Dragon Age Central

An interview with Dan Tudge, intercut with previously seen cut-scenes, gameplay and screenshots. Transcript follows.

[dan tudge] Hello my name is Dan Tudge and I’m the executive producer on the ‘Dragon Age’ franchise. And hello ‘Game Tribes TV’.

‘Dragon Age: Origins’ is the spiritual successor to ‘Baldurs Gate’. It’s something the team has been working on hard for many years, and really is a return to our roots. It’s a dark heroic fantasy masterpiece, something that we’re very very proud of.

So we created the ‘Dragon Age’ universe from the ground up to be a universe that really could support a lot of entertainment product. We were influenced by a lot of dark fantasy - dark heroic fantasy - works of fiction as well as other games and really decided that, even though ‘Baldurs Gate’ was a spiritual successor for us [sic], it was a lot of the inspiration, the dark fantasy setting is something new, a new direction we could take it in.

The rule system for ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ again is something new that we created for the universe - from the ground up, a new rule system. It goes with the new lore, the new history, and the entirely new universe.

In ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, really, there often is no good or evil, there is just difficult choices, hard choices. It is a dark fantasy world, so often a lot of choices are hard either way. Certainly there are good paths and there are evil paths, but sometimes there’s just a tough choice.

Well the main character is really you. You create your character, you create your origin, and you play your origin. The first 2 or 3 hours of the game is your origin and the choices you make really changes the way the world perceives you and the way you perceive the world for the rest of the game. So really, it’s a choice about you.

Well as a spiritual successor to ‘Baldurs Gate’, ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, having a strong emotional bond and really great digital actors for your party is something that we really made sure we had, and it’s something that actually was a real pillar of ‘Baldurs Gate’, and something that I personally very very much enjoy. So you can expect a very robust party interaction between you and your party and infact between the party and itself.

Well ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ is a tactical, party-based game. So really you’re going to expect to use a lot of tactics. Those tactics won’t be the same for everybody; the way you built your party, the people you’ve chosen to be in your party, the way you built your character, those are really going to determine the tactics that you use. And everybody’s going to approach a problem, a combat solution, in a different way.

With ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, one of the things we considered when considering multiplayer was really the ability to tell a strong, single-player, emotionally charged adventure, and really we sided with the idea of actually keeping it single-player. So we really are able to deliver the immersive, back to your roots, RPG experience that really you can only get from a single-player experience. That’s not excluding the fact that we do have a very strong community presence, we have a very stron online component to the game, where there’s a lot of pre-release content, post-release content, community achievements, personal achievements; there’s a lot of involvement online and you can expect a lot from our online component. But really that great story-driven experience is something we want to make sure that we... that our fans got.

‘Dragon Age: Origins’ will be on PC in early 2009.

An interview with Dan Tudge at Leipzig, intercut with previously seen gameplay and cut-scene video. Transcript follows.

[dan tudge] Well, ah, we’re showing more depth to ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ at Leipzig; we’re actually showing the origin stories and how the first two hours of gameplay really change your experience for the rest of the game and really change the way the world perceives you and the way you perceive the world. In the area we’re showing right now in the King’s camp, you can actually explore through the world in the two origin stories that we’re showing. One is a human noble warrior, the other is an elven mage. And really the difference between the two... now in the universe of Dragon Age elves are often treated as second class citizens, even slaves really. And as an elf going through your origin story you’re really sort of mistreated and you’re really looked down upon. Whereas if you go through as a human noble warrior you’re given a lot more respect, you’re given a lot cred, but of course you do meet the odd mage who isn’t maybe so friendly to warriors, but certainly is friendly to you as an elven mage. And it really changes, I think, your experience, and that happens throughout the game.

The experience is totally customised through not only the choosing of your origin story, but through the way you play it and the choices that you make within your origin story. Even the reasons you became a Grey Warden - one of the very key story elements within the game - is clearly defined by the choices you made within your origin story.

Currently one of the new areas we’re demonstrating at Leipzig is the Kocari Wilds. This is a very lush and serene wilderness that you can explore in the world of ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, and really as beautiful as it is, danger lurks around every corner.

‘Dragon Age: Origins’ is coming to PC in early 2009, and consoles later in the year.

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Shawn "Certis" Andrich [sa] interviewed David Gaider [dg], lead writer, at GenCon this year for ‘Gamers with Jobs’. Transcript follows.

[sa] I’m sitting here with David Gaider, the lead writer on ‘Dragon Age’ for Bioware and also one of the principle writers for ‘Baldurs Gate 2’. Thank you very much for joining us.

[dg] Thank you.

[sa] So we just came out of the presentation for Dragon Age...

[dg] Right.

[sa] ... and it looks amazing. I’ve got say - it’s not an interview if I don’t toss a little bit of salad - the dialogue flowed very nicely. It felt very natural, and that should really get across characters and the attitudes.

[dg] We’re taking a couple of things we learned from Mass Effect, which is basically the acting element, seeing the character up-close, see the nuances of emotion, and also things like the one dialogue we showed where you’re not just talking to a face that’s standing still; sometimes you will be walking through a town and talking to them as you’re moving. The only thing we didn’t do that Mass Effect did - we aren’t doing any voice over for the player character. The idea was that Dragon Age is a lot more about customisation of your own character. In Mass Effect you were playing Shepard, he was a military man - if the voice was sort of a gruff military man or a woman, that’s fine. Here you have choice of gender, of class, choice of race... we didn’t want to put a voice in the player’s head. Also we aren’t doing the thing... in Mass Effect we did a thing where you had the intent of your dialogue choice, as opposed to the exact wording. And that was sort of to give it a more cinematic flow: you could read it quickly, you could choose it quickly, you ended up with one flow of the conversation. Here we’re going back to the more traditional - you see the exact dialogue choice you’re making, exactly what you’re going to be doing.

[sa] So are we looking at... is it still going to be similar to Mass Effect - number one is always the ‘can do’ answer, number 2 is neutral... or is it a bigger mix?

[dg] No. In past games we’ve done the good choice, evil choice, whether it’s light-side/dark-side for KotOR or Paragon/Renegade for Mass Effect. It’s a little bit different, but essentially the dichotomy idea. Here we’re going for what we consider to be a darker, more mature story style where you have a lot of choices where what is good and what is evil is not necessarily going to be immediately apparent. Sometimes you’ll have very difficult choices, and say there’s a really... this is the moral path, obviously, but that one’s going to be a lot harder, you’re going to go more out of your way. Sometimes being good the reward is going to be "Oh, thank you so much for helping", sometimes taking the immoral path sometimes could just be... I’m going to do what is the quickest and most efficient way to get through this, and not worry about how it affects other people. And then deal with the consequences of those choices appropriately.

[sa] We’re not looking at a one-or-two, light-or-dark kind of...

[dg] We’re not tracking any kind of point value of how good or evil you are; what we are doing is it affects your reputation in the world, has consequences for your choices... most especially you have followers - we have very extensive dialogue for followers, kind of like in ‘Baldurs Gate 2’, where there was an extensive series of dialogues you could have. We track friendships you could have with your party members. We track romances. Also, if you’re making game descriptions they don’t agree with you can make enemies out of them - if you get to the point where they say "No, I do not believe in what you’re doing here, if you don’t change your mind I will fight you, I will stop you from doing that". The idea is that your reputation with your followers... they’re sort of a mirror as to what sort of decisions you’re making.

[sa] Are we looking at a more ‘Baldurs Gate 2’ template for that, or more ‘Knights of the Old Republic’ where - because I just replayed that recently - and they will stop you, and it will say "so-and-so seems to have something to say" - is it going to be kind of like that, or is it more going to be in the context of what you’re doing?

[dg] We have a mix where you can speak to them, and they will have your dialogue. Sometimes what they have to say is important enough that they will interrupt you and initiate dialogue. And occasionally - we’re not sure exactly how... in Mass Effect we had characters that went "[cough-cough]" when they had something to say: we hear that sometimes people didn’t quite hear that, especially when they had the sound turned low... so we’re working on exactly how we’re going to have that. But if they have dialogue we’ll have to have some way to indicate it. But sometimes they will definitely initiate dialogue with you, they will pipe in on conversations. When you make decisions, if they disagree with they might actually stop and say "Hey hey, what are you doing?". If you’re very persuasive - you could have a guy who says "Why are you killing that person?", you’re like "Hey hey, it’s alright, we have to do this, it’s important"... "Oh, ok, I guess that sounds reasonable" - if you’re persuasive. So you can be an evil charismatic person if you want and do things that even your good parry members you sort of have to talk them into it, they end up sort of "Oh, all right... I guess".

[sa] Let’s look a little bit more at the context of the world. One of the most interesting things about this game that has me excited is that this is a completely new world that you guys have built from the ground up. I visited Bioware three years ago and even then Dragon Age was behind closed doors being worked on. What is the approach? How much writing and content are we looking at compared to when you’re working on a D&D-based Baldurs Gate?

[dg] Well that’s sort of two separate questions. Are you talking about in terms of how long will it take to play the game?

[sa] Well actually I’m looking at it more in terms of how long did it take to even establish what the game is going to be as far as the world?

[dg] There was a good year, initially, that was spent - primarily by me but also the artists - putting together our vision of the world. We didn’t just do the area where the game takes place; we have sort of a larger... Thedas is the world... the continent [editor’s note: ‘thedas’ was originally a forum term meaning ‘the dragon age setting’, but is now the official name of the continent the first game takes place on] I guess is a better way to put it... where all this history takes place. We had a good notion of what the whole world was before we even actually said "Ok, I think in this entire world this first game, this first story, we’re going to do ‘here’". And then we seeded stories onto places and we thought "ah, they’re interesting, maybe we’ll go there, maybe in the future we’ll set that up and leave it for other people - maybe the community - if they want to do stories there". So these other places are interesting enough that one could look at it and go "Huh, I could think of a good reason to go there". There’s so much information. Even to this day - I did all that writing - to this day my writers will come up and say "So it says this in the wake", and I’m like "Really?!"... "Like, well you wrote it!", and I’m like "Yeah, but that was 4 years ago now". So there’s a lot, a lot of information. A lot of it is in the Codex. I think my hope is that when players are in the game, much like with Mass Effect, that you get - for those people that are interested in reading about it and experience it - they’ll get this impression that there is this larger history at work there. They’re going to be able to learn about things that maybe don’t directly impact what they’re doing now, but still you can sort of see that, and you really get a sense of "wow, there was a lot of thought put into that, and more than I’ve just seen on the surface".

[sa] As you get further along in development now - obviously the game is in full swing, it’s coming along very quickly - when you’re actually in the early stages are you writing toward gameplay situations the designers are looking for, or are they fitting in within the story that you’re establishing, or is it more of a kind of back-and-forth? Like for example, from the demo for example, the character needs to go up and light the beacon. So are you telling the story of a battle clashes and the player needs to light a beacon and this is going on, and then the designers build the levels and work toward that, or are they kind of saying to you "here’s kind of what"...

[dg] Oh, which mistress are we serving?

[sa] Yeah, what comes first?

[dg] It changes. Sometimes you can say... we set up an area, this is the story that’s going to happen. Then we put it together, we have a prototype where we run through and we’re like "Wow, that’s boring, we need to run up a tower and light a beacon, or something". No, that particular area it was set up, it was that way form the get-go. But sometimes we sit down, we set up a story, and it’s good and exciting that we don’t need to worry about game play as much. The idea is you sort of want to have a mix of action and you want to have a mix of story. Sometimes I know when I would work on an area I’d have this part, oh, there’s all this dialogue and stuff that happens here, and then for the tech designers I’d just sort of put "Insert fun here". But you know, at Bioware we have that whole part of our design team; that’s what they specialise in and they go in and there’s a couple of guys - Georg Zoeller, Yerone - that’s just two of our tech designers but they’re fantastic. I say "insert fun" and to me I giggle because I mean... but they come back the next day and they have this elaborate area with fun combats and OK, you know, that’s why they have their jobs.

[sa] That’s awesome. So you mentioned earlier consequence and your actions. In the demo there’s a prisoner in a cell and you can get him some food, be very nice, you can kill him, take a key...

[dg] We used that particular demo just because it was very quick, it was one-off. I would say that was a simpler interaction, it was meant to just be ambient. It would be very simple to look at that dialogue and go "well there’s an example of strict good and evil right there". I don’t think that’s really indicative. I think they decided to show that as a way "this is how dialogue affects"... a good way to show our consequences. Normally throughout the dialogues we focus on taking actions that are logical. You know, the quick immoral road vs. the lengthier moral road.

[sa] So the intention, then, is to be a lot deeper than that.

[dg] Oh yeah.

[sa] Now is there a point... like I’ve always found that when I’m playing games like this: you talk to somebody, you go through a lot of options and stuff... if something goes wrong you simply say "bye" and then go talk to them again and you take another crack. Are there times where you’re really going to be able to talk yourself into a corner with somebody?

[dg] Ummm... talk yourself into a corner?... We wouldn’t want to get to the point where you felt like he had more things to say and you talked to them and they’re just like "No, you’ve used up all the conversation options with me". But it depends. I know that there are times when, if you make an NPC angry he might say "I don’t want to talk to you anymore". You may have just closed that off completely. We don’t tend to do that on the critical path, because you always have to have an ability to move forward, but I mean we definitely want consequences. The one thing I did want to avoid personally is the idea that if you go out being the immoral person that does what he needs to to get the job done, so to speak, that you end up closing off quests for yourself. I think that... all the times in the past we’ve had it so that here you have good choices, evil choices, but the good choices were just as rewarding and you probably got more quests out of it than you did being evil. So I think the idea is to present two legitimate choices that offer different things. I think sometimes people - especially the ones who play... who intentionally are being moral players like the Paladin-type - they are OK, a lot, with just getting the people... getting their companions being... you know, think they’re awesome, and they’re getting gratitude, and not necessarily that, you know, someone offers them a reward and they’re like "Oh, no, I wouldn’t think of it!" and they get the reward anyway. No, that person says "Oh, great, I’ll keep my reward then".

[sa] Or you say like... you do the evil thing and he’s like "Oh, that’s really mean... so anyway, go to the tree and get that fruit for me..."

[dg] I mean it depends. There are characters that need you badly enough that even if you were kind of a sinister person, they might have to overlook that. But I mean we’re trying to have as reactive a dialogue as possible. The thing we’re focusing on more, perhaps, is recognising the choices the player makes. You have origin stories, you have your race, you have your class. Having the opportunity to have that recognised in dialogue... if you’re a mage - mages are sort of mistrusted in this world - there’s a few places where, say some robbers come out and you say "Why, you could rob me, but I’m a mage", and they’re like "Ok then, we’ll just, ummm, back away slowly... don’t turn us into toads", that sort of thing.

[sa] Now as far as the origin and how that’s going to impact things. Are we looking at a similar impact to what we saw in Mass Effect which I felt like added a lot of flavour? Or are we looking at more... something that will impact the game flow?

[dg] Mass Effect you were choosing, on character creation, sort of where your character came from? That did affect the story, it came up a couple of times. The origin stories we have - I think we’re going to talk more about them in the future as to what exactly they are - but the idea is that they are the beginning of the game. You have a unique beginning - an entire chapter - a place in the world where you start that’s different for each origin story, that affects the game from that point on. If you are, say, a commoner that comes from the poor quarter of the city, and you start of the game there, and that determines how you enter the overall story. During the course of the story if you go back to that part of the city you would expect that people there would recognise you, you’d be able to meet your family members, you would get dialogue specific to your origin, and that’s exactly what we’ve got. The idea is that for you to see all the content in the game - between the origin stories, between the followers and the romances and stuff - you would need to play the game several times. We’re ok with having someone playing and going along thinking... and you’re playing and playing for a while and "wow, this seems really specific, really specific to me being a dwarf... I wonder what would happen if I started over and played an elf? Would it be different?". The answer is "Yes, it would be different".

[sa] That’s great. You mentioned ‘critical path’ earlier, which I think is a really great way to talk about the plot. Like Mass Effect I would argue had a very critical path: Mass Effect was, you start pretty linear, and you get out of the Citadel and you can choose where you go first, but ultimately it’s driving you in a very strong narrative direction.

[dg] Bioware always does story-driven games. The very extreme opposite end is a game like Oblivion - sort of a sand-box game, where you’ve got a wide open world. I think that’s the kind of game that gives you a really good feel of a massive world. But sort of at the expense of having a more driven experience. Some players like that and they sort of go "what story?" and they wander around and do side quests and stuff and that’s cool too. But I think Bioware’s always done... we’re gonna, sure, limit the size of the world a little bit... but the idea is to give you a stronger narrative. I think in terms of Dragon Age specifically, we’re going back to sort of the medium between Baldurs Gate and, say, Mass Effect, where you have... there’s a point in Baldurs Gate [2] where you come out of Irenicus’ dungeon and suddenly it opened up. You had a wide open world, but it wasn’t like you could wonder around for miles of terrain; you had lots of areas you could go to. That’s the idea, again, that you have these large areas to go to, lots of side quests, you wanna lose yourself in the world a little bit that’s great, but the idea is to keep a little bit more focussed on what’s happening. Because, I mean, you have this massive event going on... going off and doing something for months and months that has nothing to do with the main plot, it isn’t really logical, as much as some players would enjoy it. We do want to keep the players more focussed on this, which allows us to give them a...

[sa] So maybe a little bit of the openness a PC gamer might expect, but maybe a little less than what you see in Baldurs Gate 2, which is fairly extreme as far as what you guys have done.

[dg] Yeah, we’ve done a lot content - this is a big game, one of the biggest we’ve attempted in a while... Baldurs Gate 2, kind of in a class of its own? Still, however, we’re talking about an extensive game. I can’t really say how long it’s going to be just yet until we get closer, but we’re talking about a lot of gameplay hours. The followers you’ve got, the idea is you’re going to be able to interact with them over a long period. Once you’re done you’re going to feel like you’ve had the long haul, the epic sort of journey to get the ending, and I think that’s what’s important.

[sa] Are we looking at a similar structure to Mass Effect, where you could just pound through it
and finish that game and get a really good story experience?

[dg] Yeah, but you could do the same to BG2 as well, you know, we had our testers that could get through in just a few hours if they wanted to. That was with a sword that killed things instantly. But, the idea is they knew exactly what you needed to do, and you can do that. I mean I [?] to this day; we said "oh here’s Mass Effect which is about 30 or 40 hours of gameplay", but you have people who say "oh, what? I did that in 15 easy!", so it varies for the person. Some people are going to barrel through. For the person that wants to do all the romances and follower quests and side quests and wander and hit every nook and cranny, there’s going to be a lot here for them to chew on.

[sa] Because this is a new IP, did you come in with any preconceived notions, any influences, any worlds like that? This is obviously... it’s a bit... ‘darker and grittier’ keeps coming up and I wish I had another word to describe it, but...

[dg] I wish we did too.

[sa] ... it’s definitely a bit more adult mature; it’s definitely got a bit more of an edge.

[dg] I’ve said this to other people before. While I wouldn’t want to say that this authors style was like... "yeah, let’s do that" - we’re not trying to copy it - but as far as an inspiration for how to fantasy a little bit differently, George R. R. Martin was a great example, for me personally, picking up the book, and having had a... I think at that point I’d had a little bit of exhaustion on sort of fantasy in general - high fantasy was always sort of the norm - and suddenly here’s ‘Game of Thrones’, had a world that... sometimes he gets a little dark, even too dark for me... But, here he had a world that is so much focussed on the civil war, the politics, characters that you loved could die; he wasn’t afraid to just jab you with the knife and twist it around a little, and you’re like "earth", throw the book across the room and sort of say "Oh I hate him so much".

[sa] I actually did that a couple of times, there’s a few points...

[dg] I think I know exactly what points you’re talking about. Now, for the world specifically, the... Throne of Ice and Fire? Song of Ice and Fire? Song of Fire and Ice... Ice and Fire... [the george r. r. martin book] it’s a little bit low magic. We have some low magic elements, I don’t think we go that low. Magic in Thedas is rarer, mages are distrusted for many good reasons. I should talk about the dark spawn. The dark spawn are sort of the... you look at them and think they’re sort of like Lord of the Rings rocs, right? And in that respect they are sort of the evil horde. The idea is there is so much more behind it. The reason why mages are so distrusted is that the Chantry - the church of the realm - teaches that a long time ago when mages ruled over Thedas they became powerful enough and proud enough they decided, you know we’re going to open up a gateway into Heaven. We’re going to usurp the Maker’s throne - the Maker being the sort of God as far as the Chantry is concerned. And they did. They opened up this gateway, and according to what the Chantry teaches, they stepped into Heaven... but mankind is a corrupt, sinful creature; he took a step into Heaven and he corrupted it with his own sin, he darkened it and turned it into the Black City, and that corruption got turned back in on themselves and they became... these mages got transformed into the first dark spawn and the Maker said "How dare you!", threw them back to earth, and they were the first dark spawn. They sort of repelled from the light, they went underground, they multiplied, and back then in ancient times they worshipped dragons, these are referred to as Old Gods, and the Chantry teaches that the Maker punished them for being false Gods and imprisoned them beneath the earth so these dark spawn, they search for these Old Gods, and when they find them they spread this corruption to them and the dragon wakes and rises as an Arch Demon. And when that happens the dark spawn rise with it and they’re like locusts: they spill out onto the surface and their goal is just to consume, to destroy everything. So it’s led by a dragon and that’s who these creatures are; they’re sort of like the sin of man given flesh. So, yes, they are orcs, but they’re not. So that’s why mages are so distrusted: look at what pride can do to mankind. This is where thinking you have enough power that you are a God, this is... by having that power you have doomed us. And of course the story in Dragon Age, this first story, is dealing with the fact that a blight has started again and it is your job to try and deal with it.

[sa] It must be tough trying to build a unique fantasy environment because when the first trailer came out, that first pre-E3 footage came out, there was a lot of "it’s just Lord of the Rings", you know, and it must be tough to find that balance. You mention Martin who’s a very good example of taking fantasy and doing something different with it. How much time did you go through, you know, orks, corks and sorks before you really got to a point where you felt like you had something unique?

[dg] Well, we didn’t want to... there is up to a point where you want to use the archetypes, right? They’re there. I think if we didn’t have, say, dwarves and elves... I mean there are certainly fantasy worlds that don’t have those, and essue the standards of fantasy more. That’s fine, I think we very much wanted to use some of the archetypes, so we have, say, elves and dwarves and when you look at them there are things about them that you would expect to see: elves have pointy ears, the dwarves are short and live under ground. And at the same time we want to put our own particular twist on it. Our elves are quite different. Our dwarves are a little more what you’d expect, but we take them in a place that I don’t think that they’ve gone in fantasy before. We do have, like I said, we have our ‘orcs’, so to speak, but we do something different with them as well. So, yeah... it kind of makes us cringe a little bit because when you show it on the surface, if you were to just look at an elf and a dwarf, you wouldn’t know right off the bat what we do that’s different. If you look at a dark spawn, sure on the surface its going to look like it might be more generic fantasy, but I think we’re confident that if we put it out there and people start playing it see the depth that there is actually there, they’re going to know that we haven’t just put out something that we haven’t thought about at all, right? That’s the hope.

[sa] Have you played or heard much about ‘The Witcher’?

[dg] I have played ‘The Witcher’, yes.

[sa] ... which came with the NeverWinter, the Aurora engine, kinda?

[dg] We can say, sure we’re doing a dark mature game, we can’t say not by any means are we the first person to do that. But I think we’re putting out own particular spin on it. Witcher did it. Witcher is great, I think it’s actually based on a Polish novel.

[sa] I’ve actually read the first translated Polish novel a little while ago. Not bad. Very game like actually.

[dg] Really? I really enjoyed the game myself, it’s very cool, I like what they did with their elves and their world. Very dark and gritty again, so that’s cool. Dragon Age is different... but then you could do the same thing too; if you showed The Witcher to someone - other than the fact that they have Geralt, I think was really their focus character - you could, if you were just showing a quick trailer of that, someone could say "errr, that looks fantasy as well", right?

[sa] Now ‘The Witcher’, as you know, did a lot with consequence and choices... that was like their primary focus. They would give you these flashbacks, tell you the consequences of your actions. Are you looking to go quite that far, or is it more important to tell the story with some variation, rather than say "because this guy is dead, this and this didn’t happen and it’s completely different"?

[dg] One thing that they got to do because they had a specific character is that they could delve a lot more into that character’s history and his motivations without... as a player you could make certain choices about what Geralt did, but who Geralt was wasn’t up to you, right? So in that respect we allow the player to customise his character more, we have the origin stories, there to provide the motivation for why they’re in this story, so I’d say yes and no. We go a lot more into the sort of struggle, the blight, as being this really important event, in great detail. But there’s also this idea that what the player does has an affect on how that plays out. There’s some parts of the game that... well I don’t even know if they’re going to go out the way they are right now, because there’s so many choices that have such far reaching effects afterwards, that it ends up becoming very complicated. I was just writing sort of our end part of the game, our epilogue, which... we decided instead of having a cut-off right at the climax, you sort of have a playable denumout... and I was writing through that and there’s so many variations on how things could sort of turn out, which is cool, but it’s so complicated. It blows your mind sometimes.

[sa] You listen to the guys working - like Bethesda - on Fallout 3, and they’re saying "Oh... 500 endings!"... are we looking at a multiple ending situation here?

[dg] Yes... yes.

[sa] Not 500?

[dg] I mean...

[sa] 400?

[dg] What do you mean by 500 endings though?

[sa] I don’t know!

[da] Little nuances of endings? Sure, with the denumounts I’ve been writing there’s all sorts of variations on how you affected these various areas in the world that you visit. I mean that’s one of the things we try to focus on in terms of how you affected the world, how you affected your followers, what you sort of did. I mean the overall story, sure, you’ve got to deal with the Blight, it’s a heroic story, so the idea is that you are fighting the Blight, but really the story to players is what they get to do personally, how... when dealing with the Kingdom, how do their choices affect who ended up on the throne, or whatever - just as an example, those are the things that the player cares about, right? Whether they were sinister and got to influence events, or are they a hero and how are they treated as a hero, those sorts of things. So yeah, in that respect we’ve got endings galore. In terms of larger, like, the decisions having major major variations? Yes, we’ve got more than one there as well.

[sa] Yeah, so ‘Knights of the Old Republic’, another fine example, had two endings basically. So, and I felt like with those two endings... I didn’t feel like I had a unique impact on the world. Whereas in ‘The Witcher’, as weird and arbitrary as the endings could get - all these criss-crossing things - I felt like my actions at least did have some impact on what I was leaving behind me.

[dg] It’s hard for me to talk at length about without getting into details, which I can’t, but I think we put a lot more attention on the ending and how the player affects the world, sort of... to give the player a lot more chance to see the variations. Even sometimes, like even small decisions you make, say you help... I’ll throw out one small example here: there is this one sword you can find that belonged to this family. You can keep it for yourself; because the idea is you initially... you could borrow it and say "oh, I’ll give it back". But if you do give it back, because the one small boy that you give it back to who was with the family because his parents have died... if you give it back to him, he takes it and he’s like "wow, you used this, this is awesome!". If you did give it back to him, what effect that has is, say, on the end, maybe he goes and becomes a great adventurer, sort of inspired by your deeds, right? This, just as sort of an example of something that could happen.

[sa] Now, this game’s not done, obviously, it’s impossible to even speculate really on what’s coming. What would be next. But obviously when you put the name ‘Origins’ in there, you’re kind of leaving yourself open, so I do have to ask: do you have any concepts in mind, just looking in the future, just about like kind of thinking about how would you be interweaving different games, would you be looking at separate adventures completely, in different parts of the world? Because you mentioned you guys picked one area.

[dg] Yeah, we seeded areas. I think we have looked at areas and said "you know, we could go in this direction", and then of course someone else would say "well we could do this other thing completely"... we left things open for us. The Blight is not the only thing that Thedas has to throw at you. That was sort of the idea. As to where we will go? The idea... we called it ‘Origins’... it’s supposed to be a beginning, it’s not just this one story, the idea is that this is a world that we’re opening up, that we’re going to do things with. We’ve got some plans for downloadable content down the line. Where we will go from then I do not know.

[sa] So as a player, if I’m getting into the Codex stuff, am I going to see maybe hints of where things could go, or like hints of different parts of the world where things are happening that I’ll never see in the game itself?

[dg] I’m sure you will see things that... when our plans come out later you’ll think "Oh, I wonder if they were planning it all along?"... doubtful. [laughter] No, I mean like I said there are those seeds that are there, right? So we’ll throw them out as a possibility, and if we ended up running with them later, it will be because we planned that all along. [laughter]

[sa] Smart. Now you mentioned you have a wiki, obviously an internal wiki you guys are using to develop, I know you guys are huge on that...

[dg] We have to have people who’s sole job it is just to know what’s on the wiki.

[sa] What are we looking at as far as... you’ve obviously got some stuff on the website already. Some little "here’s this character, that character". How much of that kind of wiki are you going to open up to the player base once they get into it and kind of start looking into doing things like world building themselves.

[dg] Well some of it we’re going to talk about before release; that’s yet to be talked about by the company as to how they’re going to roll that out. In terms of how much are we going to talk about in the game? As much as possible. We’ve got a lot written, and I think we’re just going to keep on writing and keep on writing. Because we have books and things you can find in game. If a player wants to they can sit there and they can read all sorts of facts or....

[sa] I’m a sucker for reading books in games.

[dg] So your gameplay may be significantly longer. The idea is we’re going to do as much as we possibly can. It’s there, it means a lot to us personally, the world is real to us, so we’re going to try and extend as much of that to the players as we possibly can.

[sa] Are we going to see any kind of novel, similar to what we saw with Mass Effect? I’m a sucker for those too.

[dg] I don’t know. Hasn’t been talked about yet. That’d be nice.

[sa] Finally, just to give our audience a sense of how big this is, what are we looking at in terms of how much you’ve written for this compared to say something like Baldurs Gate 2?

[dg] Oh, hmmm... I... Judging word count is hard. Like I said, in terms of content, I think it’s our largest game since Baldurs Gate 2. But even then a lot could change between... we’ve still got another eight months to go. I wouldn’t want to pin it down. Like I said, it is really large... I wouldn’t want to be more specific than that. That’s dangerous territory.

[sa] Finally, the last interview cop-out question, is there anything that you haven’t been asked
for something you want to get out there? That you’re like, "why hasn’t anyone asked about this yet?".

[dg] I already got in the whole origin of the dark spawn. I always want to say that because everyone time someone said "Oh they’re just Tolkien rocs", oh it kills me!... No, I think we covered everything... I want to talk about the followers. Man do I want to. But I can’t. That’s where I... weirdly enough I have acquired this reputation as Bioware’s romance guy, I don’t know how that happened.

[sa] Well Baldurs Gate 2, that was a big one. It seemed like in Baldurs Gate it was kinda...

[dg] Well that’s where we started it. When we did it for Baldurs Gate we kinda... it was sort of... let’s try doing this whole romance bit with the followers and we just sort of... back then it really wasn’t anything we knew how to do. We kind of played with it... let’s try a different couple ways to do it. And it was really popular. Some players could probably take it or leave it, but the ones who really like it, they really like it. So we kind of have kept up with it and we’ve sort of gone the next step here with regards to romances anyways. So...

[sa] More so than Mass Effect do you think?

[dg] Mass Effect’s a different kind of game, it’s more cinematic, whereas here we’re talking about... it requires you to sort of... you have to want the romance, you sort of have to not just talk to them, you have to earn it a little bit. To get approval from them, to do their quests, build it up with them. But exactly what we’re going to be doing, that’s something we’ll talk about in the future. But the followers are such a big focus of this game, like the amount of... compared to Baldurs Gate 2, one thing that was great about that was that when you travel with your followers they felt so real because they talk to each other, they talk to you, chimed in on your dialogues, you know, and inserted their opinions... to give you a cheer of approval of something. We’re going for that. They comment on the world. If you pass by a statue in the world they’re like "Hey, that’s a nice statue". I think that is important in terms of making them feel alive. So yeah we have this whole world, but the followers are such a big part of it. I think there are a lot of players that, this is why they play these games. They still talk about the Baldurs gate followers to this day, endlessly in fact. [laughter] But I mean, good. I loved writing that stuff, so it’s good to go back to that again.

[sa] Are we looking at similar situations say in Never winter Nights, Neverwinter Nights maybe even more specifically, for example, where you’ve got followers that kind of go hang out at the inn, you kinda make your choices as to who you got with us in your party?

[dg] Yes. Have we talked about that yet? I... dunno. We have a camp. When you recruit people they go into the camp, then the camps are moved with you around the world. So you’re taking a certain number of people with you in your party. So unlike, say, Baldurs Gate where if you didn’t take someone with you they stayed wherever they were, here you can recruit them, we’re not... the difference is, you mentioned Neverwinter Nights 2, our followers, I think all but 1, are purely optional. You don’t have to take them with you unless you want, we don’t force them on you: "here, here’s a follower". We don’t force them on you so you have to want to have them with you, and then the idea is there is a pool you draw from as you...

[sa] So kind of like Wrex in Mass Effect, where you could just, a lot of characters in Mass Effect, you could just blow them off.

[dg] Right.

[sa] Great, well, I really appreciate your time, I don’t think I’m going to get much out of you right now, so Dragon Age is currently due in March?

[dg] First quarter next year.

[sa] And obviously you’re going to take as much time as you need to get it right?

[dg] That is the idea.

[sa] It wouldn’t be a Bioware game if there wasn’t at least one delay.

[da] Oh God. [laughter] Half my carrier now has been spent on this game. I would like to move on to something new. [laughter] I would like to deliver this puppy... I want to get it out there and... we’ve sort of reached this point... when you’re on development there comes a point where everything gets chaotic and things are happening all over the place, and you’re kind of like [confused sound]... we have no control, oh, it’s chaos, and then all of a sudden, boom, it starts to come together. And you’re like, wow, this is really good. And we’re sort of reaching that point now, and that makes you sort of excited, because you’re like "wow", when the players get a hold of this they’re really going to like it. You hope. We went thought the same thing with BG2; a lot of people would go "what?!", but there was even a point in BG2 where we were like "wow, this game sucks so badly!"... but then there comes this point where it’s like "all I want to do now is put it in their hands", and have it be good enough that they... the really sucky part would be, and I know it happens with games that... nothing Bioware has done [laughter]... but sometimes you know for one reason or another a developer is going to put out a game where they haven’t been able to do what they intended. Sometimes you see games that have so much potential but it isn’t realised. Fortunately Bioware has always taken the time to put the work into the game that it needs. I think we’re known for having a lot of polish. And I think that’s good because that means that when we put out Dragon Age, it is going to be in a state that is going to be enjoyable. People are going to see what we intended. I think that’s important.

[sa] I’m really looking forward to it. For me, it’s number one on my list.

[dg] Awesome.

[sa] Thank you very much for joining us.

A second interview for GameTrailers featuring Greg Zeschuk [gz] and Dan Tudge [dt]. It features some of the same interview clips as their other interview with Greg alone. Likewise, it features the same gameplay clips seen elsewhere. Transcript follows:

[dt] ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ is the dark, heroic fantasy that the team has worked on. We often refer to it as the spiritual successor for ‘Baldur’s Gate’.

[gz] The game itself is incredibly emotionally engaging; great cinematic scenes and interaction between the characters. And then the combat is really tactical. You have a party of players on your side - a party or team members - that you actually will arrange on the battle field, almost like a chess game.

[dt] We call it tactical play combat. It’s ‘pause & play’, really the evolution of ‘pause & play’. So you can pause the action at any time, you can zoom out, you can issue commands, issue all your tactics, and zoom right back into the action and get splashed with the blood of your enemies.

[gz] The cool thing is it’s actually a real-time combat system where you select the moves and they execute it, so it’s not like a button-pressing type thing. But it’s very very action-oriented because there’s a lot of things going on. You feel a good sense of urgency; you can jump around between characters to see how they’re doing.

[dt] I’m not really going to talk about enemy scaling at this stand point, but I can say that when we develop the universe - the Dragon Age universe - and the areas that we’re using in ‘Dragon Age: Origins’, we chose those areas to support the story. And those areas have very specific creatures, very specific people that you will meet, and those are supporting the story, rather than having the scale for a random dungeon. Scalable combat is really a key pillar of what we’re doing. So a lot of times the combat’s one-on-one, and other times it’s your party against many. How many? Not really ready to talk about right now.

[gz] The game itself is structured so there’s a lot of what we call the critical path, the main story. There’s a ton of stuff off to the side. You know, the game, it’s... when you’re doing the game you’re always going to be pulled aside to do cool stuff; other characters in your party will want to do cool things as well. So it’s a very unique experience in that way. The length of the game itself we haven’t really talked about yet; we’re still, frankly, working out the details - we’re finished it now. But it’s big. It’s a good, meaty, awesome experience and a lot of replayability for a variety of reasons as well. One of the things in the game, the way we describe it, is you can choose to be a hero, a tyrant or a martyr. The game itself is an ‘M’ game, so it’s quite a mature... you know there’s a little bit of blood.

There’s definitely a class system in the game, so really when you pick your party you want to select your characters in the most effective way to deal with the battle. So you’re going to have a set of folks to choose from, and you’ll choose them based on story elements and things like that; pick them up based on what’s going on. And then when you actually go into battle you’ll decide is it going to be a rogue I’ll be using, or warrior...

[dt] We have mages in the game, there’s this really great thing I like to talk about a lot, it’s called spell-combos. And spell... magic in the game can interact with each other, so you can use spells like grease and then hit them with fire and light the grease on fire. A lot of these combos are going to be documented, but a lot you’re going to have to experiment with yourself, find out what they are.

In regards to ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ as a title, we spent a lot of time developing Dragon Age as a universe, and ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ is really just the first product in that universe.

[gz] With Dragon Age we’re actually making it a single-player game, so it’s really an experience of you as the hero in the story. We are going to have a lot of online features in this game, where you can compare things with other players, but also a lot of downloadable content. There’ll also be a toolset that we provide. So all these things will keep the community integrated. The game itself, the story where you’re the hero, you play by yourself.

You know, we’re doing PC, it’s coming out in early 2009, don’t have quite the date set out yet, but you know, early 2009. And, you know, down the round we’re thinking about consoles in the franchise. We’ve said that, you know, the Dragon Age franchise will have console games, with no details on those - that’s gonna be down the road. So, that’s it, and we hope people dig it.

Variants

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G4 interview Greg Zeschuk (GZ) at E3 2008. As the interview progresses we see an expanded view of the first-floor battle seen in the first 3m direct-feed gameplay video from Bioware that briefly shows the inventory UI.

The inventory shows items as a list on the right-facing page of a book, with the ‘paper-doll’ of the character and various item slots on the left-facing page. There are 12 slots which might correspond to head, weapon, neck, body, legs, feet, quiver, shield, second weapon, unknown, ring and ring.


Interview transcript follows:

G4: All right, please welcome the co-general manager of Bioware, Dr. Greg Zeschuk. Bioware! Come on! All right, so, what’s initially notable about this is that we’re dealing with a PC game. So you guys are getting back, getting your hands dirty on that. And it’s a fantasy game that is not from Dungeons & Dragons: it’s your own creation.

GZ: Yup, ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ is really a return to Bioware’s roots. That’s one of or part of the ‘Origins’ name, or what it means to us. And it’s really us going back to what we did with the classic formulae in Baldur’s Gate years ago, bringing it up-to-date in terms of technology and what we’re delivering is going to blow people away.

G4: Now, for those people - and there some young folk out there - that haven’t played the great Baldur’s Gate, what is that type of combat that you’re returning to?

GZ: What you’re seeing on screen right now is... I’m starting out with one of my guys - I’ve got a party of four so it’s a party based game - and what happens is you can control the actions of all of your party. You’ll see here this guy is going to get stuck in kind of a... this guy is going to cast a spell at him... pause it play... you can pull back... here stuck in some grease which is going to lit on fire. The whole game is actually very tactical and you actually control the characters and what they do at every moment - your entire group and plan it almost like a chess match.

G4: Now, will you be moving one character’s directions and the others follow you? How will you be managing all four?

GZ: You decide. You can actually program the AI, you can actually have them follow you, you can have them act as a group, you can have ‘plays’ you can call. You’re seeing right now this is the classic Baldur’s Gate view - the top-down isometric so you can really control the tactics. So the cool thing then... and then you can jump in and enjoy... what we’re doing here is the mage is about to throw a blizzard on top of that fire, put it out... pause the game here... about to turn it off, you can see her [person playing the demo] kind of coming back [moving the camera back], make sure you put the spell in the right place - you’re seeing choosing which spell or which talent to use; she’s going to cast a spell and pop it back into the action and let it rip. So here we go. She’s put out the fire... blizzard’s put out the fire, the guys can run through, we’ll show some other guys fighting... It’s very engaging both from a combat perspective but also emotionally and in the dialogue and everything else.

G4: Now yeah, that’s what I wanted to get to. Obviously with Mass Effect you have perfected the art of story-telling inside of a game - are we going to see similar techniques that you used there inside of Dragon Age?

GZ: A lot of the technology is the same, like that same face technology, same realistic characters that we had: it creates this emotionally engaging experience. The world of Dragon Age is very serious - heavy world, you know it’s an ‘M’-rated game, lot of blood, lot of really serious situations - you know, that’s just what the team wanted to build.

G4: Now, in terms of how the story goes, does it branch enough that you would like to see people play repeated times to find different surprises?

GZ: Absolutely. And the way the game starts is something called an ‘Origins’ story and that’s a very special personal thing that you experience that is the lens through which you see the world and also how the world sees you. And you really do choose if you’re going to be a hero, a martyr or a tyrant.

G4: And I want to make sure that you guys get your own ‘props’: you’re not using the Unreal engine as you did with Mass Effect, this is your own technology?

GZ: Yeah, absolutely, the team - just call out the Dragon Age team they’re awesome, a lot of folks at Bioware worked on this engine. You know, it’s a little bit different style of engine than what we did with Mass Effect and obviously we built upon the Unreal engine in that case; this is really designed to support all the data and all the information you have in an RPG.

G4: Now, I guess the other question is when do you think we might be playing it?

GZ: Well this is a little bit different than our usual style which is when we announce the game, show it for a number of years... what we did is we announced it a while back, kind of let it stew, fans got excited; we’re showing it here, it’s totally playable, guys can play it in our booth, and the exciting thing is it’s coming early 2009 which is not far away.

G4: Wow, well that’s great. Listen, since I have you here, anything about Mass Effect or KotOR?

GZ: I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about. I know we’re talking about this Mass Effect stuff, but you know I’m kinda... I’m losing... I... I... I’ve had a long day and my memory is really kinda weak right now; I’ve kind of lost it, sorry.

G4: Well all right. I’m coming up to Edmonton and going to sleep outside of the offices. Greg, thank you so much for coming. It is an honour, always to be with the men from Bioware.

Chris Fields [cf] interviews Dan Tudge [dt]. Transcript follows:

[cf] We’re really fortunate here today to have one of the busiest people here at Bioware available for a podcast here today. Maybe you can tell us a little of who you are and what you do here at Bioware?

[dt] My name is Dan Tudge and I am the project director and executive producer on the Dragon Age franchise. Today I’m going to talking about Dragon Age: Origins.

[cf] Which is the next great game coming out for Bioware. Maybe you can explain a little bit about what a project director is, and what your responsibilities are here at Bioware?

[dt] Yeah, basically I am the guy in charge, responsible for the entire project. I work with the great team, and manage them to completion.

[cf] Uh, well, let’s get right into it. Can you tell the people listening a little bit about what Dragon Age is and what it its all about?

[dt] Well Dragon Age is really Bioware’s return to its roots. It’s a dark, heroic fantasy; something we’ve been working a long time on and are very proud of.

[cf] And it brings us right into kind of the next question: why has it taken so long to get ready? This project has been in development for many many years now. I’m really happy that we’re finally starting to talk about it because I know how cool it looks, but what has taken this long?

[dt] Bioware has always been known for its high quality standards. We have always taken the time that it needs to make that we exceed the fans expectations.

[cf] Recently it was said in the press that Dragon Age is a game about Dragons. Is this true?

[dt] Well, the name ‘Dragon Age’ literally means the time frame in which dragons existed. But dragons do play a role in the game; we’re not really going to talk about that right now.

[cf] Yeah, let’s not give away game secrets just yet, but, yeah, that’s great. So, it is dragons, you will see some dragons in Dragon Age, but, you know, let’s move onto another question here. Another comment that was made: Ray Muzyka himself said that Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate. What does that really mean?

[dt] Well as I mentioned earlier it’s really a return to our roots for us; in fact a large part of the team was the Baldurs Gate development team. So there’s really a lot of roots within the team as well as within the IP. Critics and fans have long held Baldurs Gate as one of their favourite RPGs and it’s certainly one of my favourites. And it was both critically and commercially successful. What we mean with Dragon Age being the spiritual successor is that the game is set in a fantasy setting and we’re taking a lot of what we’ve learned from Baldurs Gate and our other titles and will deliver everything that the fans expect.

[cf] You mentioned already that Dragon Age is sort of a dark fantasy. What exactly makes Dragon Age dark?

[dt] We refer to it as dark heroic fantasy, so there’s heroic elements as well as dark elements. What this means is it’s very gritty, bloody... I use the word ‘carnage’ quite often... it’s epic with very mature themes. It still has some high-fantasy elements: there’s heroes, villains, magic... but we’re not really pulling any punches with Dragon Age: it is definitely mature and it is definitely dark and gritty and, as I said earlier, ‘carnage’ - a lot of carnage.

[cf] Speaking a little bit - you say it’s more an adult game, a little more blood and gore - does that mean there’s still going to be the fantasy elements that people like for Bioware games: things such as romances, that sort of things?

[dt] Well one of the staples of Bioware stories has always been a romance plot, which you can choose to pursue or not. You’ll find that there’s a potential love interest that you can choose to develop a relationship with, but we really don’t want to give away any spoilers here, so I think we’ll leave it at that.

[cf] You mentioned that this is kind of a return to Bioware’s role-playing game roots, the fantasy roots. Does that mean its a turn-based role-playing game?

[dt] Dragon Age is really... not really turn based - we call it pause-and-play tactical. And really what you get is to pause the action at any time, zoom in on the action, issue commands for combat, issue spells, talents, abilities... and really control the battle field - either from the tactical view or right in close on the action.

[cf] It’s been said that Dragon Age is really going to be a fantastic single-player role-playing game experience; why will it not feature a multi-player aspect?

[dt] When designing Dragon Age we really wanted to focus on a story-driven single-player experience. I really left multi-player as a feature that actually hindered the development of that experience. Origins stories, for instance, are a big example of a feature that really we only needed to include in a single-player version, where you can actually choose and then play the origins of your character. Again, driving towards a deep story-driven experience.

[cf] Dragon Age has a lot of very classic RPG elements: a fantastic story, combat, gameplay, all that sort of thing. What is the plan to make it appeal to a really broad audience?

[dt] Dragon Age features a lot of really classic RPG elements that I really think our core audience will really latch onto and enjoy. But the experience is very cinematic - it’s very large and epic - and I think really that the main stream users will find the visuals very compelling, they’ll find the story very compelling, and as well the treatment of the game as a whole.

[cf] What was the inspiration for Dragon Age? Was it more ‘Lord of the Rings’, or was it more ‘Baldurs Gate’?

[dt] Well we’re certainly huge fans of Lord of the Rings. I mean I don’t think you can be a fantasy junky and not be a fan of Lord of the Rings. Basically there’s a lot of IP that we’ve drawn upon for inspiration. Baldurs Gate is certainly a big piece of it. But really it’s a new and exciting direction for us that really is our own.

[cf] Let’s talk a little bit about Dragon Age and its potential future. Is it going to be a series of games like Neverwinter Nights was?

[dt] Dragon Age is really a universe in which all kinds of great entertainment can exist. ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ is really just the beginning.

[cf] The key question that I know a lot of fans are going to have: when is Dragon Age going to be released?

[dt] Currently we’re aiming to have ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ out this fiscal year; more details will be coming soon.

[cf] And, I guess that kinda leads into the last question. I know you’re really busy and heading off into E3 where we’re going to be showing Dragon Age. When are we going to be learning more about Dragon Age?

[dt] Well there’s going to be a whole lot more coming on ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ in the next few months: stay tuned for lots of announcements. But really we’ve got a lot of exciting things to talk about from now until release.

[cf] Thanks very much Dan!

[dt] Thank you.