Dragon Age Forum News (Nov. 10-19, 05) Pt. 1

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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.

David Gaider, Lead Writer

NPC Depth

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NPCs will also be limited. David has said, "It's something like Myst only with loads of background story and combat."

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And more puzzles!

More BS (back stories)

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and again I recommend the attention is better spent on making DA as interactive as possible.

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Right. Let's not forget that the amazing Narlen Darkwalk simply must be included.

Because without him, Lord knows it isn't possible that we can have these origin stories and still have interactive NPC's both at the same time.

I think I've taken all the advice I can, today. I'm going back to work.

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This is rather how I believe things will take place concerning the backgrounds. It's more than just a field on a character sheet and starting place, but not a hard definition of who the character is either. It will effect how things turn out, and who will likely be in your character's party, but isn't a separate story and force a completely separate set of NPCs on you either.

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You've got it about right, LdyShayna. To answer an earlier question, though, it doesn't dictate the party members you have available... though it certainly may affect their relationship with you. There are other NPC's from the origins that carry over into the rest of the game, however,

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So, at what point in character generation and module/campaign loading are these things selected? Do you plan it to be a special thing that only comes up when loading the offical campaign? Will community members that make their own modules/campaigns have the option to create their own backgrounds (*shudders*)? Will they have the option to ignore background selection? Or will background selection be part of all character creation, but other modules/campaigns will just ignore it?

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It's applicable only to the single-player game, obviously... and I hesitate to say "official campaign" as that gives the impression that this is like NWN and that the single-player story is just a module that shows what DA can do.

Having a toolset and being able to make independant modules are not the same thing at all, so imagining how the origin stories would work in NWN is a bit beside the point.

There might very well be the ability to make modules with the DA toolset, I don't think it's been settled yet. In that case, I suspect whatever origin you've selected (if indeed you can select one outside of the single-player story) will have no effect unless the module-maker chooses to use the hooks involved. Again, that's not settled either.

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OMFG! Who are you and where those kind bio-people who gave us NWN have gone! Have you been chained in a cellar writing stuff and condemned to vital information deprivation?

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Err... no, not exactly. Like Brenon said, it's more a question of exactly what form the toolset will take. We have plans on how to proceed, yes, but as always those are subject to change... and especially since this project isn't NWN and the point of the game isn't to produce independent modules, that feature remaining in the larger scheme of things isn't necessesarily a given. That's all I meant.

But Brenon knows more than I do. Listen to him -- it's true that they don't let me out of the cellar any more than they need to.

What Needs to be in D.A. NWN 2 and why!!!

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We need horses, perioud. Ridable ones, pack ones, and of different colors. Come on...let's not be outdone by Ultima Ripoffline. They've been stealing and renaming stuff from ad&d since the first day Lord Brit breathed life into his pathetic existence.

And they have horses?

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Ultima Online is also a MMORPG and doesn't have a party. Dragon Age may have horses, it's possible, but that will depend on whether or not we consider having horses an important enough part of gameplay to justify the effort --- if you have a huge gameworld meant to house thousands and thousands of players, travel is so much more an important element, after all. Trying to compare these two types of games is pretty pointless.

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Picture it...you are good... you make friends with a young newbie player who is kidnapped by a group of ceremonial magic users...tye kill him and his soul is theirs to add to their power if you don't round up your buddies and go kick their black magic butts!!! This would add a whole new aspect of adventure.

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A young newbie player? Again, it looks like you're thinking of a MMORPG. We'll have multiplayer in DA, but even then it's likely to be a form of co-op play.

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Oh yes...and ships and total ocean adventures...royal navies in medeival vessles against pirateers and pirates of the high seas with black hearted pirate mages...or perhaps it's just swashbuckling privatteers looking to rob from the rich or another country and line their families or their own pockets...it's all up to you but it all means one thingt...Adventure, Advendture, Advendture.....

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This sounds like an interesting kind of game, but sea-faring pirates and swashbucklers isn't the sort of game Dragon Age is really going to be. It's definitely more along the lines of Baldur's Gate-like traditional fantasy -- adventuring with a party, armies clashing, that sort of thing.

I have yet to hear about the subject the game is pretty much named after, Dragons, any thoughts?
Well here's a question I have about general preferences regarding dragons:

Do people like the idea of dragons being intelligent but enigmatic sentient creatures? Or do you prefer them to be really powerful but ultimately unintelligent beasts, sort of a fire-breathing dinosaur?

Pandemic & Logo?
Heh. I always imagine that we could put up a picture of an apple and tell you folks that this is what we think an apple should look like and at least some of you would go, "I dunno. It's too red for my taste. Too round-ish. And what's with that little stem on top? It just doesn't sing, doesn't dance."

funky party gathering idea for SP
Once you take the NPC's and turn them into generic personality types, taking away any specifics, you lose the ability to make them actual characters.

Turning it around and saying "here is a specific character" and asking the player to generate a character based on that would, in my opinion, probably remove the element of control that people who don't like pre-ordained NPC's would be looking to have in the first place.

Not only that, you'd still need to have NPC personalities that are generic enough that they could fit any class. That's still going to limit the ability for that character to be very interesting. Mazzy, after all, could have been a cleric or a paladin as easily as a fighter but she very much could not have been a bard or rogue or a barbarian. What elements would you have needed to remove from Mazzy's personality and story in order to make her generic? Think of the other BG2 party members... are there any that could have literally been of any class? A couple, perhaps (Imoen?) but in the end I suspect that adding personality to custom-made party members is incompatible with making them full-fledged interactive characters with their own story.

finally new gen. party based rpg!
The assumption being that you won't be able to create more than the one PC character?

So it's either the BG method of create one character or the IWD method of create the entire party? No possibility of anything inbetween? Or maybe both?

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Hey! You're not allowed to ask questions you already know the answer to!

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Well, let me answer it, then: it is something in-between. Or possibly both.

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Shouldn't you be asleep?

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Nonsense. I'm almost ready to go to work.

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my psychic powers say singleplayer will suggest u make a single character, while multiplayer will suggest u to create more if u have no friends

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Your psychic powers are flawed, grasshopper. Try again.

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And he was a MUCH nicer companion.

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Quieter, too, probably. No doubt he never objected to anything.

Concerning random conversations involving NPC's...

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Will Dragon Age be more like KOTOR or KOTOR 2 in this aspect? Thanks in advance for any answers you may be able to provide.

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More like KotOR, though probably more like BG2 as there will be more party members to banter with. The trick, as usual, is trying to figure out when and how often to trigger this dialogue so you don't get it happening in inappropriate circumstances.

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Will there be scenery NPCs like in BG1, who had nothing to do with the plot but had fun banter and created the atmosphere?

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Don't most of our games have such ambient characters?

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Also, like in BG1, will there be an opportunity to charm pretty much any named creature and get a 'secret' dialogue?

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Who says there will be such a thing as an ability to charm someone? There won't, so no.

What can DA learn from NWN2 ?
I'm excited about NWN2, myself. Comparing it to NWN1, though, seems a bit odd... one generally expects a sequel to be a leap above its predecessor, no? It's nice to see that they're ambitious; hopefully a lot of it will remain in the end product.

A few comments about some points raised:

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Bioware's already said they're doing this, not to mention stuff like multiple start points etc. & a unique multiplay campaign too.

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To be honest, that's a lesson we learned already from NWN1. And it bears repeating.

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Bioware's hinted at around 6 members with full BG-style control.

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We hinted at 6 members? I doubt it will be that many. Not because we can't, but probably because a 4 or 5-member party is more wieldy. Definitely full control, though.

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Other than individual start-locations, I wouldn't be surprised if <strongholds> turned up as well (seeing BG2 had them).

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No, we won't have anything like the BG2 strongholds. They're cool, but they don't fit in with the context of the single-player story.

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DA doesn't even have a publisher yet, so nothing on interference yet, along with Bioware's position in the PC-RPG market it's unlikely that the eventual publisher will try anything to extreme anyway.

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We're certainly in a position to negotiate a less-lopsided contract with our publisher than most developers get to do, that's true.

Obsidian is in a better position itself now that it's no longer unproven, but keep in mind that they not only have to deal with a publisher but an IP owner, as well, and one that's... well... renown for its obtuseness.

Here's to hoping that this doesn't present a problem for them.

More: You know, in most tabletop gaming that I have done (even in D&D) the player group is around 4 or 5 maximum, and that was even including the obligatory DM-controlled NPC in the group. It was never an issue.

DA does not play like BG nor is it D&D. As we get further into the balancing of play we'll adjust party size to whatever we think is more fun... but large parties certainly need not be the rule and in DA's case we're thinking at the moment that 4 or 5 should really be sufficient. 3 or less, though, doesn't leave much room for party banter and mixed roles, so it's unlikely that we would go that route in any case.

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return of a random idea:
no encountered "max party limit" (e.g. u don't get told "your party is full"), but control who joins by NPC relations. e.g. u got 9 party members available total, but each NPC will only willingly join a party containing 3 of the others. If the party contains any of the 5 they don't get on with, then they wont join.

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Then how does the NPC tell you as the player that it is even possible for them to join, but you just have too many party members? "I would go with you, but you look like you already have enough help." That seems like it would feel just as artificial. The player would, in essence, end up forced to stick with whomever he met first.

And insofar as not putting a limit on the party number, I don't think that would quite work either. At what point is someone going to go "No thanks, I think I have enough people here, really." No, of course you're going to bring everyone along with you who's willing to come... you never know when they might come in handy, after all. And what if that meant that the game then became super easy because you had this really large party? One could say that we should balance fights to match the party size, but even if I agreed with that notion it's not that easy to do... especially when the party gets large.

And lastly, before anyone asks, we're not doing "party in a pocket". We have another system that works well, a bit similar to KotOR but without the ease of access. I think it's a good compromise.

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I just wish DA wans't going to have the 'forced npc' like KOTOR series. I prefer the BG/NWN style of the PC being allowed to say no any and all potential aprty members no matter how important they may be.

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DA has both. There are critical path party members as well as optional ones. Most of them are optional... the ones that are critical path are logically so.

As for my "party in a pocket" reference, yes, I was referring to the ability to insta-magically switch out party members even when you were not with the rest of the group. Sorry, I thought that was one of those universal references; I didn't know it also referred to the FF thing Brenon mentioned, although that makes sense.

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I guess the next question will be: but what about the GUI?
You can always make it a scrolling list, or rescale if the team is big enough, or if the original game will never go beyond a limit for sure, just optimise the gui for that size but let modders modify it

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I believe the GUI set-up is indeed the main issue with making the party size larger than it's currently set at (aside from design and balance, of course, but those aren't issues for a modder). I have my doubts that we intend to jump through hoops to try and figure out how to change the GUI to accomodate modders... it'd be nice, I suppose, but it's not a matter of "just" doing anything. My understanding is that GUI creation is a complicated process. But I'm not the one working on it so I couldn't say for certain.

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Hey I'm new in here but I have a question Is Dragon Age the same game as NWN 2 ?

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AHHH! *head explodes*

Heh. Seriously, though, no... NWN2 is a seperate game completely. If you go up to the main forum menu you'll see another section of this site entirely devoted to Obsidian (the developers) and that game. Dragon Age is a party-based RPG and, while it will have some kind of toolset and allow modding, it very much is not NWN2 and has completely different goals.

Stanley Woo, QA Ninja

Elevation, BioWare, Pandemic joining forces

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hehehe

Elevation = height = z-axis

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It's all a big conspiracy, i tells ya! And our next merger is with Swim Cheval Studios from Robecloakston, Va., wo what does that tell you?

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I want a swimming, robed ridable horse with a cape.

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Done! "HORSE: Dark Riders of the Cloak of Night" will be released in 3078. it'll be all horses, all the time. Playable horses, ridable horses, cloakable horses, even flying horses! All your horse RPG needs in one dark game of black deathness. Oooh, scaaary

Update Info

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Dunno why we just can't relax?

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The impending holidays are usually a stressful time for all.

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I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when I sit infront of the computer reading these boards.
Right now (well, maybe, don't know if the BioWarians work at the moment) their working on the next great RPG. And what do we have to do? Nothing, we dont have to do a single thing, just wait for the game to ship.

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I'm in that boat too, since I'm not on Dragon Age yet. I'm currently doing work for the Live Team and... something else...

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BioWare's emplyees work day (and hopefully night) on this product and their doing it for us. Maybe they only want our money, but that doesn't really matter. You guys know that you will be a quality product so I can't understand how you can sit and comlain that BioWare haven't released enough information.

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Oh heavens, no. We don't work nights yet. Well, some keeners do, but that won't be the norm project-wide until crunch time, which is still way down the line. Thanks for giving our project leads the idea, though... jerk!

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I want to say thanks to the hard working (*pokes Stanley with a stick*) people at BioWare who actually takes time from their work on Dragon Age to answer these uselesss posts.

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See, I was right! only a jerky person would poke me with a stick. A nice person would just hit me over the head with a pool noodle or something to that effect! And like I said, I'm not on the project so I can say things like "oh yes, trans-multi-channel quad-pixel quantization in Dragon Age will treble the digital ohm bus throughput GUI" and "Darcy Pajak is a monkeyface!"

Thanks for the comments!

Let's just hope they don't stop working to read this.

Dragon Age forum being helpful?

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So my question to the bioware team is, how much is this forum contributing to the development of the game itself?

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The discussions in the forum help more in the "so what kinds of things do people like" rather than the "hey, that feature's cool, let's implement it" that many people think of when they make suggestions.

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Did you actually change something, or had something influenced by ideas that gamers give out in here?

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Of course, everything the designers read "influences" them. Whether or not something's changed as a result o that, the community will never know.

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Also (unrelated to the above) I'm currently playing guild wars. What do you think of that game, and is the multiplayer coop of DA going to be anything like that?

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We haven't announced anything definite in regards to DA multiplayer yet.

o o o o i cant waiiiit

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wow new rpg by bioware im there like yesterday

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But you just joined today!

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i have enjoyed every title that bioware has come out with beggining with bg2 and the latest jade empire and no way in heck will i over look this game even tho they dropped dnd

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We're still developing Premium Modules for NWN, so we're still involved with D&D.

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biooware gameplay for rpg is by far the best of all developers. oh and i will get an xbox for mass effect as well yayay ayay hurray for rpg ad bioware what a lovely combo.

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Thanks for the kind words. We're kinda pleased with all these projects ourselves!