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Dragon Age Forum News I (Jan. 02, 08)

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Jan 2, 2008.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum. 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.

    David Gaider, Lead Writer

    Kaitlyn


    Is Kaitlyn ever involved in a quest?
    Yes.


    Is Gorim another NPC?
    Yes.

    How does this help you? Not at all.

    You people are very bizarre.

    (And I prefer "romanceable" -- just as I prefer "judgement" over "judgment").

    more:


    and is she, by any chance, the last surviving member of an ancient race? just a wild stab in the dark...
    Not unless humans are an almost-extinct ancient race.

    more:


    Are Kaitlyn and Gorim directly involved in any "subplot", or protagonists of a whole chapter of the story, or otherwise important characters?
    I wouldn't say they're very important characters, no, though they're both involved in the main plot for the chapter they appear in. We're not trying to drop party members on you, here -- these are just a couple of names that Stan dredged up in his infinite wisdom.

    The Nemesis of Bioware.


    What I'd really want is for the game to be open ended! I mean, really open ended. Sort of like the TES series, where the game is one huge place, and you can go whenever you want to other places. Even after the game finishes! Maybe after the game finishes aint that important, but being really really open ended is!
    I can pretty much guarantee that you're talking about a type of game that is completely different from what DA is trying to do.

    follower nostalgia

    I suppose there might be certain characters that people claim reminds them of something we've done before -- "so-and-so is just as annoying as Anomen!" or "so-and-so is just Minsc with a new face!" and what have you.

    Certainly there's no character that we've repeated *deliberately*. I personally like to try out new things whenever I get the chance. Though the fact that I've written so many fantasy games does give me a bit of deja vu now and again ("I have a feeling that I've written this particular fantasy village before...") ...and sometimes we revisit themes almost by accident (Bastila*cough*Aribeth) ...but, no, never on purpose.

    more:


    I cant belive that even the creators claim that Anomen is annoying.
    I made no such claim. I only claim that there are people who like to say such, without simultaneously mentioning that they make my eyes roll whenever they do. Wait, there I said it now. Oh well.


    Honetsly, that mostly red-haired cutsey girly rogue thing went on for ages. Hopefully, we won't have another Imoen- Annah- Mission- Neeshka - under any other name. A male for a rogue! A cutsey funny male for a rogue!
    I'm laughing as I read this, because we actually do have a red-haired female rogue (at least she's red-haired in all the concept art). She isn't anything like Imoen, really, however. In fact, the male rogue probably quips more funny one-liners per square inch than she does.

    more:

    Our dwarves don't use axes. Blasphemy, I know, but what would they use an axe for? It's not like they have trees to cut down.

    more:

    Well, they import wood from the surface -- so it's not as if they have no wood at all (or no axes at all) -- it's just not as widespread amongst their culture. Wood is considered an extravagance, and let's not forget that stone often works much better than steel when it comes to construction.

    As for dwarven weapons, if you must know: hammers and swords, mainly.

    more:

    I would say no -- we're not working under any kind of dictate to maintain racial stereotypes or character archetypes. If anything, I suppose we sometimes do it to ourselves... we'll create a character that we like and flesh it out and someone else will come along and go "you know, that's almost like so-and-so" or "isn't that pretty stereotypical?" or what have you. And we'll sit back and go "huh, yeah maybe" ...though that was not what we set out to do. We could change it, but at some point playing against archetypes can go too far (see Shadows of Undrentide). Do you want to have the dour rogue or the perky, pacifist dwarf simply as a gimmick? We've got to decide what we find interesting about writing the character and the rest is simply what it is.

    But if you're asking if someone is mandating that our elves must be poofy and our rogues rascally or such -- no, not really.

    more:

    Of course they wouldn't use weapons to cut wood... but in my mind, they maybe wouldn't think to make an axe as a weapon if they didn't first have the version about that was used to cut wood.

    But whatever. It's not as if dwarves don't have axes, it's just not their most prolific weapon, culturally speaking. They mainly use swords. End of story.

    Background, Race and Parents


    wrt backgrounds/choices; do you create your character first, NWN style, or make those choices via a prologue-style tutorial, like the Elder Scrolls games, to get a feeling of how you'd fit in before deciding on a class/name etc?
    We ask you a series of enigmatic moral questions and then intuit what race, class and origin best suit you from those. We find this is a very elegant, next-gen solution that takes the stress out of the decision-making process.

    Oddly enough, everyone seems to end up being a dwarf so far. But we're working on it.

    ...

    ...okay, no, we aren't actually doing that. But it would be totally awesome.

    Owning Land/Property?

    It's not so much that you can't return to a set point -- you can, in fact, return to most areas in the game even after the quest(s) you did there are complete. It's more that the situation you're in isn't very conducive to leisurely wandering the countryside, buying real estate or raising chocobos or what have you.

    I'm all for stuff like having a headquarters or a stronghold -- I suspect very much we'll do that again at some point. Just not for this particular story in DA.

    more:


    What about being a ruler? For instance, if one is a dwarven prince, one owns a kingdom, even if you don't manage the land. Will there be instances of a PC being granted lands and estates that way?
    If you are, it'll be something you pursue once the events of the story are over.

    more:

    Except that I already said there would be no strongholds in DA. We might do that again sometime, but not in this first story.

    more:

    I get what you mean, but it's a little early even for us here at Bioware to do more than conjecture about the possibilities.

    Mary Kirby, Writer

    Kaitlyn


    So who's this Kaitlyn?

    Is it some kind of romanceable companion NPC?
    Nope.

    more:


    more so than you think. Let's go back to page 1 shall we...

    Q: Is it some kind of romanceable companion NPC?

    A: Nope.

    So we know that she's an NPC who's involved in a quest, and is not romanceable (according to Mary). She can't use magic, meaning she's either a fighter type or rogue type, or not a companion at all (in which case she may also be a commoner, aristocrat, noblewoman, or even a scribe, merchant, provider of information etc).<hr/ >
    Actually, you don't know that. Just because something is not A and B does not mean that it is neither A nor B. So she is either: not romanceable, not a companion, not an NPC, or a combination of any of those. I'm not sayin'...

    Stanley Woo, QA Ninja

    Kaitlyn

    Wow, all this for one name of one NPC. I wonder what people would say if I mentioned the name "Gorim."

    more:


    She's also, I noticed, simply referred to as Kaitlyn, and not Lady Kaitlyn. Interesting...
    Sure, but I didn't mention Gorim's title earlier, did I? Chew on that one.

    more:

    Like Dave, I enjoy dropping info on you guys from time to time, but whereas he has ALL the info, I only have little bits and pieces. So I have to be more vague than he is, and I can let him pick up all the pieces that I drop.

    Serves him right for stabbing me in the face so often.

    more:

    but then wouldn't you end up with a bijillion NPCs standing there in the final chapter thanking you for helping them out earlier? That might get tiresome. I mean, the last thing I want is Ruck and Filda thanking me for helping them, since they want completely different things!

    Is Dragon Age going to be coming out for xbox360?


    Dragon Age has only been announced as a PC game.

    End of line.

    Curious about gaming careers

    How did I end up in the gaming industry? I applied for the job.

    Sheryl Chee, Writer

    Kaitlyn


    EDIT: Is Kaitlyn the red-haired female rogue mentioned in the "follower nostalgia" thread?
    Nope.

    more:

    You know, Stan, if you keep name-dropping like this, it's going to lose it's meaning. It's like laser pointers and cats. Eventually they figure out the laser-pointer is just a way to tease them and start ignoring you.

    Georg Zoeller, Designer

    Been so busy lately... need to update my DA knowledge

    PWs won't be possible.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2018
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