Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

Tim McJones @the_McJones
“There would be times where @mike_Laidlaw would come into my room to explain things had changed and I would go ‘ok I need to kill you, I need to jump across my desk and kill you’ but I truly love Mike and I enjoyed writing on Inquisition.” - @davidgaider #paxaus

Unfrightened Mike Game @mike_Laidlaw
This is extremely accurate. I would usually clap my hands and say "Well....." and all the writers would wince.

And I love Dave, too. He's wonderful, even if he needed to kill me a lot.

Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes
Jesus, the clap. I remember the clap.

I think I kinda fixed the link (just press play)... let me know!

- There was a little DA tidbit in this interview...

IGN: Chorus is Part Musical and Part Adventure Game, with an All Star Cast
ca.ign.com/articles/2019/10/11/chorus-is-part-musical-and-part-adventure-game-with-an-all-star-cast

One More Dragon Age with Feeling
“This was something that had come up while I was at BioWare,” Gaider recalls. “Numerous times during the development of Dragon Age I kept trying to convince management that we should do a musical DLC. Let players go into the Fade and experience a bit of a musical. Which is a dream, but not quite a dream because it's the Fade. I thought that that would be cool, but they were never into the idea. I guess in the back of my head this was something I always wanted to do.”

A new studio, however, meant creative control. “That's something I get to decide?” Gaider exclaims, revisiting the feeling he had when discussing the studio’s first project. “I've loved all the games I’ve worked on, but it was always working within a set box... After thinking about it for a moment I simply said… ‘musical’.”

That single word immediately sparked a range of discussions, as well as raising a few questions. Questions that might have already had answers if Gaider and the team at BioWare were given the chance to create that Dragon Age musical. How do you make a song interactive? If there are multiple paths through a song, and an underlying story, how would that work when played? What would make a musical a game as opposed to something you simply listened to and enjoyed?

“It took a while for us to define what it meant to be a musical,” Gaider continues. “It’s not just about writing a song in that traditional sense, because each song immediately becomes so much more. If you have multiple paths it becomes lyrically challenging and musically challenging because each needs to sound like it was the intended way to go.” From there, seemingly simple gameplay mechanics required extensive thought and eventual testing. Stuff like timing, right down to the second - the exact period a player would be given to not only read through choices but act in a way that didn’t disturb the flow and pacing of the music.

With many years spent creating rich character and choice-driven dialogue scenes and storylines in BioWare RPGs, it makes sense that this initial steer from Gaider was towards the how. But, marrying lyrics and song proved to be an experience akin to learning to ride a bike all over again. “Every now and then during my career I've had to re-learn the process,” Gaider tells me. “Switching media, like going from games to novels or comic books, you really do have to re-learn how it all works. And Chorus has been the same thing. Even though when we started, I was like, ‘Oh, lyrics, songs, how hard could that be?’”

Skarin’ Eeeks @karinweekes
Was just searching Twitter for a Dragon Age related post I'd seen earlier, and this ad came up in the results, I suspect because "Fight the Fade", but even if not, I am CRACKING UP.

Downy @downy
Keep your clothes looking newer, longer with Downy Fabric Conditioner #FightTheFade.

Jo Berry @joanna_Berry
My immediate mental image: Iron Bull putting his laundry out on a line and declaring, hands on hips, "Now THAT'S fighting the Fade!" and Solas facepalming in the background.

I thought that sounded familiar...! 

If you skip to about 46:35 you can hear David detail how he had planned to kill off Varric in the (cancelled) DA2 expansion Exodus.

Varric (being a dwarf) would be the only one who could get close enough to Corypheus' red lyrium to destroy it, but in turn would be fatally poisoned by it. In the end he would have died in Hawke's arms.

awww.

is the keynote rewatch link not workin for anyone else by any chance? I watched it live on my phone at like 3am or whatever and was looking to rewatch on a real screen, but it seems the timestamp never can get past 12 mins 32 odd (or sth around there). it's not that your link specifically is broken btw Hrungr, because I can't get it to work from Dgaider's twitter or the Twitch site direct either.

aaah then maybe tis my bullshit old laptop. I'll try on my PC. thanku!

That still can happen. Remake DA2 with the expansion included. My Hawke didn't think much of the dwarf. Then remake DAI to have a companion replace, or not, Varric.

Around the 50 minute mark, talking about Dorian’s personal quest...

So now all of the defenders who claim his quest was NOT about Gaider being able to write out a gay conversion therapy plot line and us gay/bi/pan men who didn’t want the first gay male companions personal quest to be about him Being Gay being unhappy about it, I think we’re done here.

Inb4 “I never claimed that, just that his quest can mean so many things depending on how you look at it”

Please don’t straightsplain the gay mans story to me, thanks.