Dragon Age: Origins Interview
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Multiplayer: You guys are known for having one major twist in your games as in (Knights of the Old Republic) or (Jade Empire) or having one really powerful decision moment like a Wrex decision moment in (Mass Effect.) Is there going to be a pivotal twist in this game? Are you guys look to have more or pace them differently in this game?Man, that would be great, a BioWare game without a predictable, lame twist. They also talk about releasing for PC and the franchise's console future.
Zeschuk: I don't want to disclose too much about the potentially twisting and turning story. Perhaps we joke about this among ourselves the twist is that there is no twist. That might be it. In this case I think some are personal, some are big. Some will surprise the player. There are a couple of things we know already. It's interesting. When we built a game like (Dragon Age) or (Mass Effect,) you don't know how it's going to play out. You write the story and you create the cinematics. It's almost like a movie. You do the first edit and see how it works. Maybe this part needs more action. What we're seeing right now is that we're in the middle of it. We're pulling all the levers to get it to really have the impact.
Multiplayer: And how are you feeling about putting this type of game on the PC? How are you expecting the market to react to this? Do you think many people will have systems to run this? Do you think it competes with MMO's in any sense because (World of Warcraft) is fantasy as well?
Zeschuk: On the system specs side, we haven't finalized specs. The engine is quite robust and is able to scale down. That was one of our focuses, particularly because we have tactical combat with four people and up to 20 enemies. We're trying to make sure it can crunch down. I don't think system specs are going to be a big challenge for it.
The market is interesting. People are always decrying the death of the PC market. But the reality, especially if you look globally, is different. People tend to look in their back yard and say, (Oh the grass is brown. There must be no rain.) Whatever. If you look around their yard everything is just fine. They just forgot to water it. So, the PC market in North America is very different. It's not like it was five years ago. Games that have connected elements, games that fulfill something in which a lot of people work together and do stuff [are still popular.]. Every time one of our games gets reviewed we hear people saying (Why don't you go make another '˜Baldur's Gate' game again.) So we said, (Okay, that's it. Now we're doing it. Enjoy.)
Multiplayer: And what can you say about (Dragon Age)'s future as a PC franchise? The word (Origins) implies there's going to be more. And what can you say about its future on consoles?
Zeschuk: Any time we undertake something we have a goal of creating franchises. PC for now is what we're focusing on, but there is a console future for the franchise. We haven't really talked about what that's going to be, but one thing we're focused on, as folks probably have seen in regards to (Mass Effect) on the PC, is whenever we do a platform choice, we're very definitive and very specific. We don't splash it across all the platforms. Like in the case with (Mass) PC we worked really hard to make it even better than the console version. The PC gives us more tools to do that with. That s the approach we're taking with (Dragon Age) and other games at BioWare.
