Dragon Age Forum News

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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, Designer

Age Distribution of CRPG Players

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I think that probably reveals more than you intended about Bioware's two post-BG attempts at creating paladin NPCs.

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I don't think so. Mazzy and Keldorn were fine characters (which I mostly wrote) in their own right, and the fact that I wrote Aribeth (in NWN chapter 2, anyhow) and Misha (a minor, one-note character that never got explored, incidentally) I'd hardly take that as some sort of personal indictment against "conventionally heroic" characters.

I do find it kind of interesting, though, that just because Mazzy and Keldorn are "straightforward heroic" characters that they are somehow intrinsically better than those who have inner conflict, which you claim don't go far enough. So it's either a Russian novel or nothing, in your opinion? I don't get it.

Mazzy in particular was what I call a one-note character. There are other examples of one-note characters, certainly... they don't have to be good and paladin-like. HK-47 is another example, for instance. They are not what I would call complex in the slightest, however, and do not evolve at all over the course of the story.

I would put Mazzy in contrast to, say, Jolee... a character who I wrote as well who is both conflicted and very much a "grey Jedi". He is also, in my opinion, my best character to date.

There is room for characters with "unadulterated beatific goodness", certainly, but I hardly think it's a worthy goal in and of itself and does nothing to improve fantasy as a genre... so I'd have to respectfully disagree, sorry.

Archaisms....
Mmmm... if anyone used archaic english in any Bioware games it was an exception (and a rare one, as I cannot even think of a character who did so). It's our policy not to use it, period, for at the very least (beyond sounding weird to most) it becomes problematic for translation.

Mythologies in Thedas

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Re: multiple religions/polytheism-

I'd love to see a break from polytheism as well... but what I'd really like to see in Thedas is a kind of 'fault line' where two or more cultures (with their religions) collide... think medieval, or even present day, Middle East, for example. So in Thedas, we could see a monotheistic native culture under attack from a polytheistic invading empire... or whatev.

The most important thing to me is that there be competing religions, none of which necessarily have all the answers. Don't want to see gods cavorting with the heroes, or obvious indications of one religion being 'right'. Let the players choose a religion to follow, if they like, or none at all. Clerics can have healing magic, but it comes from study and a practical sense of helping fellow man (if a good-oriented religion) rather than from the God Of Healing. Paladins (assuming they're even in the game) don't neccesarity have to be champions of a god, or even all that goody-good, just willing to fight for a religion (not the same as a god) if it serves their purpose (like the Crusades)...

I've got no problem with the mythology of the game based on certain aspects of "real-world" mythology... after all, the mythology of 4000 years of humankind is bound to be richer than some slap-dash polytheism borrowed from fantasy convention.

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I think you'll be quite pleased with what we have cooked up for Dragon Age (though I won't kid myself to think everyone will be). We've worked hard, though, to put together something beyond the "slap-dash polytheism borrowed from fantasy convention". (I do like that phrase.)

We've no one system of religion amongst the cultures, but there are certain things they have in common: First, there is no certainty... there is only faith. Second, religious belief and its relation to the nature of magic is one of the defining characteristics of the Dragon Age world as well as one of its greatest sources of conflict.

I'd gush more, but that broad hint will have to do, as at this point anything and everything about the setting can still change. Hopefully a point will come soon where we cement some of this and can put it into a form to present to you all exactly what we've put together.

Will Dragons be a possible player race?

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So if the new race doesn't look lizardlike, what the heck does it look like. I could take D.G.'s comments that he doesn't think they look lizardlike just a matter of opinion, say his own personal dissapointment with the art department not making something that was required to look lizardlike, lizardlike. Or its a whole different visual.

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Well, I suppose there are elements to the race which could be interpreted as reptilian. I suppose it's a subjective thing... I just think their posits were based on a quick glance at the concept art, that's all. As far as what the art department drew... no, that turned out just fine. We had so many concepts to pick from it's hard to imagine how it couldn't have been exactly what we wanted, visually.

More:

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But when it comes to computer images ... it doesn't bother me at all. I enjoy having very human like images as much as I do more cartonnish ones (like WoW).

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I suppose people simply have different capacities for empathy, then. I, for one, found it hard to empathize with the characters in Final Fantasy. As the "uncanny valley" thing puts forward, when something is as close to human appearance as that, you start searching for the clues that differ from the human norm rather than searching for the things that are similar. You notice the lack of gleam in the eyes or, indeed, the too-perfect gleam.

I see it, anyway. I certainly didn't suggest it was a scientific truth. *shrug*

Georg Zoeller, Designer

OpenGL or DirectX
a) Please do not engage in 3rd party bashing on our boards, thank you.

b) With regards to OpenGL or DirectX, as Derek already mentioned, it will be a while before we decide what's going to happen.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

How about... ahem... riders?
The Age of Sail series isn't too bad... though after playing II, I've had to reluctantly come to grips with the fact that I will never be a pirate captain...

In terms of flight, there's a few things to keep in mind. Warcraft III has (essentially) 2D flight. From what I can tell, it seems to be a fixed distance above the ground, you can't move up and down with your gargoyles or wyverns. Essentially it's just another walkable area with no restrictions.

That sort of thing is much easier than full form 3D flight, especially with the control scheme that they use - and it works very well.

Essentially for us, what it boils down to is that any feature on the scale of mounts, player-controlled flight, full form swimming, tunnel digging, full naval combat (with wenching)... etc. is something that we'd have to get at least a fair amount of use out of to justify the resources required for implementation.

 

The part after "medieval" was in brackets, but I had no time seeking special HTML code for that, so I put it in commas. Hope you don't mind.