Dragon Age - The Awakening Interview @ IGN

PC.IGN is the first site we're aware of to catch up with BioWare about Dragon Age: The Awakening, with Online Producer Fernando Melo answering their questions. It covers some good general grounding and is worth a read but the subject of length has come up on our forums, so here's a quote on that:

IGN: How large is the expansion in terms of memory? Are you offering it as a download item for people that bought digital copies, or is it solely available as a retail disc version?

Fernando Melo: There will be both retail and download versions of it. It is by far the biggest expansion that we'll be releasing. I can't talk about the number of hours at this point, but in general, you can definitely expect a lot of gameplay. I don't think we know how to make games differently. Even without the replayability, I think it's safe to say that it's larger than pretty much any downloadable content out there. I think we need to treat it a lot more like a traditional retail expansion, which is really what it is -- it'll just have a downloadable version as well. But it'll be fairly massive. It'll be bigger than most retail games.

More information.

for the love of…! Can't people give a straight answer?

Even without the replayability, I think it's safe to say that it's larger than pretty much any downloadable content out there. I

ALL DLC, anywhere? Fallout 3? ME? Other games? What does that even mean? If he means DA:O DLC - well that's not hard (*cough* Wardeens Keep), given what they have released to date.

It'll be bigger than most retail games.

Righty - well that puts a lower bound on it surely? They could certainlys say "more than the 15 hrs that same have mentioned…" 'Most retail games' could cover 90% of the market for any game in existence. That seems a tad unbelievable. This kind of prevarication makes me extremely suspicious

Obvious cash grab.

You will probably end up in the mid to high 30s — that's kind of the current thinking, but that may still change.

Leveling in the beginning of Origins is quick but it still takes more than 15 hours to gain 15 levels (which is roughly the level increase from endgame DAO to mid-to-high 30s) IIRC, and definitely way more if you look at the leveling speed from level ~10 and on.

This probably only means that they've decided not to slow down the leveling process after the beginning like in Origins — levels are, after all, arbitrary — but it could also mean longer playing time than expected.

Originally Posted by booboo
for the love of…! Can't people give a straight answer?

No.

Straight answers means making choices. Choices means closing options because the audience is forced to (at least silently) agree or disagree. This is something marketing types don't want. They want to keep as many people as possible in the boat.
When you catch these guys off-duty they are probably extremely straight-forward and aggressive.

Honestly, what's the point anyway? Personally, I can't understand the obsession with length but my main play through for DA was 79:43 and I know I missed a few things. I've seen people on this forum claim 40 hours for everything. So, which is it?

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I've seen people on this forum claim 40 hours for everything. So, which is it?

I found that a bit odd as well. I was only about 50% done when I surpassed the 40 hour mark.

booboo is just going crazy every other post over the exact. amount. of. time. expected.

It's all relative to how you play the game. To some, Shale wasnt worth the money for his little quest and all that. To others, it was a powerful new companion that was with them the rest of the game. That's more than a few hours there. Warden's Keep quest was fun, I think it was worth it. You then have a chest and vendor that's open again, for the rest of the game. Does that get put into the "time" or not???

It's all in how you play. If youre gonna breeze thru the expansion sneering at Bio the whole time, youre entire experience being a critique of them and whether you got your "time" for your money, yeah youre gonna be disappointed. Just dont even bother.

Would you rather just have them pack it with a bunch of meaningless filler so you feel you clocked in at the right time benchmark?

Me personally, i'm like at 60% now at over 100 hours. I think I'll get my moneys worth anyway lol ='.'=

Good analysis. I'm certainly over the 100 hour mark, and still haven't finished Landsmeet on my complete playthrough!

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Honestly, what's the point anyway? Personally, I can't understand the obsession with length but my main play through for DA was 79:43 and I know I missed a few things. I've seen people on this forum claim 40 hours for everything. So, which is it?

I think the general concern is whether we're getting something like the SP of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (i.e. $60 for 4 hours) …

I must be a slow player as well. I am over 90 hours and haven't started Landsmeet yet, I have done the 4 main areas before it though.

I don't know. I think a lot of people just escape through all the dialogue and don't retry things as often as I do… I like to experiment.

I took quite awhile to finish DA, but it was more because I just wasn't very driven to complete it. For me it was the kind of game that I got tired of playing after 2-3 hours.. not that I didn't like it, but I wasn't totally blown away like some people seemed to be.

I'll remember it as a very solid title, but it's no "classic" imho.

80 hours for me, with my feelings similar to JDR's.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I took quite awhile to finish DA, but it was more because I just wasn't very driven to complete it. For me it was the kind of game that I got tired of playing after 2-3 hours.. not that I didn't like it, but I wasn't totally blown away like some people seemed to be.

I'll remember it as a very solid title, but it's no "classic" imho.

Ah good. I'm not the only one. It may hook me if I dive back in, but right now it's just plain tedious. I usually go for one of three things in RPGS: either the Glittering Prizes factor is high (Underworld I), the sidequests and options have depth and just keep coming (Fallout), or the story itself has a good narrative and some deep themes (PS:T/KotOR II). So far I got paste-in armor I don't care about, a mystifying tactical setup with little guidance on how to use it well, WoW style subquests, and a… decent storyline. I'm not feeling it here

For those who asked:

The reason I'm harping on about it is because there seems to be a trend (particularly with DLC) to charge more for less - and the community at large seems happy to let this happen - extrapolating from many of the comments I've seen here.

For the record I probably spent 100 hrs on DA:O and I felt I explored it pretty thoroughly. The last 25 of those hours were drudgery - sadly I like to finish things, so I persevered until the tedious Final (oh-so-scripted) Encounter. A lot of that time was also spent in pointless 'random encounters'. So, certainly not 100 *quality* hours. For the sake of the first 60 or so hours, I would like to play a 'decent' expansion - but I refuse to be exploited by some big greedy corporate. Which brings me back to my original point - all things being equal, IF the expansion is a nominal 15 hrs and costs $40 (length not yet confirmed, but rumoured) and the original game was a nominal 80 hrs and cost $50, then that is a rip-off. If they can do that, the next "expansion" will be 10 hours and $35 or some other cost-benefit optimization they have performed, with a 'reduced cost' to placate the restless masses. It all starts with apathy.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
booboo is just going crazy every other post over the exact. amount. of. time. expected.

It's all relative to how you play the game. To some, Shale wasnt worth the money for his little quest and all that. To others, it was a powerful new companion that was with them the rest of the game. That's more than a few hours there. Warden's Keep quest was fun, I think it was worth it. You then have a chest and vendor that's open again, for the rest of the game. Does that get put into the "time" or not???

It's all in how you play. If youre gonna breeze thru the expansion sneering at Bio the whole time, youre entire experience being a critique of them and whether you got your "time" for your money, yeah youre gonna be disappointed. Just dont even bother.

Would you rather just have them pack it with a bunch of meaningless filler so you feel you clocked in at the right time benchmark?

Me personally, i'm like at 60% now at over 100 hours. I think I'll get my moneys worth anyway lol ='.'=

I think you missed the point - but I don't have the energy for another long explanation. My problem was not with the length of the original game - it's with the nominal length that was stated (elsewhere on the web) for the "expansion" and the price $40 (which has been confirmed).

I didnt miss the point, youre talking again about how much time they think youll get out of an expansion for your buck. A regular complaint, that not enough time was given for the buck, has been logged against the DLC.

why should you care anyway? You were groaning the other day how you barely had the will to finish the OC as it was. Here youre wondering how much more tedium youll get out of an expansion? Any expansion at this point for you, I'd think, wouldnt even be a consideration.

I would rather see a good game filled with lots of quality that can be finished in 40-60 hours than a 80-100 hour game where I have to press myself to finish the game as I find to be the case with say BG2: TOB and some other games.

As for the retail price, I'll probably do what I normally does, wait for some sort of compilation…

Quality over quantity certainly.

I never thought I'd say this, but DA is getting too long, mainly because most of it is repetitive combat - most of the battles play out like the other ones….