[Noober]

Noober's selected Dragon Age Bioware Quotes
EDIT: Reorganised for ease of use

Georg Zoeller - Designer -
DA will probably not be balanced for PvP and certainly not written for PvP. We may allow PvP for the additional thrill if the server operator wants it, but even that has not yet been decided.

DA is not a PW toolkit and whether or not you would be able to make it run a PW will emerge during development, we will not make any promises regarding that. What is certain is that DA will not officially support PWs.

Brenon Holmes - Programmer -

Combat will be rules based, so no... you won't be seeing any twitch based gameplay that is fairly common in some arcade style fighting games.

If you make your attack roll, you hit. Simple as that. How fast you click the mouse or performing an arcane sequence of mouse gestures will not figure into things at all.

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

We've got the complex motivations and morales and hard choices and such wrapped up. It's in there, and lots of it.

There's also a healthy dose of "just plain fantasy". Why? Well, not because we must or because we can't think of anything better, but because sometimes it's funner that way and because we want to and it's our world and we can.

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

Sorry, no gnomes, stereotypical or otherwise.

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

And make no mistake, some luxuries are going to be implemented. But what's going to make it in is going to relate directly to what our goal for the story is.

If the story is about long, arduous journeys and about surviving the elements and hunger (or at least contains these elements) then certainly adding the need for food could possibly add something to the game.

Stanley Woo - Quality Assurance -

Dragon Age is not D&D.

Tue 23 Nov 2004

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

Well, the problem is that there's not much that we can really say that would be enlightening to you. Most anything to do with actual gameplay will be "partly" ironed out and will remain that way probably until just before the game ships. We'll think we have it all working great and then someone will come along and, say, that the spell system needs to be re-done. Whoosh! Call QA!

But, since you insist:

Combat system - PARTLY
Class system - PARTLY
Religious system - YES
Economic system - YES
Full history - MOSTLY... depends on meaning of "full"
Basic Story Line - YES

Darcy Pajak - Assistant Producer -

Yup, the plan is to have between 4~6 members in a party. The player will have full control over any member in the party. Combat will be very similer to BG. (but better)

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

Heh... true. Unlike in KotOR, though, where we had a selection of "alien-speak" lines, the lines in DA are translated into their respective languages and then recorded individually. So you will not be hearing the same bits over and over again. It seems likely, however, like the process will be similar to directing Australians to speak Finnish with a Chinese accent. (and, no, the reptilian race does not hiss... no forked tongue, so no going 'sssssss' all the time or anything like that.)

Darcy Pajak - Assistant Producer -

Morale failing and running away is realistic, but not much fun for the average player.

As someone above mentioned, losing control of the player is frustrating, and a key gameplay goal is to limit frustration as much as possible. (there can be difficult puzzles, encounters, etc,) but adding a feature which actually introduces frustration is not what we want to do. I prefer to give the player the choice because they have the capacity to realize they are in trouble and they can always flee if they want. We should not force them.

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

Not having seen Rob's sub-races in WW, I really couldn't say. And beyond that I'm not sure what the question is. We don't have anything like sub-races in DA, period.

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

The party members, in the DA single-player campaign at least, are all pre-generated NPC's that you encounter during the game. You do not create your own party, just your own PC.

Dan Whiteside - Designer

I would like to clarify Ed's arcane reply. Yes... you will see more mature storylines in our intellectual properties.

David Gaider - Design, Bioware corp. -

"(4) I CLEARLY remember reading somewhere that a dev said he wrote a conversation between a tree and a dog, so talking trees are in, too! Woot!! "

No no no.

I'm the one that wrote the dialogue for the tree.

Ed's the one that wrote the dialogue for the dog.

They don't talk to each other.

But the tree rhymes.

Which hurt my head. A lot. You try writing a coherent 4,000-word dialogue consisting entirely of rhyming couplets. Sigh.

Stanley Woo - Quality Assurance -

You will likely see DD stuff for Dragon Age, since we're looking at the system as a long-term venture. What exactly that "stuff" might be is still unknown, but we'll try to keep y'all informed over the next couple of years.