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BioWare on Dragon Age
Our final interview with Ray Muzyka. Today we talk more Dragon Age - when we'll see Morrigan and kingdoms other than Ferelden.
Written by Andy Griffiths, 03 February 2010
GamerZines: Any plans to add new enemies to the DA universe?
Ray Muzyka: Well it's interesting the Awakening expansion touches on more about the darkspawn and they aren't as uniform or as straightforward as they seem. When you start to explore their back story or motivations, yes motivations even! You'll learn a lot more about where they came from and where they are going. As we expand the Dragon Age universe you'll learn about some of the other kingdoms and empires around the world that are really interesting places to explore in their own right. We've only touched on one country thus far in Dragon Age: Origins with Ferelden. The world is pretty vast and we have an I.P bible that maps out all these different places and cool locations you get to go to potentially and we'll build on that by working on future expansions in the DA franchise.
GZ: Spell combos were a fantastic idea, but once gamers found one they liked, there wasn't any motivation to experiment. Any plans to make combos easier to find or more useful?
RM: There were a few combos in Dragon Age: Origins and adding more is a possibility. The fun of the game is finding a combo that you like, tactically there are ones that are better for different situations so it's helpful to know a few. Players who take the time to learn those, talk to friends or go to social.bioware.com and share their experiences there, they'll have a richer experience overall. You don't have to do that if you want to stick with one combo, but it's a harder path because you don't have as many tactical options. You might be able to get through a lot of scenarios that way but the players that learn different combos and different possibilities will have more options.
GZ: Obviously Morrigan is a fan favourite and she's central to Awakening...Will we have to wait for Dragon Age 2 for her long awaited return?
RM: That would be telling! She is a fan favourite, I believe in every possible ending for the game she persists in some form so that might be a clue.
GZ: Any time-frame associated with all the Dragon Age DLC? You've mentioned two years in the past.
RM: Well that was an estimate and we have a plan that lasts for that amount. We view it as a franchise where we want to build expansions, standalone titles and DLC - everything from the small DLC up to full games. We'll have some move announcements about that later this year with Awakening being the next expansion of course.
GZ: The social site is growing every day and provides a vital way to communicate with your community. Do you think that's something you've gotten better at during the past twelve months?
PCGZine Issue 40
For our latest Dragon Age coverage, click here to download PCGZine Issue 40 for free.RM: We've learnt a lot from building community over the years, it started with Neverwinter Nights, where we talked about user generated content for the first time. We learnt a lot from that product - who makes content? What content do they like? What sort of discussions do people have in the community? We took all those lessons and put them into practice for the Dragon Age and now Mass Effect community. Social.bioware.com has been tremendously successful in terms of benefit to fans and unification of the community.
GZ: Obviously you used to be a very PC specific developer, are you now more open to developing for different platforms?
RM: Pretty much, we build our games for multiple platforms typically we consider them all to be equally important, they have to meet the target audience. We craft each user interface to keep the target consumers happy, so it's as great an experience as any other platform. We aren't satisfied until that goal is met.
GZ: With Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights you let other developers handle the sequels, but with Mass Effect 2 you've taken the reins. Will we now see BioWare keep all of their franchises in-house?
RM: Well I think both are possibilities. With Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights we didn't own those worlds, we were honoured to work with them and obviously we're working with Lucas Arts again with the MMO Old Republic, but for Neverwinter Nights and KOTOR it was a good opportunity to work with a great partner in Obsidian to build great sequels. But at the same time to return to Dragon Age and Mass Effect because we were working on those games way back then too. So it allowed us to build new IPs and focus on our own franchises.
GZ: With Old Republic a lot of people were surprised when the 2011 release date was announced. Are there a lot of lessons you're learning with MMO development which you hadn't thought about before?
RM: Well it was the first time we had announced a formal time-frame for the release date. Building an MMO is incredibly challenging and rewarding at the same time. This is an incredibly ambitious game which has 40 novels worth of content, we joke that its Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and beyond just in terms of the size of the game which is probably why it's such a challenge for the team in Austin that's building the game. I'm really excited about the potential of it - the first BioWare style story driven, fully voiced player and non-player characters, choices with consequence style MMO.
GZ: Obviously there's a huge gap between ME2 and Old Republic. Apart from DLC is there anything else BioWare has planned?
RM: We have a couple of products which we'll be announcing soon with a lot of cool ideas and fans will be able to continue their adventures in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age universe for quite some time.
GZ: So a BioWare flavoured E3 then?
RM: We might have more things to say before then.
Dragon Age coverage available in PCGZine Issue 40 - click here to download it for free!
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stavrosgz
29 April 2010 @ 11:21AM GMT