chevalier
Wed, 27th Sep '06, 10:16pm
Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum (http://forums.bioware.com/viewforum.html?forum=84). Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">David Gaider, Lead Writer</font>
Will DA music composed by Inon Zur? (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=491968&forum=84&sp=45)
<hr />Already that kind of music doesen't feel like it would fit the artwork we've seen of DA though. Just too much of a vague asian/sci-fi aura and so far not very green wildernesses.<hr />
If you're talking about the look of the tech demo from way back, that's nothing like what the final game will look like.
Cut Scenes (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=495609&forum=84&sp=15)
While cutscenes can be invaluable in moving the story forward (the lack of any ability to create a proper cutscene in NWN was killer), I'd have to agree with TFVanguard. At some point you have to decide whether you're making a game or making a movie.
Why does Dragon Age need 3D graphics? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=486328&forum=84&sp=60)
Like it or not, however, 3D is the standard. The Infinity Engine graphics looked great, but using anything remotely similar today would only be met (justifiably or not) with accusations of the game using dated technology and would end up being a hurdle to overcome in gaining positive attention for the game rather than a feature to ballyhoo.
Seriously, most of the discussion on this topic sounds like a mixture of nostalgia and wishful thinking. "Oh, but you don't know for sure"-- no, we do know. Doing otherwise for us is so not in the cards it's not even worth discussing.
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Yes, there is something to consider there. And perhaps focusing so highly on beautiful art isn't the answer. Did I say it was? Back-pedaling away from 3D art, however, and flying in the face of expectations is not the answer. I'm not calling you a Luddite, but you definitely seem to have taken the problem of the general focus on graphical fidelity in the industry and made it a rant against progress in general.
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<hr />For me, the biggest issue is that engines have to be constantly redone, which means that everyone (designers, artists, etc) have to get used to new tools all of the time. BG 2 could be long because the basic engine didn't change, so they could focus on the other parts of design.<hr />
That's very true. We haven't been in a situation since BG2 where we've had the same engine for two successive games in a row, and we'd like to be.
I also think the process of producing 3D content has become easier. There was a time when I couldn't have imagined us being able to produce as many areas as BG2 had in 3D, but that's changed. Part of it revolves around the acceptable fidelity of the art your producing -- does every single area need to be a work of art, for instance? Or can you lower the fidelity a bit in order to produce more content? Is the trade-off acceptable? Obviously many of you guys are saying yes, and that's not surprising -- but it also wasn't the argument. We've gone from whether 3D art is actually required to a general rant about the state of RPG's in general and I'll leave that to the experts.
My point was originally that certain things are expected from a major release, whether you think they are detrimental to the game's innate RPG-ness or not. Inside of those boundaries we can play -- there are plenty of RPG elements that don't rely on whether or not the art is 3D, so expanding the argument to encompass everything (not that you were doing it LdyShayna, but some certainly are) is not exactly helpful. I'm not saying we don't want to make a good RPG, after all, I'm saying that if you can't suggest how to do that while still meeting the minimum expectations as they stand for a major release you're not helping matters any. Be Don Quixote if you wish, but don't expect us to tilt right along with you.
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<hr />So why not make successive game engines backwards compatible, so that the tools stay mostly the same, with only perhaps a couple of new added functions? Why are game engines so radically different as to require unique tools everytime? Isn't it possible to make some sort of modular game engine design, with seperate scripting, AI, game mechanics and rendering engine components? So that you can update a component of the engine without significant changes to the rest?<hr />
There's a lot of reasons why we haven't been able to do that... at least part of it involving not having done any sequels for a while, so thus having very different needs with a given project. It isn't as simple as just wanting to, though hopefully conditions will come around again soon.
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What's to remedy, exactly?
Seriously, we got what we wanted out of the announcement and have been working away. Eventually we will start showing stuff, but we've no need to "indicate tangible progress" to anyone as we're not looking for any publicity. If we were, this would be an odd way of doing it.
If the "average schmuck" -- and by that I assume you mean the keeners who care enough to follow DA's progress intently -- wants to interpret that as DA being vaporware, why would that concern us? Once we are interested in the publicity, they'll learn differently.
Quests and the possibilities for loss (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=493612&forum=84&sp=45)
I think the biggest issue is that a human DM can follow the players along and apply detail where needed. Everything the player doesn't do and everywhere they don't go can be safely left in the background. In a computer game, the same amount of detail needs to be applied to all the paths that the player didn't take as the ones they did.
Serenity of the DA 'Verse (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=493862&forum=84&sp=30)
Those are some good points, and very true. Having full VO makes it very evident how awkward something can sound out loud. Prose can be very evocative, and narrative very useful -- but we have the luxury of neither, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's simply very different, and not easy to get right the first time out. I would say without hesitation that we have thought a lot more about the sheer process of storycraft and dialogue while doing DA than ever before, for various reasons.
Hmm. Second post of Gromnir's today that I've agreed completely with. The laws of the universe have gone topsy-turvy! Ahhh!
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I consider myself a fanatic, and I'm not a big fan of River either. I don't loathe her as much as some, but I found the whole "crazy girl that is really dangerous" bit rather tiresome.
I mentioned that I ran a Firefly tabletop campaign, didn't I? Well, we had a River character as well... a psychic who couldn't quite control her powers and occasionally had flashes of insight which would eventually save the ship (even if it didn't seem comprehensible at first). Great, right? Try annoying. She was hunted by the authorities constantly, a loose cannon who eclipsed all the combat characters whenever she "let loose", and you know what ended up happening?
They shot her in the head.
It was funny when we watched the Serenity movie near the end of the campaign and the scenes came up where they discuss what to do with River and the whole "bullet in the brainpan" scene. My players who were with me at the theater laughed.
I consider River to be a Whedon-ism at best and a Mary Sue at worst. Ah well, they can't all be winners.
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Those were really the problems we found in the game, and they just made obvious the problems that existed in the character (though she hid it behind a face of Drusilla-like weirdness). Imagine if the character went forward after Serenity -- what point are Jayne and Zoe as the dangerous combat characters when River can handle anything that comes their way? River would need to be mysteriously "taken out" by the plot every time the crew was to be actually challenged.
And the psychic messages she gave out regarding things that were about to happen? To the players, it just made them roll their eyes. Oh, here it comes. The Mighty Hammer of Plot. Not that they didn't like the plots I came up with, but having them delivered by someone who was too crazy to do so clearly made River annoying as opposed to actually helpful.
There are things I like about River as a character... I liked Drusilla, after all, but the use of such a character as a companion in a story is questionable. In a game it's even worse, and that's IF the player can stand being upstaged by an NPC. Flufflyamoeba is correct: every player wants to be the center of attention in their own story, admit it or not.
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Absolutely. We used the same archetypes as existed on the show, but with our own characters. The feeling of Firefly came more from the fact that the group served as a ragtag family for each other, and from the western feel to the setting... I mean, really, any time I focused more on the Old West aspect and ignored the Science Fiction aspect the game worked MUCH better.
Indeed, I found I could just steal plots from Old West movies and translate them. And keeping the group poor and striving to make enough money just to keep flying was a *great* incentive.
Plus it's fun to talk in a western twang.
As a CRPG, I suspect it'd actually work quite well. So long as any Companion on board was an NPC (that didn't work well for group cohesion as she was constantly leaving the ship).
Why 20-30 hours? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496148&forum=84&sp=15)
That wouldn't be wise for us to do. We're not yet at the point where we could even estimate how long the game might take to play through -- we're just pouring content in and we'll see where we're at later.
I will say, however, that there's a lot of content in DA. That may not end up meaning much, however, as the gameplay length will depend a lot on how much side stuff and exploration there is and not just how long it takes to plow through the critical path.
So there you go. Vagueness and all.
Dragonage portraits!?!??! (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=490972&forum=84&sp=60)
When you're in tactical mode not so much, but a fair amount when you're in dialogue.
My thought on this is that is the more detailed the 3D faces become on-screen, the more desire there is for the on-screen avatar to match the portrait. In the Infinity Engine, for example, it was easy to understand that the on-screen avatars were roughly homogenous. And even in NWN the on-screen faces were still pretty simple. So you look less to them for cues regarding the character and more to the portrait.
With a very detailed and adjustable on-screen avatar face, however, I suspect it becomes a bit more jarring to have a difference between the avatar and the portrait.
It's sort of a version of the Uncanny Valley -- the idea that the closer a face looks to human, the more we will look for visual cues to point out the differences that don't look human. So a cartoony face can look very human and expressive to us and a photo-realistic model can come across as cold and alien even if technically correct.
So my opinion is so long as you've got enough potential variety in the game's ability to generate faces, not having a 2D portrait is probably best. 2D portraits get points for being more stylistic, surely, but like I said become a bit problematic when you're already seeing a very detailed avatar face on-screen... and considering the work and time that needs to go into them to offer even a modicum of selection the feature really only offers benefit to modders.
After all, how many people are going to argue that they would get sufficient selection to get their characters just so with a 2D portrait if you had to settle only for the selection that we could reasonably provide with the game? Not many, I suspect, and arguing that 2D portraits should be included because it could potentially be modded into being more useful than procedural-based 3D portraits isn't going to hold much water, I'm afraid.
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I don't disagree. As I said, 2D portraits get points for style. But is that worth the trade off of needing to put in all the extra time just to produce a limited selection of pictures which are unlikely to come near every variation of avatar?
Some kind of procedural method of turning a 3D avatar into a portrait is an interesting thought, but I suspect the balking point there would be that the portraits are there mostly for GUI purposes as opposed to sheer style. But it's a thought.
Even though, I suspect you're giving less credit to the ability of next-generation graphics to apply some nuance to 3D model expression.
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Revolutionary?
Err... a bit novel, perhaps, and considering the fact that having any kind of portrait is superfluous when you already have a 3D representation useable by the GUI that's really its only merit.
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Again, and I remind you that this isn't necessarily what Dragon Age is doing, it's a matter of being able to easily select your character on the GUI.
Especially when we're talking about controlling an entire party of characters, you're going to need some way of easily selecting your character even when they aren't on-screen or there's a big ol' mess going on in there. That's really all it's for. The fact that the portraits were ever artistic in nature was a bit extraneous to their function.
On top of that, I suspect the only time you're normally going to be seeing your character's face on a regular basis is during dialogue (at which point the GUI is not required). Otherwise you're looking at them from behind or overhead. So it's not as if you're going to grow tired from seeing two exactly the same faces on-screen all the time, I think.
Experience (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496274&forum=84&sp=105)
Hmm. I find it odd sometimes that some players will become proponents of systems not because they are fun, but because they are more realistic or because that's the way it was in another game that they enjoyed (regardless of whether or not the feature itself was enjoyable in that game).
In fact, some people appear downright masochistic with the notion that the more punishing a rule is, the better it is and ergo the more fun.
It makes me wonder sometimes whether or not if we actually provided a game with all the features that some people want whether they would actually even like it. Respect it, maybe, but not necessarily enjoy it.
Of course, by no stretch does that mean I think that the opposite is automatically true (less punishing or easier being more fun, that is), but it's simply a curious observation.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Community Coordinator</font>
When will we see nudity? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496470&forum=84&sp=45)
Personally, not BioWare's opinion or anything reflecting on Dragon Age, I usually don't need nudity to enjoy image, story, piture, game, movie, etc. I have nothing against nudity and am generally the sort who falls more into the "I'd rather see nudity than violence" type of opinion. I just usually don't see the need for nudity in most cases.
I do get bothered by movies or tv where, lets pretend, there is a married couple of 10 years in bed who have just had a passionate encounter. She gets up to go to the bathroom naked, and covers herself with a sheet as she walks to the room. Sorry, I just don't buy this sort of thing. I've been married 17 years now and my wife and I are pretty open between the two of us. I understand the actres in question may not want to show nudity, but the writing called for it.
BUT in my opinion, the writer likely could have better written the scene so that this rather silly instance didn't occur. He could easily have left them in bed, or cut the scene to the bathroom with her doing up her robe, or moved time ahead till later or whatever. I think a good writer can create a scene or story that doesn't have to have nudity as a part of it. I have seen some very passionate and hot scenes, I've seen some very violent and horrible rape scenes, and I've seen some funny comedic scenes where nudity was implied and left up to the imagination if the viewer. And it all made sense in the story that was being presented.
Can there be nudity in games (and other media type things)? Sure. Should there be nudity in games? IMO, no. There are too many ways that a good writing team should be able to get around "having to have" nudity in teh game.
Supported OS? (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=495560&forum=84)
You didn't miss it, as it hasn't been posted yet, as we don't know it yet. The tech team is still figuring out the specs for PC and such and until we are sure of them, we aren't going to give out what could be the wrong information.
When they are sure, we will make the specs known. Stay tuned.
Why 20-30 hours? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496148&forum=84&sp=30)
Not to blow my own horn but.... toot toot.
Actually I have to play the new games more. Generally in QA (note the lack of an ampersand &. QA hates ampersands.) we work on one game at a time. You're Mass Effect QA or KotOR QA or whatever and occasdionally help on the other games as time allows. Once the game you're working on ships, you move on to a new project.
As the Community Coordinator, I have to keep abreast of all of the developements on each of our upcoming games (as well as knowing about all of our past ones). So I have to play the demos, check the builds, speak to the developers and I still get to provide feedback to the different teams. Only by doing this will I know what I can pass on to the community and keep you all updated.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Jennifer Hepler, Writer</font>
Serenity of the DA 'Verse (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=493862&forum=84&sp=30)
In screen and TV writing, generally 1 page of script is supposed to be one minute of film, which means your typical 1-hour TV show script is 54 pages. West Wing and Gilmore Girls scripts average 70-75 pages of dialogue in that same 54 minutes. Also, if you look at a WW or GG script, you'll rarely see a single dialogue exchange that's more than 4 lines or so -- almost everything is done through quick back-and-forth exchanges that characterize both speakers. I'd highly recommend reading their scripts to anyone who wants to study writing dialogue for actors.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Ferret A. Baudoin, Senior Designer</font>
Why 20-30 hours? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496148&forum=84&sp=30)
This isn't in any connection to Dragon Age, but I agree with ElAntonius. As I get older and have less free time, I really enjoy the occasional game that I can finish in a couple long weekend sessions of play. It's neat to have an entire story and experience in that timeframe. Although I still like my RPGs to have some "heft" to them.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Stanley Woo, QA Ninja</font>
Experience (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=496274&forum=84)
Personally, it doesn't matter much how I get XP, only that I get XP at all and I get it consistently. If I get a bunch of XP for solving the Mystery of Cabin Cove with my eyes closed but not for revealing the Secret of Lime Lagoon with my eyes closed, I might be a little confused and discouraged.
If, however, I get XP for unmasking the Buffalo Bandit and I get similar XP for killing the Diving Desperado and similar XP for saving Penelope Porpoise, then I don't mind so much.
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<hr />The practice of repeatedly doing something in order to become better at it (i.e. practising) occurs in real life.<hr />Yes, but we're not talking about real life. We're talking about a rules-based system in a video game, where "realism" often equals "less fun.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">David Gaider, Lead Writer</font>
Will DA music composed by Inon Zur? (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=491968&forum=84&sp=45)
<hr />Already that kind of music doesen't feel like it would fit the artwork we've seen of DA though. Just too much of a vague asian/sci-fi aura and so far not very green wildernesses.<hr />
If you're talking about the look of the tech demo from way back, that's nothing like what the final game will look like.
Cut Scenes (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=495609&forum=84&sp=15)
While cutscenes can be invaluable in moving the story forward (the lack of any ability to create a proper cutscene in NWN was killer), I'd have to agree with TFVanguard. At some point you have to decide whether you're making a game or making a movie.
Why does Dragon Age need 3D graphics? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=486328&forum=84&sp=60)
Like it or not, however, 3D is the standard. The Infinity Engine graphics looked great, but using anything remotely similar today would only be met (justifiably or not) with accusations of the game using dated technology and would end up being a hurdle to overcome in gaining positive attention for the game rather than a feature to ballyhoo.
Seriously, most of the discussion on this topic sounds like a mixture of nostalgia and wishful thinking. "Oh, but you don't know for sure"-- no, we do know. Doing otherwise for us is so not in the cards it's not even worth discussing.
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Yes, there is something to consider there. And perhaps focusing so highly on beautiful art isn't the answer. Did I say it was? Back-pedaling away from 3D art, however, and flying in the face of expectations is not the answer. I'm not calling you a Luddite, but you definitely seem to have taken the problem of the general focus on graphical fidelity in the industry and made it a rant against progress in general.
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<hr />For me, the biggest issue is that engines have to be constantly redone, which means that everyone (designers, artists, etc) have to get used to new tools all of the time. BG 2 could be long because the basic engine didn't change, so they could focus on the other parts of design.<hr />
That's very true. We haven't been in a situation since BG2 where we've had the same engine for two successive games in a row, and we'd like to be.
I also think the process of producing 3D content has become easier. There was a time when I couldn't have imagined us being able to produce as many areas as BG2 had in 3D, but that's changed. Part of it revolves around the acceptable fidelity of the art your producing -- does every single area need to be a work of art, for instance? Or can you lower the fidelity a bit in order to produce more content? Is the trade-off acceptable? Obviously many of you guys are saying yes, and that's not surprising -- but it also wasn't the argument. We've gone from whether 3D art is actually required to a general rant about the state of RPG's in general and I'll leave that to the experts.
My point was originally that certain things are expected from a major release, whether you think they are detrimental to the game's innate RPG-ness or not. Inside of those boundaries we can play -- there are plenty of RPG elements that don't rely on whether or not the art is 3D, so expanding the argument to encompass everything (not that you were doing it LdyShayna, but some certainly are) is not exactly helpful. I'm not saying we don't want to make a good RPG, after all, I'm saying that if you can't suggest how to do that while still meeting the minimum expectations as they stand for a major release you're not helping matters any. Be Don Quixote if you wish, but don't expect us to tilt right along with you.
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<hr />So why not make successive game engines backwards compatible, so that the tools stay mostly the same, with only perhaps a couple of new added functions? Why are game engines so radically different as to require unique tools everytime? Isn't it possible to make some sort of modular game engine design, with seperate scripting, AI, game mechanics and rendering engine components? So that you can update a component of the engine without significant changes to the rest?<hr />
There's a lot of reasons why we haven't been able to do that... at least part of it involving not having done any sequels for a while, so thus having very different needs with a given project. It isn't as simple as just wanting to, though hopefully conditions will come around again soon.
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What's to remedy, exactly?
Seriously, we got what we wanted out of the announcement and have been working away. Eventually we will start showing stuff, but we've no need to "indicate tangible progress" to anyone as we're not looking for any publicity. If we were, this would be an odd way of doing it.
If the "average schmuck" -- and by that I assume you mean the keeners who care enough to follow DA's progress intently -- wants to interpret that as DA being vaporware, why would that concern us? Once we are interested in the publicity, they'll learn differently.
Quests and the possibilities for loss (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=493612&forum=84&sp=45)
I think the biggest issue is that a human DM can follow the players along and apply detail where needed. Everything the player doesn't do and everywhere they don't go can be safely left in the background. In a computer game, the same amount of detail needs to be applied to all the paths that the player didn't take as the ones they did.
Serenity of the DA 'Verse (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=493862&forum=84&sp=30)
Those are some good points, and very true. Having full VO makes it very evident how awkward something can sound out loud. Prose can be very evocative, and narrative very useful -- but we have the luxury of neither, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's simply very different, and not easy to get right the first time out. I would say without hesitation that we have thought a lot more about the sheer process of storycraft and dialogue while doing DA than ever before, for various reasons.
Hmm. Second post of Gromnir's today that I've agreed completely with. The laws of the universe have gone topsy-turvy! Ahhh!
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I consider myself a fanatic, and I'm not a big fan of River either. I don't loathe her as much as some, but I found the whole "crazy girl that is really dangerous" bit rather tiresome.
I mentioned that I ran a Firefly tabletop campaign, didn't I? Well, we had a River character as well... a psychic who couldn't quite control her powers and occasionally had flashes of insight which would eventually save the ship (even if it didn't seem comprehensible at first). Great, right? Try annoying. She was hunted by the authorities constantly, a loose cannon who eclipsed all the combat characters whenever she "let loose", and you know what ended up happening?
They shot her in the head.
It was funny when we watched the Serenity movie near the end of the campaign and the scenes came up where they discuss what to do with River and the whole "bullet in the brainpan" scene. My players who were with me at the theater laughed.
I consider River to be a Whedon-ism at best and a Mary Sue at worst. Ah well, they can't all be winners.
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Those were really the problems we found in the game, and they just made obvious the problems that existed in the character (though she hid it behind a face of Drusilla-like weirdness). Imagine if the character went forward after Serenity -- what point are Jayne and Zoe as the dangerous combat characters when River can handle anything that comes their way? River would need to be mysteriously "taken out" by the plot every time the crew was to be actually challenged.
And the psychic messages she gave out regarding things that were about to happen? To the players, it just made them roll their eyes. Oh, here it comes. The Mighty Hammer of Plot. Not that they didn't like the plots I came up with, but having them delivered by someone who was too crazy to do so clearly made River annoying as opposed to actually helpful.
There are things I like about River as a character... I liked Drusilla, after all, but the use of such a character as a companion in a story is questionable. In a game it's even worse, and that's IF the player can stand being upstaged by an NPC. Flufflyamoeba is correct: every player wants to be the center of attention in their own story, admit it or not.
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Absolutely. We used the same archetypes as existed on the show, but with our own characters. The feeling of Firefly came more from the fact that the group served as a ragtag family for each other, and from the western feel to the setting... I mean, really, any time I focused more on the Old West aspect and ignored the Science Fiction aspect the game worked MUCH better.
Indeed, I found I could just steal plots from Old West movies and translate them. And keeping the group poor and striving to make enough money just to keep flying was a *great* incentive.
Plus it's fun to talk in a western twang.
As a CRPG, I suspect it'd actually work quite well. So long as any Companion on board was an NPC (that didn't work well for group cohesion as she was constantly leaving the ship).
Why 20-30 hours? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496148&forum=84&sp=15)
That wouldn't be wise for us to do. We're not yet at the point where we could even estimate how long the game might take to play through -- we're just pouring content in and we'll see where we're at later.
I will say, however, that there's a lot of content in DA. That may not end up meaning much, however, as the gameplay length will depend a lot on how much side stuff and exploration there is and not just how long it takes to plow through the critical path.
So there you go. Vagueness and all.
Dragonage portraits!?!??! (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=490972&forum=84&sp=60)
When you're in tactical mode not so much, but a fair amount when you're in dialogue.
My thought on this is that is the more detailed the 3D faces become on-screen, the more desire there is for the on-screen avatar to match the portrait. In the Infinity Engine, for example, it was easy to understand that the on-screen avatars were roughly homogenous. And even in NWN the on-screen faces were still pretty simple. So you look less to them for cues regarding the character and more to the portrait.
With a very detailed and adjustable on-screen avatar face, however, I suspect it becomes a bit more jarring to have a difference between the avatar and the portrait.
It's sort of a version of the Uncanny Valley -- the idea that the closer a face looks to human, the more we will look for visual cues to point out the differences that don't look human. So a cartoony face can look very human and expressive to us and a photo-realistic model can come across as cold and alien even if technically correct.
So my opinion is so long as you've got enough potential variety in the game's ability to generate faces, not having a 2D portrait is probably best. 2D portraits get points for being more stylistic, surely, but like I said become a bit problematic when you're already seeing a very detailed avatar face on-screen... and considering the work and time that needs to go into them to offer even a modicum of selection the feature really only offers benefit to modders.
After all, how many people are going to argue that they would get sufficient selection to get their characters just so with a 2D portrait if you had to settle only for the selection that we could reasonably provide with the game? Not many, I suspect, and arguing that 2D portraits should be included because it could potentially be modded into being more useful than procedural-based 3D portraits isn't going to hold much water, I'm afraid.
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I don't disagree. As I said, 2D portraits get points for style. But is that worth the trade off of needing to put in all the extra time just to produce a limited selection of pictures which are unlikely to come near every variation of avatar?
Some kind of procedural method of turning a 3D avatar into a portrait is an interesting thought, but I suspect the balking point there would be that the portraits are there mostly for GUI purposes as opposed to sheer style. But it's a thought.
Even though, I suspect you're giving less credit to the ability of next-generation graphics to apply some nuance to 3D model expression.
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Revolutionary?
Err... a bit novel, perhaps, and considering the fact that having any kind of portrait is superfluous when you already have a 3D representation useable by the GUI that's really its only merit.
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Again, and I remind you that this isn't necessarily what Dragon Age is doing, it's a matter of being able to easily select your character on the GUI.
Especially when we're talking about controlling an entire party of characters, you're going to need some way of easily selecting your character even when they aren't on-screen or there's a big ol' mess going on in there. That's really all it's for. The fact that the portraits were ever artistic in nature was a bit extraneous to their function.
On top of that, I suspect the only time you're normally going to be seeing your character's face on a regular basis is during dialogue (at which point the GUI is not required). Otherwise you're looking at them from behind or overhead. So it's not as if you're going to grow tired from seeing two exactly the same faces on-screen all the time, I think.
Experience (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496274&forum=84&sp=105)
Hmm. I find it odd sometimes that some players will become proponents of systems not because they are fun, but because they are more realistic or because that's the way it was in another game that they enjoyed (regardless of whether or not the feature itself was enjoyable in that game).
In fact, some people appear downright masochistic with the notion that the more punishing a rule is, the better it is and ergo the more fun.
It makes me wonder sometimes whether or not if we actually provided a game with all the features that some people want whether they would actually even like it. Respect it, maybe, but not necessarily enjoy it.
Of course, by no stretch does that mean I think that the opposite is automatically true (less punishing or easier being more fun, that is), but it's simply a curious observation.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Community Coordinator</font>
When will we see nudity? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496470&forum=84&sp=45)
Personally, not BioWare's opinion or anything reflecting on Dragon Age, I usually don't need nudity to enjoy image, story, piture, game, movie, etc. I have nothing against nudity and am generally the sort who falls more into the "I'd rather see nudity than violence" type of opinion. I just usually don't see the need for nudity in most cases.
I do get bothered by movies or tv where, lets pretend, there is a married couple of 10 years in bed who have just had a passionate encounter. She gets up to go to the bathroom naked, and covers herself with a sheet as she walks to the room. Sorry, I just don't buy this sort of thing. I've been married 17 years now and my wife and I are pretty open between the two of us. I understand the actres in question may not want to show nudity, but the writing called for it.
BUT in my opinion, the writer likely could have better written the scene so that this rather silly instance didn't occur. He could easily have left them in bed, or cut the scene to the bathroom with her doing up her robe, or moved time ahead till later or whatever. I think a good writer can create a scene or story that doesn't have to have nudity as a part of it. I have seen some very passionate and hot scenes, I've seen some very violent and horrible rape scenes, and I've seen some funny comedic scenes where nudity was implied and left up to the imagination if the viewer. And it all made sense in the story that was being presented.
Can there be nudity in games (and other media type things)? Sure. Should there be nudity in games? IMO, no. There are too many ways that a good writing team should be able to get around "having to have" nudity in teh game.
Supported OS? (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=495560&forum=84)
You didn't miss it, as it hasn't been posted yet, as we don't know it yet. The tech team is still figuring out the specs for PC and such and until we are sure of them, we aren't going to give out what could be the wrong information.
When they are sure, we will make the specs known. Stay tuned.
Why 20-30 hours? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496148&forum=84&sp=30)
Not to blow my own horn but.... toot toot.
Actually I have to play the new games more. Generally in QA (note the lack of an ampersand &. QA hates ampersands.) we work on one game at a time. You're Mass Effect QA or KotOR QA or whatever and occasdionally help on the other games as time allows. Once the game you're working on ships, you move on to a new project.
As the Community Coordinator, I have to keep abreast of all of the developements on each of our upcoming games (as well as knowing about all of our past ones). So I have to play the demos, check the builds, speak to the developers and I still get to provide feedback to the different teams. Only by doing this will I know what I can pass on to the community and keep you all updated.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Jennifer Hepler, Writer</font>
Serenity of the DA 'Verse (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=493862&forum=84&sp=30)
In screen and TV writing, generally 1 page of script is supposed to be one minute of film, which means your typical 1-hour TV show script is 54 pages. West Wing and Gilmore Girls scripts average 70-75 pages of dialogue in that same 54 minutes. Also, if you look at a WW or GG script, you'll rarely see a single dialogue exchange that's more than 4 lines or so -- almost everything is done through quick back-and-forth exchanges that characterize both speakers. I'd highly recommend reading their scripts to anyone who wants to study writing dialogue for actors.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Ferret A. Baudoin, Senior Designer</font>
Why 20-30 hours? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=496148&forum=84&sp=30)
This isn't in any connection to Dragon Age, but I agree with ElAntonius. As I get older and have less free time, I really enjoy the occasional game that I can finish in a couple long weekend sessions of play. It's neat to have an entire story and experience in that timeframe. Although I still like my RPGs to have some "heft" to them.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Stanley Woo, QA Ninja</font>
Experience (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=496274&forum=84)
Personally, it doesn't matter much how I get XP, only that I get XP at all and I get it consistently. If I get a bunch of XP for solving the Mystery of Cabin Cove with my eyes closed but not for revealing the Secret of Lime Lagoon with my eyes closed, I might be a little confused and discouraged.
If, however, I get XP for unmasking the Buffalo Bandit and I get similar XP for killing the Diving Desperado and similar XP for saving Penelope Porpoise, then I don't mind so much.
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<hr />The practice of repeatedly doing something in order to become better at it (i.e. practising) occurs in real life.<hr />Yes, but we're not talking about real life. We're talking about a rules-based system in a video game, where "realism" often equals "less fun.