Any questions for Bioware re: Dragon Age: Origins

[Steven W]

We have an interview lined up tomorrow with the lead designer of the Bioware RPG Dragon Age: Origins, said to be the spiritual successor to Balder's Gate.

If you have any sensible questions then feel free to post and I'll ask...

[kalniel]

Is there anything Bioware has learnt from working with a third party engine (UE3) on Mass Effect that they've been able to apply to Dragon Age?

What is the performance trade-off, if any, in soft-coding so much of the mechanics? How do you choose which things to soft-code and which to hard-code?

Origins is obviously the start of something, can you tell us how you plan to deliver future content? Will there be stand alone games, expansions, micro-content etc?

Will it be possible to plug in and out modifications in a manner similar to The Elder Scrolls games, or will changes to an area/module require saving the entire module as a separate file and loading that up instead?

Will save games keep a copy of/track changes to the current module and thus be at least partially tied to game version?

Are there Zombie kittens?

edit:
In this player's opinion, recent Bioware games have all suffered from trying to provide good gameplay AND good characters/conversations - they almost feel like two separate games and you can be all tense and tied up in the game play until you have a conversation at which point you're almost taken out of the game with lengthy exposition and multiple choices to go through if you want to learn everything, disrupting the pacing. Have you done anything differently with DA:O to enable people to learn all the lore and about the characters but without disrupting the flow so much?

What environments can we expect to encounter in DA:O?

[SmileyUK]

Will it have any co-op features, the best thing about BG2 (and all your other games tbh) was being abe to play though with the missus.

[cleaverlch]

Will it have ridable horses?

[kalniel]

I can answer the last two: No

[DevilMayCry42]

Nooooo!!

Well, methinks Kalniel hit pretty much (and a LOT more) of the points I would have asked...

[kalniel]

<whiney american accent>
So is this done already?

[Steven W]

Cheers guys, the interview was postponed! But rest assured it will happen next week, so any more Q's fire away.

[cleaverlch]

Apart from having dragon in it's name, is there anything else that stands out in the game?

[kalniel]

In a media where most of the interaction occurs ultimately on a flat 2d plane with one or two types of click, how do you give the player the impression that they're actually involved in the process? Is it possible to design quests and other challenges that aren't just dialogue or combat driven? Can you give any examples of world interaction?

[gilljoy]

how will magic work in the game?
how is the NPC conversations going to be done similare to mass effect or different?

[kalniel]

When designing a game like DA:O, what sort of order do you decide key elements like world-setting, gameplay story and engine design in? Do you produce a technology and then create a story to fit the capabilities, or does the story you want to tell lead technology development?

[kalniel]

Annnnd BUMP!

But rest assured it will happen next week

Did you do this Steven?

[CaseyV9]

I read the race you choose makes a big impact on way you are treated in game. So do choices you make have a big impact on the world around you and the people?

And multiple endings. In Fallout 3 Beth claimed hundreds of endings were possible but they lied.
So, multiple endings and if so how many?


I found Bauldur's Gate II an excellent story. I found from the start It was a big mystery about finding out who you are. What kind of story should I expect from Dragon age?

Is this interview going to happen?