More Dragon Age: Origins

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Shir'le E. Illios
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More Dragon Age: Origins

Post by Shir'le E. Illios »

A couple more Dragon Age: Origins bits.

First IGN has their third (and last) [url=http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/101/10174 ... l:3cqxyhll]Origin preview article[/url:3cqxyhll] up. Unfortunately it's the City Elf Origin and I really don't want to spoil that one, so I haven't read it beyond the first paragraph. It is my understanding that, much as the other two Origin story previews they pretty much go through the entire story step-by-step (and thus is filled with spoilers).

Here's the spoiler-free first (well, technically second) paragraph:

[quote:3cqxyhll]There are two kind of elves in Dragon Age: City Elves and the Daleish. The former are beaten down urban dwellers while the latter are still wild elves who live as nomadic groups in the wilderness. Elves used to be held in slavery, until the prophet Andraste (the creator of the main religion in the game) abolished it 400 years prior to the events of the game. However, the elves are still discriminated against and looked down upon by humans, with city elves as basically indentured servants who live in slums called alienages.[/quote:3cqxyhll]
The second link is [url=http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com ... 7:3cqxyhll]an interview[/url:3cqxyhll] that TOR (the book publisher, not to be confused with the MMO Bioware is making) held with David Gaider, talking a bit about choices and the story in Dragon Age: Origins (without spoilers).

Here's an excerpt:

[quote:3cqxyhll][b:3cqxyhll]You clearly want to give players a choice in the story that they follow, but on the other hand, you also need to control the narrative, and I’m wondering how Dragon Age is going to go about doing that.[/b:3cqxyhll]

[David Gaider]: Well, it depends. Say you have a decision at some point where you’re making a choice that could affect the entire kingdom. A lot of times, it’s easier to put those kinds of decisions at the end of the game. If you can provide an emotionally satisfying decision, you don’t need to worry as much about the consequences, because they affect things beyond the scope of the actual gameplay. I love those kinds of endings, actually. You can move those decisions earlier, and we do that in a couple places in Dragon Age, where you make a huge decision, and that can be very expensive for developers to follow both the results of that decision and carry them throughout the rest of the game, but sometimes you have to decide if it’s worth it and pony up the development cost.

The other decisions you do can have local consequences instead of global. Other games have done this as well. Using [i:3cqxyhll]Fallout 2[/i:3cqxyhll] as an example, sometimes you go to a hub, like New Reno or various other settlements or areas, where the quests you do there have lots of ways of completing those quests or big results from those quests, but they would only affect that area.

So you can make the consequences local, and a lot of our writing is sunk into the party members. About a third of the game’s writing is in those party members. There are plots that are specific to the members you recruit, and depend on their reactions to the actions you take. They all have different moralities, different things which are important to them, so you’re going to have to carefully manage how they react to your actions. Sometimes if you’re persuasive, you can talk them into agreeing with you.[/quote:3cqxyhll]
There's a link to the audio interview the text version comes from below the article.

Finally there's [url=http://www.vg247.com/2009/08/25/ray-muz ... /:3cqxyhll]a more general interview[/url:3cqxyhll], talking about Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic and just general things about BioWare and such, that VG247 held with BioWare and Mythic boss Ray Muzyka.

Here's an excerpt:

[quote:3cqxyhll]If you’re going to say Dragon Age is one of the best games you’ve ever played… I’ve finished Dragon Age. I’ve played it extensively on PC and console. I can really stand behind it. I’ve played it a lot. On one of the play-throughs I spent 120 hours. Two hours a day for 60 days, 90 percent of the game, according to the telemetry. And I loved it. Every minute of it. I couldn’t wait to come home. After about ten hours of gameplay, every day I was talking about coming home and I played it for two or three hours, or whatever time I had free, and play it to the early hours. Luckily I don’t sleep as much as my wife. I’d stay up till after midnight and play it after she was asleep.[/quote:3cqxyhll]
And speaking of Mass Effect, it seems that BioWare [url=http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/49887 ... d:3cqxyhll]put up a patch[/url:3cqxyhll] for the PC version of the first Mass Effect game.


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Shir'le
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-= Shir'le E. Illios =-
Chosen of Eilistraee
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