Dragon Age Central

Quote: Posted 05/25/09 19:57 (GMT) by Mary Kirby

Quote: Posted 05/25/09 19:54 (GMT) by just another fan


I was planning to start as either a human mage or noble, but there doesn't seem to be much love for the Human noble. Why?

We've all playtested the human noble the most. After the eleven billionth time you've run through it, you start to think, "Hey, all that squalor in the alienage is starting to look pretty sweet about now..."

True. it's a great origin and is lots of fun, but a favourite? Not after a bajillion times playing through it.

Quote: Posted 05/25/09 19:54 (GMT) by just another fan


I was planning to start as either a human mage or noble, but there doesn't seem to be much love for the Human noble. Why?

We've all playtested the human noble the most. After the eleven billionth time you've run through it, you start to think, "Hey, all that squalor in the alienage is starting to look pretty sweet about now..."

Quote: Posted 05/25/09 16:01 (GMT) by tigrina
Does this mean the whole initial idea of DA comes from a desire to (re)create the 'first time BG series' feeling then? I just thought of it as a marketing strategy to be honest. Unless it comes from the need of wanting to tell an epic heroic story. I can see the (very good) point in that.

I wouldn't say that was the only desire. Those of us that started DA, however, have very good memories of Baldur's Gate. We like fantasy, elves and dwarves and all -- why wouldn't we want to do something in that same vein, taking into account the things we've learned since and the things we want to try that are new? Revisiting familiar and beloved territory doesn't necessarily have to mean retreading the same ground, even if that's something that some people might claim they'd like to see happen.

Quote: Posted 05/25/09 15:22 (GMT) by tigrina
I'm not sure if this is true. Would be cool to examine the experience of people now trying out the BG series first time after seeing all kinds of "cooler looking" other games. There are a few threads with people in who are doing exactly that right now. The other thing I noticed recently on some other boards is that the love for the writing of especially some NPC's is higher with replay and I assume age. That is nostalgia combined with looking at it in a different way.

Perhaps. All I meant is that it is significant -- one should not dismiss the fact that re-creating BG in every detail is not going to magically re-create the same sense of novelty that you felt when you played it the first time. The thing about nostalgia is that it's probably not quite the game you remember. This is not to say that nostalgia is all there is or that it isn't an excellent game worth replaying. If that were true then there'd be no-one interested in remaking it at all, and we probably wouldn't be creating DA in the first place.

That must be the confusion. There is a differnce (to us) between a "build" and the content of the build. We get new builds of the game all the time. Sometimes a new build can be created just to fix one bug. Sometimes a build can represnt a huge change to something (maybe new text, new effects, whatever). The build that went to NYCC was very recent (for the time), but the content of the build was old.

Hopefully that clears things a bit.

Quote: Posted 05/24/09 18:10 (GMT) by Alodar

Quote: Posted 05/24/09 17:09 (GMT) by Chris Priestly

Quote: Posted 05/24/09 15:16 (GMT) by Mansse

Quote: Posted 05/24/09 15:07 (GMT) by Alodar

The spell lists at the Wiki were from a build that is at least 2 years old that was shown at the NYCC(New York Comic Con).

I did not realize it was that old. I shouldn't quote that then.

Me either, and I took it to NYCC. It was, at the time, about 2 weeks old, but hardly 2 years.

When talking about the spell descriptions Georg had referred to the info at the NYCC demo as a year and half old build. It's been about 4 months since then so I just added and rounded up.


Alodar

Actually, I think I said 'from last year' - The comment was made this year.

However, even at the time of the demo, the descriptions were several months old - we don't update them continuously. There's description passes to sync the descriptions against what the spells do - and since spell effects kept changing until pretty much a few weeks ago. Radically changing

More or less. We haven't finalized the controls yet and until we are sure of the final scheme, we aren't going to be discussing it. As soon as we know for sure, we'll let everyone know.

Quote: Posted 05/20/09 17:13 (GMT) by Reaper004
Why? What purpose could a prostitute possibly serve in Dragon Age, be it male or female?

You mean besides the obvious?

How about a quest giver?

How about an information giver?

How about for ambient character in a seedy area?

Is there any reason why these role couldn't be filled by prostitutes?

Quote: Posted 05/20/09 14:47 (GMT) by Valmy
I am not lying I swear somebody from the development team said that during one of the many whining threads about how the delay for consoles is ruining Dragon Age as we know it.

But I do not remember where exactly or who said it.

I wouldn't overstate that. Adding a bunch of stuff back into the game this late in the process is what would be called "feature creep" -- very often these things were cut for very good reasons. (I know that every time we mention a plot or area that was cut, the forum person imagines it as some perfect, brilliant, fully-formed thing that constitutes a tragic loss -- whereas the reality is that it was probably a crappy, buggy, barely-done thing that was going nowhere. I can name on one hand the cuts in games which I think were tragic as opposed to things that ultimately benefited the game as a whole. Mind you, those cuts were REALLY tragic, but I digress.)

There was some bandwidth to add some cut material back in, in some manner, but if what you're imagining is entire chapters being summoned from the nethers willy-nilly then you've gone too far.

*sigh*

The game is not finished. It is still being worked on, refined and polished.

Quote: Posted 05/20/09 13:57 (GMT) by cosmin haraga
So the game is finished and will be sent to burning as it is.

Err... no.

Quote: Posted 05/19/09 22:51 (GMT) by ashbery76
I know the whole plot and ending due to the trailer and the Bittech interview

I find that highly unlikely.

Quote: The MassEffect team spoiled next to nothing and that is how it should be done.

You mean the entire twist about the Geth, which was spoiled in the early advertising? That next to nothing?

I assure you that nothing of that level has been spoiled about Dragon Age, unless you're going with the idea that any inferences you've drawn are all that is -- again, that's admittedly yet, but there isn't a marketing campaign that hasn't spoiled these things to some degree in the months before release, so the point made by the poster about blaming the wall has some merit. Paying close attention to such information when you're the sort who's averse to any spoilers at all is, in fact, a bit self-defeating, no?

Quote: Posted 05/19/09 14:50 (GMT) by RunCDFirst
It's a shame that hurt egos would prevent BioWare from interacting with their community in such a fashion, but that's the way that things roll I guess.

Yeah, that was a bit unexpected. It was just a tiny, pointless tribute -- yet a bunch of people on the forums got up in arms about why it couldn't be their tiny, pointless tribute. Yet none of them would actually admit that jealousy was the issue (even if it was very clear that was the case). Sadly it ended up being a bit of a backhanded compiment to those forum members. Poor Gromnir kept getting accused that his name wasn't very original afterwards, for instance.

Nobody outside of the forum crowd would even be aware we named those characters after anyone, and yet the very people it was meant to be a shout-out to resented their presence in the game. So, no, I don't think we'll ever be doing that again.

I like how we're both revealing too much and being asked constantly on the forums to reveal more. We've also revealed stuff too soon, yet we need to reveal more since the game has been in development so long.

I'll just say that I think our marketing folks have things well in hand, and this is the sort of "marketing push" thing that we mention a lot in the forums when people complained even at the start of this year about not getting enough info on the game.

Game developers don't develop just for the totally tricked out Alienware rig. They want as big of an audience as possible, so they try to make the game playable on as wide a variety of different components as they can. This means different graphics cards, motherboards, processors, and memory.

We haven't announced the game's system requirements yet, but stay tuned and when they're ready to go, we'll announce them here and elsewhere.

End of line.