Dragon Age: Origins Interview, Part Two

The second installment to GamerZines’ interview with Dragon Age: Origins lead designer Mike Laidlaw is now available. The topics this time around include Mike’s preferred platform, the risk involved with releasing a toolset, and more.

GZ: Were there ever any plans to add multiplayer or drop-in, drop-out co-op? A lot of developers go for that option, regardless of if it’s a benefit to the game or not.

ML: That’s a really interesting point you’ve just made. It certainly was under consideration because we do enjoy multiplayer and frankly it’s an awesome way to experience something like this. But when we looked at what we were attempting to do in terms of developing a new engine, building a new world and a new style of RPG with its own rule set, you can only allocate so much time. You can only put so much effort into so many different things and what we were concerned that one side was suffering to create a half assed version of another side. So shoddy multiplayer, would have caused us to have a less interactive story, which wasn’t something we were willing to accept. Early on we made a decision to focus on it as a single player game. The world can change, adjust and feel like it is a consistent and continuous world. By really focusing the team, we’ve ended up with a story which does an exceptional job of reacting to the way you’ve played your character without having to worry about other people dropping in and changing the fiction.

Some games are so much better with co-op… but I don’t think Dragon Age: Origins is one of ’em. This is the single player experience I’ve been looking forward to quite some time.