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Game News Dragon Age semi-annual update

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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Tags: BioWare; David Gaider; Dragon Age

It's been awhile since we checked on <a href=http://dragonage.bioware.com/>Dragon Age</a> - a "blockbuster" fantasy RPG - and our buddy Dave Gaider (who has a very dark secret), so let's take a look:
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<blockquote><b>Moral choices</b>:
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I have nothing against a choice leading in an unexpected direction, so long as it's a logical one and the player is not constantly being "gotcha'd" by circumstance.
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As I've said previously, the good/evil dichotomy isn't really what Dragon Age is about... so you're not going to find a clear "good path" and "evil path" in every dialogue and plot. You will find moral choices that apply to the situation, and sometimes they will be very clear-cut and other times it will be difficult to decide what is the right thing to do.
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...
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So if you're playing the noble hero, sometimes a very moral option will present itself and will be a no-brainer. Other times you will have to struggle to find an option that you can live with. The difference is very much as subtle as not being "there should be choices that match the type of character I want to play" but rather being "I should be able to at least try to follow my character's path even if I am not always successful."
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...
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There are, in fact, several plots we've written in DA where it was pointed out during reviews that there was a "good" path possible in an otherwise very complex situation, even though it would be quite difficult and not very rewarding materially -- and in each case we decided to go ahead and implement it. And for those players who were trying to be the hero, finding that path and succeeding (or failing) was more important to them than the bigger material rewards which might have been available otherwise. That makes, I think, for a more interesting story.
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<br>
<b>Party members</b>:
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There is a "base camp" similar to the Ebon Hawk where NPC's who have joined you stay when they're not in your immediate party. Your immediate party consists of those NPC's (if any) that you wish to take with you to do your actual adventuring. So there is a difference between people joining you and being part of your party.
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...
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DA will have a couple of NPC's who travel with you whether you like it or not, for story reasons, though they don't go into your party unless you wish them to. The other potential NPC's are all completely optional. And that's because this is the type of story we choose to tell. If you don't like that idea, you're free to make your case against it -- but realize at the same time that while DA is neither BG/BG2 (as you've discovered) it's also not KotOR/KotOR2 nor NWN and making assumptions one way or the other isn't likely to be very productive.
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...
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The few NPC's that join you are there from the beginning because that is how the plot unfolds. They do not have to be part of your party at any point. And no, you do not have the option to kill them or tell them to go away even if the dreaded thought that this might be a repeat of the Imoen situation pops up in your head, and that will make sense when you play through the game. All the rest of the NPC's are optional to have join you at all, and if the thought of there being a couple of NPC's who you cannot shake and who you might have to deal with at certain points in the story even if they are not adventuring with you the majority of the time is too much for you -- well, that's the "c'est la vie" part, and it's not going to change.
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<b>Story</b>:
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If you make the story not be about the player at all, you run the risk of it not being very engaging. It might be, but if you rely on the antagonist that's only one hook and a risky one at that.
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<br>
The only way you can make a story not about the player is simply not to have much of a story. Sandbox games like Oblivion do a great job of leaving the player to engage himself in whatever he chooses to -- at the cost of narrative. Even then, it won't work unless the player is hooked somehow into the setting or the gameplay.
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<b>Death</b>:
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Take your average fantasy or adventure story where there's combat -- do the heroes die on a regular basis? No, of course not. If they die, it's at an appropriately climactic or dramatic moment. Having the power to resurrect the dead allows you to have a game mechanic that allows your heroes to die on a regular basis, sure, but I think that this is at the sacrifice of making death a mundane occurance. This is not a good thing.
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...
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The consequence for failure does not have to be death. As I said, it can be injury or other impediments. You say that there are many groups that have died -- and, yes, that's true. Even in KotOR if the entire group was defeated you died. Ultimately the story is about the group that succeeded, and having had various party members die randomly along the way would not have made that group's story more fascinating.
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<b>Teh dark sekret</b>:
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I know LARPing is fun. I happen to run a LARP. </blockquote>Discuss.
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whatusername

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I don't particularly like the death part. It feels much more better when a party member is about to die, and you know you'll never see him/her again.
 

Jed

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Gah. Bio just keeps spiraling further and further down the drain. Why not just give up and make point'n'click adventure games?
 

Ladonna

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He is very defensive these days isn't he? Maybe he suffered an injury running through the forest screaming 'Fireball! I cast Fireball!'.

In any case, It really doesn't say much about the game except that he is telling you A) theres a basecamp...B) You will have a couple of Kreia's along for the ride who are indestructible, like it or pissoff, and C) You can die? You can't die? Your two super story Kreia's cannot die?

It doesn't tell us anything about how finished the game is, etc.
 

Volourn

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"He is very defensive these days isn't he?"

Nah. Just repeating himself for the 80th time. People were really harping (including me, heh) about not liking having npcs forced on you.

And, btw, you can die. It just takes takes total party wipe. Which I dislike immensely; but you *can* die.


"Gah. Bio just keeps spiraling further and further down the drain. Why not just give up and make point'n'click adventure games?"

You are an idiot. This is a RPG site. BIO's games keep getting more, and more role-playing. Their games are getting more in line with the 'rpgness' that this site pretends to like. Of course, everyone knows the Codex is full of bullshit considering they cover games like Dungeon Seige.

L0LLERZ!
 

Castanova

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Personally, from the very limited info we have, Dragon Age sounds great. Whether or not BG2 was the epitome of the "RPG" it was certainly, to me, fun as hell. Fun enough to make it one of my favorite games. Dragon Age, hopefully, will be similar in that regard.
 

HanoverF

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MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Volourn said:
BIO's games keep getting more, and more role-playing.

This may be the single stupidest thing ever posted here. Even coming from you.

Seriously that almost puts the ESF stuff to shame.
 

Volourn

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It's the truth. You obviously can't handle the truth.
 

Voss

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Not sure on how much role-playing it will actually have but the 'base camp', joinable NPCs in excess of whats actually adventuring with you (but still with you, but not with you, with you) and the not death (unless total wipe, I guess) iare less than appealing.

Having various party members die along the way does make the group's story more fascinating. Struggle and loss is a sign of a challenge, and dealing with both makes for more interesting characters. A 'Whew, good thing you didn't die' is forgettable and dull.

And forcing the plot to revolve around certain NPCs never seems to work well. Maybe its just the execution. Though the required to be with you, but not part of the party sounds wonky. How much plot are you going to miss if you don't have them in the party? And if none, why are they required at all?
 

Drakron

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Is Dragon Age a korean JRPG?

Because its starts to look like one ...
 

Trash

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Somehow everything Gaider says sounds terrible. Dunno, but to me he makes it sound like a rather shallow game with no real penalties on death. Choices sound like they will be more cosmetic than everything else.

Than again, this game doesn't hold that much interest to me. Firstly I have a feeling that bioware is putting most resources into mass effect, and that this game is being made on a budget and to generate some money in case mass effect fails. I also would rather wait for something other than the same old cliched fantasy crap that most crpg's seem to have become.
 

Ladonna

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It seems to be the 'IN' thing now to make people have NPC's go along with them.

They have a story to tell, and you WILL listen! :lol:
 

Micmu

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Chronic Kotoritis all over it...
I bet it will be declared as a 360 title (a.k.a. cross-platform) at some point. ;)
 

Ladonna

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Could you go nuts and kill your party members in the KOTOR's?

I remember when I played number 1, I killed that Cat woman thing that was supposed to join up, but that was when she was evil. Had a nice blank space there for the rest of the game.
 

Inziladun

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Ladonna said:
Could you go nuts and kill your party members in the KOTOR's?

I remember when I played number 1, I killed that Cat woman thing that was supposed to join up, but that was when she was evil. Had a nice blank space there for the rest of the game.

The only optional characters in the game were HK-47 and Juhani(the cat lady). The only character you could kill was Carth, the Wookiee, what's-his-face and that annoying 12 year old. But that was at the very end of the game and only if you played 'da eval side'. KOTOR did have some interesting choices, but they were far and few between and it ended up just being another Adventure game with involving dialouge and an illusion of choice.
 

Volourn

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" that this game is being made on a budget and to generate some money in case mass effect fails. "

LOL A budget game with 60-80 people working on it currently. LOL

LOL A budget game that will be in development for 4-5 year sby the time it's released. LOL

LOL A PC game to generate money if a console game doesn't. LOL

The funnies on this site are hilarious!
 

Drakron

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LOL, it anounced development was back in Jade <s>Toilet</S> Empire days and so far they have nothing to show outside something that looks that come out from a Korea jRPG.

Perhaps its name is Magna Carta 3: Dragon Age.
 

Castanova

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OK, I'm all for bashing recent Bioware games and I'll even accept heavy skepticism for Mass Effect considering there's lots of info available and all signs point to Star Wars-without-a-license action shooter with dialogue "trees" tacked on.

But some of the complaints about Dragon Age in this thread are really grasping at straws.

'base camp'

Huh? Without knowing how it's implemented how can you possibly make a judgment about this? Why is having a base camp bad? Because all RPGs must involve a party wandering around homeless? In my mind, NOT having a base camp is retarded unless your characters like to make camps in the woods despite being two steps away from a town.

joinable NPCs in excess of whats actually adventuring with you

You must be joking. You disapprove of the fact that you have a choice of NPCs? Unless they have so many NPC choices that the quality of each individual is diluted, what could possibly be your complaint about this? That's like being disappointed that Doom contained more weapons than Wolfenstein.

shallow game with no real penalties on death

This is how every single RPG in the world works except for roguelikes. The only difference is, after a battle you don't need to hit the Rest button 8 times so you can re-memorize the Resurrection spell. As far as the flood of streamlining in modern RPGs goes, this is virtully a non-issue.

Chronic Kotoritis

How? You have almost no information about this game. I'm not saying Dragon Age is going to be great, but to blast the game based on such limited information is ridiculous.
 

OccupatedVoid

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Volourn said:
LOL A budget game with 60-80 people working on it currently. LOL

LOL A budget game that will be in development for 4-5 year sby the time it's released. LOL
Volourn is right. Budget games do not take 4-5 years to complete, otherwise the costs of development over a 4-5 year period time would make it a normal 'gimme $60!' game. Also, budget games have small teams because the profit of a title is used to help pay salaries and other company assests.

More People = Higher Price != Budget game.
 
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There are, in fact, several plots we've written in DA where it was pointed out during reviews that there was a "good" path possible in an otherwise very complex situation, even though it would be quite difficult and not very rewarding materially -- and in each case we decided to go ahead and implement it. And for those players who were trying to be the hero, finding that path and succeeding (or failing) was more important to them than the bigger material rewards which might have been available otherwise. That makes, I think, for a more interesting story.

There we go again. When they have made a plot where the "GOOD" choice was rewarding materially? I had to go Sith just to have some pocket money.

DA will have a couple of NPC's who travel with you whether you like it or not, for story reasons, though they don't go into your party unless you wish them to. The other potential NPC's are all completely optional. And that's because this is the type of story we choose to tell.

There we go again, part two. I guess one could say in KOTOR it was not obligatory to take HK and the lesbian girl.

Story:
If you make the story not be about the player at all, you run the risk of it not being very engaging. It might be, but if you rely on the antagonist that's only one hook and a risky one at that.

The only way you can make a story not about the player is simply not to have much of a story. Sandbox games like Oblivion do a great job of leaving the player to engage himself in whatever he chooses to -- at the cost of narrative. Even then, it won't work unless the player is hooked somehow into the setting or the gameplay.

Maybe they should hire a professional writer before talking about what is possible in stories. And someone who thinks Oblivion does anything good, let alone great, other than some nice views is a moron. That without even mentioning that calling a character-centered story a "Player-centered story" is just retarded from a so-called RPG developer. And Arcanum had not the character as the center of the plot, but the narrative was character centered. Then i guess those guys are never going to look into Arcanum for inspiration, as having an interesting villain who may actually be right is too much for their drama queen plots - The closer they got was to kidnap Virgil, make him an Emo Pilot, and make him tag along regardless of what the player wanted. An Emo Pilot that went in a straigh line while being attacked by sith fighters and was called an "Ace."

Death:
Take your average fantasy or adventure story where there's combat -- do the heroes die on a regular basis? No, of course not. If they die, it's at an appropriately climactic or dramatic moment. Having the power to resurrect the dead allows you to have a game mechanic that allows your heroes to die on a regular basis, sure, but I think that this is at the sacrifice of making death a mundane occurance. This is not a good thing.

Final Fantasy alert here. All your resurrection spells and items are inefective if a character was killed by a Plot Gun. So much promise this game showed when the hype was young.

The consequence for failure does not have to be death. As I said, it can be injury or other impediments. You say that there are many groups that have died -- and, yes, that's true. Even in KotOR if the entire group was defeated you died. Ultimately the story is about the group that succeeded, and having had various party members die randomly along the way would not have made that group's story more fascinating.

And the fact that it was just not possible to have all three members die if you had any skill, or the sheer stupidness of having your companion get up with nothing beyond a migraine after being teared to shreads by five lightsaber wielding Siths.

On another thing: Has my memory gone bad or that one is in complete oposition to what they said at the beginning of the proyect, when they made a big fuss about how death would not be something to be taken lightly and once some character died, it was gone for good? I thought it was going to be something like in Arcanum or Torment, where you can lose characters but you still can make it to the end no matter who died. Maybe someone should go and tell those idiots that companion-centered plots are a bad idea in RPGs.

Teh dark sekret:
I know LARPing is fun. I happen to run a LARP.

That explains everything.

Jed said:
Gah. Bio just keeps spiraling further and further down the drain. Why not just give up and make point'n'click adventure games?

Because adventure gamers have become somewhat like the Codexers: They know what they want, and how they want it. Bio is not up to the challenge of writing a good puzzle, as we clearly saw in KOTOR, much less a good plot.

Voss said:
Having various party members die along the way does make the group's story more fascinating. Struggle and loss is a sign of a challenge, and dealing with both makes for more interesting characters.

It would be pure gold if a RPG had characters that actually reacted to that. The closer thing i can remember was JA2, where mercs began to get picky after those "last ditch effort" battles where you lost three quarters of your troops or commented when someone died. But since the only noticeable effect was higher payrolls, a slight moral decrease, and rejecting to sign up until you have won some battles without heavy losses it amounted to window dressing, mostly.

Inziladun said:
The only optional characters in the game were HK-47 and Juhani(the cat lady). The only character you could kill was Carth, the Wookiee, what's-his-face and that annoying 12 year old. But that was at the very end of the game and only if you played 'da eval side'.

That alone made the Sith side compelling. They had it comming since the beginning.

Drakron said:
Perhaps its name is Magna Carta 3: Dragon Age.

At least Magna Carta (as someone whose opinion on games and stories i respect told me - because i know not Korean nor do i want to) had a story ages far beyond anything Bio can dream of making, a thing not very difficult to do if truth has to be said. So it would be more like Final Fantasy VII: Shallow story, stupid characters, lots of teenage drama, and an Emo main character.
 

Drakron

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Huh? Without knowing how it's implemented how can you possibly make a judgment about this? Why is having a base camp bad? Because all RPGs must involve a party wandering around homeless? In my mind, NOT having a base camp is retarded unless your characters like to make camps in the woods despite being two steps away from a town.

Oh yes because NONE OF US PLAYED KOTOR AND JADE EMPIRE.

"Base camp" means the Ebon Hawk and the "rest areas" of JE, likely ME will use the "PRKS Mapple Leaf" (or whatever the ship is called) as a "base camp".

Now the idea is not bad per say, its bad is that the NPCs that joined the party will follow as the good sheep they to the "base camp" so intead of having a personality and go around on their own.

You must be joking. You disapprove of the fact that you have a choice of NPCs? Unless they have so many NPC choices that the quality of each individual is diluted, what could possibly be your complaint about this? That's like being disappointed that Doom contained more weapons than Wolfenstein.

Bingo, you get a bunch of silly archtypes.

Biggest issue is if you decide to take one you are stuck with him so expect a small amry going right behind you to "base camp".

This is how every single RPG in the world works except for roguelikes. The only difference is, after a battle you don't need to hit the Rest button 8 times so you can re-memorize the Resurrection spell. As far as the flood of streamlining in modern RPGs goes, this is virtully a non-issue.

I lost Misc once from a pretification followed by beaking the statue ... could not be raised my any means.

Point is if you know the NPC cannot be lost you simply use then as meat shields, bringing people from death consume resources so you dont view then as walking HP barriers.

The non issue is the "holding hands" that lead to Oblivion having a buildin walktru ...
 

Sarvis

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The Rambling Sage said:
Voss said:
Having various party members die along the way does make the group's story more fascinating. Struggle and loss is a sign of a challenge, and dealing with both makes for more interesting characters.

It would be pure gold if a RPG had characters that actually reacted to that.


So it would be more like Final Fantasy VII: Shallow story, stupid characters, lots of teenage drama, and an Emo main character.


Uh-huh. :roll:
 
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Sarvis said:
The Rambling Sage said:
Voss said:
Having various party members die along the way does make the group's story more fascinating. Struggle and loss is a sign of a challenge, and dealing with both makes for more interesting characters.

It would be pure gold if a RPG had characters that actually reacted to that.


So it would be more like Final Fantasy VII: Shallow story, stupid characters, lots of teenage drama, and an Emo main character.


Uh-huh. :roll:


You are taking that out of context. Drama by no means has to be shallow teenager emo crap. I am not talking about "Sniff, my friend died, i am going to suicide myself by jumping into the burning pyre where his body lies" but more about the game reacting to the death of your characters in a believable way. People is sometimes scarred for life because of the death of someone dear, and that changes them - usually not into emo idiots who can't cope with their adolescent and superficial feelings.

And all those guys that follow your character around have lives, enemies, friends, families, feuds, their own quests, and should have deep backgrounds - The death of a character could open an entire new tree of sidequests, bring interesting and well written consequences, change parts of the gameworld fully. Instead, on most games the death of a companion just denies some quests and means one less sword next fight. If the death of a companion was just another "choice" that could change and modify the game world that would be something.

How would that be anywhere near the scripted death and immature drama of Final Fantasy VII?
 

Jed

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Volourn said:
And, btw, you can die. It just takes takes total party wipe. Which I dislike immensely; but you *can* die.
This is the equivalent of saying that since you can choose not to finish a game, that it means "multiple endings." Choice on par with deciding whether to use melee, ranged, or magic attacks to kill monsters!

Is it possible that you are actually getting stupider and more sycophantic toward BioWare?
 

Shoelip

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How can you have a Korean Japanese Role Playing Game? It would be called a kRPG.
 

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