Dragon Age - News Roundup

• Executive Producer Mark Darrah
• Lead Designer Mike Laidlaw
• BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk

“We try to hit choices that have impact and deeper meaning,” he said. To illustrate that point a pivotal moment was shown in the game. The lead player had a choice to make – destroy an artifact so that no one could use it, or leave it alone. In the first run-through of the scenario, Laidlaw’s character destroyed the artifact, which outraged two of his party members – those characters with deep and distinctive personalities that had been part of his group for some time. But what he did was morally offensive to those characters and they attacked him and the fourth member of the party. Using a little developer magic, Laidlaw’s protagonist killed those members (which were then lost to him for the remainder of the game), and then proceeded to kill the guards and guide who were responsible for him being at this point. The idea was that the artifact was too powerful to wind up in the wrong hands and it was better to not let anyone else get hold of it.
But wait, what if he made a different choice. The scenario was replayed and this time the protagonist set the urn up as a symbol of hope for the beleaguered lands trying to combat the Blight and Dark Spawn threatening to sink the world into eternal evil. One party member grumbled and standing was lost, but the two that had attacked so willingly before were joyful and the protagonist’s standing with them went up.

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CCC: How many writers are working on this game?
MD: At the peak, I believe there were seven. The writing has been going on for a long time. The lead writer has been on the project from the beginning and he's written a lot about the way the universe works and has written a lot of the story. One of the things that you need to do to tell a story of this size is that you need to make sure that there's something behind the backdrop, that it's not just a picture painted on a wall. As a result, there's thousands of years of history written. There are a lot more stories to be told in this universe.

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GO: You let players choose from any of six origin stories, stories you've suggested resonate throughout the play experience. How pliable or reflective is Dragon Age's game world respective of those choices? Do they change the way the entire game plays out, or just invoke the occasional narrative nod?

ML: Origins for us are such a key element of the game that we appended the word to the title. We knew we wanted to do these right and make them a hallmark of the game. We could have done a cursory approach, certainly, but instead we thought, "Okay, what's gratifying about having an origin that's playable?" That's where I think it starts--knowing that you get to experience a focused start to the game that gives you perspective and a different flavor when you're finally starting into thin...More information.

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