Dragon Age Central

How about now?

Yes, October 20 2009 is the official release date for Dragon Age: Origins. So go reserve your copy at your local store.

That is your first glimpse at our brand new trailer, made for us by the fine folks at Blur. This is just your first taste of the coolness that will be coming as part of E3 next week. Not only will there be the cool new trailer, there will be all sorts of great news, interviews and gameplay from E3.

There will be something cool happening here on the BioWare Dragon Age: Origins website as well. This is just your first taste of E3 and the coolness Dragon Age: Origins will be bringing.

October 20th. Hmmm... how about that.

Quote: Posted 05/25/09 21:50 (GMT) by Phaidon_atlas

Derek French did not mention SecuROM...

Of course I didn't because the original press release says that we aren't using SecuROM for Dragon Age: Origins. I can say it again if it wasn't clear.

We are not using SecuROM for Dragon Age: Origins.

Quote: Posted 05/14/09 01:27 (GMT) by Dave of Canada

I'll admit, I haven't followed Dragon Age much - but it interested me, and now I'd like to get informed

1. How long is the game going to take?

I think the estimate is sitting at 80 hours. You'd have to get Evil Chris to verify that, though.

Quote: 2. I've heard there's such things called "Origins" - what are they?

These things. Fully playable starting chapters of the game that vary according to your race (and sometimes class.) and affect how the world views you (and vice versa.)

Quote: 3. Single Player only, or is there Multiplayer?

Single Player only.

Quote: 4. I've heard this game is going to be hard, how "hard" is hard?

This depends a lot on which difficulty setting you play on. If you enjoy weeping in frustration, try nightmare. If you just want to see the story, try casual. If you like something in between, there's normal and hard.

Quote: 5. Who is the bearded badass that jumped on that purple ogre-thing in the "Violence" trailer?

Duncan! (He's the same guy narrating the "Join Us" video.)

Quote: 6. When's the game coming out, or the estimated time?

Second half of this year.

Quote: 7. Will the main characters voice-acted, like Mass Effect?

The player character is not voice-acted.

Quote: 8. What's the general lore / world set up for the game?

Man, this would take me a week to answer. I'm going to point you here instead.

Hi Everyone,

I have some good news to pass on to you today that answers one of the most frequently asked Dragon Age: Origins PC questions.

We’re happy to announce that the boxed/retail PC version of Dragon Age: Origins will use only a basic disk check and it will not require online authentication. In other words, the retail PC version of the game won’t require you to go online to authenticate the game for offline play. We have chosen not to use SecuROM in any version of Dragon Age that is distributed by EA or BioWare.

Some other cool stuff that we hope you’ll like - we have already launched the Dragon Age toolset beta, which offers developer-grade tools, and we’re looking forward to what fans will create with it. We’ll also be supporting the game with a ton of great downloadable content that will be available for purchase after the game’s release. Together these features will provide some very cool reasons to go online with Dragon Age: Origins.

We’re really excited as we head towards the release of Dragon Age: Origins this fall on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, so keep an eye out for more news as we’ll be providing you with more details shortly.

Stay tuned for more coolness to come…

I was wondering when someone would notice the pre-order badge. This is just the tip of the iceberg for pre-order information. We will have more details on pre-orders soon so stay tuned for more info in the weeks to come.

The November 3rd date is not the final date. When we do have an exact release date, we will make it known.

Actually daniel, you have not read my post apparently.

The PC version would not have reached the quality it has now if not for the sim-release delay. It would have been a noticeably worse game.

Yes, the console versions have 'interfered' with the game by buying it more time. Without the prospect of a console sim ship, the game would have been out by now, with a lot less polish (evidently, since we're still working on it).

And talking about profit - yes, BioWare has always been about profit. It's not an idealistic venture to make 'better games' for the sake of it. Anyone suprised by that please google the meaning of the following 5 letters 'C O R P'.

However, we (and that includes EA) do believe that the best way to turn a profit is through making quality games.

As for being lied to: Situations change.

Take Mass Effect. Launching a franchise is risky. Even being the same game, It could have tanked. There could have been other games in the launch window, canibalizing sales. Hence we would not decide on making a PC version until we know that the game is successful. Hence you would only ever get the line 'Mass Effect is planned for the 360, we have nothing else to announce'. Saying anything else would cause the same reaction we're seeing here: 'You promised a PC version...'.

Now, fast forward a few month, it becomes clear that Mass Effect is a smash hit. Contracts are being drawn up, resourcs evaluated, etc. Until all contracts are signed, the project is well underway and it is clear that it can be successfully executed, that's when we can start talking about the Mass Effect PC version. Before that, any previous line of messaging needs to stay in effect.

Nobody lied, nobody actively misled. The situation changed.

In fact, situations change around us a lot. Our company changed owners 2 times during the development of Dragon Age. We saw 2 console generations during the development of Dragon Age, along with all the changes this brought to the industry and the market. We saw the rise of the MMO genre during the development of Dragon Age. We shipped 3 other titles as a company during the development of Dragon Age and learned important lessons from that.

If you expect none of these changes to have any impact on the game just because we, at some point, stated that we had certain plans with the game, you're living in a dream world.

As for the 'But you promised us a PC version' stuff going on here: That's what you're getting. Dragon Age PC is home on the PC. It uses RTS style keyboard and mouse controls. It makes uses of PC texture resolution and graphics features, etc. It was designed for the PC. That has not changed, and that's what we promised. We never promised 'but we are not going to delay the game if it makes business sense or we can assure a better quality'.

If you seriously want to complain about the game being delayed, please, read my post again. Yes, you could be playing it right now, and yes, it would feel less polished and we would probably have cut a whole bunch of content that we didn't have time to bring to ship polish. If you seriously prefer that option, it flies in the face of your previous statements about how you prefer 'better games' to be made.

Quote: Posted 03/31/09 03:43 (GMT) by danielkx

And I still hold to the belief that if the game was never being made for the consoles, Dragon Age for PC would be just as polished by May as it will be when it is released in fall, supposedly November from what one of the GDC articles said. I believe this to be true because the resources for the PC version will likely be very thin once development for the consoles goes full scale. If consoles weren't in the equation, the resources would stay with the PC version, meaning less time would be needed to polish the game.

Also, the sales projections would be dramatically lower. And, all things consider, we kind of like money and getting paid.
More platforms means higher profitability, which is good news for the franchise and our ability to make games (which is an expensive proposition).

Resources are given to a game based on sales projections and predicted profitability. It is delusional to think that the game would get the level of QA, marketing $$$ and development time it is getting now if there were no console versions.

Platform exclusives are mostly a thing of the past. There are two ways this can go:
a) create on one platform, shovel it onto all others
b) create the game and then properly port it to all platforms, making the changes necessary for it to feel and play right on all of them.

We're kind of fans of (b), because it has served us well in the past, because we want as many people to play our games as possible, and because we want these people to buy our next games as well.

BioWare done multiplatform as far back as MDK2, and so far I don't think we screwed it up for any of our games.

Whether or not DA would be out today if we didn't do a console version is really pointless lamenting. Maybe it would, but evidently we're still working on it, and the additional weeks on the schedule have done great things for the game.

We like doing the console versions because it means we're reaching a much bigger audience for our game that doing it on the PC alone. Bigger audience means more
people play it and we make more profit. We kinda like these things.

Why release simultaneously? Because all data indicates it is much more effective in terms of sales (and we very much like that) and it means you can focus your marketing campaign instead of running multiple campaigns at different times, which is less effective and more costly.

There really ain't any dark secrets here, we've explained all of this several times now - except for some reason a few people seem to believe that we got it all wrong

Really, you better get used to multiplatform games, because that's where the industry is heading when it comes to AAA titles. It's inevitable given the production costs.

All that said, it should ease you that we're approaching this by finishing the PC version first and then moving on to do deep ports for the consoles, because that means you don't need to be worrying about those conspiracy theories of us 'dumbing down the game' because of additional platforms.

Quote: Posted 02/03/09 21:28 (GMT) by Lady Evenstar
Does this affect the publication date for the Stolen Throne or just mean that we'll have plenty of time to read it before installing the game?

The release of the novel is unaffected, insofar as I'm aware.

What? And spoil the surprise?

I can say that the demo (assuming people play from the beginning of the demo till the end) can take 45 minutes to an hour. It is designed so that people who play for 10 minutes will walk away having enjoyed themselves (so you do not HAVE to play for 45 minutes or whatever).

I can also say that the demo will not reveal any major story spoilers at all (aside form the fact that it is part of the game, so that area will be familiar to those who demo when they play the real game), but there are no story spoilers.

To address the original question:

There are no current plans to use Games For Windows Live in Dragon Age.

Aha! We are in the Exhibit Hall (which is level 3) of the Javits center. All of the companies (DC, Marvel, EA, etc) are all in the big hall, so you can't miss us. We are at booth 1441 which is almost directly between the Marvel Comics booth and the DC Comics booth.

For more information on the layout, or to help find us, you can check out the link here: Click Here

Jay and I still want to meet up with fans from our forums for some more personal chit-chat and maybe to show you all some cool stuff not shown at the Con it's self. To do this, we would need all agree on a location and have some of you all confirm coming out (I am NOT offering to use my hotel room again. Not after the "unpleasantness" with those Spanish college girls, the orangutan, the mayonnaise and that Arch-Bishop). If anyone can think of a nice restaurant or bar (not too loud) where we could all meet up, please suggest it here.