Dragon Age Big Announcement tomorrow

NickD · Post by **NickD** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:11 am

It's basically NWN2 without multiplayer and not using D&D.

Dragoness · Post by **Dragoness** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 4:40 pm

Does it have lots of Dragons in it, at least? :O

NickD · Post by **NickD** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:41 am

Um, I don't think so.

All I remember about the Dragons in Dragon Age is that they're not smart like in D&D. IIRC, their intelligence is more on par with a dolphin.

indio · Post by **indio** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:43 pm

The thing that looks good is actually nothing you can see...it's Zeschuck's expression as he talks about how involving the story is.

I hope he's right.

BG was an emotional ride. It's story made the game mechanics so incredible to learn..so worth learning! So I hope the story is reminiscent of BG in terms of its depth and immersion. That remains a priceless time in my life, the first weeks of playing BG and my mind just completely exploding with awe.

That said, the animations are incredible and Zeschuck looks pumped about it. Can't wait.

NickD · Post by **NickD** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:44 pm

I'm afraid I'm feeling a bit pessimistic about it (I really am a miserable bastard aren't I?!).

I would say a large part of what I really liked about BG is the tactical aspects of it. It wasn't just about choosing your party's actions each round and winning the fight, it was doing that well enough to survive all the fights until it was time to rest. And hopefully well enough that you would only have to rest for 8 hours. It was about selecting your party from a large list of NPCs and only having a single core party instead of being able to pick and chose every time you leave an inn, and when you reject an NPC, you didn't get to go back and change your mind. And when a party member died, you had to get them ressurected or reload and do better next time.

But when your party can never really die unless you get a TPK... that takes a lot away from the tactical aspects. When your party members are basically immortal, you stop caring so much about keeping their damage to a minimum and so you basically stop caring about them.

As for the story... I've been pretty unimpressed with most stories Bioware have come out with. Mass Effect was decent, but hardly brilliant. The rest were largely uninspired, dull or rip offs of other plots.

Swift · Post by **Swift** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:49 am

Bioware to demo Dragon Age Toolset at Penny Arcade Expo

Introducing the Dragon Age Toolset
The Dragon Age Toolset provides builders with powerful, developer-grade tools.
Key features include:

Create Original Adventures: Using Dragon Age's rich set of assets and locations as starting blocks, you can modify these stunning areas by adding new quests, characters and scripting to create your own adventures, conversations and cut-scenes.

Powerful Script Editor: You can fully customize combat and creature AI to create detailed action sequences full of heart-pounding party-based tactical combat.

On-Going Toolset Content Updates: We have plans to release additional assets and features for the toolset in the future, allowing for expanded creation of new areas.

Live Toolset Demonstration at the Penny Arcade Expo
The Dragon Age Toolset will be part of a stage demonstration during the Penny Arcade Expo, August 29-31, 2008, at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center in Seattle, Washington.

At the time of this writing, you can attend the live demonstration scheduled to be on the PAX main stage Sunday, August 31, at 1:30 PM Pacific Time. For more PAX information and coverage please check out our Conferences 2008 web page.

Toolset Demonstration Highlights
At PAX, Dragon Age: Origins Producer Fernando Melo and Senior Designer Ferret Baudoin will be presenting a 45 minute overview of the toolset for Dragon Age fans.

The demonstration takes place in the Ruins of Ostagar area

A quick look at the extremely flexible Face Morphing feature

Clothing, armor and weapons will be selected giving a quick look at the variety

Enemy monsters will be selected and placed in the area

The new dialogue editor will be featured

The module created on stage will be played through live in the Dragon Age: Origins game

We hope to see you at PAX. Stay tuned for more toolset updates and information.

indio · Post by **indio** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:17 am

Toolset, and no multiplayer? Surely not.

NickD · Post by **NickD** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:34 am

I am hoping either

a) He meant you couldn't play the official campaign multiplayer, but you can play other Dragon Age module games multiplayer

or

b) The backlash against single player only was big enough that they changed their mind.

But I suspect it'll be more like The Witcher, which is single player only, but you can build your own single player adventures with the Djinni toolset.

indio · Post by **indio** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:33 am

No multi is just silly. Baldur's Gate had multi, and that was 10 years ago!

Swift · Post by **Swift** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:18 am

indio wrote:No multi is just silly. Baldur's Gate had multi, and that was 10 years ago!

Yes but Bioware has been moving away from Multiplayer to focus purely on single player story driven games. Jade Empire and Mass Effect, both fantastic games, both bereft of multiplayer, though i do agree having a toolset but no multiplayer seems like a waste.

NickD · Post by **NickD** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:00 am

Swift wrote:though i do agree having a toolset but no multiplayer seems like a waste.

From a marketing point of view, perhaps not. Having a vault of Dragon Age modules available for downloading will keep the product alive for longer and make it easier for Bioware to roll out a multitude of expansions and "Adventure Packs". I'm sure there are still plenty of people out there who only ever download single player modules for either of the NWN games.

Whereas, making it multiplayer introduces a number of complexities they will not have to worry about, making the release cycle (and thus income) faster.

Kest · Post by **Kest** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:29 am

in any case, this is bound to stink

indio · Post by **indio** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:08 am

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:36 am

I'm sure EA put a "No fucking multiplayer" clause on this.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:06 pm

Multiplayer's a lot of extra work, a game needs to be designed with it in mind from the beginning. I'm glad there are still some developers willing to put their foot down and leave it out, rather than tacking on some half-assed capture the flag to sell more copies.