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[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.