Interview Dragon Age 2 vs. Fable 3

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age 2

<p>... which one is better and why?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Video Games Daily <a href="http://videogamesdaily.com/interviews/201011/dragon-age-ii-think-like-a-general-fight-like-a-spartan/" target="_blank">interviewed BioWare's Robyn Theberge</a> on BioWare's answer to Fable 3, <strong>Dragon Age II</strong>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Hi Robyn. This might not be the best way to start the interview, but what do you think of Fable 3?</strong></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>You know what, I haven&rsquo;t played it!</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>I just ask because BioWare seems to be heading in a very Lionhead-ish direction with its RPGs &ndash; the key features haven&rsquo;t so much been changed as &ldquo;digested&rdquo;, arranged in a more intuitive way. How far do you think you can follow that approach before the underlying complexity of your game suffers?</strong></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>We&rsquo;ve kept a lot of those core values, especially on PC. On consoles, we&rsquo;ve definitely moved into more of an action-based RPG just so, you know, we&rsquo;re going to quarry that line, between the core group and the [casual] people. We want to sell videogames. We want to appeal to as many people as possible. And that was one thing with our feedback &ndash; we have forums, we have a ton of great fans and we definitely listen to them, and respond to their desires and what they&rsquo;d like to see, what direction they&rsquo;d like to go in. And that&rsquo;s where a lot of the key changes that we&rsquo;ve made to Dragon Age 2 have come from.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They want to appeal to as many people as possible. At least she is honest.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/100388-dragon-age-ii-interview.html">GB</a></p>

 

[SimpleComplexity]

We want to sell videogames. We want to appeal to as many people as possible.

Props to the guy for being honest.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Every PR guy is honest as long as you're not a complete moron.

Also, Fable is more RPG than Dragon Age will ever be. Plus, it's more stable and have no bugs that break quests or special systems stolen from other developers.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Every PR guy is honest as long as you're not a complete moron.

 

[grotsnik]

And that was one thing with our feedback – we have forums, we have a ton of great fans and we definitely listen to them, and respond to their desires and what they’d like to see, what direction they’d like to go in.

Yeah, but it *was* a sentence immediately followed up by the usual marketingbabble...a diamond in the rough, if you will. An emerald in the turd.

 

[Ogg]

we have forums, we have a ton of great fans and we definitely listen to them, and respond to their desires and what they’d like to see, what direction they’d like to go in. And that’s where a lot of the key changes that we’ve made to Dragon Age 2 have come from.

Last time I checked, Bioware forums were divided between long time RPG players who asked for more RPGness (something à la Baldur's Gate, at least) and gay fan fictions. It seems they've been more interested in the latter than the former.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

the key features haven’t so much been changed as “digested”

I wonder if that was a subtle dig implying their games are shit, or if I'm reading too much into it.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

we have forums, we have a ton of great fans and we definitely listen to them, and respond to their desires and what they’d like to see, what direction they’d like to go in. And that’s where a lot of the key changes that we’ve made to Dragon Age 2 have come from.

This is true, but they've made an effort to ignore anyone who complains about bugs, stupid features or design flaws.

Still true, though.

 

[grotsnik]

we have forums, we have a ton of great fans and we definitely listen to them, and respond to their desires and what they’d like to see, what direction they’d like to go in. And that’s where a lot of the key changes that we’ve made to Dragon Age 2 have come from.

This is true, but they've made an effort to ignore anyone who complains about bugs, stupid features or design flaws.

Still true, though.

I don't know. Aside from the icky 'Well, *I* Support X Decision, I Still Love You Devs!' threads that seem to crop up every so often, there seems to be a significant majority on their forums complaining that they never asked for a static protagonist, reduced inventory options, SPARTAN COMBAT, simplified dialogue options, and other 'key changes'.

 

[waywardOne]

the [casual] people.

 

[Roguey]

Bros, Robyn's a woman. Thought the name would have been a tip-off.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Shhh.. we know. It's our way to degrade the people we hate even further.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Bros, Robyn's a woman. Thought the name would have been a tip-off.

How am I supposed to know that "Robyn" is a female's name?

 

[Roguey]

It looks like one? Robyn would be a really feminine name for a guy, though I guess there's a language barrier to be considered. Plus there's a picture of her here: http://www.v2.fi/artikkelit/pelit/573/Dragon-Age-II/

 

[DalekFlay]

we have forums, we have a ton of great fans and we definitely listen to them, and respond to their desires and what they’d like to see, what direction they’d like to go in. And that’s where a lot of the key changes that we’ve made to Dragon Age 2 have come from.

This is true, but they've made an effort to ignore anyone who complains about bugs, stupid features or design flaws.

Still true, though.

Yeah, criticizing anything in a Bioware game on their forum gets you a post from a developer giving you what for. They don't really listen to the community or interact with them as much as tell them like it is. The common response to worrying about the RPG-ness of Dragon Age 2 is "shut the fuck up we'll make the game we want to make."

I agree though, at least she is honest about wanting as many players as possible. Bioware have always been honest about that though, they recently made that "we want 10,000,000 sales" comment. They, like pretty much every single old PC developer, have turned into a slimy movie studio exec, the one who tells the indie movie makers they need to dumb their movie down for the mainstream audience if they ever want to make it into a theater.

 

[CraigCWB]

...you know, we’re going to quarry that line, between the core group and the [casual] people.

Right. Because there's a lot of overlap. Just like there's a lot of overlap between people who like to drive hotrods and people who like to drive minivans.

We want to sell videogames.We want to appeal to as many people as possible.

That's code for "we'd rather sell 10,000 minivans than 2000 hotrods, and we don't care that our company's success was based on our reputation for producing high performance hotrods. But hopefully I'll be able to convince people who don't actually like minivans that our minivans are even BETTER than the hotrods they thought they wanted, and then we can sell 11,000 minivans and we'll just right off the other 1000 people as being too stupid to know what they want".

She managed to say a lot right there, didn't she?

And that was one thing with our feedback – we have forums, we have a ton of great fans and we definitely listen to them, and respond to their desires and what they’d like to see, what direction they’d like to go in. And that’s where a lot of the key changes that we’ve made to Dragon Age 2 have come from.

Yeah, that's TOTALLY what I remember from their forums when I was playing Dragon Age. Just about every post, people were saying "We want it to be more action-y... and, there are too many numbers and it's very confusing.. also, it's way to hard! One time one of my guys fell unconscious and it was so sad... and it took him almost 10 seconds to recover to full health and because of that one of my other guys almost fell unconscious too! So please please please make Dragon Age a console game that I can play for 10 minutes while I'm eating a ham sandwich and talking on the phone without having to worry about all those stats and things, and my guys won't fall unconscious"

I bet anyone could prolly go to Bioware's DA forums right now and see how many people were saying things like that. And so it's really good to know how closely they are paying attention, and how they are giving their fans what their fans want.

 

[Archibald]

It looks like one? Robyn would be a really feminine name for a guy, though I guess there's a language barrier to be considered. Plus there's a picture of her here: http://www.v2.fi/artikkelit/pelit/573/Dragon-Age-II/

Fuckable.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, criticizing anything in a Bioware game on their forum gets you a post from a developer giving you what for. They don't really listen to the community or interact with them as much as tell them like it is. The common response to worrying about the RPG-ness of Dragon Age 2 is "shut the fuck up we'll make the game we want to make."

I for one, love the Bioware shoulder-chip.

Laidlaw admits he's including features for the... disabled. Otherwise RPGs will be KILLED. Then one of the cinematic designers chimes in with

Oh the dissonance. I love Bioware so much.

 

[CraigCWB]

I agree though, at least she is honest about wanting as many players as possible. Bioware have always been honest about that though, they recently made that "we want 10,000,000 sales" comment. They, like pretty much every single old PC developer, have turned into a slimy movie studio exec, the one who tells the indie movie makers they need to dumb their movie down for the mainstream audience if they ever want to make it into a theater.

And they really should know better. They were just starting out when the old school game studios were dying that death. And they should know better than thinking they are part of EA now makes them immune, considering Origin got bought by EA about when Baldur's Gate was released.

The sole survivor from the old days (as far as I know) is Bethesda. And Bethesda is the one game studio that never changed its recipe except to improve upon what they'd already been doing.

 

[CraigCWB]

So, Roguey, this Laidlaw guy is claiming that he's killing the children in order to save them, Janet Reno style? And you like that? Or am I mistaking the bit where he seems to be claiming that making RPGs less RPGish will actually save RPGs from oblivion and expand the appeal of these increasingly less RPG-like to include people who it seems either don't even like RPGs at all or like their RPGs to not be very much like RPGs, except for the interactive movie part which as anyone who has ever played a Bioware game knows is the only part that counts? And so on?

This is the SAME SHIT that Interplay, Sir-Tech, and Origin were peddling in the late 1990s. It's the SAME SPIEL. Almost verbatim. This guy should go talk to Ray about this, because Ray was all over usenet pitching Baldur's Gate as a *REAL* RPG, that wasn't going to peddle to the lowest common denominator like all the old school RPG developers were doing.

As for why the fanbase for RPGs may be shrinking, this gentleman might wanna look in the mirror. RPGs were the best selling games throughout the 1980s and remained so until people with HIS philosophy hijacked the genre and tried to dumb it down for the masses in the mid 1990s. RPGs were again the best selling genre in the late 1990s, and part of the reason for that was Bioware's emergence with the Baldur's Gate games. If the fanbase is shrinking now it's not the fault of the market - the demand is there. It's the fault of developers.

 

[Black]

dragon turd 2 vs turdle 3 which is turder and why

 

[CraigCWB]

Fuckable.

As if there's more than one person besides me on the codex who might even remotely have the option of picking and choosing, eh?

 

[grotsnik]

And Bethesda is the one game studio that never changed its recipe except to improve upon what they'd already been doing.

I fear some here may disagree with you there, sport.

One piece of developer-chippiness I've seen more than once on the Bioforums is,

(paraphrase; in response to criticism)
"In the end, it's *our* game. And we're going to do what we want with it."

Could be that you just develop that sort of attitude after years of listening to fans yelp, "we want sex with Legion!"/being cooed over by gaming critics/being successful whatever you make, but that sort of precious entitlement seems to me a fucking bad attitude. Yes, it is their game. They don't have to cater to requests from their so-called fans, because, apparently, everyone will buy it anyway, regardless.

Biohubris. Will TOR puncture it?

 

[Ancient]

Why Bio can't fucking make noob friendly version and "hardcore" version of a same game changing some mechanic's and re-balancing stuff a bit can't be that hard rly and then they would appeal to a bigger crowd.

I think most Codexers would enjoy game with decent/challenging gameplay , despite gay romances and overall moronic sotry

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

This is the SAME SHIT that Interplay, Sir-Tech, and Origin were peddling in the late 1990s. It's the SAME SPIEL. Almost verbatim. This guy should go talk to Ray about this, because Ray was all over usenet pitching Baldur's Gate as a *REAL* RPG, that wasn't going to peddle to the lowest common denominator like all the old school RPG developers were doing.

As for why the fanbase for RPGs may be shrinking, this gentleman might wanna look in the mirror. RPGs were the best selling games throughout the 1980s and remained so until people with HIS philosophy hijacked the genre and tried to dumb it down for the masses in the mid 1990s. RPGs were again the best selling genre in the late 1990s, and part of the reason for that was Bioware's emergence with the Baldur's Gate games. If the fanbase is shrinking now it's not the fault of the market - the demand is there. It's the fault of developers.

Well, this all depends on whether people buy Dragon Age 2 doesn't it? I am sure they will...