Dragon Age Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare 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

Druids/Rangers being attacked by Animals

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I think what he's saying is, if they make a class possibly similar to the ranger, they won't have to feel restricted to making him/her a dual-wielding, sneaky, nature-oriented, light skirmisher that has limited access to divine spells. Plus they won't have to listen to as many people saying "That isn't what a ranger is!" when they differ from the D&D version.
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That's pretty much it, yes. And even if we have a nature-specializing class similar to the ranger, he needn't have a special affinity for animals a la animal empathy. He might just know a lot about how to survive in the wilderness. He could also have abilities and a place in the world that would make him actually useful and cool... which, insofar as the ranger is concerned, would be pretty darn near revolutionary.

Bad language and sex.
You know... I suspect I would be willing to take an M rating JUST so I could have the hero watching the onrushing horde of evil and then frowning, putting his hands on his hips and growling "Well, **** ME." Hmm. I suspect that might not get past the filter.

Bad language and sex.
Profanity and sex need not be gratuitous, and I think that's the real distinction. I'd just like the freedom not to shy away from it should the story call for it. And did someone say they didn't buy that as a limitation on storytelling? Let's take... oh just hypothetically... the drow. Are they lusty sadists who worship a spider goddess and sacrifice babies in her name? Or are they somewhat-puritan bullies who still show an inexplicable amount of skin and while they do serve an evil goddess they don't mistreat their slaves or actually sacrifice anyone because those things are wrong? You decide. And then tell me how much that difference might affect the ability to tell this hypothetical story about them. And, certainly, we could restrict ourselves only to completely puritanical tales... but that would sort of qualify as a limitation, wouldn't it?

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Request: Better fight choreography

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It would be really, really cool if the library of actions from which the animation engine could draw contained literally hundreds of offensive/defensive moves, and selected more appropriate ones, reserving the best ones for critical hits & close shaves. I'd like to see a lot more ducking, jumping, and weaving for defensive moves, but again synchronized these moves with the attack.
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It *would* be really cool... However, remember that each animation has to be loaded if we're going to use it in a given fight. Also, you'd need a version of the animation for every PC variant (rig) (race and gender (this is a simplification), if they can all use it) and that's not even considering the cost... both monetary and timewise. We're aiming to make combat look good. That's one of the main goals of the system, that said... you won't be seeing several hundred combat animations for one character. It's just not feasable at this time. Also, another thing to consider. Choreographed fights are easy with two people, add in a few more and your complexity begins to skyrocket. We have a few things we're investigating that may or may not make this easier, only time will tell. More information on these sorts of things will most likely be available at a later date.