Interview David Gaider has free reign in Dragon Age

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: David Gaider; Dragon Age

<a href="http://www.gameshark.com/features/507/Dragon-Age-Origins-Interview.htm">GameShark have quizzed David Gaider over Dragon Age</a>. It's a wanky interview (What's your favourite character in Dragon Age :blush with not much substance:
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<blockquote>... we faced a lot of road blocks whenever we attempted to do even mildly risqué things in the D&D games. Which is fine, right? It's their property; they should get to make sure it's portrayed in whatever manner they wished. Part of the thing about BioWare having its own property, however, was that it was going to have free reign to put out something that was intended for adults right from the start.
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Not that you want to go crazy, necessarily. It's not like we have naked people running around beating each other with bloody arm stumps while eating children. Though now that I think of it, wouldn't that be awesome? It's just nice to have the option, and I think that exercising that option made Dragon Age possible.</blockquote>
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Meanwhile <a href="http://www.dragonagecentral.com/single/1219191840">Dragon Age Central have a transcript</a> of <a href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/40693">Gamers With Jobs David Gaider interview</a>. As per usual, the fan-based / non-mainstream interview actually asks some interesting questions:
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<blockquote>We’re taking a couple of things we learned from Mass Effect, which is basically the acting element, seeing the character up-close, see the nuances of emotion, and also things like the one dialogue we showed where you’re not just talking to a face that’s standing still; sometimes you will be walking through a town and talking to them as you’re moving. The only thing we didn’t do that Mass Effect did - we aren’t doing any voice over for the player character.</blockquote>
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There's more on in-game reputation, his vision of the Dragon Age world and other stuff.
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Thanks <b>M Davis</b> and <b>Xerxos </b>!

 

[Mefi]

Gameshark: You have an enormous wang. Is it ok if we stroke it? Really? Oh cool....

----

The fan interview however...

[dg] No. In past games we’ve done the good choice, evil choice, whether it’s light-side/dark-side for KotOR or Paragon/Renegade for Mass Effect. It’s a little bit different, but essentially the dichotomy idea. Here we’re going for what we consider to be a darker, more mature story style where you have a lot of choices where what is good and what is evil is not necessarily going to be immediately apparent. Sometimes you’ll have very difficult choices, and say there’s a really... this is the moral path, obviously, but that one’s going to be a lot harder, you’re going to go more out of your way. Sometimes being good the reward is going to be "Oh, thank you so much for helping", sometimes taking the immoral path sometimes could just be... I’m going to do what is the quickest and most efficient way to get through this, and not worry about how it affects other people. And then deal with the consequences of those choices appropriately.

[sa] We’re not looking at a one-or-two, light-or-dark kind of...

[dg] We’re not tracking any kind of point value of how good or evil you are; what we are doing is it affects your reputation in the world, has consequences for your choices... most especially you have followers - we have very extensive dialogue for followers, kind of like in ‘Baldurs Gate 2’, where there was an extensive series of dialogues you could have. We track friendships you could have with your party members. We track romances. Also, if you’re making game descriptions they don’t agree with you can make enemies out of them - if you get to the point where they say "No, I do not believe in what you’re doing here, if you don’t change your mind I will fight you, I will stop you from doing that". The idea is that your reputation with your followers... they’re sort of a mirror as to what sort of decisions you’re making.

Does Gaider speak the truth?

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

We track romances.

It's good to see that there are some developers left who know what real role-playing is all about. Take that, Obsidian!

 

[Korgan]

Yeah, the makers of Saerileth for BG2 should be given $100M so they can lead the genre to a bright future. We can has hentai, too!

 

[Gragt]

But you can't have sex with Saerileth...

 

[PlanHex]

The only thing we didn’t do that Mass Effect did - we aren’t doing any voice over for the player character.

Yay for more conversation choices due to lack of voice acting!
Now it just remains to be seen whether these choices all lead to the same answer as usual.

 

[Korgan]

But you can't have sex with Saerileth...

But you can make her wear sexy clothes and... oh, it just seemed SO wacky in that Let's Play on SA. That's what Western hentai would look like, yeah. Really lame. You have to be Japanese or a hardcore weaboo to make good interactive porn. Biowhore should only do the softcore stuff like in BG2.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Does Gaider speak the truth?

No. This is obviously false:

[dg]In past games we’ve done the good choice, evil choice

The Bioware games alignment scale is in fact:
simpering doormat -> apathetic -> anti-social mental defective.

 

[J1M]

This is a load of bullshit. I am so tired of companies blaming someone else for presenting lame choices and consequences. There are plenty of things you can do that are interesting and diabolical that still fit into the Teen rating mold of not harming children or showing excessive gore/sexuality... especially when the ESRB just reviews a tape of your game being played that you send them.

 

[Carrie Underwood]

It's not like we have naked people running around beating each other with bloody arm stumps while eating children.

There goes my pre-order.

"... in Mass Effect we had characters that went "[cough-cough]" when they had something to say: we hear that sometimes people didn’t quite hear that, especially when they had the sound turned low... so we’re working on exactly how we’re going to have that. But if they have dialogue we’ll have to have some way to indicate it."

I can just imagine the entire party simultaneously erupt into a coughing fit because you haven't spoken to any of them since the last village. How about having the player actually initiate dialog on their own because they want to hear what a character has to say? "I need to talk to Ashley after every mission so I can fuck her" is not enjoyable.

"If you’re very persuasive - you could have a guy who says "Why are you killing that person?", you’re like "Hey hey, it’s alright, we have to do this, it’s important"... "Oh, ok, I guess that sounds reasonable" - if you’re persuasive. So you can be an evil charismatic person if you want and do things that even your good parry members you sort of have to talk them into it, they end up sort of "Oh, all right... I guess"."

Bioware: Now with doormats. How about those good characters abandoning your party when you go on a murder spree or steal from an orphanage?

"Even to this day - I did all that writing - to this day my writers will come up and say "So it says this in the wake", and I’m like "Really?!"... "Like, well you wrote it!", and I’m like "Yeah, but that was 4 years ago now". So there’s a lot, a lot of information."

Back pats all around!

"It was a conscious choice, probably stemming from the fact that we faced a lot of road blocks whenever we attempted to do even mildly risqué things in the D&D games. Which is fine, right? It's their property; they should get to make sure it's portrayed in whatever manner they wished. Part of the thing about BioWare having its own property, however, was that it was going to have free reign to put out something that was intended for adults right from the start."

Yes, that's right. Blame DnD. You couldn't make the game as totally awesome and adult as you wanted because DnD wouldn't let you. Planescape Torment? What the fuck is that?

"I know, I know, crazy writer guy right?"

You're mad, David! Absolutely mad!

"Magic in Thedas is rarer, mages are distrusted for many good reasons."

Hey something different that... makes sense. The story behind it sounds really good too, especially when you consider that their whole god might be false, which would make the entire event and the basis for distrust a lie.

"You listen to the guys working - like Bethesda - on Fallout 3, and they’re saying "Oh... 500 endings!"... are we looking at a multiple ending situation here?

What do you mean by 500 endings though? ... Little nuances of endings? Sure, with the denumounts I’ve been writing there’s all sorts of variations on how you affected these various areas in the world that you visit. ... So yeah, in that respect we’ve got endings galore"

Thank you for telling the truth. You could have easily said "500? Try more like 5,000! Take that, Bethesda!" However, I do have one question. Will you have a special major ending if you buy horse armor DLC like Bethesda will be doing with the brahmin armor?

"The idea... we called it ‘Origins’... it’s supposed to be a beginning, it’s not just this one story, the idea is that this is a world that we’re opening up, that we’re going to do things with."

This really begs the question of if they're going to make characters transferable to the next game. Otherwise, it seems to be an excuse for not having a proper ending.

"But the followers are such a big focus of this game, like the amount of... compared to Baldurs Gate 2, one thing that was great about that was that when you travel with your followers they felt so real because they talk to each other, they talk to you, chimed in on your dialogues, you know, and inserted their opinions... to give you a cheer of approval of something. We’re going for that. They comment on the world. If you pass by a statue in the world they’re like "Hey, that’s a nice statue". I think that is important in terms of making them feel alive."

I never played BG2, but this sounds really good if it's done right. I thought Fallout did this great with a brief non-intrusive text float. If we're going to have to go into 'dialog mode' whenever we pass a statue, that won't be good.

Those interviews weren't that bad. Either way, it's not like I have a ton of RPGs on the horizon to look forward to, so I'm glad Dragon Age can be one of them.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

You should play BG 2, it's very fun.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

If we're going to have to go into 'dialog mode' whenever we pass a statue, that won't be good.

BG 2 doesn't have dialogue mode; it only has chick lit mode.

It was a conscious choice, probably stemming from the fact that we faced a lot of road blocks whenever we attempted to do even mildly risqué things in the D&D games

In BG 1 I recall murdering all the children in Beregost to the whoops and cheers of my evil party members. I'd count child murder as risqué. Then again it is an American game so 'risqué' probably means something prosaic like sexual intercourse.

 

[Mefi]

Then again it is an American game so 'risqué' probably means something prosaic like sexual intercourse.

Elves with nipples are bad. Elves without nipples are good. It's a simple moral code which serves them well in their dealings with the outside world.

 

[Lesifoere]

If we're going to have to go into 'dialog mode' whenever we pass a statue, that won't be good.

BG 2 doesn't have dialogue mode; it only has chick lit mode.

Chick... lit mode? Okay, is this an insulting reference to the romances in BG2?

 

[Shota Shernokavich]

It sounds great. They have enough money now to actually spend time making a non-mainstream style game. Good stuff.

 

[buccaroobonzai]

It sounds great. They have enough money now to actually spend time making a non-mainstream style game. Good stuff.

This is something that should if things were fair and righteous in the world(like a Sierra adventuer rpg), happen a lot more often. We would see studios make some mainstream games that roll in megabucks, and then the true brilliant ideas that are the dreams of the best game designers actually get made.
Car companies sell millions of cars and they have enough money to make their own exotics- Ford with the GT, Dodge/Viper, Chevy Corvette Z06, Toyota/Supra, Mazda/RX-7, Mitsubishi/3000GT, Nissan/300Zx & Skyline.

Though as other people have stated, the game industry should start to evolve(if thats the right word) toward the same level as we see in the film industry where tons of indy studios produce small budget productions for the niche crowds. Once the game industry reaches that level, we may see further progression to where large Studios like Bio, Obsidian et al. invest in the smaller indy studios and finance their projects for ancilliary profits much like large film studios now do.

It is a question, as to whether indy RPGs, wargames etc. will be produced en masse on consoles too, using such tools as Microsoft Xnet(?) design tools that are being used to produce many arcade and platformers.