Dragon Age Forum News (Jan. 17, 05)

Remove all ads!

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

refraction of a hint of a guesstimate of a signal of a clue?

You won't hear anything about publishers until the ink is dry. We aren't having any particular problems on that front though...

2006 DA Events?

There are bones... people may even have skeletal structures, but no promises!

To address the other stuff that seems to pop up in every third thread or so... for now you're going to have to be content with what we discuss here on the forums.

We've put in requests to get the FAQ updated, and we're currently looking at our PR timeline. Since I'm not directly involved in either of those things... I can only tell you that "stuff" is happening.

David Gaider, Lead Writer

Gargantua Party

No, there will be no giganta-party. That would be unwieldy not only for pathing but also for conversation -- you want a giant mob that is going to chatter away at each other constantly? Unless the number of times each individual was involved in a conversation was reduced, you'd be overwhelmed, and at that point the effect will not be quite the same, would it?

Nor will we reduce the number of NPC's available just so you can have them all in one party -- as was proven by Gecon, there are always going to be some NPC's who some don't care for or who they feel are more or less useful than the others, so there must be enough to have a range of characters available.

More:

It's always a challenge when you have to consider that each NPC must calculate a proper path and take into consideration such things as collision with objects in the world and fellow party members and yet still try to move as a coherent group. This challenge naturally gets greater as you have more and more figures on-screen in the same party. You may not think this is an issue that must be considered, but there it is.

Conceivably the group could reach a size where the only solution would be to have them move as a military unit (in step with each other and in formation) or to have the "party in a pocket" where the leader moves on his own and the party only pops out when needed.

More:

Well, let's go back to my poor excuse of an argument for a moment, shall we?

Unless the game was 2-3 times longer than normal, you're going to have a greater concentration of those banter dialogues being spoken if you want to get them all out. And not only will there be more banters that will need to be spoken, there will be more combinations of party banter that will become eligible since you've now got so many people in your party at the same time.

So, yes, the result will be a constant barrage of dialogue coming from the party members if we write as much for each of them as we do for a game where your party is smaller (that is, after all, why so much is written). And if we write less so that everyone has room to speak, then the obvious result is that you get less focus on any single party member.

I do know, after all, just how much party dialogue there is in a game like BG2 and how much useful room there is to have those banters initiate. I doubt very many players would appreciate the notion of being constantly interrupted in order to listen to their party members talk.

If your argument, however, is that we should indeed be making the game 2-3 times longer just so you can have all those party members in your party at the same time, talking amongst themselves, then that's quite something else altogether.

 

I wouldn't mind games being longer.

 

Yes, longer games are good, but not through artificial means like this. The extra length needs to add something to the game. Just like making the game longer by sending you endlessly back and forth along the same path. That was one of the main arguments against Final Fantasy 8. You have a prison sequence, where you constantly go up or down all the floors of the prison, just cause everytime you reach the bottom or top you discover it is no (longer an) exit. IIRC you go up and down that prison about 3 times and it takes a very long (boring) time.

 

What I don't like in that area is putting time limits on quests, meaning you have to spend some time waiting for an event to trigger. Sometimes it doesn't even make the game longer from the perspective of real time but only game time because people just press the rest button a sufficient number of times. I think I would enjoy a certain randomness in the main quest, perhaps a changing focus and less distinction from side-quests and all the accidentalia. I did like the Might & Magic 7 quest to win a game of Arcomage in all inns in the realm. Or the Might & Magic 6 one by Loretta Fleise to convince stables owners to pay higher taxes. It would be nice to have a reason to return to towns where you have already completed the main quests. Or perhaps to have a reason to go there before tackling the big thing. Baldur's Gate I sort of had it but Baldur's Gate 2 not really and Neverwinter Nights simply precluded it. Even if you allow the player to roam a bit, that's already much. In the Might & Magic series, random bounties and arena fighting were a nice incentive.

 

Those are the means of the console rpgs to lengthen them. Make you go back to places you already visited to complete sidequests. Usually, you get good rewards for doing so. Although I like that, the fact is it usually stands out as something asside. I know it's in the name sidequest, but still, it would be nice to get it more integrated into the story. Morrowind and BG2 make an attempt at this, but in the end still fail. In Morrowind, you are motivated to involve yourself in the guilds (which are the sidequests) to act as your cover. In BG2, it's to raise money for the main quest. The point at which they both fail, and which every game fails, is that usually you are busy with them at times where you're actually not supposed to them RPwise. In bg2 for example, there have been numerous discussions about whether it makes sense to go sidequest hunting in chapter 6. As you can tell, I'm in the camp of it not making sense RP wise. And it's always like that. The moments you are "free" to go sidequest hunting, is usually during some very pressing event (like a meteor crashing on earth) or during a pursuit of the bad guys. Someone really ought to come up with a solution for this, though I must admit I don't have one either.