AspectVoid
08-16-2008, 10:37 AM
This morning I sat in on the GenCon demonstration of Bioware's new RPG, Dragon Age Origins, and interviewed Community Manager Chris Priestly and Lead Writer David Gaider. The demonstration was led by Chris, who opened with with an explanation as to why Origins was added as a subtitle. Feeling the Dragon Age is bringing Bioware back to its roots of Baldur's Gate, and the importance they placed on the Origin system used in character creation, Bioware chose to add the subtitle.
With the explanation done, we entered the meat of the demonstration. It began with your character traveling with a highly respected member of the Grey Wardens, Duncan, to meet the king. Your character is a new recruit to the Grey Wardens, and will be going through your initiation the night before what hopes to be the final battle against the Blight. The Blight is the generic term in the game for the armies of monsters that are led by an Arch-Demon.
Upon meeting the king, there was an extensive dialogue with the player getting 5 or 6 chances to direct the conversation. The conversation system is Baldur's Gate as opposed to Mass Effect. You have a list of 3 to 5 dialogue choices to choose from, ranging from polite to asshole. The player character does not have voice acting, though every other character does. The dialogue choices you see on screen are exactly what the player says.
After we finished speaking to the King, we took a look at a side-quest. There was a sole prisoner in a cage, whom we spoke to. He informed us that he had been locked up for stealing a key to a chest that contains some magic items. He still had the key, as he had swallowed it before his arrest, and had now shitted it out. He wanted to exchange the key for some food and drink. Our character, instead, killed him and took the key. A quick end to the quest, but one that was worth treasure.
We next took a look at the combat system. While traveling around, you play in a Knights of the Old Republic viewpoint. However, at any time you can scroll out into a Baldur's Gate style view. The GUI currently resembles Neverwinter Nights. You have the party shown on the left side of the screen listed down, and a quick button bar at the bottom with your skills, spells, and other powers. Combat is in real time with the ability to pause at any time. Melee is what is to be expected, with it being point and click to attack.
Magic, however, has some nice upgrades. Spells will now fully interact with each other. The first instance of this shown was the casting of the Grease spell. This spell slows movement within its area. A fireball was then cast at the grease, causing it to become a firestorm. To put this out, our mage cast Blizzard, causing the ice to put out the flames.
After the demonstration, I spoke with Chris and David about a few more points with the system:
* Dragon Age is using the Unreal 3 engine. They have learned from mistakes with Mass Effect. Load times will be better than ME. They are considering leaving the load screens a second or two longer than they need to be in order to prevent the player from seeing the texture popup that is rampant in the engine.
* They will be releasing two tool sets for Dragon Age. The first toolset will allow users to mod the core resources within Dragon Age. The second tool set will be designed to allow the user to create brand new content, including new monsters, new graphics, new area maps, and more. The system for creating new dialogue will be along the lines of Neverwinter Nights, but there are many new features that can be used, such as drop downs to automate certain parts.
* Bioware will be contacting members of the community to create the Wizards and tool set instructions. They know that they have such a grip on the tool set that they would leave things out if they wrote it themselves. They are confident that anyone who used the Neverwinter Nights tool set will be able to use the Dragon Age tool set. While the engines are different, everything is laid out very similarly. There will be a learning curve, but it shouldn't be too restrictive.
* Bioware recognizes the inventory issues that were in ME and KotOR. Dragon Age will have a single party inventory like those two games, but they are looking into supplying filters for searching your inventory to resolve the issue of scrolling through a single long list of items.
* They are not yet ready to reveal the specifics about the different Origins or the Character Creation. This will be released in the near future, however. They have promised that Character Creation is deeper than it was in Mass Effect.
* Dragon Age is built around a brand new RPG system. They will speak more on the details of the system when they begin showing off character creation.
* Party interaction will be highly emphasized. Party dialogue is the most extensive type of dialogue in the game. It will be going back to the style of Baldur's Gate where the party will begin conversations with you, will comment on your actions and the environment, and will be a constant presence.
* I also spoke with David about the choice to not have the lead character be voiced. Bioware's decision was that the lead in Dragon Age is the player. In Mass Effect, the lead character was Commander Sheppard. While the player was directing his actions, he was still not completely the player. In Mass Effect, everyone created their own Commander Sheppard, but he (or she) was still Commander Sheppard.
* While I couldn't get any details about the romances in the game, I was informed that fans of romances will be pleased with Dragon Age: Origins.
* All of your party members will have their own quests. Some will be simple, some will be extensive. The romances have the larges quests among the party members.
Finally, Chris informed me that the main content for the game is completed. They are now working on adding in additional features that they original left out, optimizing the game, and cleaning out bugs. They are expecting the system requirements to be in line with PC Mass Effect. Currently the game is still PC exclusive, though they have started talks about bringing Dragon Age to all other platforms. The game is well on schedule for its Q1 2009 release.
With the explanation done, we entered the meat of the demonstration. It began with your character traveling with a highly respected member of the Grey Wardens, Duncan, to meet the king. Your character is a new recruit to the Grey Wardens, and will be going through your initiation the night before what hopes to be the final battle against the Blight. The Blight is the generic term in the game for the armies of monsters that are led by an Arch-Demon.
Upon meeting the king, there was an extensive dialogue with the player getting 5 or 6 chances to direct the conversation. The conversation system is Baldur's Gate as opposed to Mass Effect. You have a list of 3 to 5 dialogue choices to choose from, ranging from polite to asshole. The player character does not have voice acting, though every other character does. The dialogue choices you see on screen are exactly what the player says.
After we finished speaking to the King, we took a look at a side-quest. There was a sole prisoner in a cage, whom we spoke to. He informed us that he had been locked up for stealing a key to a chest that contains some magic items. He still had the key, as he had swallowed it before his arrest, and had now shitted it out. He wanted to exchange the key for some food and drink. Our character, instead, killed him and took the key. A quick end to the quest, but one that was worth treasure.
We next took a look at the combat system. While traveling around, you play in a Knights of the Old Republic viewpoint. However, at any time you can scroll out into a Baldur's Gate style view. The GUI currently resembles Neverwinter Nights. You have the party shown on the left side of the screen listed down, and a quick button bar at the bottom with your skills, spells, and other powers. Combat is in real time with the ability to pause at any time. Melee is what is to be expected, with it being point and click to attack.
Magic, however, has some nice upgrades. Spells will now fully interact with each other. The first instance of this shown was the casting of the Grease spell. This spell slows movement within its area. A fireball was then cast at the grease, causing it to become a firestorm. To put this out, our mage cast Blizzard, causing the ice to put out the flames.
After the demonstration, I spoke with Chris and David about a few more points with the system:
* Dragon Age is using the Unreal 3 engine. They have learned from mistakes with Mass Effect. Load times will be better than ME. They are considering leaving the load screens a second or two longer than they need to be in order to prevent the player from seeing the texture popup that is rampant in the engine.
* They will be releasing two tool sets for Dragon Age. The first toolset will allow users to mod the core resources within Dragon Age. The second tool set will be designed to allow the user to create brand new content, including new monsters, new graphics, new area maps, and more. The system for creating new dialogue will be along the lines of Neverwinter Nights, but there are many new features that can be used, such as drop downs to automate certain parts.
* Bioware will be contacting members of the community to create the Wizards and tool set instructions. They know that they have such a grip on the tool set that they would leave things out if they wrote it themselves. They are confident that anyone who used the Neverwinter Nights tool set will be able to use the Dragon Age tool set. While the engines are different, everything is laid out very similarly. There will be a learning curve, but it shouldn't be too restrictive.
* Bioware recognizes the inventory issues that were in ME and KotOR. Dragon Age will have a single party inventory like those two games, but they are looking into supplying filters for searching your inventory to resolve the issue of scrolling through a single long list of items.
* They are not yet ready to reveal the specifics about the different Origins or the Character Creation. This will be released in the near future, however. They have promised that Character Creation is deeper than it was in Mass Effect.
* Dragon Age is built around a brand new RPG system. They will speak more on the details of the system when they begin showing off character creation.
* Party interaction will be highly emphasized. Party dialogue is the most extensive type of dialogue in the game. It will be going back to the style of Baldur's Gate where the party will begin conversations with you, will comment on your actions and the environment, and will be a constant presence.
* I also spoke with David about the choice to not have the lead character be voiced. Bioware's decision was that the lead in Dragon Age is the player. In Mass Effect, the lead character was Commander Sheppard. While the player was directing his actions, he was still not completely the player. In Mass Effect, everyone created their own Commander Sheppard, but he (or she) was still Commander Sheppard.
* While I couldn't get any details about the romances in the game, I was informed that fans of romances will be pleased with Dragon Age: Origins.
* All of your party members will have their own quests. Some will be simple, some will be extensive. The romances have the larges quests among the party members.
Finally, Chris informed me that the main content for the game is completed. They are now working on adding in additional features that they original left out, optimizing the game, and cleaning out bugs. They are expecting the system requirements to be in line with PC Mass Effect. Currently the game is still PC exclusive, though they have started talks about bringing Dragon Age to all other platforms. The game is well on schedule for its Q1 2009 release.