Dragon Age: Origins Interview

Kotaku has kicked up an article-style interview they did with Dragon Age: Origins online producer Fernando Melo last week about the game’s social networking components.

Sharing stats and updating an online avatar version of your character isn’t itself a feature that would amaze avid users of something like the Halo-tracking Bungie.net. But Melo and his team have more elaborate plans than that.

“One of the things we started to look at was the way you could share your story,” Melo said. “That really ties to the core of the game. The game radically challenges based on the decisions you’re making along the way and the party members you have with you. We were trying to figure out how to create these water-cooler moments that people could talk about without spoiling it for people…we wanted to have a way that complements that instead of random [forum] threads.”

To help players share their stories, the data-tracking will also snatch details on what the player has accomplished in the game. Those details will be listed as the character’s adventure log on the Social site.

Melo hopes that a future iteration of the service will present the narrative accomplishments as if they were chronicled in a personal journal, which is a far cry from the team’s earlier, scuttled concept to have player’s characters Tweet their accomplishments for the world to see.

I care little for other social networking services, so I’m not sure this is going to do much for me.