Dragon Age: Origins Interview

The ZAM Network takes the prize for posting the 1000th Dragon Age: Origins interview (or thereabouts) that we’ve seen over the past couple of months. Executive producer Mark Darrah is the one getting grilled this time around:

ZAM: What inspired Dragon Age to be made? I know you guys are always mentioning Baldur’s Gate II and Neverwinter Nights as big drawing points. Is there anything else?

Mark: Really, from a game play perspective, what we’re trying to do is make a game that evokes the feeling of Baldur’s Gate II, or Neverwinter Nights. But from an IP perspective, it’s more influenced by the harsher fantasy aesthetic of something like a George R.R. Martin book, or some of the better Conan stuff. It’s a darker fantasy, but we also want to keep that heroic touchstone, so there’s that Lord of the Rings element mixed in. You’re fighting an ultimate evil, which is something that you’d see in a Lord of the Rings novel, but there are all these politics and darker undertones, like you’d see in a George R.R. Martin space as well.

ZAM: Have there been any other games that you looked at when developing Dragon Age?

Mark: Certainly Mass Effect because we have easy access to the team there. I also think that the Final Fantasies have always been a strong role playing component on the console, so it’s hard to work in the fantasy space on the consoles without considering them. More recently, games like Bioshock have taken a new approach to storytelling. They tell stories in a much different way than we traditionally do and I think that’s been a really interesting thing to look at from a storytelling perspective. Obviously Fallout and Oblivion have also gone to a more open world style of storytelling. I think that open world exploration is something where there is room for a lot of different kinds of games, but it’s important for us to be aware of what exists around us so we can learn through them and be inspired by them.