Dragon Age II Q&A, Part Two

In the second installment to their Q&A with Dragon Age II lead designer Mike Laidlaw, GameZone poses questions about the amount of free roaming the sequel will offer, the approach they’ve taken with companions this time around, what role the Darkspawn will play, and more. Two more that stick out to me:

DG: Dragon Age had Alistair, KotOR had HK-47, Mass Effect had a handful but Wrex stood out. Will any of them stick in your mind that people hold on to like Minsc and Boo?

ML: I actually think there will be a number of them that do in DAII, because they play to different types. The funny character often gets remembered. They’re memorable, they’re amusing. There are a number of them who would be the funny character. Varick is hilarious. Isabella is hilarious; she tells a lot of dirty jokes. She’ll probably stand out. Alistair always has the one liner, he always did. He was also a real person. Someone who is making the one liners because A) he was feeling really guilty about shirking his duty, as his royal blood suggested maybe he should be doing and B) because he was suffering in despair of losing his mentor. What made Alistair resonate was that he was a person under the gag, and that’s always been our approach in any companion. Trying to have them be memorable for more than just the one note hit. You have to get a whole drum kit in there.

DG: Reflecting back to your past, Baldur’s Gate would offer a 100 hours of gameplay. When BioWare started going more towards consoles, the hours started dropping. Where do you see that in terms of the state of RPGs? Is the modern content becoming too much to produce? Or do users just want to have a more core experience and get it done given that some people don’t even finish their games? Some people are probably only half way through Dragon Age: Origins and never even got to the end. Where do you feel are the state of RPGs in terms of content and length of play?

ML: There are two angles to it. One is the resolution, or the density of the content. Baldur’s Gate had no voice; big blocks of text as someone wrote out, (he then does this and then he does this.) Before, we’re providing more and more expository text. What we’re finding is that while you could get a 100 hours of content like that reasonably easy, you could get the same emotional impact and investment in 40 hours of content if you increase the fidelity. I think that’s the approach we’ve been taking. Do we think the best game ever would be four hours? No, I don’t think so. I think that there comes a point that the returns are diminished. You’re putting so much effort that it’s like listening to a hi-fi stereo with that friend that everyone has that only listens to vinyl. Regular ears don’t hear that. It’s like an acquired taste. It’s like drinking a very fine scotch. Anything will get you drunk, but the fine scotch might do it in that smoother way. So I think in terms of the state of RPGs is that we’re faced with reality of other genres and platforms making huge strides in terms of presentation, fidelity, and – it sometimes is a dirty word for RPGs – but even accessibility. The sense that Call of Duty is close enough to being a black ops military shooter guy that even if I don’t know a whole lot I can get sighting down a barrel, and it feels like that. It’s not abstract in any way. Anyone can dive in with that. I get what I’m doing here and the story tells itself in a reasonable way. So for us, getting to the point where you don’t have to make that mental leap over, (that little sprite is me,) and get to the point where it’s like, (oh cool, sliders’ and all that stuff and the fidelity goes up,) it does engage more. If you get to the point where it’s super dense, then you’re putting way too much effort in it and you won’t engage as much.