Dragon Age News Thread

Mike Laidlaw Retweeted
Raikko 🐈 @edfringe‏ @raikkocosplay

New profil pic by A&B Photography
@bioware @dragonage @mike_Laidlaw @bengelinas @patrickweekes @biomarkdarrah @davidgaider

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April Prime‏ @april_Prime
@mike_Laidlaw about 3 or so years ago I tweeted you nug anatomy - but I got better at it since then Having lots of fun with this!

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Mike Laidlaw‏ @mike_Laidlaw
So cool.

I hope they have some sort of in-office drinking game for this.

I honestly don't see why people would even ask to have the HOF show up in a game. After the way Hawke's cameo was ranted about, I doubt we'll ever see our former protags again in future games. I'll be happy as long as they are at least mentioned in codex entries.

Drink.

While I'm in favor of getting new protagonists each game, it comes at a cost. Every game a segment of the fanbase seems to feel alienated that their character isn't returning. Then if they are mentioned (or appear like Hawke), that gets criticized for not matching what their character would do.

BioWare needs to find a better way of wrapping up the previous protagonist's storyline if they intend on never using the character again. It seems like every game they leave the door open to the protagonist returning. With Trespasser it really doesn't even make sense NOT to have the Inquisitor return in some capacity in DA4 (unless the story goes in a completely different direction).

Again, I really enjoy getting a new character every game that I can make my own from scratch and not have any baggage from previous games. But I can sympathize with people who are frustrated with their characters because BioWare has never closed off storylines in a way that feels satisfying.

The amusing thing is that HOF's storyline is the most thoroughly closed off out of all DA protagonists - they can either die (and not just die, but allegedly have their soul destroyed), become rulers of Ferelden or ride into sunset and live the rest of their life how they want. Inquisitor would maybe be 2nd best - that is until Trespasser came along and went implying that they're not off the hook yet. I'd be deeply surprised if they don't show up again, just because of how story went.

PC Gamer‏ @pcgamer
Here's everything we want from a new Dragon Age game: bit.ly/2uxphrP

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Same. I thought adding the Golden Nug was a good idea, but I don't think NG+ is important either.

And I also like the Deep Roads, but I wouldn't mind seeing more environment variety and biodiversity underground.

Apart from that, I pretty much agree with the rest their points as well.

Specifically on this point,

Completely agree that it's not vital to a game but for people who enjoy multiple playthroughs BUT don't enjoy doing the exact same combat difficulty again NG+ typically allows for that. On the Dev facing side it's one of those things that can have its development cost drastically reduced if planned from the beginning.

Not to suggest that this will exist or not in whatever it is we're working on ( ) but I thought I'd drop a comment - I seldom get to reply in this thread because everyone just goes on about the story and all the mechanics/gameplay threads are stale .

Haven't read the article yet, but I will. But to the point of yours I highlighted... they strongly hint they'll do that in "ambient" conversation in the Descent DLC when a lost-then-found dwarf is discussed. This recovered dwarf has memories of all kinds of stuff and environments far down in the earth's crust... then the memories fade away. 

- For those interested in diving a little into the technical side of Frostbite...

Sébastien‏ @sebhillaire
My SIGGRAPH 2016 PBS presentation "PB Sky,Atmosphere&Cloud Rendering in Frostbite" extended course notes are online!
www.ea.com/frostbite/news/physically-based-sky-atmosphere-and-cloud-rendering

Talk by Sebastien Hillaire at SIGGRAPH 2016 in the Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course.

Video games are becoming more and more demanding in terms of visual quality and dynamism. Open world games may require lots of visually dynamic elements, such as time of day lighting and real-time evolving weather. The dynamic and often global nature of these elements make them difficult to simulate and render in real time. Sky, atmosphere and clouds are the three main components we need to simulate in order to achieve dynamic time of day and weather conditions.

In this document, we present the practical physically-based solutions we have researched and developed for Frostbite to simulate, combine and render these complex and dynamic participating media elements. We present background on volumetric rendering, and then dive into the choices and improvements we have made to render each of these elements, as well as the complex interactions between them. We will also describe how this fits into Frostbite's physically based shading framework as well as how artists visually author each component to achieve their vision.