Dragon Age News Thread

Chat said “I would love to see Shale again, but I’m not counting on it.” Mark replied “Shale is quantum.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever see broodmothers again. People trapped in statues, sure, I could see that. Desire demons would definitely get a redesign if they ever came back for sure. You could do something like the Fear demon in DA:I where it sort’ve, you could do it in conversation where it looks like something different to everybody. That might be an interesting approach. Yeah, or Desire demons mirroring the player character’s romance, if you had a romance then you’d know what would work with the character.”

“I don’t think the character artists are happy with the sort’ve giant bulldog look of mabari. I think if we got mabari again it would be [inaudible]”.

“My original plan for Joplin was to make a toolset, find a talented group of people and essentially uplift them into an indie studio and help them make a remake of DA:O. So if that had been the case, the combat would have been much more modern. If you were to Deadspace[-style remake] it, I don’t know what you’d do, because remaking DA:O with modern graphics and tac cam would be expensive. If you go to a remaster you could just up-res all the textures and call it a day, that’s the easy one, it’s easy to see what you’d do with that. If you’re doing a remake I’m not sure where you land. Like do you go more action RPG? DA:O was considered an action RPG in its day.”

Chat asked “Is there a plan to include any of the old main player characters in the next games?” Mark replied, “The problem with the Hero of Ferelden appearing in future games is they don’t have a voice and everyone else has a voice now, and they could very well be dead. So it’s sort of a difficult one. It was discussed for DA:I when you’re in the Fade, but. If you’re gonna bring them back you gotta figure out what to do, it could be done. Bringing them back now, I think what you would do is make it so that, ‘surprise! they’re still alive’ and they are mute now because of something to do with the Blight. I mean you’re kind of retconning that in, but you could 'a wizard did it’ into making them mute. The other thing would be, their appearance is definitely lost, so you would have to recreate them. But that’s already been done, we did that with Hawke.”

Chat commented around this point, “Same problem with DA:D and the Inquisitor, but it would be weird if they didn’t have any role at all.” Mark said, “With the Inquisitor, at least you can just assume that the events of Trespasser happened whether they played it or not. So they have no arm.”

“The Dead Space remake is designed to feel like the original, not be the original. I don’t know that you can do that with DA. You can remaster, in which case it is the original, just pretty. You can remake, but I think remaking and making it feel like the original isn’t really possible. So if you make a remake it’s more likely to feel like DA:I or like whatever DA:D ends up feeling like, more than it is to feel like DA:O. One of the reasons why it hasn’t happened is, Mass Effect is like, if you find a partner that knows how to do Unreal, and there’s a million of them, then you know what you need to do. It’s on early Unreal 4, especially ME1, so it needs to be updated, so you need to touch a bunch of stuff and find stuff that’s been lost. You know the best version of the combat, so you update everything to that. With DA:O it’s like you could just up-res the textures, but first of all there’s no partners out there, basically, that know how to use Eclipse. The pitch was to take DA:O and DAII and you basically remake them in Frostbite and you make the 'Champions Trilogy’, you retcon it into a trilogy. Like it’s three different player characters, 'this is their rises’, and you remake it.”

“There was some appetite after Joplin was gone, there became some appetite for releasing the toolset for Frostbite, but the two things didn’t line up.”

“I like Absolution, I feel like it could have used one or two more episodes but you know, I get why it didn’t get that. Oh yeah, it’s definitely a love letter [to DA]. I can’t imagine someone watching Absolution if they didn’t know anything about DA and it making a ton of sense, because it’s talking about an 'Inquisition’ as if they’re the good guys, and the Tevinter Imperium isn’t really set up as being that bad until it suddenly is really bad, so I think you kinda need to know what’s going on coming in. Netflix is kind’ve throwing a lot of things at the wall to figure out what works. Disney is eating their lunch and Disney controls all the IPs.” Chat here said “The sad thing is Netflix is notorious for cancelling things that are loved.” Mark said “It’s possible that Absolution was relatively cheap, but Netflix’s track record is, that unless it was very cheap, I can’t imagine us [inaudible]. I don’t know the numbers on Absolution. I mean they set it up to make it so they could do a second season, but yeah, I don’t know if they were.”

“Absolution would have been a relatively cheap show but that doesn’t, so like that’s the weird thing, Netflix will do multiple seasons of things. It’s like a cost-benefit analysis. Something with lower ratings that was cheap enough could get a second season versus something that was really popular but cost a lot could get cancelled. Absolution was pretty cheap, but I don’t know if it was cheap enough.”

[The Hair Question ] Chat said “One day we will get a BioWare game with good hair. One day.” Mark replied, “I hope they have good hair this time. I think they’ll have good hair. There’s some really cool tech in Frostbite now that FIFA is using for pretty good hair, so might be expensive, but.”

[please note this video streamed 4 months ago] “I’ve been pretty inaccurate on my predictions for DA:D news. I mean I would be shocked if they don’t plan to do something for EA Play 2023, but then there would be no reason for them to do anything before then, to try to make their own event, but. Yeah, I would say that, if they’re planning to release this year [2023], which would still be my expectation, they’ll announce at, they’ll have stuff at EA Play and probably date, so they can open up preorders in Europe. If they’re still concerned about their date then they won’t date. Normally EA Play would be in June, same time as E3. Do we have confirmation of an E3 this year?” Here chat commented, “Could you see them potentially showing up at something like the rumored Microsoft conference?” Mark replied, “It’s possible, the problem with going to a console-specific conference is it’s implying things that you don’t necessarily want to imply. If you’re a really big game like GTA or COD or something then it’s fine, but for something like DA you never want to even softly imply, you have to be really careful about potentially softly implying that this is a Microsoft exclusive or a Sony exclusive. They could do it, if Microsoft made the deal sweet enough, there’s always that possibility. But it’s a lot easier for the really big games, you’re never gonna be confused that GTA is Microsoft exclusive or that COD is a Sony exclusive, but you could make that mistake with DA, and they’d want to be very careful not to make that happen. But it could happen, but I doubt it.”

Chat asked “So for whoever ends up giving the live presentation - would you have any advice for them? I imagine it’s a stressful time.” Mark replied, “Live, it is stressful, it’s interesting though because the press conferences, the stage press conferences, you have a live audience but it’s a lot quieter than say doing a PowerPoint presentation to a roomful of say 50 people. So in a way it’s a lot easier, but you have to kind’ve get over the fact that there’s 3000 people in the room with you. But if you can then it’s easier than a normal presentation, because you can just practise and get smooth. Now EA practises a lot for their press conferences, which is good if you’re nervous, but it does have a tendency to kind’ve squeeze a lot of the authenticity out of the presentation style. You can really see that in the Anthem one where it’s me and Casey Hudson. We practised that like fifty times. Maybe not fifty times. At least a couple of times. It’s not a good format. It takes a format that’s supposed to be authentic and on the fly and turns it into something where all of the spontaneity has been squeezed out of the thing. I do think authenticity is the key, but the problem with authenticity is sometimes you get someone like at TGA saying that the Oscars are garbage. So EA would rather have 20% less authenticity, with 50% less chance of someone going massively off-script. I actually don’t agree, I think it’s the wrong tradeoff, but they would rather take the safe route.”

Chat said “I feel like the Warden and Darkspawn story arcs have taken a back seat to the templars and mages. Do you think it’s likely they will ever revisit the Blight threads?” Mark replied “I think the Blight will be probably relevant.”

“I would be very surprised if the Architect showed up in DA:D. They could collapse the quantum of him though, if they wanted to bring him back, they would just do that. If he was killed, he body-hopped, same as Corypheus did. They could do that. I don’t think they will.”

“Isabela is quite quantum.”

“Boss design like the Mother in Awakening definitely would not fly today.”

“Any of the books that happen after a game are canon only so much in that they, the events that happen in them are treated as happening, but they aren’t necessarily treated as ‘whose alive and whose dead’, for canon. But things that happen before stuff, like The Calling, I think are treated as fully canon. Like I think Absolution will be treated as canon, like Fairbanks will be dead. There’s nothing in there that violates any possible worldstate. But sort’ve like, from a canon perspective, there’s sort’ve like several layers. There’s, what is, base canon, in terms of what we choose, like fully canon would mean it applies, is canon for everyone. Whereas there’s also the, like, what is the default, what is default canon, what is written to. But if things that can potentially be violated by different playstates, the writers will tend to try to write away from them so that we don’t suddenly have something happening that violates your playthrough. So something that can be true for everyone is more likely to occur. Something that might happen for someone else, I mean, obviously that’s been violated, like Leliana shows up even if she’s dead in DA:I, but that’s why it’s lampshaded. So that if you kill her, it’s explained why she’s alive. Masked Empire is fully canon for the same reason, because it doesn’t have any way of violating anything. Doesn’t mean that some things that are presented aren’t recontextualized, but.”

“RPGs don’t demo [at conferences and events] super-well because they require so much context. The best I ever saw honestly was probably, I saw Skyrim once at an E3 but I didn’t play it. They’d set it up in such a way that when you were standing in line to play it or just kinda walking by you could see other people playing it. I actually didn’t play it at that E3. Standing there for five or ten minutes watching other people play it was probably the best RPG demo I’ve ever seen, because you were distant from it, so you kind’ve accepted a little bit less context. So you kinda want that, but you can’t really get that, so you either ended up doing what BioWare usually does which is a behind-closed-doors 45 minute demo, which gives the context, but you can only get a certain number of people through it. Or you have something that’s really tight for stage. When demo-ing an RPG you need to set up the story, the conflict, but you also need to somehow sort’ve establish how this plays. With a shooter you kind’ve know. Do you show character generation in an RPG demo? You never do but kind’ve people care about that a lot so you kinda should.”

“One of the best [demos] from a story perspective that I ever saw was Mass Effect 2, it showed the beginning of the game, the bit with you walking through, the bit where Shepard dies, and showed it as if it was the end of the game. So a big misdirection. But I think that you kind’ve have to do some sort’ve, and I guess we did something, not as effective, but kind’ve the same in DA:I where we showed Future Redcliffe essentially as an ending of the game or as something that would happen.”

“The PAX demo of DA:I was the game as we understood it at the time. A lot of stuff we showed at PAX ended up not getting into the final game, so people get mad when demos misrepresent the game, but sometimes that’s happening because the game changes after the demo. Not because it was a lie, it was the truth at the moment, it’s much more likely to happen with an RPG than it is to happen with other things. With shooters you might get something like big fidelity degradation but you’re unlikely to get significant changes to mechanics.”

“Hira in Absolution starts out being really bad at levitating/flying on a disc], and then gets really good in like a later episode, I feel like she should’ve, or I guess it’s in the same episode, she’s way better all of a sudden at levitating, at flying.”

Chat asked “Why are there no Desire Demons in DA:I?”. Mark said “I think they need a visual redesign and there wasn’t time for them, and they’re not, they require a combat rethink in terms of how they’re used in combat, and a visual redesign, so it was basically just de-prioritized.”

[please note this video streamed 4 months ago] “I’m not worried about DA:D not having been at TGA 2022. I mean they’re doing it probably because they don’t wanna date themselves. Their earliest launch date would basically be end of this year [2023], so it’s rational for them not to be at TGA 2022. I assumed they would be mainly because of just the way the marketing campaign has gone, but the fact that they aren’t is actually a strong signal that they’ve decided to regain control of their marketing campaign, which is actually probably smart. Yeah, they’re not out of beta yet.” Chat commented here “I’m kinda relieved to hear that because I was afraid they would push the game beyond Q4 24.” Mark said, “No I don’t think so. For them to go to TGA 2022 would have meant having full gameplay and they probably just didn’t wanna polish it up. I should’ve clued in when they released a whole cutscene from the game on DA Day 2022 that they weren’t gonna be at TGA 2022. That was a pretty strong signal. For them to do both wouldn’t have been. There’s no way that Geoff Keighley was gonna let them put that cinematic trailer on the stage at TGA 2022. So what they have is this sort’ve, too little for TGA 2022 but it’s a big drop for DA Day, so that was the thing that I missed.”

[following on from the previous point, and when chat was discussing feeling drip-fed] “It’s just, I mean, for reasons that make sense for the project but less sense for the marketing. DA:D has been announced for a very long time. You wouldn’t voluntarily announce a game so early if you didn’t have external reasons. Also, harder to cancel an announced game.”

“Cullen’s story is done in DA:I.”

“We’ve recast people before, for sure”

Chat said “I feel like DA fans have this tendency to cling extremely tightly to existing characters. Like, there will be a ton of characters introduced in DA:D that we will fall in love with, and not really miss people from previous games.” Mark replied, “Yeah, you’re right about that. That’s exactly what happens, is people want stories with the characters that they know to continue but once they feel that they’ve seen new characters then they’re a lot less concerned.”

“I mean the general rule is, you don’t bring back followers who are romances or who could be dead. So Cullen kind of doesn’t meet any of the criteria for coming back. The quantum on DAII characters is really high. I guess there are a lot that don’t die, but.”

“My feeling on Absolution, I think everyone else is a bit too under-played and Qwydion is a bit too over-played. If you like brought her done one notch and everyone else up one notch it would be okay. But yeah, she does stick out a little bit for sure.”

Chat asked “Was there any thought given to bereskarn in DA:I?” Mark replied, “I think the problem is the artists don’t really like the visual design of bereskarn. I think there’s a cool model to be had there, but they just don’t have it at the moment. I think there’s a general desire to move away from just generic wilderness creatures as combatants, like wolves and bears and stuff, so maybe they’ll make a reappearance.”

Chat asked “Who does everyone think the ‘default’ Divine is?” Mark said “Interesting question, I don’t know.”

Chat asked “Do you think that the Architect will make an appearance in DA:D?” Mark replied, “I don’t suspect, I think they’ll let the Architect just be, the place for the Architect to appear was DA:I, I don’t think he will appear in DA:D. I think the reason why he doesn’t appear in DA:I is because he could be dead.” Chat commented, “Wouldn’t he have the same powers as Corypheus though, and just come back?” Mark replied “Well that’s true, that’s a good point. I don’t know that we established that by then or not but I don’t know, maybe. He could’ve linked himself to a, could’ve been body-hopping.”

Chat said “We saw Hira in Absolution using a flying magic disc. Do you think they will implement that in DA:D as a new form of magic?” Mark said “Yeah, I don’t know. It was interesting because when Hira uses it the first time she uses it to lift someone else, which is sort’ve how I imagined it working, but then she actually flies with it later. I don’t know if that was just poetic license given to the anime creators or if it’s an actual plan for going forward. It’s definitely presented as quite an awkward way to fly.”

Chat asked “Can you talk about DA lore? Are we ever going to meet the Evanuris? Was there a clear story arc planned?” Mark replied, “The story planning for DA is always broad strokes, there’s always a goal in mind but they try to leave as much open as possible to allow it to flex and bend as they need it to.

“Nope I’m not covered by any NDAs.”

Chat asked “Did you like what Mike Laidlaw developed with Joplin? I know they changed it with Morrison. But it’s starting to sound very similar.” Mark said, “Honestly, Morrison didn’t drift that far from Joplin, from a story perspective. Some of the stuff around, that was being investigated around like cons [heists?] and things, wasn’t really working, we were probably within one month of having to cut that feature anyway. So I think story-wise, you know, it’s been re-worked, it always gets re-worked, but I think it bears a striking similarity to what was in Joplin.”

“If you brought back Desire demons you would definitely do male and female versions. But I think they need a dramatic re-imagining.”

“Any stuff in Tevinter Nights has a possibility of being relevant going forwards for sure.”

Chat brought up griffons. “Flying affects everything in the game, it’s a major thing to deal with. I do not think they’ll do flying. Because Anthem is built around flying. DA shouldn’t be. Having the griffons be in a cutscene or like something you use in a specific plotpoint, sure, but actual gameplay, the seems pretty unlikely. For the same reason that you don’t see aravels moving around. I think animating someone on the back of a griffon flying would actually be pretty complicated to make look good. Not that it couldn’t be done but yeah, that’s a thing. ‘I have rockets in my butt’ [like jump-jets in ME:A] is a little easier. I think as-presented the griffons are a, they care a single person when they’re flying, but again, I don’t think we’ll see them as a mount.”

“Yeah, DA:D is on Frostbite.”

[please note this video streamed 5 months ago now] Chat wondered about seeing a trailer or BioWare showing stuff at DA Day 2022/TGA 2022. Mark said “Oh yeah, they wouldn’t show combat at this early stage, but they might show some levels. If they have a really cool compelling cinematic that doesn’t, that’s sort’ve either a mislead on the story or something like that, I could totally see them showing a cutscene”. “Yeah, I don’t know what we’ll see at TGA [2022], I think we’ll see something though. They won’t show combat, not for reals, it’s too early. If they show plot it’ll be something that is not spoiler-tacular.”

[please note this video streamed 5 months ago now] About release date, Mark said “Oh yeah, for sure late 2023 is the earliest. There’d be no reason to launch anything earlier than that. Q1 would be too early/soon. Q2 is full of sports titles for EA. So Q3 [inaudible]”.

Chat said “I am fine with any and all cameos, but I am not holding my breath for Sera and Vivienne to have anything more than a passing mention.” Mark said, “I don’t think they’ll worry, if they want to put Vivienne and Sera in DA:D they’ll do it. I don’t think either of them have any quantum endings do they? Oh that’s true, Vivienne can be Divine.”

“The Darkspawn Chronicles DLC is canon-ish but definitely yeah, the team reserves the right to ignore it and has.”

“I don’t know why they’ve steered away from the tree ents [sylvans]. They could come back. They’re nobody’s favorite, so they just kinda fall down the priority list. If there was a good reason for them they could easily come back. You could have made a sylvan off the Behemoth rig from DA:I, but that would be weird and not really match the sylvans from DA:O. I think the way you would do it actually would probably be to build something off the giant rig, but again it would be different, so you’d really wanna make a custom rig.”

“I’m pretty sure that the [in-world] Dragon Age will be an age that lasts a suspiciously long time, as long as there are Dragon Ages being made. I don’t think they will drop ‘Dragon Age’ because it’s such an identifiable part of the franchise”.

Chat asked “Do you see DA continuing as a franchise after DA:D?” Mark replied, “Oh yeah, I don’t think they’re done with DA.”

Chat asked Mark’s thoughts on the quantum state of Kieran. “I think they’re gonna collapse Kieran down. Probably what actually happens is they’re just gonna push Kieran into the background.”

Chat commented on being sad that the Inquisitor won’t be the main character going forwards. “I mean the main character doesn’t have an arm, kind’ve makes some of the classes a bit tricky”.

Chat commented that any quantum character basically guarantees that we’re only going to see a cameo of them going forward. “Yeah, if they’re quantum they’re going to be pushed into the background for sure.” Chat then mentioned Sera. “I don’t think Sera’s quantum, or not very quantum.” “Yeah, we don’t typically bring back romance options in major roles because they, you have to sort’ve deal with that quantum. That’s not the worst thing”.

“I wouldn’t expect to see Shale again because they are so custom, but they’re also quantum aren’t they, can’t they die in Orzammar? Like if they were building a golem rig for some other reason then I could see it. Everyone is quantum basically. That is why actually so often followers do not reappear, is because everything is pretty quantum”.

“I don’t think we’ll see something like the broodmother again, I don’t think it fits with the tone that the game is striving for anymore. The stuff before the broodmother, that I could, that sort’ve stuff, that kind’ve creepy tone stuff, I could see that being something that occurs again. But the broodmother itself, or something like that, I’d be surprised.”

Chat asked, “How canon is Darkspawn Chronicles? Did that team just go nuts and completely leave the map or is ‘Wade is a Desire demon’ actually a lore nugget?” Mark replied, “Darkspawn Chronicles obviously can’t be canon.” “That’s a valid question. I suspect at this point the team would treat it as non-canon so anything that’s revealed there would be considered completely non-canon, but I mean I would’ve at the time assumed that any lore revealed in it would be considered canonical assuming it was something that happened before the branch from reality. But I think they would probably at this point treat it as totally non-canon”.

Chat asked, “Why couldn’t y'all hire the DA:O Warden voice actors? I heard the voicing is why they didn’t include the Warden in DA:I with Hawke”. Mark replied, “The Warden is a quantum character in DA:I, the answer as to what to do about the Warden from a voice acting perspective is a very open question. Do you leave them silent? Do you voice them? All of the answers are not great. I think if you’re gonna have them in a relatively major position, you better have an answer to that question.” “Yeah, I suppose you could hire back the voice actors. It’s a lot of different voices, so that can become a problem as well. I don’t know that people consider those exactly as the voice of their character. I mean I certainly don’t. I mean yeah, they are technically, but. Yeah, it could be done.” Chat commented here that “literally any option is going to disappoint someone”. Mark said “Yeah, that’s my feeling as well. No matter what you do with the Hero of Ferelden in another game, it’s going to be problematic. You know, if you brought the Hero back you could just keep them silent and you could actually even give a reason, like 'oh yeah, they’ve survived but the Blight has taken their vocal chords’, or whatever”.

Chat then mentioned again the Hero of Ferelden having many voices in DA:O. Mark paused to explain “The problem of why they’re probably not gonna use the voice actors from DA:O. First of all, there are a lot of them which means you have to bring back those actors. The Hero of Ferelden is a very quantum character, might be married, might be alive, might be dead, or might be not married. The other reason is that people are basically used to their character being quiet for all of the conversations, so if you bring them back and voice them there’s going to be some people that are going to be upset by that. So it could happen, but not as a major perspective, it would be as a cameo at most so that’s what I would say is, that it’s unlikely but it could happen. But I doubt they would just hire these voice actors back, it’s too many and it would require too much wrangling, so there you go.”

“The reason why Hawke doesn’t do much in DA:I is for the same reasons, we don’t know how you built your character, we don’t wanna have them do something iconic that isn’t appropriate to the way you built your character.”

Chat said, “Ideally, BioWare would release something before DA4 where we can create our Hero, Champion, and Inquisitor ahead of time, and then just import them in”. Mark said, “Because the character creators have changed so much it has been discussed to add something to the Keep. I’m not sure if they’re going to maintain the Keep or not, but add something into the Keep that would be a character creator for previous games to kind’ve bring them up to standard. I think that’s a good idea, even if they don’t end up showing up in the game, just to have sort’ve standardized the look for everybody. Yeah, but I don’t know if they’re gonna do that to be clear. There was a conversation about it, but I don’t know whether that’ll actually happen, because that requires getting something that either runs Frostbite in a web browser or a standalone application to make sure it looks like how it’s supposed to look.”

Chat said, “A person who decides to pick up DA4 who hasn’t played the other games is unlikely to start up from DA:O and play all the games AND DLC before DA4 to get hype.” Mark replied, “No, I wouldn’t, certainly the Dragon Age team is not building [DA:D] with the assumption you’ve played all the games previously. That’s always a concern, that people think they have to do that and then it just closes the door to new people entering the franchise.” “I would expect DA:D probably won’t even expect much DA:I knowledge given the time between games.” Chat said “Most people who will pick up DA4 as their first Dragon Age game probably won’t even use the Keep”. Mark replied, “Yeah, the expectation is that most people would not use the Keep, but that’s actually not so bad because there’s lots of, we know what the default player looks like for DAII and DA:I, we have canonical choices so that’s not too problematic”. “Some people definitely will play everything but you don’t want that to be a barrier to new people playing the game”.

Chat asked why Marvel’s Avengers and Fallout 76 are still being supported yet Anthem isn’t. Mark replied, “Two reasons, but they’re basically the same reason. EA is definitely not something that likes to support things that they consider to be failures. But the other reason, which is kind’ve the same thing, is that because BioWare has so much going on, there is a tendency, there’s always a lot of pressure to move people onto the biggest need, and Anthem is not the biggest need. If BioWare was allowed to add fifty to sixty people that wouldn’t be the case, well at least it wouldn’t be in the short-term, but it isn’t because EA is very cost resistant, resistant to spending costs, so it’s really about corporate structure and culture than anything else. If you look at something like Battlefield or other games at EA that have failed and then recovered, it’s usually because the studio that made them literally had nothing else going on so the only option was to let them fix it or to basically shut the studio down. In the case of BioWare, there’s always something else they could be working on and as a result, when things don’t go as well people tend to get moved onto those other things. That’s essentially what happened with Mass Effect: Andromeda as well, though in the case of ME:A there was also pressure from Jade Raymond’s studio to steal all those people, which is what ended up happening. So it’s really about the approach to these things at a corporate level.”

Chat asked, “Can you make a video about development hell and how games with long production cycles like Dragon Age Origins avoid that?”. Mark replied “The short answer to how do games avoid development hell long production cycles is basically that they don’t. It’s probably worth a video to talk about what happens in the middle of long projects, but the short answer is what often happens is that they spend some period of their time kind’ve going in a big circle because the time is so long that projects can get lost. DA:O added and took out multiplayer three different times. Anthem spent a ton of time not being able to admit that it was making Destiny. ME1 spent a ton of time trying to figure out what it wanted its combat to feel like”.

Chat asked, “What do you feel about the revival of the Griffons?”. Mark said, “I think it’s going to be hard to pay griffons off in gameplay but I’m glad that they are back, it’s an interesting addition”.

On the reason why Dragon Age has so many multimedia things e.g. books, comics, compared to other IPs: “I mean Witcher has tons. BioWare actually has a dedicated business development group which looks for opportunities to make money with the IP”.

Chat asked, “Do you think they’ll ever explore why Dwarven Darkspawn can use magic?” and Mark replied “Maybe, I doubt they will explore that too much. I mean it’s sort’ve, the question is is like, are genlocks all dwarves, or are they some dwarves and some ‘something coming from a broodmother that aren’t really dwarves anymore’. I guess that would be one out.”

“I imagine that the only way that broodmothers would remain in the game [DA:O] would be in a remaster. In a remake I’m sure they would make changes, I would be very surprised if they didn’t. But in a remaster you can get away with a lot more. I think they would change their appearance. Also, there’s been an effort to unify the look of the darkspawn a lot more, so.” “You’re never gonna see broodmothers, probably in any form, in the mainline games, definitely not in the form that they’re in in DA:O. I don’t think you’ll ever see a broodmother again. I guarantee that you’re not seeing broodmothers in any future Dragon Age thing. I would be very confident in that statement.”

Chat commented “Male Desire demons on the other hand” and Mark replied that there is a concept art out there for male Desire demons.

Chat asked “If we won’t get Broodmothers, do you think we’ll get the original Archdemon design? The Tentacle Monster one?”. Mark replied “Probably not the tentacle version for an Archdemon. I could see that being created as another monster or high-level boss, but probably not as Archdemon because the, sort’ve, dragon as being part of an Archdemon is too intertwined in the lore at this point.”

Chat commented, “I just hope the Mythal death in DA:I was a fakeout”. Mark said, “One thing with Mythal is that, Kate Mulgrew, as her stock has risen and fallen, her price has gone all over the place, so ‘is Mythal gonna show up?’ decisions will be partially based upon if she’s priced herself out of the market or not. Though I think she actually was sad, based on the DA:I stuff, so maybe she’d be willing to do it on a little bit of a lower price. But I actually don’t know, because is Orange Is the New Black still on the air? Her price may have come down again.” “I mean definitely you can see, sometimes characters disappearing is because the voice actor became a pain to work with, or became expensive, those are definitely factors, no question.”

Later on this topic chat asked “Would you say Laura Bailey is still in the affordable VA space? I know she’s become a mega popular/busy thanks to CR, but she’s always been VA first afaik.” Mark replied, “Depends, you can always sort’ve write less for them, if you can do it in one session you can kind’ve afford anybody, it’s a question of how much they’re gonna show up.”

Chat asked, “Do you agree with the criticism some people have that DA lore focuses too much on elves?” Mark said “Yeah, kind’ve, I think it sort’ve, it’s not on purposes, the elves, they just kind’ve ended up sneaking into everything it seems like. I think there’s a recognition of the elves kind’ve being too present.” “I don’t think elves are going to disappear, I just think that they don’t necessarily need to, one of the things that sort’ve constantly happened is that the stories ended up presenting the elves as they keep sort’ve having them make just the worst decisions. So I suspect there’s a goal to maybe make them not do that and then that would allow them to sort’ve rebalance with everyone else. It’s also harder to get, dwarves kind’ve require a, they’re either harder to integrate in, because they’re off [over there], they’re not just in a forest, you gotta go into a hole to talk to them, so they kind’ve always are gonna be less present unless you’re doing something in the Deep Roads or Orzammar.”

“It’s always hard to kill off the protagonist. Always gonna get people who are against that but y'know [shrug]. I can certainly see the argument for killing off the Inquisitor in Trespasser”.

Chat asked, “Would it be more likely that we would be able to get answers to the more deep-fan stuff like The Calling etc by assuming those would be in DLC and not the main game of DA:D?” Mark replied “I don’t imagine that there’s gonna be a ton of, it’s possible that you’re gonna see that sort’ve stuff in DLC but I don’t know what the live service plan is gonna be for DA:D to be honest because that was definitely, has been in flux over the course of DA:D, that’s for sure.”

Chat asked, “Have you been asked about The Last Flight and your thoughts on the Griffons?”. Mark replied “My thoughts on griffons? I mean, I don’t think that we’re gonna see griffons as things you can ride. Flying is a gameplay feature that you better be really sure about before you add it into your game. But will we see some griffons? I think probably in some form, I mean the reason to put them in the novel is to reintroduce them to the setting”.

Chat discussed titans, lyrium, and theories and speculation about them. Mark added “Definitely not gonna comment on any of the titan and lyrium and so on, though, I mean things can and probably will have changed since I left. I don’t want to accidentally say something that ends up not being reality”. A chat user asked “I thought the franchise had a roadmap or something”. Mark explained that there are roadmaps, but those are definitely open for manipulation and adjustment as required by the storytelling of the game, and that this is the main reason for the unreliable narrators. It gives that flexibility as required. “You can’t really believe anything any one person says, they all have their own motivations, just because someone says it doesn’t make it true”.

Chat asked, “Are the Devs planning on doing anything more with the Keep?” Mark replied “I don’t know what the current plans with the Keep are. The reason the Keep exists in DA:I is to handle the generation switch, so that’s still a relevant concern, but it was maintained by a separate group, and I’m not sure that that separate group completely exists anymore. It is not an insignificant amount of work to keep the Keep up to date. I like the idea as it removes the import requirement and so on but it’s certainly not free. So maybe?” He also added “What was the change to the user agreement? I know that a whole bunch of stuff from around DA:I-time needed to be updated because of changes in European privacy laws, that’s why The Last Court [came to an end]”.

Chat asked, “Think we will ever get answers on Magic or The Maker?”. Mark replied that he thinks we will get some answers on magic, or at least additional context, but on the Maker, “No, I don’t think that’s ever going to be answered. I think the setting’s much better off with the Maker being undefined and potentially existing and potentially not existing.”

Chat asked “Will we ever find out wtf lyrium ghost Leliana really is?” and Mark said “On that front, my guess is no”.

Chat asked, “Are the people that worked on the character and the dialogues are still working at BioWare?” Mark replied “Which character are you asking about? Because the answer’s probably yes”.

“I would be incredibly surprised if we did see Desire Demons [in future games], but possibly. I saw some updated concept art.”

Chat asked “Do you think we are going to be able to spend points on attributes again in DA4 or nah?” and Mark replied “I don’t know if they’ll do attribute points, I suspect not…?”

Chat asked “Do you think DA4 would be able to read DA:I saves since they’re both using Frostbite?” and Mark replied “Oh, it doesn’t matter, the reading the save games is nothing to do with Frostbite. The reason why Inquisition uses the Keep instead of save game reading is because of cross-generational stuff, we didn’t want people locked to a platform. So I think it’s quite possible that DA4 will use the Keep. I don’t think they’ll do save game reading, because the Keep exists already”. Chat followed up, “I wonder if DA:I was made to even create plot flag data at all, what with the Keep already being a cross-game option” and Mark said, “DA:I does store plot-flags in their save games, but yes, the intention was always to store them in the Keep, not to mine them out of save games”.

Chat asked, “Would Oghren be done differently today?” Mark replied, “I do think Oghren would be done differently. He either needs to be more serious, as he’s always treating his trauma with alcohol, or he needs to be somehow made more comedic. But I don’t know that BioWare would make a character like Oghren again”

They won’t drop the name Dragon Age even if they switch in-world ages. Chat asked “DA5 should wrap up the Dragon Age series, and then any new game should be set centuries ahead of the Dragon Age”. Mark replied, “I mean if you wanted a massive reboot you could set it a long time in the future, have a new Dragon Age, that they’ve called it that for some reason, but I don’t think there’s a need for that.”

Chat asked, “Are you devs (former devs as well) hyped and excited about the entire lore and world of DA like we are?”. Mark replied that the devs do get into the lore but that they actually often lean into the community to make sure that they aren’t violating their own lore (because there’s so much of it). “You guys have done a much better job of curating it than we have to be honest”.

A comment in chat said, “I think it’s important to know that as DA4 ramps up, the fandom is going to change”. Mark replied “for sure, definitely, as the marketing picks up for a game you draw in more people. Also, BioWare is carrying some Anthem people that picked up that never left, that has definitely changed the tenor of the fandom to some degree”.

For dialogue, the reason why the paraphrase is different to what Hawke actually says is that they found in ME1 that if they just made them the same, it felt like everything you as the PC said was being repeated because you had already read it in your head and then it got said out loud. This does sometimes lead to disconnect as sometimes what Hawke ends up saying isn’t really what was implied by the paraphrase. Mark said, “That’s why we’ve been experimenting with different tonal stuff in different games, to give you hints as to more clarity as to what will actually be said”.

Chat asked “What is your opinion on the rewrite/corrections of a lot of the lore from DA2 in subsequent media?’. Mark replied "My opinion is that you should try to be respectful of everything that came before as much as possible. I don’t like that some of the comics and things have enforced some sort’ve standard canon so strongly. I recognize that, especially coming out of DA:O, there’s not much choice, but I feel like we could have done a bit of a better job there”.