Dragon Age Forum News (Oct. 20, 05)

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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

Will the PC have a voice?
I don't think we're currently planning on giving the PC full VO. As you say... that's a *lot* of extra dialogue.

I believe we're still planning on doing Voice Sets though... so yeah... for the occasional grunt, battlecry and voice emote you should hear whatever speech package you've chosen.

We'd like to expand a bit on the voice set idea though and maybe have a few more vocalisations as opposed to just grunts and the occasional crazy outburst.

We'll see how that works out though.

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Conversely, there are some people that would rather imagine what the voice of their character sounds like than have their illusions shattered by an actual voice. Were there ever times that you couldn't quite find the voice set that you really wanted for your character?

And Brenon, damn, go sleep or something.

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I don't sleep.

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I know that computer role-players have various philosophical camps in regards to the best method of creating character immersion and admit that a minimalistic approach to PC voice might be the best for that factor of play. However, I still find good voice acting more engaging than the best facial and gesture animation I've seen.

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For sure. I think there's a very fine line there somewhere... I'd love it if we could have all the voice sets with full VO. Generally I can dig through the voice sets (assuming there's enough choice) and find something I'm moderately happy with.

And while it may not sound *exactly* like what I think my character sounds like, it's "close enough".

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Brenon:
" I don't sleep."

That... explains a lot.

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What about just having the PC voice the most important lines.... like you guys used to do with NPCs

the big stirring speaches, the triumphant confrontations...

but not the "here's the kitty cat i rescued from the tree for you" type lines.

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If we were to move towards having full VO for the PC that would probably be a first step towards it.

We Want our Persistant Worlds

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The additions of and small changes needed in to toolset for their proper creation is small in comparison to what is needed to create the game itself and BioWare has already done much of the Developement already needed by the PW community to do such.

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No. We haven't. The work you're referring to is 'non-trivial'.

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The Multiplayer community has even told Bioware of and has even created partial solutions to what they need but Bioware has treated them with hostility, for some unknown reason.

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The PW posts I tend to see cropping up are usually 'energetic'. If our saying: "Persistent Worlds are not a goal of Dragon Age" is hostile... well...

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The addition a small amount of code and the additions of a few small options Will Not subtract from your Singleplayer experience but offers you the potential for much more in the game after your done going thru the Single Player version one time or 100 times.

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As I mentioned up above, it is a non-trivial amount of work. Adding additional PW features means less time spent polishing/debugging/implementing other things. It's a simple trade-off. At least when you're talking about programming features.

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So I ask? is the capabilities of people creating Persistant Worlds using the tools that Bioware can fairly easisly provide, (they claim they are going to shipping a toolset are they not?) going to subtract that much from your Singleplayer game experience?

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Things need to be designed very differently if they're intended for a scaleable multiplayer experience. Especially if that experience is supposed to last on the order of weeks or months at a time.

You're talking not just about additional features of the ruleset, but a different design altogether for a lot of different systems.

For example, making a networking layer for around ten players is a lot different from making a networking layer for 100 people. Very different, and that's just *one* particular implementation detail. (NOTE: None of this is indicative of what DA is or is not doing)

As a PW builder, I'm sure you can understand that. After all, you deal with building larger distributed scripting solutions... don't you? The difference between something you'd use on a PW versus something you'd use in a SP module is fairly different in most cases... ne?

The 'Making of …' video
I'm not sure if anything is planned or this... or at least if it is, I've never seen the camera crews.

Which is probably for the best, since all I do lately is sit in my office and swear a lot.

If we were to do something like this I imagine it would probably be more of a PR initiative and would be looked at a bit further down the pipe.

Right now: "I don't think so... but that could change".

Set Microsoft as publisher, and go on
Just curious... what is 'information'?

What is it that people have a burning desire to know that we are stonewalling them on? Is it the lack of PR? Interviews? Chats? Screenshots? Teasers? Wallpapers? Developer communication? Concept Art?

Or is it just more of a general feeling that we're hanging on to all the juicy bits?

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Mostly I would like info on specail querks (like will you be able to ride horses? Will there be neat stuff like what cep added to nwn? Will there be sub races built in? Will there actually be dragons? there better be dragons! etc.).

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No definite answer as of yet.

Can you be more specific?

No, unless you're referring to a cultural subset of a race. In which case yes, there are different cultures... though I don't believe it currently has any effect on character creation (ie: stat modification).

Yes.

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Does that mean we pick a culture at character creation, as a purely asthetic choice, or that just that different cultures exist in TheDAS (just like there are Asians, Australians, Russians etc. in the real world)?

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There are different cultures that exist in DA. This has already been mentioned, I believe... I was just reiterating.

So: 'The latter'.

If Dragon Age would be more singe player-focused RPG
Well, I for one will be disappointed in DA ends up being 20 hours. I'd guess it to be a fair bit longer, though it's really hard to tell until playthroughs are possible.

As for making several smaller scope games, it's not a bad idea. I would prefer it if we didn't have to go that route.

Shenmue did something similar and it was painful... especially when you go to the end and realized that the story wasn't anywhere near finished. Nothing irks me more than 'To Be Continued...'. Especially if the story is interesting.

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I think the real solution to this whole "make a long game" dilemna is a powerful toolset.

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But the toolset is not the focus of DA.

No one is saying the story has to be incredibly short, we'll see what kind of length we're looking at once things develop a bit further.

All that's being said is that a single 100+ hour game isn't really feasable with the way that development currently works.

James Henley, Designer

Will the PC have a voice?
Conversely, there are some people that would rather imagine what the voice of their character sounds like than have their illusions shattered by an actual voice. Were there ever times that you couldn't quite find the voice set that you really wanted for your character?

And Brenon, damn, go sleep or something.

If Dragon Age would be more singe player-focused RPG

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Not an 80-hrs RPG? Ouch.

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The age of the 100 hour RPG is over, at least until the techniques used to develop high quality art assets catch up to the technology itself.

Baldur's Gate 2 came at a rare point in time where 2D art was still acceptable and the techniques to develop it were nicely optimized, so the assets could be produced quickly and cleanly.

That is no longer the case, and with the pace that technology advances these days, it will likely be a long time before that particular trend comes full circle again.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not actually bothered by that. I don't have that kind of time to invest in a game these days anyways, and I've played a number of games that, while only 30-40 hours, felt like a full, satisfying play experience.

David Gaider, Lead Writer

Will the PC have a voice?
We have actually discussed this quite a bit. DA won't have it, but that's not to mean that every Bioware game won't have it as there's both plusses and negatives to consider.

The main issue here is one of personalization. In a large RPG, the PC is going to have a LOT of dialogue. Indeed, collecting all the PC responses, you'd have many times more dialogue for a PC character than even the most extensive party NPC. And you would have to record all of it for each voice you're going to supply.

Meaning that if we record all PC dialogue, at best you're going to include maybe one male voice and one female. Literally there might not even be room for more options, providing you wanted to go through the expense. Unless it wasn't a very long game, I suppose, but I'm running on the assumption that we're dealing with something at least as long as KotOR (or more so). And is one voice for each gender enough? Include more options and suddenly the VO and space requirements become massive.
And if the idea is to allow a player to personalize their character, what are the chances that the voice will simply not be what they wanted? You'll be hearing this voice speaking throughout the game, remember... you'll hear it all the time. It better be good. Damn good.

Not all RPG's aim for personalization of the character (Jade Empire is an example), but DA still is.

The comment that it would feel repetitious since you read all the responses first is a good one, too. We could go the way of putting the intent of the response without the wording ("Ask where the castle is.") and surprise the player with the wording... but I'm not sure that would be preferable. Someone mentioned offering options for tone, but again unless you have a very short game each option for a PC is going to involve a massive amount of dialogue.

I suppose if it's something that could be done right and not take up a huge amount of resources and disk space, we might try it out. Speaking personally, though, if this was a character I had made myself, the idea of being stuck with a voice I hated and then having to listen to it throughout the entire game would be a little irksome.

We Want our Persistant Worlds
Yep, it's true. The entire lesson we should have learned from NWN was that we should never create any game ever again that doesn't support the making of persistant worlds. It's very boring of us to make a game that focuses mainly on being a good single-player party-based RPG. Those are a dime a dozen, really.

Dealing with the Dragon Age Community Online

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Well from everything Bioware has said, DA is primarily going to be a SINGLEPLAYER GAME and they are not going to give us the long awaited capabilities we want to make a decent multiplayer Persistant World so as I see it, this entire subject is kind of irrelevant.

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Actually, what we've said is that DA will be a party-based RPG that will have both a single-player and multiplayer campaign. As for PW's, we don't really know at this point whether they will be possible with DA. Whether or not they will be possible, however, is not a goal of the project and thus will not factor into design decisions.

If someone thinks that this is a mistake and that we should be catering to PW's, then by all means say so. Acting like we have somehow betrayed a promise, however, doesn't really make sense... there would be reason to expect that NWN2 would be PW-capable, perhaps, but DA is an entirely different project. As I've said many times before, it's not simply NWN2 with the D&D taken out of it.

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Would it be fair to say the DA will be more like improved graphic version of BG II with a limited toolset rather then NWN which was based on multiplayer design and had a rich toolset?

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Mmm, no, that wouldn't be quite accurate, either.

The multiplayer in BG2 won't play like BG2's multiplayer very much. Multiplayer wasn't really BG2's strong point, and for good reason. The main problem with NWN, meanwhile, is that we tried to shoehorn singleplayer into a multiplayer package (really the reverse of BG2's issue, I suppose).

I'm not sure that "limited" is the way to describe the toolset that DA will have, either. It isn't the focus of the release and we very likely won't do much to make it extremely user-friendly, but it may indeed be quite powerful.

Will DA be PW friendly?

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Maybe just maybe you should consider buying it instead.

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Exactly. That's how it works. If what you're looking for is apple pie and we aren't making apple pie, then you should probably go buy some apple pie from whoever happens to be making it.

And if the fact that they are making apple pie and we are not makes them rich beyond the dreams of avarice, then we shall curse the gods for our lack of wisdom.

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From everything Ive been able to gather about Dragon Age is that if you want any Persistant world capablity, then you Best Look Elsewhere as Bioware does not want you to have those capabilities with their game system.

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It's not that we don't want you to have apple pie. We understand that you like apple pie-- a whole lot! Indeed, we made apple pie once before and we think apple pie is cool. The pie we're making now may even be compatible with apples -- we just don't know yet, as it's not really what we intend to make.

But thank you for letting us know that you would like to see us make more apple pie. While we think the folks at Obsidian may have the apple pie market cornered sometime in the near future, you really have to respect someone who has that kind of passion for apples.

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Now When a company says: We dont want to sell our customers what they want, but only what we want to give them with only the few select feature we want to offer, and we dont care that much about the quality of our product

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This is where you lose me completely.

We are not saying "we do not want to give you PW's".

We are saying that this game is not being built with PW's in mind. If we tried to build it with PW's in mind, we would have to change some very fundamental things about how this game is made.

We intend for it to do a select few things, and it will do those things well. If we try to make it include all sorts of other things, it will only end up that we do each of those things less well because it will be less focused.

In other words, we do care about the quality of our product. And it will show.

The one part of your statement that is true is that if not designing DA with PW's in mind means that nobody wants the game because they all wanted PW's, then our company will indeed not do very well.

But, respectfully, we're going to take that chance, and for those people who have been waiting for the exact game that DA intends to be, we sure as hell ARE listening to them. But thanks for your input.

What about more work?
You want to have a job?

I've liked tradeskills well enough in a MMORPG setting, but I have trouble picturing it otherwise, myself.

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At least it would make sense to have the NPCs doing such jobs, and have the PCs be able to do some early sidequests (like finind some ore, gathering pelts etc).

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I could see being able to set party members to certain tasks when you leave them behind at camp, perhaps... but I'm not certain this is quite what you meant by this.

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Most rpgs only feature some shopkeepers for weapons, armor, magic, and some NPCs walking from "x" to "y".
After almost two (2) decades of computer roleplaying I want more depth when it comes to realistic and alive feeling city.

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This is quite different. The plan is to have ambient NPC's awash in different animations and appearing to go about the daily business of their lives... as opposed to merely standing in one spot or pacing from place to place. But it will still be an illusion, if a more sophisticated one.

Even so, the regular business of crafting seems to me to relate more to the sandbox-type of RPG than what we do. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Tired Cliché's To Avoid

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Cute like Imoen but suicidal and annoying like Tomi?

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Tastes differ. I personally have seen only one character more annoying than Imoen - the flying skull in PST. Ye gods.

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Indeed, I have said many times before that I would prefer that a character get a strong reaction as opposed to none at all. Characters like Deekin and Imoen and Aribeth seem to have people who like them passionately and people who hate them passionately... with very few inbetween. That's better than, say, Valygar, who some people kind of like but who never gets discussed at all.

Not that every character needs to be a comedic sidekick (far from it), but the characters that are more or less acceptable to everyone are also bound to be boring as hell.

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Do you think it's possible for every NPC companion to get a strong reaction in a game with, say, six or more companions?

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People are going to like or dislike characters for different reasons... sometimes bizarre ones. I think it's telling, though, when a character is nobody's favorite (or most hated).

Their placement in the game may be a factor (such as with Valygar, perhaps), but I think it's a small one. Sometimes the most minor roles are memorable.

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Moreover, just because I'm thinking of NPCs, reaction, and asking you questions: You stated before that romancable NPCs will also have a 'just friends' path, do you see NPCs as showing different parts of their personality depending on if the PC chooses the romance or friend path?

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Possibly. It really depends on who's writing the character at that point and how they want to present the character.

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hk and jolee...

we has seen hk on more than a few "10 best npcs" lists. were an amusing character, but there really weren't much to 'em. hardest part of developing hk for dave were probably coming up with a concept and a catchphrase.

jolee, on the other hand, were a far more complex character, and no doubt dave worked much harder on him... but we ain't seen jolee on those "10 best npcs" lists at gamespy and elsewhere.

if Gromnir is a developer, we gotta laugh at many of the threads on the boards... 'cause what boardies ask for, and what they seems to actually like is two very different things... we gotta laugh, 'cause otherwise we would rage or howl or weep.

HA! Good Fun!

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It's true. Jolee is probably the NPC in KotOR that I am the most proud of. HK-47 was given to me to write with the entire concept of "tough assassin droid" and I decided to make him a cross between Bender and a killer version of the Littlest Hobo as a gag.

Huh. Who knew?

Which does sort of go to show you that you can't plan for chemistry. Not that Jolee didn't have his role... I think we were pleased enough with him. Not everybody can be a star, right?

More: Yep. Notice how everyone has a radically different opinion on the NPC's? This is why I look at the overall trend as to which characters get discussed. Not being discussed doesn't mean a character is worthless... Valygar and Jolee had their place... but it's worth considering why certain characters get reactions from the larger audience and others don't.

Not that it's a science or anything, but I've had a lot of time to tinker and watch the results. It's an interesting past-time for me.

If Dragon Age would be more singe player-focused RPG

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Well, Biowarians, why not adopt the Gromnir 3x30 format, with releases 2 and 3 each following its antecedent by 8 or so months?

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Well, gosh, us not responding to a dare like this must mean there's something to it.

Just how long does it take to make enough art assets for a 30-hour game? SO somehow we're supposed to make 90 hours worth of art assets and split it up into three games and this is supposed to take less time overall?

I don't mind the idea of serializing a long story into shorter segments, but it's going to take the length of making one 30-hour game and multiplying it by 3. Period. But that is not going to mean time is mysteriously saved somewhere in-between. The reason that shorter expansions often get made (in lieu of moving onto the expansion immediately) is, I assume, because they come out more quickly and thus are released while the original game is still on peoples' hard drives.

More: Point taken. But I guess it depends on where you intend to go with the story. If we were doing one 90-hour game, why would it take less art assets to split that same story up into three segments?

There *is* less for programming to do when you're moving onto a sequel with the same engine... indeed, that's an ideal situation of the kind that BG2 was in, but only because we can start creating the story from the get-go with the knowledge of exactly what our capabilities are (and can prototype it, as well).
Even so, these days the main limitation would still be how many art assets you had available. If these are supposed to be full retail releases, I'm not sure that major re-use of previous art would be very acceptable.

Perhaps you're right. Even so, at this point it's simply conjecture. I'd have to see further study on it before I accepted it, because right now my gut says it's not that simple... and I don't think that's just me being conservative.

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Truth be told, Bioware should be able to crank out 50 to 100 hour modules at the rate of one every other month or so if they would just use the tools they have.

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Okay, I think I need to go away now.

Stanley Woo, QA Ninja

The Limit of Patience

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but i thought that doctors at Bioware labs are working on a secret potion to raise the productivity level, it is supposed to be based on the Miraculix recipe, so there's a chance we might see DA be released soon.

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In recent news, Miraculix has been banned as a viable foodstuff by the Canadian equivalent to the Food and Drug Administration, as it was found that the "wonder substance" (as Miraculix is often called) contributed greatly to both asymptomatic toxic keyboard thrombosis and chronic internal mouse-itis.

Medical professionals also warn against turning this thread into a release date thread, citing previous locked threads as evidence that release date threads tend to get locked.

This is Stanley Woo, reporting live from my desk.