Dragon Age News Thread

If you've played a game with romance options, you may have encountered someone you wanted to romance but couldn't. Dragon Age 2 has playersexual romances. That is, the romances lock to the player on first interaction. They (mostly) aren't pan sexual.
Playersexual has its issues from a fidelity perspective.

Mike Jungbluth @lightbombmike
Today is bittersweet as I leave BioWare for my next adventure. Direction is lighting a fire and passing the torch. And that creative fire burns bright in the team I helped grow here. To add a bit of myself into a series like Dragon Age has been a privilege I won’t ever forget.

Also a big shout out to the larger EA Animation Community. Never before have I seen so many studios come together to openly share knowledge, tech and ideas. It makes EA truly special and I feel honored to have helped contribute to and drive it for a time. I’ll miss all of you!

Darren R 😨😱😵💀👻 @doom_Squid
Still shocked this is happening ☹️it was brief, but I'm glad we got to have some crossover finally. All the best on with the new adventures man ♥️

Mike Jungbluth @lightbombmike
Man, it kills me it was for such a short time. What sort of dummy hires someone as awesome as you and then leaves?!?!!

You have been such a breath of fresh air and inspiration. You are going to do such great things with the team here. Consider me one of your biggest fans!

BioWare @bioware
"There is a vigil before templars take their arms, but the gravest danger they face is falling asleep."
Art by _magicaltia_ www.instagram.com/_magicaltia_/

elle tchi @elenatchii
refering to a character at work as "my blorbo" as one does

An awesome DA fan put in a ton of work to transcribe Mark Darrah's Summer Games Fest stream. Quite a few tidbits in this one - enjoy!



[prior to the show beginning] "I think the chance of us getting Dragon Age: Dreadwolf news is basically zero because it doesn't make sense to me that you would announce the name so close to the event if you were gonna show something. I think there's probably a 5% chance that we get BioWare news, but it probably won't be Dreadwolf news if that happens. But, you know, 5% chance. And if it is something it would be, either, they finally managed to decide to do a Dragon Age remaster or something to do with SW:TOR or for some reason EA has decided they need to talk about Mass Effect. Hopefully not that third thing because it's a loooot early to be talking about Mass Effect. But if we get something that would be my guess. But I honestly think we're not gonna get BioWare news. So maybe we'll all be surprised." [nb this event has obviously now passed obviously]

[answering various questions and comments from the side-chat] "I don't mind 'Dreadwolf' - question about what do I think, what would I have called Dragon Age [4]. I mean we were starting naming discussions before I left. I think Dreadwolf was on the list, it's, there's nothing wrong with it as a name. I think that the franchise should definitely put 'Dragon Age 2' in the past and stick to subtitles. At one point I was actually pushing for calling it 'Dragon Age' with no subtitle. I got talked out of that. I think probably that was the right call. But I think, yeah, Dreadwolf is fine. You want something that's short and say-able, so things like 'Minrathous Nights', it just gets too cumbersome and long, it becomes awkward. I do think there is something to be said for a made up word. ‘Skyrim’, or ‘Dreadwolf’, or that sort of thing, because it lets you dominate the search. Whereas if you are 'Inquisition' or 'Oblivion' or those sorts of things, you can kinda get lost in the Googles, at least at certain points in your campaign."

"My bet is that we'll see Dreadwolf at the The Game Awards [this is in December]. That was actually my assumption before they announced the name, now it's even, now I'm even more confident in that."

"Yeah I mean, you have a wolf and a dragon in the name, that's a bit confusing, that's fair".

"I don't have a problem with the font. I think that we'll probably see some refinement on the word form before it launches. Yeah, we'll see."

"I don't know if the Spider With Hands is gonna be in Dreadwolf or not. I mean, I would be, I would hope they wouldn't just toss away an asset they have.”

"I mean because there's more Tevinter stuff in Dreadwolf, I imagine that they're gonna be able to turn the magic level up quite a bit, which lets them do a lot more experimentation with creature design."

“Definitely I feel like the Dragon Age team has heard the, 'please stop making us kill wolves, it's making us sad', so I don't know/think there's gonna be a lot of just, animals, as enemy factions in Dreadwolf. Except spiders."

“I feel like the BioWare games have always been undermarketed. I remember when Mass 1 was coming out, that was around the first Assassin’s Creed. We were going out to dinner with Microsoft I think and I could see a television over someone’s shoulder and in the time we were at dinner I think I saw fifteen Assassin’s Creed TV ads and Mass Effect got zero. So I do think there's always been, BioWare's always been undermarketed, not just by EA but just in general, I think there has been a tendency to under-market BioWare games. I think Cyberpunk put the money behind the game and it showed, from a marketing perspective."

"I mean the writing team tends to shy away from going back to followers, especially ones that have a lot of quantum. Anyone that was a romance option inherently has a fair bit of quantum. They do re-occur, you've got Varric twice and you’ve got Isabela twice, like, you get people coming back, but Dragon Age tends to shy away from that just because it just puts a lot of extra work that nobody sees, because you just see what matches your quantum state, and all the other work is basically a waste. Quantum just means that there are a lot of different potential states for the character."

"Everyone in Dragon Age 2 except for Varric and Aveline is very quantum."

"Dragon Age 4 was marketed in 2018 because EA needed something - well, two reasons. One, EA wanted something at the The Game Awards and didn't have anything else and two, by putting it there you also made it way less likely that the game was gonna get cancelled. So. There was some politics on both sides of that one."

"I don't think Obsidian would be the right partner for a Dragon Age remake even though, you know, they have a long track record. But I do think that, you know, someone that would be willing to spend the money, would probably do a better job than EA, who would [inaudible] remake".

"Yes the progression in Inquisition multiplayer was bad unfortunately. I've been fighting for co-op campaign, campaign co-op in Dragon Age for a while. In Inquisition it was a huge fight with EA because they just didn't understand why anyone would do it because they were all competitive sports game players and on Dragon Age 4, it was, one of the problems was getting the writers on board. But there was also the whole - we'll get to it when we talk about Anthem [in an upcoming vid] - but there was the whole 'everything should be a live service' stuff going on within EA at the same time as well. I do think campaign co-op, if you commit, could be amazing."

"I suspect that multiplayer will be purged completely from Dragon Age 4. That's my guess."

"The next Mass Effect is really early [in production] so."

"[quoting someone] ‘Mass 5 isn't releasing next year according to Jeff Grubb'. No. No it's not.”

"Yeah, I think he [Jeff] may be right about Dragon Age 4 next year. I think they're probably aiming for Christmas next year."

"There's a reasonable chance that Starfield doesn't come out in the same year as Dragon Age 4."

“I don’t think there’s an EA day. I don’t think so. I think EA’s plans is to spread their stuff across the year, I think they realized that too much stuff was being pushed out, they didn’t have enough to show, so they’re not doing, so EA Play isn’t happening this year and they’re just gonna show things as it comes out. So I expect to get BioWare at The Game Awards. Probably just Dragon Age. Probably nothing for Mass Effect this year. That would be my guess.”

“Pretty sure they’ll be at The Game Awards. Pretty sure that Dreadwolf will be at The Game Awards because, that would fit, that would make sense with announce the name now in June, six months to get a trailer together, get some gameplay together and show. If they are on track for next Fall, like, November next year, that would also make sense. I mean, they could delay and wait for next summer, which would be more in line with the shorter marketing cycles that games have been moving towards. But I think because it got announced already in 2018, you kinda don’t get to play that game, you kind of have to show early because you’ve already started. Yeah, I mean, the devs care about DA Day. The problem with DA Day versus N7 day, you’ll get something on N7 Day but it probably won’t be anything related to Mass 5, because it’s just too early. You might get something else. The problem with DA Day is it’s too close to The Game Awards, they’re usually only a few days apart, so you either need two assets or it’s, it’s too bad, if The Game Awards were actually a little bit earlier, you’d be able to piggyback them a little bit better.”

"The Game Awards are usually early December, but usually the 8th or 9th as opposed to the 4th. Yeah, that sort’ve thing, the short stories, for DA Day, is more what I would expect to get just because it’s a more community-focused thing, maybe, I mean that would also be a place for something else if, you know, if they’re gonna have a TV show or a new novel or something that would be the place to announce it as well probably. There was a bunch of TV announcements at Summer Game Fest, so maybe do that at The Game Awards as well.”

Once again, an awesome DA fan put together a hefty transcript, this time of a podcast interview with David Gaider.

One-to-one: it's Dragon Age creator David Gaider!
On BioWare, his new musical RPG, his life and more.

www.eurogamer.net/one-to-one-its-dragon-age-creator-david-gaider

Here are a few highlights from the 1 hr 23 min. interview:

- BioWare was in the process of changing internally around the time that David Gaider left. There are still a number of people there who he worked with and cared about, but a lot of others have moved on as well, so he thinks it is a very different company from the one he knew.

- When DG was at BioWare, they always joked about doing a musical, maybe a musical DLC or something. The inspiration for this was that one Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode. He thought it would be cool to do something like that, like in the Fade or something. And everyone was really keen. As soon as he brought it up, the localization team and animators were trying to figure out how they could do this. Eventually, Mike Laidlaw said that "If we sell 10 million copies I'll let you do a musical DLC". They didn't reach that figure of course and when DG left the studio, he wanted to try doing that.

- DG was starting to feel like he needed to move on sometime during Dragon Age: Inquisition. He had experienced writer burnout by this point, the first time this occurred was the worst when he was starting Neverwinter Nights. He suddenly hit this wall and couldn't write anymore, it was very upsetting. Everyone at BioWare including James Ohlen was very understanding. He had to find tools to cope with it and slowly teach himself how to deal with the blank page. He slowly came back, and then finally was good, but then eventually burned out again right after DAO, "haha, big surprise.." He was just working so much, and was writing the novels as well at that time; that was a lot of writing, constantly, that required laser-like focus, so it was no big surprise that he eventually burned out again. But David leaving BioWare was not due to burnout. He thinks that the company was just starting to change and he started to feel like he was always going to be in the position that he was in, which was a mid-level manager. He doesn't think they were really considering him to be a serious candidate for Creative Director. There are several reasons he could think of as to why that might be. He had seen people getting promoted past him at that point. He did enjoy writing and still does, and to a point he was like "I will always enjoy this". But he also wanted more say over what he was making and why he was making it. And so he got that urge, he wanted to try to feel his way up to some more responsibility.

- [following on from the above point] There was also an element that the company itself was starting to change in a way that he did not care for. He felt that he had reached the end of his tenure on Dragon Age. He had written all the wizards and elves and demons stories that he had in him, so he was like, "I need to leave here". That wasn't him being like 'I need to leave BioWare", he was just feeling that he couldn't keep writing Dragon Age. Like, he could, he is a professional, he can write things because he's told to write them and make them as good as he can, as that's what you do as a professional. But it was like, he felt that he needed to move on, and he felt he would do a disservice to the project if he stayed. Patrick Weekes was another writer who was ready to step into his shoes, fresh, and who had only been working on the project for a couple of years at that point, so it was like, DG was set up to leave.

- The project he moved on to next was what became Anthem and it really wasn't his cup of tea. He wasn't gelling with the team very well, because they were mostly people from Mass Effect. There was always a bit of a weird internal rivalry at BioWare between people who worked primarily on Dragon Age and people who worked primarily on Mass Effect. It was honestly like two studios under one roof, two different cultures, and it just happened. DG doesn't think that much could have been done about this, BioWare did try to shift people between projects as much as possible to avoid that, but really it was up to the project management, like the project directors, and each one had a different style that engendered a different culture (Mark Darrah versus Casey Hudson, they just had very opposite styles and so their teams reflected that). DG really didn't seem to gel as well with the people on Anthem, he thinks they had very different goals. A lot has been written about Anthem and he doesn't want to badmouth them, there was a lot of good stuff about Anthem too and he was sort of torn. He felt like "this isn't really what I want, maybe it's time for me to look somewhere else".

- On Dragon Age: Dreadwolf: "I have been mostly surprised, just like everyone else. I know a little bit." There was a process before he left where they were like, "Okay, we need to dig everything that only exists in David's head and make sure we get it down on paper." They went through that process because there was a long time where there were lots of things that only existed in his head, like the Deep Deep Lore, until eventually they were like "That's a problem, we need to get this on paper." And DG was like "Alright, fine.". Ben Gelinas had been hired at the time to wrangle; they had all this online stuff, a lot of it was legacy, and no one knew which was which. Ben had to get rid of all the legacy stuff, codify their Wiki, make it organizable, and a lot of this was him dragging all the stories out of DG's head and getting them on paper, which was a fun process. BioWare never needed to ask DG stuff [about the lore of DA, after he left]. He said, "You know, a lot of times I'm sure they've gone in and changed stuff since I left, who knows, maybe the Deep Lore I once knew no longer applies".

- He has secret hopes for the new game but thinks BioWare would never do them, so he won't talk about it because he thinks Dragon Age fans would get up in arms about it. So he won't say it, and he knows BioWare won't do it because he remembers when he brought up his plan that he wanted to do this with the rest of the DA team including Patrick Weekes, and they were horrified, like "Noooo, we can't do that". And he was like, "Yessss, but we are, and so he knows that with him being gone they are never going to do it, "So, alright fine. That's fine." And he knows he has to let go. He said there will come a point when the next game comes out and it won't be what he would have made. It can't be, and he will have to reconcile the fact that it's no longer his baby. They may have made decisions about things that change the world and he'll be like, "But... iiieee..." And he can't help that, and neither can they. But it has to be. It has to become what Patrick Weekes and John Epler want to make it. And he is sure it will be great. The thing he will have to figure out eventually is will he play it? Would he enjoy it? This is really the question - Could he enjoy it for what it actually is, or would he just be constantly second-guessing it and not playing the RPG, but instead sort of judging it maybe. He doesn't know. He'll have to suss out his feelings when it comes out. He thinks that in the end, he will probably need to go to a private room, play it, and then not talk to anyone publicly about what his feelings are. Maybe he'll talk to Patrick about it.

- There were also a few other interesting topics he touched on, such as things about many slanted perspectives in the lore and known anecdotes like the origin story where James Ohlen handed him an atlas and asked him to create. But much of it was covered in the Bioware 25 Years book and by DG previously in the various Summerfall Studio DA playthrough Twitch streams.

The Strix @the_strix
What nobody tells you in AAA is that big projects break your heart. You see what it can be, you feel its visceral beating heart, and if you could just encapsulate that, it would have all the power in the world. And it never quite makes it there.

Must be the same for big movies.

Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes
Every time.

The great projects are the ones where the eventual player reaction is positive enough to let me forget everything that got cut for scope, or lost a key awesome bit and shipped at good enough.

Then I can celebrate what is instead of missing what could have been.

kari @boosterau
I will take a break from working on awesome single player games to play one of EA's most critically acclaimed, GOTY winning games.
Complete with a dog cameo.



John Epler @eplerjc
I wonder if I could make someone watch the opening screen for five hours if I told them there was a secret that only showed up at exactly the 300 minute mark.

Corinne Busche 🏳️‍⚧️ @corinnebusche
Since most of my teammates are out on holiday, I get to spend my day sipping coffee and playing the build ☺️




Playing... the build?

Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes
Be sure to choose (redacted) when you get to (redacted)'s (redacted) quest!

David Gaider @davidgaider
This one's available for everyone to listen to, now. If you couldn't check it out before, now you can!

Corinne Busche 🏳️‍⚧️ @corinnebusche
Watching GDQ [Games Done Quick] breaks my brain. Every time.

Think we’ll ever see Dreadwolf runs at GDQ?