV.
    And that would probably because we really haven't gone into detail on the features, yet.

    More:
    Are you so sure having Gaiderish NPCs will be a good thing? I mean Deekin is nice and all, but he's no Fall-From-Grace or Morte.
    Not every character I write is a Deekin, genius, nor is every NPC a comedy character in any of the games we've done.

    Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

    Just back from GenCon...
    I thought I would drop by and say it was a pretty cool and wacky event.

    Teresa and I were there to show off Jade Empire but I did do a lot of talking about Dragon Age. I'm very glad to see the most passionate RPG fans in the world are geared up for a game that is years away. Very cool.

    Diablo or NWN
    Yup- Diablo is a very different game then NWN and I would have trouble comparing them. Maybe a better comparison would be Dungeon Siege to Diablo. I liked both those games but there was not enough of the story in either for my tastes.

    Georg Zoeller, Designer

    AI scripting
    We don't need no stinkin "Too Many Instructions error" :D
    Great idea, people love to watch scripts that go into endless loops (the reason for 99.99% of all TMI's), it's a whole new level of game experience.

    How about... ahem... riders?
    Even if there aren't any ridable horses for the PC, how about enemies with horses?
    That is certainly a possibility as well, far less expensive than PC-ridable horses. You essentially would have an enemy creature that was horse-and-rider with unique attack and death animations.
    The only problem I see with this is believability. "The heathens the next tribe over can ride horses, but if we sneak in in the middle of the night, kill them all in their sleep, and steal their horses, we can't." I'd see that as a pretty huge logic problem. It becomes less problematic if you replace "horse" with "large, scary wolf" - and don't allow small-sized PCs, whether naturally or by spell.
    A while back someone created a goblin wolfrider by combining NWNs Goblin models with the wolf model. Worked pretty well, and since wolves probably wouldn't let just anyone ride them, you got a good excuse for why the player won't be doing it...

    Brent Knowles, Co-Lead Designer

    How about... ahem... riders?
    Like, uhm what was that ? Aaah yes No, if there are mounts they need to be included seamlessly of course ^^ Over all there are a lot of points why there should be horses, i wonder what is a valid reason against it ? And don't come with zots, everything takes zots that is not a valid reason for a large-scale battle oriented game. One might as well do a pirate game without ships. Also don't bother to mention that loading screens are a much better solution for transportation - its not about transportation, we have teleport spells for that - its about combat. I wonder if its really that expensive to do horses, after all some NWN mod feature goblin worg riders, so i do not think it is that difficult... of course the modification of combat rules would take a heavy toll... but you are creating a new ruleset in any case so it would be good to cover it and think about it before everything else stands - it might screw over everything if added later.
    A major reason against doing horses is campaign design. Horses require a campaign with large, relatively empty areas. If there are many dungeon and city areas in the game and only a few plains areas, what's the point of having a horse? The cost to implement a horse riding system (especially in regards to combat) is expensive... but not impossible. However, if the campaign being designed does not require horses, wasting resources on a underutilized feature would be silly.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2018
    chevalier, Aug 24, 2004
    #1
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