Dragon Age: Origins Interview
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GB: Achievements are gaining a lot of popularity across all platforms, but in Mass Effect, it actually gave you in-game bonuses. Will there be in-game bonuses of some kind with Dragon Age's achievements? Mark: I don't believe on the PC that you'll get any bonuses from achievements. On the consoles, I don't think that's been locked down yet.
GB: How many achievements are there total?
Mark: There are 150 achievements on the PC, and then on the consoles, it's limited down to 50, because that's actually a requirement of the manufacturers.
GB: I did notice you have two achievements specifically for the Stone Prisoner DLC.
Mark: Right.
GB: I also saw a couple for something called Warden's Keep. Is that another add-on that hasn't been announced or something?
Mark: Yeah. So we have other additional downloadable content that we haven't announced yet, but there definitely will be additional achievements for downloadable content as it comes out.
GB: Alright. Now you have a team that's specifically just working on post-release content, right?
Mark: We do have a team working specifically on post-release content, yeah.
GB: How many different add-ons do you anticipate releasing?
Mark: Well, we're planning to do two years' worth of additional content for Dragon Age, so we'll have things all the way up to full expansion packs. But I mean, also, we'll have just small things, like weapon packs, and new equipment. So it's really hard to quantify in that way, because we might have 100; we might have actually probably we'll probably end up close to that, and counting everything. But in terms of actual plot content, I don't know, a couple dozen probably.
GB: A couple dozen? Really?
Mark: Yeah.
GB: You mentioned a full expansion. Do you think that everything will be released digitally, or can you foresee actually having a $30.00 expansion pack on retail store shelves, like we were used to seeing years ago?
Mark: Yeah. You know, we haven't firmed up our plans yet, but I do think there is still a market in place for that sort of thing, an actual physical expansion pack. I think that market still exists.
GB: So not just a conglomeration of six previously released add-ons, but an actual standalone expansion pack?
Mark: Yeah. I mean, we might see that as well, where you take existing downloadable content you've done before, and packaged up, and put it in a different form. But I think the advantage you get of something larger, the higher price point, that you can put more work into it. It can be a bigger story. It can tie itself together, and have cross-links and things, and whereas if you just take six different plots that you've done, and then just sort of put them in one box, it's still a great experience, but it's not going to tie itself into a greater story.
GB: So what would you like to see included in the add-ons? Could you conceivably add an entirely new origin story?
Mark: I suppose that would be possible. It would be difficult to do, to tie that into the story now. I mean, I guess we're doing something as complicated with Stone Prisoner, because there's a full follower which ties into the whole rest of the game all over the place. And that was done as downloadable content.
I suppose a new origin is possible. And that would be massive in scale. It's interesting. We have no plans for that.
GB: If you did that, couldn't you open up new classes?
Mark: Yeah. Certainly I'd be interested in exploring new classes, or at least new specializations, giving new talents, that sort of thing, as well.
GB: Well, the way the game is designed, wouldn't you almost have to have an original origin story to introduce new classes?
Mark: Well, it would depend on the class, because if it was an origin story that didn't require so if we added something that was another martial class in the vein of a rogue or fighter, that would fit within the existing origin stories relatively reasonably.
But if you went to something different, like a different magical class, yeah, then that would definitely require a new origin story to make any sense, because you wouldn't it wouldn't fit in the mage origin, because that's very specifically tied to magic. And it wouldn't fit into the other origins, because of the way that magic exists in the Dragon Age universe. You don't just have magic users wandering about.
So certainly any sort of arcane or divine or well, basically non-mundane class would require a new origin story, if we were to do something like that.
