Dragon Age - Forum Highlights @ Sorcerer's Place

Maylander said:

This game has been in production for a very long time now, isn't it about time we start getting some new, solid information instead of just various discussions and a three year old wallpaper? The first previews of Dragon Age were written after E3 2004, where Dragon Age was shown, so it must be getting close to completion unless something has gone wrong.

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Probably nothing has gone wrong as much as the game simply isn't being worked on very much. Bioware is essentially a console developer now and the PC appears to be just an afterthought. Remember, they just merged with Pandemic, a pure console developer. Since this game was announced, Jade Empire came out, and then Mass Effect was announced and it will come out this year. I'll bet that Jade Empire 2 will be out before this game. Since Dragon Age was announced, Bethesda has acquired the Fallout license and they will have completely built a new game and released it well before DA. Grand Theft Auto IV will have been completely built and released in a three year period with a new engine. Ditto for Halo 3. I used to be optimistic that this game would be out last year, but now I figure it probably won't be out before the end of the decade unless it goes cross-platform, which it probably will. I have given up hope on this game. It's as good as vaporware.

BioWare have different teams working on different projects all within the development studio, and each project has different demands and so will result in differing release dates. It is not as though the DA team got shunted onto Mass Effect or whatever. DA also does not have a publisher at this point while the other titles do and thus have contracted release dates to meet.
The fact that DA is taking a good long time in development can only be a good thing as far as I'm concerned. We all know too many games are pushed out the door unfinished and in dire need of more development time.
I think BioWare are doing the right thing here, plugging away quietly at DA while other projects continue to generate operating revenue. It seems to me a rather advantageous and desirable situation to be in, overall.

doctor_kaz said:

Probably nothing has gone wrong as much as the game simply isn't being worked on very much. Bioware is essentially a console developer now and the PC appears to be just an afterthought.

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No.

Is this thing on? Am I on Kaz's ignore list?

Merging with Pandemic put a few kinks in the schedule, which goes a long way toward explaining why DA has been in development forever. Decisions that made sense for a small-to-mid-sized game developer didn't make as much sense for a bigger company like we've become, so all the projects made some adjustments. Also, DA was announced much earlier than other BioWare projects (in terms of its development cycle) specifically because the company wanted to reassure gamers that it wasn't going to be all Asian-and-science-fiction games forever -- that BioWare would be doing a swords-and-dragons game again.

DA's team isn't as large as Mass Effect's, because Mass Effect is the next project coming out, and the next project out always has the biggest team. It's larger than any other project we've got, however. It has its own floor. It currently has more writers than Mass Effect.

It is not an afterthought. Just don't expect to hear much about it until Mass Effect is out the door. Once that happens, the marketing team will hit you with more Dragon Age than you'll know what to do with.

kaz's post smelled like bait to me, Patrick. Guess it worked.

He's a master baiter.

Brilliant comeback Patrick!!