Dragon Age Forum News (Jan. 03, 06)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum. 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.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Weapon Speeds, Fighting Styles

I'm not really sure what Boomergan Ammunition is... but if it is what I think it is... no. A ranged ammo slot is pretty likely.

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Each style of weapon should have a particular flavour, along with advantages and disadvantages. It will not be a purely aesthetic choice.

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Will I be able to use unfeasable thrown weapons like Charkrams and "Glaives" that bounce around, kill people and return to me (like in Silver).

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No.

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Will I be able to munch Dragons with my fists and spit them out with my feet (metaphor)? Or will I have to rely on tactics to kill larger creatures.

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Large creature fights will probably involve a bit more than simply hitting them lots.

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Are there any Vorpal Swords with heightened fatality rates compared to Un-Vorpal swords?

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I have yet to see anything like a decapitating blade.

Jennifer Hepler, Writer

Will DA allow you to roleplay a truly evil character?

We're hoping that the choices in Dragon Age will all be interesting ones in and of themselves, regardless of whether the player is trying to be "good" or "evil." Those won't be measured traits in Dragon Age, so it will be more possible than in most games to truly make every single decision count. You can absolutely play a dyed-in-the-wool hero or a complete selfish bastard of an anti-hero, but there won't be a meter on your character sheet penalizing you if you decide, in the best interests of roleplaying, that this one time your "evil" character really would spare that little girl, or your "hero" use torture to find out how to save the lives of thousands (NOT ACTUAL GAME EXAMPLES!). Real human beings make choices based on the specific situation they're in, by considering many factors and often agonizing over whether they've made the right decision. For people who are looking for those kinds of tough choices and roleplaying moments, Dragon Age will provide them in spades...whether those choices ultimately make you feel good or evil is up to you.

David Gaider, Lead Writer

Will DA allow you to roleplay a truly evil character?

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How does information in the world of DA gets carried around? Is there some form of newspaper or is it hearsay?

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Most people can't read, so let's go with hearsay.

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Not everyone is aware of your background, no, and you don't have to tell them about it. It's not exactly a mystery, however -- your background is where you come from and who your family is, not something sinister and profound that you will need to keep hidden.

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in terms of relating to the Npcs is a surprise for them concerning my identity possible or will my identity be clear through the opening dialogue?

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Let's leave this part for the story to reveal.

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The backgrounds are fairly neutral, and as far as good or evil goes that is up to you. There is no in-game indicator that will mark you as "evil" or "good" and others will assess you based on your actions that they're aware of.

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Well, if there was something dramatic about your past that was worth hiding then I could see writing dialogue around keeping it hidden from your party members -- but otherwise what would the point be, exactly?

Again, you don't have to talk about yourself, but since the backgrounds are a matter of location and social standing and not "I am evil and mysterious" they're not really a source of drama in the sense that you seem to be expecting.

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Is there a way for DA to track this, even if it's behind the scenes? Is it on an event-by-event basis only (i.e. my character performed a certain deed, people recognize me specifically because of said deed)?

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It's on an event-by-event basis. We initially had a more standard reputation system planned, but it turned out that it wasn't necessary -- it was far simpler to track those events which would be heard about globally individually than to try and associate some kind of numeric value to them. After all, as soon as you have a numeric value than any given event must be inherently "positive" or "negative" and that's not really what we ended up deciding to go for.

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I'm curious because there's usually some manner of alignment, reputation, or other system that allows you to direct the protagonist along a certain plot.

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For a specific plot, what you're generally looking at is a specific variable (or set of variables) that will advance and track your progress. That doesn't change. Really, all most reputation systems are are global variables that track the current "setting", and that's only going to apply to certain kinds of designs.

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I'd suppose it would be of particular interest to modders implementing story ideas perhaps more so than the casual gamer.

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Such a system is easily set up, as there's always going to be global variables that can be set and accessed. A modder would just need sufficient triggers and places in dialogue or scripting that would look for such variables. If we had a need for such a system ourselves, it would be easy to implement.

The Influence of Infinity Engine

DA is the spiritual successor to all of our past roleplaying games -- which means NWN and KotOR as well as the BG series (not Planescape: Torment, really, which we didn't work on) and it will draw influence from all three of those sources.

So is the DA engine the spiritual successor to the Infinity engine? In part, I suppose -- they will have some things in common, not least of which is having a fully-controlled party. I guess what it comes down to is what you think "spiritual successor" means.

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Will I be able to relate certain parts of Dragon Age to Fallout?

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Err... sure? They're both RPG's.

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(Longshot:Can we get some more screens please?)

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Not yet, no.

 

Looks like we have the first female dev in today's news. And note that some designers are called writers now. Wonder if this means that dialogues are getting a new, special focus.