The Dragon Age 4 chapter in BioWare S&S 25 Years Book

The Making of the Dragon Ages Chapters insights:


Dragon Age: Origins

The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen.

“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”.

Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There are as many words in it as all of Sten’s conversations put together.

Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century.

Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take, and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums, and different stories.

The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”.

Irl Viking art influenced Ferelden.

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais.

There was other stuff on DA:O, but it's stuff I've seen DG talk about before so...


Dragon Age II

DA:O had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest.

Initially, DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said, “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this.

Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times.

The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around one city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)

They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made one presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went.

As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here are the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”

Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”

Despite this, he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite.

The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”.

The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example, Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DA:O. In contrast, Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art.

Varric was conceived as a storyteller, not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible from Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby).

“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]

If DA:O was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style).

John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off-screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.”

Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture

The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles, not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation.

DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally.


The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI.

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI.

It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain.

Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army.

To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process.

It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life.

Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected the next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden.

A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first conceived for EM. This fact was mentioned near the biker mage concept art with the dark-eyed mohawk female elf, and the concept art of Bethany with the blond bob.

The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions.

The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI.


World of Thedas

Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DA:O’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”.

This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me, it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”.

For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes that might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”.


Dragon Age: Inquisition

It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]

This game was aimed to be bigger then DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way.

The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers, etc. in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes.

DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back… so, of course, it got left til last again.”

“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]

Over the course of development, they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room

As writing on a project like DA:I progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out).

Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one-off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”.

The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. IRL these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”.

With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on for a community vid was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples.

The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies.

Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”.

The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess.

Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”.

Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge.

On DA:I, in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future, I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”

Two geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47, and Darth Malgoose.

Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds, the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when the footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries.

For DA:I the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”

On DA:I storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists.

Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of base game sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”

A general note on concept art:

In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses.

Maybe she transitioned over to a LoF?  That is Isabella's look from DAI:MP. 

We were pretty sure that wasn't Dorian though, as he's carrying a sword and wearing Crow-ish armor.

more
Bless that person, who posts screens from the book
64.media.tumblr.com/f5f456f158008e392e6c3721ff3a1a4d/dacc4e5c8f5331a8-f2/s400x600/c15a1898a0df97af056e5c5cb7fbc77b7ce2ccad.png


64.media.tumblr.com/79072fb7ae3e9168d973c2f1b9e10b04/dacc4e5c8f5331a8-aa/s500x750/4ed7311d997c81e58ea886f97d4cd46d8f8f75ba.png
This looks like Leliana, Cassandra and Vivienne celebrating the Inquisition’s victory at Skyhold. Is the elf on the left holding the ring behind the curtain (she has no vallaslin), supposed to be a sad post-game Lavellan after Solas leaves?

64.media.tumblr.com/04a5ed664a756fba3dae0b2b98347059/dacc4e5c8f5331a8-e1/s500x750/e869fe717f91cc8d57c13115affc6447d10bee84.png

I just want to say its quite a good time to be a BioWare fan right now actually. I can't speak for anyone else but it just seems like they are building towards something and then we have a new ME game to look forward to, the ME remaster, this new book, marketing has gotten more and more frequent with the new DA game. About the only thing to really look forward to with this crummy year.

It occurred to me a while ago that Solas’ plan might be to unleash the Evanuris and let those psychopaths wreak havoc across Thedas. That would fit with the “Evil Gods” image.

Given the comment above yours I do wonder if this is intended as sarcasm.

Though on a serious note while I am treating it as uncomfirmed until we actually see the game, yes, a new protagonist is something to look forward to.  

Edit:  Well a couple above now.  

Not to rain on your parade, but it's really easy to make good looking concept art. The piece about the evil gods is exactly what I want from Dragon Age, but I've been burned too many times to be excited.

Doubtful, he hates them and said he doesn't want Thedas to suffer. He believes that freeing the Evanuris will be a consequence of bringing down the Veil, and has said he has a plan for them.

An image from BW's office - possibly for DA?

Actually, I do recognize the image now - it's from the assault on Adamant cutscene.

I have to ask, does anyone know if the word Morrison refer to Kieran or is it like an inside joke or something? I haven't been keeping up with DA news til the teasers came out this year and me being the tin foil hatter I am makes me wonder if Kieran will have a bigger part to play in the story or not 😆