There’s been quite a bit of activity on the official Dragon Age: Origins forums lately, so I thought I’d point out some of the more interesting threads.
On a new preview in PC Gamer magazine:
Chris Priestly: I’m calling out to all of our North American audience that the next copy of PC Gamer magazine will have a huge feature article and cover devoted to Dragon Age Origins.
PC Gamer writer Evan Lahti was recently up here in chilly Edmonton where he was able to interview the Dev team and get some hands on time with Dragon Age Origins it’s self. Once he headed back to warmer climes, he wrote this excellent 9 page article on his time with the game and his thoughts and impressions.
The article is chock full of hot new screenshots including your first glimpses of all 6 origin stories, some new areas and a few creatures sprinkled in. The article also talks about how Dragon Age relates back to Baldur’s Gate, it talks about the Dragon Age Toolset and delves deep into where some of the Dev team got their “origin story” in the world of video games.
Look for your copy of PC Gamer with the Ogre on the front as this cool issue will be on sale in North America on February 3.
On weapon scabbards:
Poster: Hello! I really liked the game, you are doing. But the biggest thing that is killing me, is the way the NPCs carry their weapons. It looks like it has been pasted to their backs, without any holster. You should realy do something with it if you dont mind, because it looks really awfull. Thats all. The entire game is really great!
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Chris Priestly: Indeed. It isn’t embarrassing, it is a design decision.
I know we have people on staff who could make scabbards or whatever, we chose not to as we didn’t think it important enough to spend the time on (as in making the art for all the different possibilities, hooking them up, making entirely new “drawing weapons” animations, hooking them up, etc).
I’m sure some industrious fan modders will try to do it with varying degrees of success. More power to them.
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Brian Chung: Another problem also is things can quickly snowball out of scope.
Say we do put it in. Nevermind there’s a fair amount of work involved creating said scabbards because the game has multiple blade sizes and shapes. And the work involved matching the right scabbard to the weapon.
And I know that pretty soon you’ll get people asking to customize the look of the scabbard because the default one is ugly. But then people will want it easy to switch around, so a GUI change on the inventory screen is also required.
Then it’ll be “Why the back? Why not also have it on the belt too?” And you want the animations to not clip when drawing or sheathing your sword. Adding to more code to toggle between back or belt if possible, and several months of animator time to adjust the actions.
And so on…
On pubs and inns:
Poster: One of the coolest things about baldurs gate was going to the inn after a long day of butchering monsters and drinking enough to put a dwarf under the table and getting gossip from the barkeep. will there be any features like drinking alcohol or visiting inns in dragon age?
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Ferret Baudoin: With our advanced Pub 2.0 technology not only will it feel like your character is at a pub, but so will you. To take advantage of Pub 2.0 tech just open one of the six cans included with the game labelled “Pub Emulation Liquid” and imbibe. After a few of those not only will you feel like you’re actually at a pub, but it will realistically dull reflexes and fine motor skills.
Hee hee, I can confirm (if no one else has) that there are taverns in the world. And you will get to visit them. I know, scoop of the century.
On the recent Orzammar update:
Poster: I was thinking that too, since they only say they sealed the road. I could see there being pockets of Dwarves out there, perhaps they’ve even been under siege since the first blight!
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David Gaider: Actually, Orzammar has been under siege since the First Blight. Indeed, the dwarves do not think of there having been a First Blight or Second Blight or anything like that as the humans do… the dwarves have been at constant war with the darkspawn since they first appeared, and they consider the human notion that the darkspawn were defeated after the last Blight to be laughable.
As for the question of “What is a Paragon?” they are the most venerated dwarves, the ones whose statues line the halls of Orzammar and who are worshipped after their death. Any dwarf who performs a feat of sufficient magnitude and worth, be they warrior or smith or even merchant, may be made a Paragon by the Assembly. It’s a rare event, and it immediately creates a new House in the Paragon’s name. While they live, a Paragon has almost as much say as the dwarven King — not through actual political power, but by way of their word being respected by all. Almost all Houses today stem from a Paragon in the past, and the Shaperate is very careful about maintaining the Memories (the records of lineage and deed) as the worth of one’s ancestors will determine one’s station (and is, I’m sure you can imagine, the source of a lot of argument).
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Poster: So how do they deal with things when a Archdemon is in control of the darkspawn or do they even notice?
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David Gaider: The thing is, when an Archdemon appears it generally leads the darkspawn onto the surface (an Archdemon hasn’t led a campaign against the dwarves since the darkpsawn captured the Deep Roads long ago). While the dwarves certainly don’t need the surface to fall (they rely on the surface races, now) the irony is that when there’s a Blight on the surface the dwarves actually have an easier time of it below as the Deep Roads empty out for a time.
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Poster: My first post here, so excuse me…
The dwarfs sound really really cool… and the story seems to be quite open to development as well… so maybe in the future there’s going to be a story stemming off saying something like: oh, there’s another major dwarf city still intact and heavily inhabited, but so isolated that the dwarfs became a slightly different race… etc…
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David Gaider: Actually, in the world it’s already acknowledged that in recent years Kal-Sharok has been discovered to have miraculously survived. The few dwarves remaining there are rather… embittered towards Orzammar, however, and are extremely reclusive and unwilling to re-establish contact with the rest of the world. Whether or not you ever go there and find a story waiting for you remains to be seen.
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