Dragon Age Forum News (Jan. 10, 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.

Sheryl Chee, Writer

Varying the tone/style of the game

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I believe DA has three writers: David Gaider, Jennifer Hepler, and one other. I expect we'll see their individual styles come through in the game, unless they've been homogenized and assimilated into the Bioware Collective (TM).

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There are more than three writers working on Dragon Age. And a roomful of typing monkeys that pick up the slack when we're on our coffee breaks.

Or posting on the forums. *cough*

More:

You're right. Everyone has a different style of writing, but drastic changes in tone are jarring, and we are trying to avoid that.

Stanley Woo, QA Ninja

Varying the tone/style of the game

We try to keep the tone pretty similar throughout the game soas to keep the player immersed in the story, but I'm sure you'll recognize the individual touches that writers add to their characters and dialogue.

I fully expect Sheryl's dialogue to be full of subtle videogame references and mentions of how cold she usually gets when waiting at the bus stop after work.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

Dear Diary

Well, I like an element of humor in almost any game, but I think something like Journals needs to be consistantly serious. Too much humor would be, IMO, overkill.

Maybe in a more humor based game, like Bard's Tale perhaps, but I think Dragon Age will have a more serious tone.

But what does everyone else think?

 

It's quite reassuring to hear they have six people whose job is specifically writing.

 

I don't agree with the diary entry. Maybe it could be serious, maybe comical, but I think that should be dependant on the events and the personality of your character. I actually like if the diary entries are like real entries in a real persons diary, meaning that typical monologue the writer has with its diary. Mostly these days, diaries are shopping lists, without any flavor to them. That makes them boring to use. On top of that, making the entries flavourfull doesn't remove their usefulness, because it is just the wording of the entry, not how the entire diary system is working. You can have all the functionalities of current games, but with better fitting text entries.

 

Yeah, first person narration would need to depend on the writer's personality in order to be credible. Otherwise, it would be like a joke repeated too often to be funny anymore.

 

Another good take would be to make it a third person narration of events, as viewed by an (unknown) outsider. I just loathe those "journals" that only consist of a list of mission objectives, without any personality. They're ok for something like Half-life or Quake, but not for a true RPG.

 

Hmmm... yes, that's right. But sometimes there's only some narrative and the objectives aren't spelt out. Sometimes something is missing, something important to the solution of a quest. That's not good, either.