Dragon Age: Origins Interviews

The guys over at GameShark have published three separate Dragon Age: Origins interviews that they conducted during the latest press event up in Edmonton.

An excerpt from their interview with executive producer Mark Darrah:

Can you give an example of how one of those choices might impact the game?

Yeah. For example, you could play a party that has three mages in it and a tank to fill in the gap and the game is going to play very differently than if you play an all fighter party, which is also possible. Those tactical choices are very macroscopic and have a big impact on the way the game plays. And your combat choices go all the way down to what equipment are you going to equip or what spells or abilities are you going to pick. And I think the breadth or range of those choices is really interesting. That’s the kind of player I am. I like to pick and fiddle with the little knobs and this gives you a lot of opportunity to fiddle with knobs. But if you don’t want to, it’s easy to

A lot of presets from which you can choose.

Yeah, exactly.

A snip from their interview with lead designer Mike Laidlaw:

I wanted to ask about the more recent marketing of the game. It seemed to take a different turn from where it had been, prior to the acquisition by EA in particular, into something much edgeier, the (New Shit) video, a lot more emphasis on the blood and the sex. Do you think that’s helping get attention for the game and if so, is it getting attention in the right way?

That’s an interesting question. It’s funny because it actually took place well after the EA acquisition happened. What I think it’s done is – the New Shit and that kind of stuff – is that it sat quite a few people back in their chairs. And the people who had been die-hard followers of the game for quite a long time – they watched all the old videos and that kind of stuff – a lot of them reacted negatively. And I think the reason they did is because they were worried that a marketing shift meant the entire game had changed. And, of course, they were excited about the game that they knew. They were worried that, (Wait! What are you doing?) Right? Like, (You must have changed everything!)

I will happily say that this boat is far too big to turn that quickly. This is the Titanic and the iceberg of shipping this damn thing was well ahead of us at that point. What it did do, I think, is it inspired a lot of debate, which is good because it does raise visibility. But it also brought people that may not have paid any attention, like, (Oh, it’s got a dragon. Yeah, I don’t care.) But suddenly, it’s like, (It’s got a dragon and rock and roll and what does that mean?)

And the thing about that, at the time, was we were basically hitting the notes of violence as Dragon Age is a game that is more visceral and is more punchy than many others. So, by giving it a more violent soundtrack than people were expecting, I think it actually had the impact of driving that point home, like, (Look, wow they have big battle scenes. They have persistent blood on their armor so when you come out of a fight.) So, it was all valid stuff that was in the game. And the end result is people flaring up about it to a degree, but also remembering and paying attention and I think that’s important for any game to have people aware of what’s happening.

And at no point did we ever say we changed anything. I think the hardcore guys were a little worried, but since then we’ve gone, (Okay, so now we’ve talked about violence. This month we’re going to talk about lust. This month we’re going to talk about betrayal.) You have to hit the points of the game and each of those has their own way of presenting it. More recently we talked about the music of the game. We talked about Zur and Audrey Ashburn and those haunting lyrics she did-

Which was wonderful stuff.

Yeah, and it’s entirely different in tone. So, that’s always the challenge in anything that’s 80-90 hours [of gameplay].

And a sampling from their interview with BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk:

Was it the two of you that wanted to go back to the well with a Baldur’s Gate kind of heroic fantasy?

GZ: There were a lot of folks. A lot of people that worked on the original Baldur’s Gate and some of the Neverwinter Nights folks are on this title, and we try to match what people want to build with what they work on at Bioware. So that people who love sci fi work on Mass Effect. Fantasy people get to work on Dragon Age. And I think really what we thought is that while we didn’t own the D&D property or Baldur’s Gate anymore we also felt confident we could build something new of our own; something that could really stand out and that’s really what the motivation was.

RM: We were really looking to evolve it too.

GZ: Oh yeah. It’s definitely not as simple as just a spiritual successor.

RM: It’s got an edge to it. It’s got a bite. It’s dark heroic fantasy, so it’s not necessarily what you’d expect. It’s got the same level of richness and depth and tactical choices and things like that, and the expanse of the world. At the same time it will be a different version of fantasy than people have seen before.