Interview Dragon Age II Interview

VentilatorOfDoom · Dec 22, 2010

Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age 2

More Dragon Age 2 news surface, another interview is available, this time over at RPGamer. <a href="http://www.rpgamer.com/games/dragonage/dragonage2/dragonage2int.html" target="_blank">Mike Laidlaw and David Gaider answer questions</a>, here is an excerpt:
<blockquote>
I've been playing as a rogue, and most of the skills I've seen so far have been very positioning based. A lot of them are very fast and make the rogue a lot more fun to play, but some of the positioning skills feel a little stiff. The rogue has a backflip move, and this one in particular feels that way — it's always a backflip; it's not directional, it's always straight backwards from wherever you're facing, even if that's into a bunch of enemies. Was this done intentionally because this is a tactical sort of game, or are you just not wanting to make it as "actiony" as a traditional action title? ML: There's a fundamental answer there, which is cool. One of my tenets when we sat down to look at combat was, "What I want to get away from, guys, is the sense of active defense," because at that point you're basically making what we'd call a brawler, where you have blocks, you have dodges, and that sort of thing. The problem with active defense, as I see it, is that active defense works exceptionally well if you're controlling one guy, but I don't want to move Dragon Age into a position where I'm controlling one guy, and I don't want to feel like the AI won't flip out of the way so I must try to control all four peoples' defenses. So when I sat down with the combat team, we developed a rule that said, fundamentally, defense is a preparatory activity — putting on armor, drinking the right potions, casting buffs, maintaining modals, that provide protection so that as the player I'm largely the offensive coordinator, choosing what spells to cast, what debuffs to throw, whether or not to stun the guy, and so on. The end result is that, while you can't do directional stick evading, what you can do is pause the game, switch characters, take the aggro, and play it like an RPG with the kind of complex tactical elements that we thought were really neat. The rogue's evade skill does some additional stuff. It flips backwards which is great, but it also causes enemies to lose threat, so they tend to move back to your tank. It has a sort of double role. It's a really fundamental thing: if I want to make a team-based game, I think that active defense gets you in trouble, so we moved away from that and said, "Make defense preparation and active in the moment."
</blockquote>
I can't wait to see the complex tactical elements that you thought were really neat for myself. Personally I assume they're neither complex nor tactical, but we will see.
Spotted at: <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/100827-dragon-age-ii-interview.html">Gamebanshee</a>

baronjohn · Dec 22, 2010

Fuck your single player mmorpg Bioware

aggro dps dps aggro aoe dps aggro dps

SimpleComplexity · Dec 22, 2010

There's a fundamental comment here, which is cool.

Multiple Sarcasm · Dec 22, 2010

ML said:
There's a fundamental answer there, which is cool. One of my tenets when we sat down to look at combat was, "What I want to get away from, guys, is the sense of active defense," because at that point you're basically making what we'd call a brawler, where you have blocks, you have dodges, and that sort of thing. The problem with active defense, as I see it, is that active defense works exceptionally well if you're controlling one guy, but I don't want to move Dragon Age into a position where I'm controlling one guy, and I don't want to feel like the AI won't flip out of the way so I must try to control all four peoples' defenses. So when I sat down with the combat team, we developed a rule that said, fundamentally, defense is a preparatory activity — putting on armor, drinking the right potions, casting buffs, maintaining modals, that provide protection so that as the player I'm largely the offensive coordinator, choosing what spells to cast, what debuffs to throw, whether or not to stun the guy, and so on. The end result is that, while you can't do directional stick evading, what you can do is pause the game, switch characters, take the aggro, and play it like an RPG with the kind of complex tactical elements that we thought were really neat. The rogue's evade skill does some additional stuff. It flips backwards which is great, but it also causes enemies to lose threat, so they tend to move back to your tank. It has a sort of double role. It's a really fundamental thing: if I want to make a team-based game, I think that active defense gets you in trouble, so we moved away from that and said, "Make defense preparation and active in the moment."

Too many words for "We can't animate for shit."

racofer · Dec 22, 2010

You guys can't judge the game until you've liked it. So everyone STFU.

Chateaubryan · Dec 22, 2010

Fuck, I didn't understand one bit of this undigestible load of crap.

At least, I take comfort knowing that the guy who defecated this thing probably didn't understand it either.

Kraszu · Dec 22, 2010

SUMMARY:
Q: some rambling, can you make a back flip that is in other direction then back or is it a strategy game. Some more ramblings with repetition.
A:It is a strategy game so you can't do sick non back, back flips, you can use buffs, put armours, active blocking don't work when you control a team + repetition of the same in different words couple of times.

Overweight Manatee · Dec 22, 2010

Can't have active defense, want players to be able to switch characters.
Can't have FF, don't want players to have to micromanage chracters.
Can't have combat too hard, want players to be able to use the AI.
Can't have creative party creation, players have to have at least 1 warrior and 1 mage.
Can't have enemies that go after weak characters, make warriors an enemy magnet.

I have to ask, does Bioware even have any idea how players should be playing their game? Is battle supposed to be a time for its players to ALT TAB and write fan fiction while the party automatically wins?

SkepticsClaw · Dec 23, 2010

Ya, I'm definitely sensing some confusion over what the emphasis of combat in this game is supposed to be. It seems like it will be neither fast and action-based nor slow and tactically minded, but instead some awkward marriage between the two. is that going to work? I'm skeptical.

However, this 'indigestible load of crap' or whatever actually makes me feel a little better about this game, because it gives the impression they've at least thought about it a bit and they are trying to emphasise the tactical elements of combat. Whilst still making it fast and fun for the console kids (bah, humbug). But this impression might well be a misleading sense of false hope. I guess we'll see when it's released.