Dragon Age 2 - PulseTV with Mike Laidlaw
 

From the Dragon Age II site:
More information.

In this case, the awesome button would be?

Although Dragon Age is pretty much dead to me now, I'm perversely curious if he continued his trend of putting his foot in his mouth and making cringe-worthy statements, though not curious enough to make myself watch it.

Any volunteers want to take one for the team and summarize? :p

Yeah, this guy has some great quotes, and the best part is, he doesn't see what the issue is. My favorite was his reason for the emoticons in the DA2 dialog wheel - because "text is a horrible medium for conveying sarcasm or sincerity". Awesome line from a lead designer on a project employing 24 professional writers.

But in this clip, his main 'foot in mouth' moment was where he talks about stealth as an 'innovation' as if he was experimenting with it, pioneering something. He talks about seeing if it had a future in the franchise going forward. Did he forget that Brent Knowles, the lead on DA1 already had the feature in within Origins? Keep on innovating Mike. At this rate, you might one day make a game as good as its predecessor. But treat carefully - all that stealthy stuff might turn of your target Call of Duty audience. Killstreaks, f**k, yeah!

Instant mis-reading on my part : "Awesome BEEEP". [Deleted by myself for security reasons ;) ] Uh.
I shouldn't post here before noontime.

TV Ads, a good and proven way to brainwash your audience. Good to see BioWare continues to learn new ways to spread the awesome.

just watched it.

They have invented a totally new way to play called stealth gamplay. Not sure what that is but can't wait to hear more and if we really really like it they will expand on it in the future. We can only hope other developers will follow biowares lead here and introduce this totally new gameplay idea into their games.

We get to wear really pretty clothes and talk to people. We can only hope that all of those people are voiced by felicia day. The best voice actor in the whole wide world!

They are adding…wait for it……wait for it….. Puzzles. That right you read that right. Another mind blowing innovation. Don't worry though for the puzzle challenged they are totally optional so still no thinking requires in this series.

And last but not least they are adding a new monster that's not a darkspawn! The wyvern and you can actually go on a hunt for it. Amazing.

Well I don't know about the rest of you but i'm off to take a bottle of sleeping pills and wash them down with vodka in hopes that I can sleep straight through to oct 11th. So it will get here faster.

Sweet dreams all.

How original. :rolleyes:

Takes me back to 1998…

Sigh……:sarcasticclap:

Nothing surprises me any more since the best people are working on the other games and were stuck with the rejects making dragonage.

Funny, I could have sworn I used this new 'stealth' thing all the time in Dragon Age Origins. I must have been dreaming. :p

Damn! Too late for the hunting party. Already slaughtered. :D

Laidlaw is always good for a laugh if nothing else, if we should ever get so lucky that he loses his day job, he can always have a second career in stand up comedy. :p

Have you guys seen this interview?. She is one of the writers working in bioware. Anyhow read yourself and prepare to get shocked. I'm puzzled myself. How can you write for games if you don't like playing them?

Few examples.

This resonates with me. I like her. Too bad she's already married.

These lines clearly say this : "I am a Writer. I am an Artist. I am NOT a gamer !"

And that makes her different. Someone with her dedication shouldn't work on games like ME or DA2.

Someone with this dedication should imho work for something unique !

Edit : She also says this :

So she does have some background.

Also interesting is this, imho :

I think it says a *lot* on the importance of fighting in games …

she may be better off working for company who makes adventures games?

Anyway why don't we have a gaming genre where there is no combat? It will be interactive story telling, puzzle solving, you can even have NPC companions etc. Or is that adventures gaming? I am not being sarcastic since I have never really played an adventure game :)

That more or less is Adventure games. While they were hugely popular at one time with games like King's Quest selling many (relatively for the time) copies, the genre has been mostly marginalized in recent years and most gamers seem to look down on it, if they even know it exists.

At any rate, I don't think what she is saying is necessarily bad per say, I just think it depends on how that sort of writing is applied and you do need to keep in mind that writing for an interactive medium is quite different than writing for a book or movie.

The interview she gave is actually from 2006 and she worked on Dragon Age: Origins, which was actually a relatively decent game. She's also not the main person pulling the strings so I don't think she has that much control either way. I don't think she necessarily made Origins good or DA2 crappy, though she worked on both.

If anything, I think Bethesda could use a few people like her to get some halfway decent writing in there and Piranha Bytes could use some women working on their games to balance out the testosterone overload in those games.

Why do you say that? She likes writing not playing games… Sounds as if she would prefer games be interactive movies, with optional content(IE parts you could fast forward). The good thing, as a writer, she has very little say over game design…

(IMO) Gaming, as a medium, lends itself to a different kind of writing style or technique. A game's true strength is not it's ability to convey a story(books, comics, tv, movies ect already accomplish this). Rather, as an interactive medium, the ability to be a part of that story and not just immerse yourself in the game world/environment. RPGs that contain meaningful C&C and/or a branching narrative are the pinnacle of that "part of the story" approach. It is why I prefer the RPG genre over others, it has the potential to come closest to that type of immersion… It is why I find a predefined voiced protagonist incredibly limiting - in terms of RP.

I don't think a "good" writer will necessarily translate into a good writer for games…

I see people saying that, but I don't feel that way at all. Quite the contrary in fact. When I play a pre-defined character I feel like I am playing it and reacting how I would if I were this person with their history and experiences, but I think to any extent it would be like that anyway even if you created your own character.

It doesn't bother me that I didn't set their history and in fact it makes the character fit in better in that world because they have a real history, friends, enemies, acquaintances, memories etc. They are a real part of that world and they belong as opposed to some nameless stranger that just got plopped into the world 5 minutes ago.

I think some of the pre-EA Ultima games sort of took a balance between this approach by having the character basically supposed to be 'you' transported to another world and you get to pick what sort of character you are yet that character still has a history with that world, but that's a balancing act that is hard to do.

I know many will vehemently disagree with me on this, but honestly if I get a choice between a bland, generic Bethesda PC or one like the Witcher with a rich, fleshed out history yet I still get to make the choices and play his or her role, I will pick the latter every time.

I agree to a point but I think it depends on what they are doing. If they are doing whole scenarios then absolutely, the writer needs to take into account the player's role in that scenario, making that a rewarding experience for the player, and also any potential non-linearity branching off. Obviously if you are not a gamer and have no desire to ever be one that could be a problem.

If the writer is doing dialog, in-game books, background lore or things of that sort then I think a more traditional script or novel writer is fine and probably even preferable.

I get what you're saying, it goes to the whole "tighter experience" argument of a game, like TW2. But you don't have to be a completely nameless stranger either. That either or scenario completely ignores chargen, where you could have to one degree or another some of what you mentioned… Games have fixed protagonists because, generally, that is the easiest approach to a "story driven" game.

It comes down to preference, but for me that would be a better approach…

Again, I don't think it has to be an either or scenario here… I'd take a game with an advanced chargen(selectable backgrounds, traits, histories, et cetera) over TW any day. As for TW, I say it is a game of character suggestion more than role playing. Too much of Geralt's history and personality are pre-defined to take ownership of Geralt's actions or motivations… The flashbacks are a jarring reminder you are not playing your character. Admittedly, for some that is not a big deal, it may even be a positive. But shouldn't your actions within TW universe matter, at least when controlling Geralt? Apparently not, if you romanced Shiani in TW1 you were still stuck with Trish. And that last example is what a fixed predefined protagonist is all about… It's not your story, it's theirs.

Let me preface this by saying I don't have anything against a fixed predefined protagonist or those who enjoy playing one. But for an interactive medium, I feel the best approach is one where the player is as reasonably engaged and involved as possible. A fixed predefined protagonist will never have universal appeal. As an example, restricting the gender to male will never do much to engage female(or to a lesser extent certain male) gamers.

That wasn't because of a fixed protagonist, that was the devs being lazy and/or not wanting to go to time and expense to run the whole game through with both Triss and Shani. They could have checked the imported file and reacted accordingly. There's a short remark about Adda for instance that only happens if you saved her in TW1 and imported your save. Otherwise she's dead.

The Shani thing was extra annoying because they didn't even attempt to come up with some half baked reason she isn't there. Like they could have had Geralt say a couple of lines how things didn't work out between them or she went off somewhere or whatever but they didn't even bother with that.

I really don't mind playing a female and although I realize it's some huge issue for some people to play the opposite gender, I personally don't feel that way or understand it.

I don't play games to be myself, I'm already myself, I play to be someone else. If that's a woman, or alien or robot or whatever so be it.

For a story RPG I want to be part of that story and not generically plopped on. I tend to think of games where you roll your character as very much being the latter. However, if a game pulls off an Ultima or Dragon Age: Origins system that gives you a fair degree of control over the character you create and still allows them to have a past and people in the game world who react to it, I'm all for it.