Dragon Age News Thread

Unfortunately, Bioware hasn't really supported modding since NWN, and having voiced protagonists would make modding in character interactions EXTREMELY difficult.

DAO was like that, too. Being a multi-chaptered story doesn't prevent modding support. If people break their story, they can just repair/reload the vanilla game, just like when you break anything else when modding.

I'm still 100% for Bioware/DICE releasing a toolkit with the next DA. But DICE doesn't seem to want to allow people to know that much about Frostbite for various reasons.

I don't think this is the solution, because it is still showing the developer bias in regard to character sexuality. Being able to mod it doesn't change that. There is also the fact that modding is primarily a PC activity, which leaves out the majority playerbase of console users. In addition, there are many people like myself that don't feel comfortable modding the sexuality of a character*.

Modding is not a solution in the least.

Also, as stated, the voiced protagonist makes things more difficult. It's much easier to have a free love mod in DAO because you can just use all of the current lines spoken by the LI, which don't usually reference PC gender, while then allowing the PC access to all of the silent lines. The same can't be said for voiced protagonists, as shown with the DAI romance mods, because there will be chunks of missing dialogue. It's not a complete experience by any means.


* People can do whatever they want in their own games, but it's not something I do. I don't even mod character appearance to any great degree. The developers made them as they are and I want to respect that vision. I simply want them to have a broader vision with how they regard character archetypes in regard to sexuality. I, and others, want that to come from the devs themselves.

Emily (aka Domino)‏ pentapod
"Everything's so triangle-y!" #overheardintheoffice



[HASH]DAT

Are they talking about elves?

Crossed purposes. The solution I mentioned was in reference specifically to the problem posed by phoray and midnight tea . I wasn't addressing the problem of bias in character sexuality.

Consoles can and do have modding, but I will acknowledge that it's much easier to create and use mods on PC.

Credit for the artist that the OP didn't include 

Dare I say... Tevinter?

I dunno. Dwarven architecture has a lot of angles to it.

Also: Racist!

I'm asexual too and I really enjoy the romances as well! I don't mind the sexual content, I'm just not interested in sex when it involves myself I don't mind playing an Inquisitor (as long as he/she doesn't resemble me) who is interested in a sexual relationship with someone else.

John Epler @eplerjc
I know that some people see the phrase 'soft skills' as condescending but, personally, soft skills are 90% of my job.

There are people with better technical knowledge, some with better creative ideas about specific things, but what I do is use soft skills to find compromises and make sure everyone is focusing down on specific, tangible things.

It's about everyone coming away from that process feeling appreciated and invested - like they've been listened to - and that's hard.

Because, ultimately, not everyone will always get what they want, but you want them to feel like they're heard while they build the thing that you need to build. That's 'soft skills' to me.

Ultimately, that's why I like being a lead - because I can enable talented people to build something together that feels like a consensus project.

The best thing you can do as a lead is to set a vision that your team can buy in to, provide guidance where necessary, remove obstacles, and course correct as appropriate.

Building content is fun, and you shouldn't get away from it completely, but it's not your primary job anymore. You are a force multiplier - you can make your team work effectively and efficiently enough to more than compensate for your absence on that front.

Anyways, just some Sunday at noon thoughts on game dev specifically, but leadership in general. Being a lead is a very specific set of skills, and promoting the most technically competent on that basis alone is often not a good solution.

I just ate a handful of peanut M&Ms for lunch so take my advice at your own risk.



[HASH]DAT

To me, having to watch characters go around naked (especially in sex scenes) is just too voyeuristic.