Interview Dragon Age compared to Baldur's Gate & Neverwinter Nights

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Dragon Age

<a href="http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dragonage/news.html?sid=6201727&mode=previews">GameSpot. Interview. Dragon Age</a>. Quote:
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<blockquote><b>GameSpot: We understand that Dragon Age: Origins is intended to be the spiritual successor to BioWare's best fantasy role-playing games, such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. What was it about those games that you definitely wanted to capture in Dragon Age?</b>
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DT: Fans who loved the rich story, interesting characters, and tactical combat in the deep fantasy setting of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights will love what we're doing in Dragon Age: Origins. We're capturing the same great spirit of story, exploration, tactical combat, and character progression that we delivered in those previous titles and bringing it to a dark, heroic fantasy setting. We've taken a lot of what we learned from creating Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights to make Dragon Age: Origins even better, so fans can expect a lot of what they enjoyed about those games, but with next-gen improvements.</blockquote>
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Summary: IT'S NEXT-GEN!!1
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<blockquote>BioWare has always focused on delivering deep, story-driven experiences, where your actions and choices have meaningful consequences. We're taking that even deeper with Dragon Age: Origins by introducing a new feature called "origin stories." You start the game by choosing and then playing through the origin story of your choice. You start off in a unique place in the gameworld, which sets up the way you become a Grey Warden and flavors the rest of the game in terms of your motivations, how you perceive the world, and how the world perceives you. Your choices will open up different story branches, dialogue options, affect how other characters treat you, and change the state of the Dragon Age world by the end of the game. Compared to our previous titles, the story and scope of <b>Dragon Age: Origins is the most ambitious of any BioWare game yet</b>.</blockquote>
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BioWare makes a saving throw vs failure to achieve ambition. Stay tuned for the result of the roll.
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Spotted @ <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com">RPG Time Piece</a>

 

[Volourn]

NWN 4 THA W!

 

[Spectacle]

Re: Dragon Age compared to Baldur's Gate & Neverwinter N

<blockquote><b>GameSpot: We understand that Dragon Effect: Origins is intended to be the spiritual successor to BioWare's best fantasy role-playing games, such as Jade Empire and Mass Effect. What was it about those games that you definitely wanted to capture in Dragon Age?</b>

DT: Fans who loved the rich story, interesting characters, and tactical combat in the deep fantasy setting of Jade Empire and Mass Effect will love what we're doing in Dragon Effect: Origins. We're capturing the same great spirit of story, exploration, tactical combat, and character progression that we delivered in those previous titles and bringing it to a dark, heroic fantasy setting. We've taken a lot of what we learned from creating Jade Empire and Mass Effect to make Dragon Effect: Origins even better, so fans can expect a lot of what they enjoyed about those games, but with next-gen improvements

BioWare has always focused on delivering deep, story-driven experiences, where your actions and choices have meaningful consequences. We're taking that even deeper with Dragon Effect: Origins by introducing a new feature called "origin stories." You start the game by choosing and then playing through the origin story of your choice. You start off in a unique place in the gameworld, which sets up the way you become a Grey Spectre and flavors the rest of the game in terms of your motivations, how you perceive the world, and how the world perceives you. Your choices will open up different story branches, dialogue options, affect how other characters treat you, and change the state of the Dragon Effect world by the end of the game. Compared to our previous titles, the story and scope of <b>Dragon Effect: Origins is the most ambitious of any BioWare game yet</b>.</blockquote>

 

[kris]

Don't deviate from our story. You will be a warden even if you will destroy our organisation! (Haha, just joking, you can't destroy anything, you gotta follow on the story you know)

 

[Barrow_Bug]

Hmmm, I hope it brings something new to High Fantasy. I've tried playing BG2 twice recently and just couldn't dig it.

 

[Warden]

Re: Dragon Age compared to Baldur's Gate & Neverwinter N

BioWare makes a saving throw vs failure to achieve ambition. Stay tuned for the result of the roll.

 

[Ogg]

Hmmm, I hope it brings something new to High Fantasy. I've tried playing BG2 twice recently and just couldn't dig it.

Apart from flat-chest babes?

 

[The Feral Kid]

If horrible voice-acting/accents ( British accents for the sake of it) is an indicator, then this game will suck. The isometric view fails to mask it's LotRish/Oblivionish pseudo-epic direction. One of the things Bio got right in the past was excellent voice-acting which resulted in almost immediately figuring with what kind of NPC you were dealing with and setting the tone and atmosphere nicely. Not anymore. All characters sound and look generic and so does the game-world by what we've seen so far. Probably not the only issue but surely a serious indicator of what to expect.

 

[Fenril]

Excellent voice acting like for example in BG2? Between your "sister's" teeny whines, your female party members whines, and minsc retarded musings to cite a few examples?

Oh well maybe its me whining about the character personalities themselves and the atmosphere they create and not so much the voice acting.

The villain in BG2 was well realized though. A bit overly dramatic but almost convincing.

 

[DraQ]

Eh. BG2 is way better than BG1.

In a perfect world your average RPG designed to entertain you with generic high fantasy, when, for some reason, you don't want anything more original, would look pretty much like BG2.

 

[PennyAnte]

I've tried playing BG2 twice recently and just couldn't dig it.

Same here, at least not all the way through.

 

[Texas Red]

What the hell are you people whining about? Bioware agreed to deliver a true RPG instead of those next gen pieces of crap. It will be better than BG 2 because it is going to have actual DIALOGS and gameplay consisting of more than just combat.

I've only seen one of the trailers and I really liked it. The blond king wasn't what I first expected, but a stupid, weak willed idiot. That cutscene beat everything BG 2 had to offer with their 10 second "dialogs".

So we don't get to have MotB like epic storytelling and setting. That's not what most RPGs are about. Give me something generic and I'll still enjoy discovering locations, digging up lore and conversing with NPCs.

 

[The Feral Kid]

Excellent voice acting like for example in BG2? Between your "sister's" teeny whines, your female party members whines, and minsc retarded musings to cite a few examples?

Oh well maybe its me whining about the character personalities themselves and the atmosphere they create and not so much the voice acting.

The villain in BG2 was well realized though. A bit overly dramatic but almost convincing.

Surely their whining was much more pleasant and pleasing than...yours.

No matter how irritating you could find certain characters like for instance Minsc his characterization via voice-acting was superb.

BG 2 especially has stellar voice-acting.Bodhi, Irenicus, Korgan to name a few. Every NPC's voice joinable or not uncovers the very essence and traits of a character. That's what good voice-acting is all about. Emphasizing the characteristics of each personality and creating a certain air around them. The exact opposite of generic randomness.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Bioware agreed to deliver a true RPG instead of those next gen pieces of crap.

Here's how this should actually read:

Bioware agreed to deliver a true next gen piece of crap.

 

[fastpunk]

Eh, DA:O doesn't look too hot, which is weird because Bioware usually manages to hype things up quite well. Mass Effect, for example, looked awesome in trailers and such... but DA:O is just meh.

 

[Lurkar]

DA:O suffers from "I've seen this before." The bigger problem is, the "before" is "Everything else Bioware has ever made." Jade Empire? Exact same Bioware, only in psuedo-Asia. Mass Effect? Bioware in space. You get the idea; there's a formula here that's being stuck to, and it's starting to bore. Mass Effect is a great example - instead of making an actual sci-fi game, they stuck with the very fantasy oriented "An ancient evil awakens!" The fact that you could snub, hate, and attack the council at every single point imaginable in the game and they never thought "Oh hey this might be bad, maybe he shouldn't be a specter" struck me the most.

If anything, DA:O is starting to look not only like they're using previous ideas, but they're outright copy-pasting games together. Looks like that "You're a <sekrit> no matter what!" is going to be back. I understand there's a type of game Bioware is best at, but my god, at least TRY to deviate a bit from the formula.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Give me something generic and I'll still enjoy discovering locations, digging up lore and conversing with NPCs.

the problem with generic is, you've already seen those locations and read the lore before playing the game.

 

[Texas Red]

Give me something generic and I'll still enjoy discovering locations, digging up lore and conversing with NPCs.

the problem with generic is, you've already seen those locations and read the lore before playing the game.

I don't see that as a problem at all. Take for example Divine Divinity. It has a generic story about the character being the chosan oan and a war with orcs. Yet that game is atmospheric and I'm sure you felt that when you started in that village. Or Baldur's Gate. The Slums are generic, filled with thugs and whatnot, and a tavern with unsavory business. Plus you already know Faerun lore. But that doesn't change the fact that the Slums managed to be dark, aesthetically pleasing and conversing with NPCs, even if they had only a few lines, charming and enjoyable.

 

[Cthulhugoat]

snip

True. It also applies to our beloved Bethesda. Well, to their original, non-licensed stuff (Elder Scrolls!). All in first-person, all combat heavy and rather reliant on exploring.

And since Elder Scrolls is Bethesda's best, they obviously had to develop FO3 in the ES way with some added postapo spice. Both series are known for their RPG titles, so... best of both worlds1!

 

[Lurkar]

snip

True. It also applies to our beloved Bethesda. Well, to their original, non-licensed stuff (Elder Scrolls!). All in first-person, all combat heavy and rather reliant on exploring.

And since Elder Scrolls is Bethesda's best, they obviously had to develop FO3 in the ES way with some added postapo spice. Both series are known for their RPG titles, so... best of both worlds1!

My big gripe with Elder Scrolls is that at least up to Morrowind, it was ambient and different. It took some of the fantasy cliches and altered them around. Take the wood elves - ES wood elves were voracious cannibals. That was a pretty cool idea. And Morrowind made the dunmer, especially the culture and religion, ten thousand times more interesting then the usual "Dark elves, evil, underground" that everything else in the world does. And then Oblivion came out and instead of the jungles of Vaguely Rome, we had Medieval Britain. Man, I haven't seen that before. It was so stock it actually caused physical pain.

My problem with how DA:O looks is...well, look at it! "An ancient evil awakes, like all our other games. You are a spect-sorry, a warden, and must stop it!" My god, do you not see just how repetitive this is getting? If you're big draw is your big and "epic" storylines, I'm thinking you should at least try writing a different storyline then the one you always go for.

 

[Rhalle]

It will be a well-made game.

It almost surely will also be a love child of NWN and Mass Effect.

Tudge has got his talking points pat: Spiritual Successor; Isometric Camera like BG; Dark Heroic Fantasy; Next Generation. His personality as a marketing man is so studied and unctuous it makes my hair hurt.

The notion that it is BG-like because of the camera is pure fanbase pandering garbage: surely it will be the NWN camera all over again-- AI fights automatically, skill bar if you're interested, spacebar pauses.

There's absolutely nothing new there, fundamentally, yet it is a buzzworded feature. And I won' t be a bit surprised if the camera controls for PC are a wonky nightmare lifted whole cloth out of NWN.

And when the console version becomes available, the BG talk will almost surely cease and it will be: Dragon Age: from the makers of KOTOR and Mass Effect, now available for your XboX.

Also, Dragon Age may also be Bioware's first victim of EA. We may see types of unprecedented DLC, the most egregious stuff that should have been in the box to begin with. Origin Stories (i.e., other races to play) may come at a cost of $9.95 each thanks to the Death Star.

That the game was recently renamed before finally being revealed, but we have yet to actually see one of the playable races we know exists, makes me suspicious this might be the case.

But it will be a good Bioware title, and well-made; and fun, despite the ladies who are queens of the snappy retort on forums but who insist on writing the most utilitarian and mind-numbingly correct PC dialogue choices ever seen to man.

 

[sirfink]

One of the things Bio got right in the past was excellent voice-acting which resulted in almost immediately figuring with what kind of NPC you were dealing with and setting the tone and atmosphere nicely.

You actually liked the stereotypical evil guy voice they use all the time in their games?

That's a typically lame thing Bioware does all the time. You talk to some "humble farmer" and he talks like Darth Vader... gee, ya think he might actually be a bad guy trying to trick me? Naw....

 

[Disconnected]

British accents for the sake of it

You've never actually met a Brit, have you?

But yeah, atrocious fake accents definitely don't add to the atmosphere.

 

[poocolator]

...Fans who loved the rich story, interesting characters, and tactical combat in the deep fantasy setting of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights will love what we're doing in Dragon Age: Origins...

*fapfapfapfapfapfap*

Seriously, if they pull this off, I'm going to blow my load the moment I realize there is still hope for RPGs vis-a-vis Failout 3

 

[Saxon1974]

Man I wanna believe that this game will have the feel of Baldur's gate but I just dont think it will. Really hoping for ability to explore freely.....

It doesn't look that interesting to me from what I have seen so far. Im not a fan of the "movie" style games like NWN2 OC or Mass Effect that are heavy dialog that don't let you freely explore.

But Im used to being dissapointed nowadays.