Dragon Age: Origins Interview

GameBanshee News · #1 (**permalink**) 08-07-2008, 07:51 AM

The guys at UGO Games Blog had the chance to quiz BioWare president Greg Zeschuk about their Baldur's Gate spiritual successor, Dragon Age: Origins.

UGO: What is the Dragon Age universe like? We’ve seen that it’s a very classic kind of fantasy setting, but what is the Blight? And what are the Arch-Demons? It seemed in your demo like that’s another name for a Dragon…

Zeschuk: (leading) I’m not sure what the arch-demons are just yet…

Well we created a whole new fiction for this game. And a large part of the effort of the team was in spending quite a bit of time in the pre-production phase, really fleshing out the back-story to the world. Really, the Darkspawn are the enemy you face in this game. They’re these mutated, freakish monsters that are humanoid, but not. They themselves fled to the dark side of the Blight and so you have to try and figure out the source of it, the cause of it, and of course, stop it. There are some references to the Arch-Demon and you have to figure out what that is…

The overall world is actually a very brutal, gritty sort of world. We call it the Dark World of Fantasy, which is different than classic High Fantasy--sashaying elves and happy hobbits. It’s a brutal world where you have very tough decisions and there’s all kinds of social commentary that is impacted by those choices you make.

UGO: Are we going to be traveling over an open landscape in Dragon Age? Or are we going to be moving from town to town kind of like in Mass Effect, where you really only move from cultural hub to cultural hub?

Zeschuk: We cut out that travel part. We tend to prefer the big exploration areas. There’s no real need to run from place to place in the game. Also, travel could potentially limit the distance you could theoretically cover. So we tend to have action areas which are very large. That’s one of the strengths of Dragon Age. We have some very big areas with a lot of data held in those. A lot of creatures, a lot of loot, items, things like that… But we actually [control] the travel between those areas.

Ronan · #2 (**permalink**) 08-07-2008, 08:48 AM

Am I the only one who is actually looking forward to this gane? I admit that it's propably not going to be groundbreaking or anything like that, but good game nonetheless. I have not read that much about this game, but it seems good so far.

dragon wench · #3 (**permalink**) 08-07-2008, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronan

Am I the only one who is actually looking forward to this gane? I admit that it's propably not going to be groundbreaking or anything like that, but good game nonetheless. I have not read that much about this game, but it seems good so far.

I doubt you are the only one

Personally, I'm very cautious, but it does look like one of the more promising games currently in development. We'll see it it is indeed a "spiritual successor" to BG2... If it truly is, I won't complain, and nor will many others around here.

btw, anyone else having trouble with the link? I have tried clicking on it three times and on each occasion it has been exceptionally slow to load, and then my browser (Firefox) freezes. I have a a high speed connection and a fast machine.. so... not what I normally encounter.

BlueSky · #4 (**permalink**) 08-07-2008, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon wench

I doubt you are the only one

Personally, I'm very cautious, but it does look like one of the more promising games currently in development. We'll see it it is indeed a "spiritual successor" to BG2... If it truly is, I won't complain, and nor will many others around here.

btw, anyone else having trouble with the link? I have tried clicking on it three times and on each occasion it has been exceptionally slow to load, and then my browser (Firefox) freezes. I have a a high speed connection and a fast machine.. so... not what I normally encounter.

Yes , same problem here, and I too have fast connection and uber machine...