Dragon Age - Console Versions Coming
 

From GameSpot's coverage of the EA conference comes confirmation of unspecified console versions of Dragon Age, "in the future":
More information.

1) PC gaming is dying.
2) BioWare sold its soul to the devil!
3) Dragon Age will be dumbed down for the shitbox kiddies.

Got those out of the way for ya.

I might be not following the local trend but I'm happy about that. I don't have a gaming PC anymore and this was about the only high-profile PC-only game I was interested in ;)

Oh, games are released on several platforms…EVIL! DESTRUCTION! SACRILEGE! BURN THE HERETICS!

Normally, games are released either for the PC OR consoles.

BOTH is rather uncommon.

Before these guys make the console version, they need to spend a few hours making an interface that isn't a complete piece of shit. That means paper doll inventory with icons that clearly show what stuff is, click-and-drag, customizable hotkeys, etc. If they don't even do this then it's so much for that spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate 2.

Is there any reason to believe that they won't?

The fact that Bioware hasn't made a good interface for an RPG since Neverwinter Nights is a pretty big concern for me. I think that Bioware has a long way to go to get PC gamers excited about this one. They could start by just copy-and-pasting the NWN inventory and character development screens into this game.

The NWN interface was actually the only one they did made up that was good. BG is a great series, but not for the interface. Besides, they haven't made a PC only game since NWN and looks like they won't. Ever again. And while NWN had a very good interface I hated the inventory, all the tabs were and items of different size ala Diablo were flat out annoying.

I expect news that fanboys of Bioware are thinking of comitting suicide over the fact that DAO will be released on consoles as well.

I thought the NWN interface was horrible, the whole wheel thing that the commands came off of killed me.

It's slow yes, but you could also assign hotkeys for your primary actions.

Yeah, the wheel in NWN was horrible I thought. Maybe I never played enough with those hotkeys. Mass Effect PC has a pretty decent interface it is said, though, doesn't it?

The command system is OK but the inventory/weapons upgrade system still sucks.

Not only that, but with the shift key and control key you could establish essentially three hotkey bars. It was very easy to use. You could put weapons on one bar, spells on another bar, and commands on yet another bar. The maps sucked but other than that, NWN had a superb interface.

What was wrong with the BG2 interface? It fixed the problems from BG1 and it was very easy to do stuff like manage inventory between party members. Selecting or clearing spells was a total piece of cake. Considering how complex the actions in D&D can be I thought the interface was wonderful. Think about how easy it is do do something like trade armor between two characters and compare that to the layered menu scrollbar adventure of doing the same thing in Kotor. I would be delighted if there was something like that for Dragon Age.

I would have to disagree - the inventory system is clunky, god forbid if you want to sell something. Even the (simplistic) dialogue system feels weird! Still, the tactics screen (the one you get by pressing space) is decent enough.

Anyway, yeah, I'll agree with everyone else - a console version usually means the interface is going to be crap (with Morrowind/Oblivion being a trivial example). Then again, I assume the PC version is coming out first, so for once, they might just be adapting the interface for the console users, and not the other way around.

For its own time, I thought the interface in BG was pretty good. The interface in BG2 felt intuitive for me, again in its own time, with higher resolution and options to turn the sidebars and the whole GUI off.

NWN's GUI was decent save for the wheel for spells. As a sidenote, IMHO Obsidian managed to improve the spell menu quite nicely in NWN2, but then they are a different developer altogether.

When a game is targeted to go out on console the game get short.
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The inventory system in Mass Effect is god-awful, Thaurin. If BioWare give me a drag-and-drop paper doll and inventory system that uses my screen's real estate, I couldn't care less about the console versions.

In every Bioware game since KotOR I get the impression that their main priority in interface design is to make it as newbie-friendly as possible. Efficiency is only an afterthought.

Possibly true - but every game including KotOR1 onwards had the Xbox as the lead platform, so it's hard to tell how they will approach a PC-first game.

BG2's interface is, to say the least, clunky. It literaly takes up more than half of the screen. The so called hotbar was probably the worst part, since most of it is occupied by stuff you won't use and can't change. Spells are hidden away in the worst way imaginable. And other stuff like that. Not to mention small, but quite annoying stuff like a dual-wielding character that also would use bows has to constantly switch between the two. NWN's was an a real improvement in the hotbar area, and I the spell management ussue, while true, it was very easy to drag frequently used spells onto on of the 3 hotbars. Or other things, like switching weapons, potions and items and so on.

Ï like BGs inventory system a lot actually, and couldn't stand the NWN one. I don't mind the inventory covering my screen when I enter it - I don't enter the inventory while running around, unless it's in games like WoW where I have loads of ground to cover, and can auto-run (using num lock).

I think Baldur's Gate had an attractive inventory interface, but it was not very functionally designed. First of all, it was too restrictive in terms of space - and the UI screens were all opaque, taking up the entire area.

Neverwinter Nights was miles ahead in terms of functionality, and it was a lot more lenient with inventory space. Also, it was transparent and non-intrusive.

The radial interface received a lot of flak, which I don't understand. It was never meant as your primary way of interacting with the game, merely a base from which you could access everything. You had tons of hotkey slots, and every primary function had a corresponding hotkey.

Overall, i'd say the NWN UI is one of the best i've seen for a game that complex, and I have no idea why it was criticised so much. Apart from aesthetics, it was superior to the NWN2 UI in just about every way.

I don't think that it was criticized that much. At least not in the reviews I read. The one big problem it had was that ugly-ass minimap. Then again, the maps themselves were ugly tilesets, so that was kind of inevitable.

The NWN2 interface really had me scratching my head. All that they had to do basically was copy the first game but they kinda screwed it up. Still, it was better than the interface for any console-to-PC port that I have played.