Questions about commoner origins, a fan-made map, returning to our place of origin, and whether the game is solo-friendly have been answered in the latest developer responses on the official Dragon Age: Origins forums.
Mary Kirby and David Gaider on the dwarf commoner origin:
Taking it off in character creation is sort of an irrelevant and flippant choice, much like turning your skin tone as green as you can, since every dwarf who looks at you “sees” one anyway and immediately identifies you as casteless.
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Everyone will act as though you have the tattoo even if you removed it in chargen. As far as the game is concerned, casteless dwarves have tattoos. You are a casteless. Therefore, you have a tatoo.
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You’ve just had it so long, you don’t even see it anymore.
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Indeed. If it doesn’t make sense for you not to have the tattoo, then you needn’t remove it. It will be there by default, however.
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That’s a level of detail we didn’t want to get into at that point, as we would simultaneously need to have a unique GUI feature to explain the significance of each god as well — when for every other tattoo it’s just a graphical feature. I’d like to see that in some future edition, however.
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No, it means that we’re not going to force you to have features that you may consider ugly. It doesn’t mean we’re going to allow you to have features that were never intended to be there to begin with.
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Why, yes! Of course in THAT case and only that case we have mask-specific dialogue for every character where they stare at you in suspicion and refer to you as “that mysterious masked person”.
Or we would if there were masks, maybe.
The same two on the removal of the human commoner origin:
A few comments:
1) Yes, some concepts are not going to be really feasible in DAO. That’s not unlike many games — as someone mentioned previously, you wouldn’t normally be able to play a noble in other games. Even if that was a background choice, chances are it would generally only be reflected in occasional dialogues. Your origins matter in DAO, and while it would have been preferable if we could have provided a non-noble, non-mage human background I think it suits our concept far more that the origins are not inconsequential. As is par for the course, there’s always a trade-off, and in this case it does indeed mean that DAO’s not the sort of RPG you can approach with a pre-conceived character concept that works in some other game and expect it to apply seamlessly.
2) The Human Commoner was not cut because it was “boring”. It was cut because it didn’t fit the rest of the game, and we didn’t have the time to fix it. Yes, that includes the extra time we got later. Each origin is a massive undertaking — remember it includes an entire chapter’s worth of content as well as the effects that origin has on areas and dialogues throughout the rest of the game.
3) For the same reasons as #2, you’re not likely to see new origins as part of DLC. That’s my assumption, however — I have no idea if such plans might change in the future.
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And that’s all fine and well, but the only way to do that is to render such backstory practically meaningless. While I get that some people like the idea of being able to imagine any old thing and not have the game contradict their story (simply by lack of reference), I don’t think that’s particularly required for a good RPG — and in this case, rather than force you into a single backstory, we offer options that are particular to the choices you made in character generation, options that actually matter to the game and teach you about your place in the world.
And that’s what THIS game is about. Period. The end.
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Is it a reasonable alternative? It feels to me like someone lamenting prior to the release of, say, Planescape: Torment that they had planned on pretending to be a Mercykiller genasi or a Doomguard tiefling or even some lost vagrant from the Prime — even considering that such desires might have more merit due to the fact that we’re talking about a previously-published game system that allowed for such options, it still had nothing to do with the game that was being made. It may end up being of no interest to you personally, and that’s fair, but suggesting that your whims should be accomodated probably has very little to do with the game being created. I don’t know if it’s “repulsion”, per se, but a reaction to some people still wanting this RPG to be anything and everything.
Not that anyone’s really advocating for anything to be changed, as far as I can tell. Which is good, as this is pretty fundamental to this game’s concept and I don’t foresee it changing in the future.
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I think people should be wary of jumping to conclusions with just what the Human Noble origin entails. As we’ve said many times, your immediate background may be predetermined, but how you feel about it and where you go from there is entirely up to you.
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I don’t think the origin is as restrictive as you imagine. You could just as easily say:
You’re the younger child in a noble family. Your older brother is heir and will inherit all the lands and title of your estate, so you must make your own way in the world. You decide to forgo trade, since you detest city life and you certainly don’t want to go beg your father for the money to set you up with an apprenticeship or a shop. You’re not pious enough for the Chantry. You certainly don’t want to marry for money or live off your brother’s benevolence. So you decide to become a hunter and trapper, maybe a guide. You spend most of your days out in the woods, hunting, sometimes not returning to Highever for weeks on end.
on a fan-made Dragon Age: Origins map:
In terms of positioning, you’d need the Waking Sea to come much further inland. Orlais sort of exists in a crescent around it.
Chop off about the western third of your map. Orlais will need to be smaller and the Free Marches quite a bit larger. Nevarra should be a blob that exists between Orlais and the Free Marches.
Where you have Rivain currently should be the Imperium. The Anderfels is about right, with jungles to the north of it.
Directly north of the Free Marches, on that eastern coast, is Antiva. North of that is Rivain — where you have the Imperium currently, though it should be smaller.
There is a northern coast, in which is the island nation of Seheron (Qunari controlled) and the island chain of Par Vollen essentially north of Rivain.
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Not bad. A few comments:
1) Orlais is too big, and probably stretched out a bit too far west. The Free Marches would extend further westward, and Nevarra would be a Florida-shaped area between it and Orlais (and much larger than you’ve represented it).
2) The Anderfels is a bit further to the northwest, with the Donarks (the jungle) extending much further to the north. It shares a land border with the Imperium, but there is a section of the Hunterhorn mountains that seperate it from Orlais.
3) Rivain actually exists on a peninsula. Basically add a diamond-shaped (roughly) peninsula with the tip extending about as far south as Antiva’s southern border (there is a bay seperating Rivain from Antiva). Where you have Rivain right now is Imperium territory, mostly.
4) Antiva is smaller. Seheron is larger. The Imperium should be a tad more U-shaped, with a bay in it’s middle. Minrathous is on the western side of that bay, in the far northwest part of the Imperium.
5) It’s “Amaranthine Ocean”, not “Amaranthine Sea”.
6) There are mountains to the southwest of Orlais, as well, the Gamordan Peaks. The “Penguin Monsters” area is called the Korcari Wilds in the area south of Ferelden and the Arbor Wilds in the area south of Orlais.
7) For those who asked, the Dales is an area just west of Ferelden. It once would have seperated Ferelden from Orlais (and back then would have represented the fringe of the Imperium).
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It’s not a matter of getting approval. The good copy of the map is still being worked on. At best we could put up one of the earlier, less-detailed versions, but it would also be out of date — so I doubt we’ll do that.
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This map has the proportions basically correct, though Nevarra is a bit larger than that. Kont-aar is also on the northern tip of Rivain, and not the Imperium. The Anderfels, again, would also be further northwest with mountains seperating it from Orlais.
The bay in the Imperium also needs to be wider and much more shallow. Rather than a finger, think a teacup. You did the Antiva/Rivain divide almost exactly like it looks on the map, in fact.
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Nice!
Some comments:
1) Orlais is looking better, but the western portion is not so shallow. You could probably reduce how far the Waking Sea comes inland and it would be fine.
2) Seheron is now too large. It is also directly north of the bay in the Imperium.
3) Rivain is a little larger. Look to the map posted previous to yours for the proportions. You got Nevarra exactly right, however.
4) As mentioned, Minrathous is not a nation — just a city.
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Supplying the ones not already mentioned:
– Anderfels: Hossberg, in the northwest
– Antiva: Antiva City, in the middle of its coastline
– Orlais: Val Royeaux, on the northern coast of the far inland tip of the Waking Sea
– Free Marches: no single capital
– Rivain: Dairsmuid, in the southern end of the peninsula
– Seheron: Seheron, on the eastern shore of the island
– Nevarra: Nevarra, right in the middle
Andreas Papathanasis on returning to our place of origin:
One of the parts of the game I enjoy the most is getting to interact on later stages with places and characters encountered earlier (some of them in the origin stories), and see how they’ve all evolved and recognise you and your prior actions in the world. It really makes me want to play the game with another origin story when I see a character and think “hey, wonder what that guy would think if I was a dwarf…”. Ok ok, usually I’ll just use the dev version cheats and change then and there, but you get the point.
There’s no point spoiling this further, just be patient for a few more months and I think you’ll all be happy with how all this works.
And, once again, Mary Kirby and David Gaider on whether the game is solo-friendly:
You never need to take party members with you — if you recruit any, they can stay at camp and you can go through the game with just your player character. There are many places where the dialogue takes this possibility into account, even.
Whether you can do so with a reasonable amount of difficulty, however? That’s a different question. The game is balanced for a full party. You can turn down the difficulty level, if you wish, but you solo at your own risk.
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Mmmm no, I’m pretty sure that Dog still counts as a party member when counting the number in the party. I don’t think we’ve scripted any exceptions to look for a specific “if there’s only Dog” case.
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You are misunderstanding what I’m talking about. Interjections are handled on a per-party member basis. What I am referring to is the recognition from NPC’s as to whether you’re alone or not. If you have Dog in the party, you are not alone. They may refer to “they” instead of “he” or “she”. In this case it doesn’t matter if Dog can talk, it’s just counting the number of party members you have with you currently.
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Well, there are a couple cases where there is an “if there’s only Dog” case, for situations in which, for plot purposes, you specifically need a party member capable of speech around. But there are only two that I can think of in the entire game. For all the general, “Is the player in a group?” checks, Dog does count as a party member.
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It’s not always solely a pronoun thing — sometimes it affects how you are treated or referred to (“what? a lone man, all by himself come to challenge us? Ha ha!”) but we’re not talking unique dialogues or quests in that instance, no.
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