Dragon Age: Origins Forum Activity
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 950
On influence and alignment:
Actually, the approval of your party members is tracked by a meter on their character sheets. You also receive text notices when a party member's approval changes, but not in the middle of dialogue (like, for instance, how NWN2 alerted you to Influence changes).
The level of approval does indeed determine at which points a party member considers you an enemy or a friend... though there's a bit more to it than just that. Some party members you can influence in significant ways -- but only if you are a friend/lover and they are at some kind of crossroads (it really depends on the character in question).
There is indeed no alignment meter of any kind.
On blood magic:
The Chantry's stance against blood magic is not because it is intrinsically evil -- it does not "taint" you physically like, say, a Jedi turning to the Dark Side of the Force would be tainted. The reason is because it is considered too dangerous. Mind control could certainly be used for good ends -- but how do you stop the temptation to use it for personal gain? How do you control the fear of people who have no means to protect themselves against such mind control? How could you stop the second-guessing that would exist every time someone important made an unpopular decision -- was he mind controlled? How can you be sure?
Using life energy as a source of mana is equally questionable. So long as the source is your own, perhaps that isn't so bad... but how long before a mage starts justifying their need for power and seeks other sources of mana? Will they always be willing?
Think about it. There has to be a zero tolerance policy on it simply by virtue of public paranoia should it be otherwise. Demons do play a role in this, as well, but I'm not going to go there just now -- suffice it to say that the prohibition has very good reason.
On the delay:
I have a thought for you.
Unfinished game = annoyed customers = bad press = bad bottom line, as well.
As we have said many times already, the game was not solely held back for marketing reasons. That does save us money by having a single campaign, yes, but it's not the only reason it was done. I know it's always a drag to have a game you're expecting be delayed, but us being "lazy" isn't really the issue.
Hopefully you're still around when the time for release comes closer. I think the game will be worth the wait with the time to polish it as it deserves.
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I hope you aren't saying that you expect us to keep you appraised of everything that might happen or might change as we make our plans? Good lord, some folks already take even our most tentative targets as solemn promises. "Obfuscate" nothing, if we ACTUALLY told you how often things change during the course of development, your heads would spin!
The time between knowing that we might not be able to make the game as good as we want to by our internal target date despite months of planned back-breaking crunch and communicating that to our company and them deciding that, yes, perhaps we should delay the release after all as well as how and when to tell all of you -- it's both significant and probably not as long as you might think.
I understand disappointment and even suspicion -- but paranoia is quite something else.
We're committed to making this game exactly what we and (I hope) you expect it to be. If there are any other changes of plan (knock wood) we will take a deep breath and eventually figure out how to relay the news to you -- but that's not indicative of deceit. I really hope you realize that.
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Well, I understand being upset and getting a little irrational. I'm a big PC gamer, myself -- and these days I'm reminded a little of watching the Commodore Amiga portion of every gaming store shrink day by day. It was not fun. I don't think PC gaming will disappear, but I understand the frustration of watching all the development effort seemingly heading towards the consoles. That's a big step, however, from begrudging console players simply getting a port or suggesting that PC gamers are being actively sabotaged. People have said in the big thread "well you guys should have relayed the news better" -- but I'm not sure there IS a way that could have been said that would actually allieve all the disappointment and the leaping to conclusions that went on.
But I'll try, if I can. At the end of the day we'll have to shut up and let the game prove itself anyway, no?
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I think you're mixing up "not complete" with "cut", judging from some of the items on your list. Things are always cut because they either aren't working out as we thought, we just didn't have the time/resources to do that much content or becuase it was too complicated to properly run. The same will be true for DAO, no matter how much time we have -- but just because things are cut does not make the result "incomplete", not unless your idea of the complete package includes all the concepts and maybes that were thought of along the way.
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Yes, and also keep in mind: it's not that we're complete and looking for things we could now add into the game -- we're trying to finish what we already have. Adding new things in at this stage of development is called "feature creep", with the main issue being that it causes bugs due to the inter-dependencies on just about everything from systems to story. The first thing any new developer learns is that everything you put into the game can cause bugs, most often in places where you had no idea it even had the capability of affecting.
This is not to say we will add nothing in -- I don't know and wouldn't want to make promises -- but I have no idea what it might be possible to do so without causing all sorts of problems all over again. Dragon Age is a VERY big game.
