Dragon Age Forum News

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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

Female NPCs

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Btw did you notice that while Bioware keeps pleading "depth" to explain why their good characters are always flawed their evil characters never have a good side? They are just evil. Yet no one seems to complain that they are one dimensional.

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Huh. I don't remember seeing any of us plead anything like that. We have plenty of good characters that don't turn evil, and the only reason not to make any character flawless would be because that is boring (male or female).

Certainly we've had two major female romantic interests that have "turned to the Dark Side" in a similar fashion, and that's quite noticeable. I doubt we'll be doing that anytime again soon, thankfully. As for other attempts at observations made in this thread, the only thing I've noticed is that you can make just about any point you like if you're selective enough in your references. The points people are trying to make, however, does speak to what they'd like to see more of or less of with future characters, which is great feedback.

Is Neverwinter Nights 2 a threat to Dragon Age?

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In added defense to David Gaider. You do realize that David Gaider does not have final say in everything allowed into a game. The powers that be have ripped to shreds on several occasions many of the quite ingenious writings he has put out. Thanks David for your hard work and effort.

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Well, thank you, though as Hades points out I'm sure Chris Avellone works under mostly the same restrictions I do (though his position is perhaps more senior... he has been lead designer on some projects, I believe, whereas I have not). My only point is that comparisons of our writing talent, or indeed the writing quality of Dragon Age and NWN2, has nothing to do with any kind of threat they might represent to each other... which is the topic of this thread. There is, after all, a definite line between "conversational flow" and "thread hijacking".

World Depth and History.

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Also, to Mr. Gaider, are you familiar with the works of George RR Martin? I'm curious...

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I am, indeed, as has been mentioned. I think it can safely be said that Mr. Martin's series is a big influence on Dragon Age, as is Lord of the Rings. What that exactly means in terms of world detail is something that is probably better shown sometime in the future rather than talked about. I can talk all I like about how detailed the history is going to be, it won't mean much until you see it. You will find references to all sorts of historical things in the game, and as a writer it's great to have a context to put everything into. If there's an abandoned ruin in the swamp it's great to know in my head when it was built and why it was abandoned even if that never comes up in the game (though having characters conjecture about such things is great fun). We want to establish a consistency in our world so that you as a player start to get that indefinable sense of connection... do you know what I mean? That sense that there is a larger world at work here.

I mean, if a player cared to, you could learn dwarven... you could point out the dwarven influences in other languages and conjecture on the cultural reasons for those influences. You could see in the game what is distinctive about dwarven architecture and point out why there are elements of that architecture to be found in one land but not another. We are fleshing out large parts of the world which this first story never even touches on... but knowing they are out there gives us a sense of completeness which translates into what you see. Does it help that we have a legend about a great knight from a land that none of the NPC's in the game even come from? Maybe not. But you might hear a song being song about it in a tavern, and when you hear the tale in full later you might remember that song and that connection might resonate with you. I can't speak for the other writers, but those sorts of things certainly resonate for me, and I hope I can communicate that.

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Quote: Have the dynamics of the world in DA already been decided? Is it going to be linear ala Kotor? Or will we see at least some semblence of open-ended play (if not to the scale seen in Daggerfall or Morrowind).

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It leans much more towards KotOR. As I've said before, the game is much more story-driven than the kind of freeform wandering you might see in Morrowind. The world is definitely a setting for the story and not a sandbox, per se, but that doesn't mean it's without depth or the opportunity for exploration.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Dragon age, what is it, whats it about, where is it based

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were DA cancelled... Ray and Greg would have been the ones cancelling it. I think Darcy would be the one to go on insane mad rampages and such were it cancelled. Those magic 8 balls would become dangerous weapons.

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He he he, It would be a shame if DA was canceled, but we'd survive and make another game. Maybe call it "Village Pillage". Anything would do as long as we make piles of $$$ off it.

"Making of" DVD
Actually, we did talk about a "making of" DVD, but if we did it, it would not be a diary as most movies are, but more of a post-mortem. We have even though of hiring actors to come in a play us. Mel Gibson would play Scott Grieg, and we'd get Russell Crow to play David Gaider. However, the costs were prohibitive so we’re looking at using muppets. One thing we could do is include commentary during gameplay. David, and I would talk about each adventure and what it took to design and complete each quest while the player was going through the game. The problem with that is that localizing the 40+ hours would also be cost prohibitive. Besides, I do not think David would like to just talk for that long. I would think it would be cool as we could then market action figures based on the programmers and writers at BioWare.

Target Audience
Hi all, The level of violence completely depends on what the publisher, the territories we want to sell the game in, and the ERSB will give let us have. Not that we are going out of our way to add buckets of blood to the game, but we are also not going to shy away from it. It will be what we intend it to be so it meets the overall style we are trying to have. I highly doubt we will have heads splitting and the party being showered with bits of brain and skull. But in a situation where we want to convey gore and horror, then there will be gore and horror. However, it will not be the main theme of the game and if our publisher thinks, they can sell more if tone it back, we will tone it back. Information on the ESRB and their rating system: http://www.esrb.org/

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

DAScript: script parameters?
Hmm... not sure if it's quite what you're looking for... but something like this exists already - though it's not really true parameter passing. The HandleEvent function I mentioned in the other thread can be used to pass an arbitrary number of parameters into a script. It isn't quite what you're looking for - but it's "possible".