Dragon Age II Interview
Dragon Age II Interview
Interview - posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Mon 25 October 2010, 11:14:28
Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age IIGames On Net interviewed Dragon Age 2 associate producer Heather Rabatich about all the improvements we can expect to see in Dragon Age 2.
They changed the art direction:
games.on.net: Let’s talk about the upgraded art style. Why the change in art direction this time around?
Heather Rabatich: Well, we wanted Dragon Age 2 to stand out from the generic fantasy genre. Origins was a very specific type of fantasy game and Dragon Age 2 isn’t that type of fantasy game, it still has a lot of the carry over, but we don’t want it to get lost in that mix. This is a very specific type of game and we wanted to give it that cleaner updated look. So we still have these beautiful cities and vast landscapes and we haven’t departed completely from it, but if you look at a screen shot you’ll know its Dragon Age 2. It’s actually an ever growing market, half the games out there right now seem to be fantasy and I think our style is now setting us apart from that, it matches the combat, it matches the new type of story we’re doing.
This game is a ... very specific type of game, you know, like, very specific with landscapes and cities and shit. Thanks for the info, Heather!
They're going to improve accessibility:
games.on.net: And how do you make it more accessible?
Heather Rabatich: Well, you press a button and something cool happens! There’s like a cause and effect, its happening before your eyes, you’re not having to pause and set up a scene if you don’t want to, and you’re not getting annihilated if you don’t play that way. So the pause, and the tactics, and and strategy is there, and you might not even realise you’re being strategic initially, but after a while you start seeing how cool it is when you combine abilities and party members specialties, and you’ve got everybody fighting together and its interesting to be able to jump between the characters, and I just think its still a strategic game, but we have sort of made it a little lighter in the sense that you can just pick it up and play it and know what to do. It’s a very satisfying combat system for both types of player.
Causality - cause and effect. But wait, here comes the single biggest improvement:
games.on.net: From your personal opinion, what is the single biggest improvement between the two?
Heather Rabatich: There’s so much I liked about the first game, but personally, for me combat-wise, that is a big thing for me because I’m tactical to a certain degree but then sometimes I just button-mash my way through, I just wanna get to the next part of the story, so I don’t always want the epic combat, I just want to beat it and be done with it. And it really depends on where I’m at in the gameplay, so I like this type of combat, I feel like its faster and the pace is faster so I would say that for me that’s one of the things that, as someone who’s playing the game everyday, watching the combat improve and seeing how the game is changing in that way has, for me, been a very satisfying experience.
Seems Ol' Pete proved himself a true visionary once again because he recognized the significance of one-button-mashing combat goodness years before BioWare and CDProjekt caught up with the trend.
Spotted at: GB
They changed the art direction:
games.on.net: Let’s talk about the upgraded art style. Why the change in art direction this time around?
Heather Rabatich: Well, we wanted Dragon Age 2 to stand out from the generic fantasy genre. Origins was a very specific type of fantasy game and Dragon Age 2 isn’t that type of fantasy game, it still has a lot of the carry over, but we don’t want it to get lost in that mix. This is a very specific type of game and we wanted to give it that cleaner updated look. So we still have these beautiful cities and vast landscapes and we haven’t departed completely from it, but if you look at a screen shot you’ll know its Dragon Age 2. It’s actually an ever growing market, half the games out there right now seem to be fantasy and I think our style is now setting us apart from that, it matches the combat, it matches the new type of story we’re doing.
They're going to improve accessibility:
games.on.net: And how do you make it more accessible?
Heather Rabatich: Well, you press a button and something cool happens! There’s like a cause and effect, its happening before your eyes, you’re not having to pause and set up a scene if you don’t want to, and you’re not getting annihilated if you don’t play that way. So the pause, and the tactics, and and strategy is there, and you might not even realise you’re being strategic initially, but after a while you start seeing how cool it is when you combine abilities and party members specialties, and you’ve got everybody fighting together and its interesting to be able to jump between the characters, and I just think its still a strategic game, but we have sort of made it a little lighter in the sense that you can just pick it up and play it and know what to do. It’s a very satisfying combat system for both types of player.
games.on.net: From your personal opinion, what is the single biggest improvement between the two?
Heather Rabatich: There’s so much I liked about the first game, but personally, for me combat-wise, that is a big thing for me because I’m tactical to a certain degree but then sometimes I just button-mash my way through, I just wanna get to the next part of the story, so I don’t always want the epic combat, I just want to beat it and be done with it. And it really depends on where I’m at in the gameplay, so I like this type of combat, I feel like its faster and the pace is faster so I would say that for me that’s one of the things that, as someone who’s playing the game everyday, watching the combat improve and seeing how the game is changing in that way has, for me, been a very satisfying experience.
Spotted at: GB
