Dragon Age Forum News (Sep. 18, 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.

David Gaider, Lead Writer

Consequences for Actions in TheDAS
We do have a fair number of plots which work like that... the consequences of your actions aren't always easily determined, and some only show up later on down the line.

I would like to point out one thing, though, for those who are worried: we have self-appointed "advocates" amongst the design team who put on their particular hat when they play through a game and want to ensure that their style of play is accomodated. This ranges from the intelligent evil guy to the smart-*** rogue to, yes, the paladin-esque do-gooder.
What they tend to look for, individually, is not that they always have an easily-identified option created just for them, but rather that the character they play always have a reasonable course of action available. After all, someone playing evil doesn't like being forced into gainless altruism any more than someone playing good likes being forced into doing terrible or heartless things. When I do quests, there should be a path that someone who believes they are good could try... it may not be the easiest path (and, indeed, that's a solid definition between morality and immorality) but it should be available and rewarding.

Just thought I'd say that before the religious argument reared its head and took over.

Vampires...

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i really hope that the DA dev team does not leave effects/opponents/ideas out of the game because they are not plausible for the DA world. That would be disappointing, hopefully they have not set themselves too many limits trying to make it a realistic world. I'm disappointed to hear that vampires and liches won't be in the game, for me it would have been interesting to play from the 'Kangaxx perspective', and vampires/liches were tough, challenging opponents. I do hope that abilities like level drain, charm/dominate and powerful wizards (as a replacement to liches) will still be included.
Animated corpses sounds to me like zombies, which were never challenging in any game, they're just mindless opponents with no strategic battle elements required.

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We're going to use some creatures that would be familiar to you, and some we're going to put our own "spin" on the same as we do with our elves and dwarves (and as I think about it, there is a creature which is kinda sorta like a lich in some respects, I guess... but not really) ...they'll be recognizeable, but perhaps not what you expect. And then we'll have some creatures that are entirely our own.

That can't be surprising, can it? It's a new world, and it would be a bit boring and pointless to recreate D&D verbatim. Some creatures are just not going to fit... and speaking from my own point of view, I think the Forgotten Realms in particular went too far in trying to fit everything in and generally ignoring how that might affect the rest of the setting. The world was basically a patchwork of genres, and that's not what we're going for.

James Henley, Designer

Is there anything left to discuss?

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Arrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhhhh!

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Your head a-splode.

More:

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If they'd offer a quarterly summary of A-D, the boards would be better off by far.

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What falls under each category is subject to change at any moment, so releasing information like that would be more misleading than maintaining a relatively consistent level of secrecy.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Why won't Bioware just admit..

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that this game is NEVER going to be released!

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Because more than likely, I'd be lying.

True, there are certain cases where the game might not get shipped...

1) Edmonton could be attacked by the vicious mole-people who have been secretly coveting our cattle.

2) A new game called 'Bonks' in which the point is to bounce a super-ball off of another person's head becomes extremely popular, ousting all other forms of entertainment.

3) A caffeine crisis stops programming worldwide.