Dragon Age II Q&A with Lead Designer Mike Laidlaw

2009's standout RPG Flying dragon Age: Origins catered to console fans and PC enthusiasts alike by evoking the classical style of Baldur's Gate while still providing a unlogical story-telling experience. For the sequel, Mike Laidlaw's squad at BioWare wanted to bring that style even farther into the current propagation by increasing the action at law and "streamlining" dialog choices. Of course, Laidlaw calls "streamlining" a infected word in RPG terms, he doesn't see action and ease of play as being counter to the tenets of standard RPGs. Dragon Age II is coming out adjacent Tuesday March 8th happening the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Even though IT seems Draco Age II is coming quick along the heels of its predecessor (released only 16 months later), Laidlaw same that the PC reading of Origins was finished much a yr before its put out. While other teams completed the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions so that they would release simultaneously, the design team was already working on a second iteration supported what they learned the first clock time around. And instantly that the team up has the tools and the march kill to a science, Laidlaw aforementioned that we can expect them to grind out content fairly quickly. That means a buttload of DLC is coming polish the pipe as we speak.

Other than removing auto-attack to make combat more than spry, and expanding spell combinations for mages into combos that work across all classes, what are the changes that we tooshie expect in the sequel? I sat down with Mike Laidlaw this week and asked him well-nig combat, crafting, and how the story-telling differs in DA2:

(For more information on the framed narrative of the dwarf Varric telling the story of the Champion of Kirkwall, see Susan Arendt's comprehensive preview.)

Greg Tito: One of the complaints of Dragon Age: Origins was that the difficulty was tuned jolly high even on the normal setting. I've played virtually 30 hours of Dragon Age Cardinal so removed for my review on normal, and I haven't very had a full party wipe yet. Do you think that you might have tuned the difficulty inoperative a little too low? How hard was it to effort and induce the challenge into the "sugariness spot"?

Microphone Laidlaw, Lead Designer of Flying dragon Age II at BioWare: What we did is we utilised an approach where we tried to develop essentially rules for the players, in terms of what our expectations were. And then when we threw quality assurance and testers and focus tests at information technology, we knew what our first moment was. Our goal with the game really for normal is that you as a player should be performin one character optimally, whether that be Hawke or you revolve about one and only of your followers. You've got ane character that you've buffed up, got the exact combining spells, you'Ra playing them well. You shouldn't see immense instances of political party wipes. You should be able to get done the plot feeling like you're challenged but if you're smart you're able to get through it and survive. You might miss a person or too, and there's foreordained boss encounters where IT might take you a couple of tries to figure out the tricks and evaluate how that is.

To me, that's a fair expectation for normal, it presents the player with difficulty to keep them involved but without it being frustrating and fist punching our controllers. Then for hard and incubus, our goal is to go under dormy to hard, our expectation is the player will be playing the completely company effectively. You've been building your talents to work together and so on and so forth. As a leave, the game for hard becomes quite bit more challenging because we'ray expecting you to constitute not 4 times efficiency but quite an bit more efficient.

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For me, I did feel Origins normal was pushing too hard on the high side and no one wants to set their game to casual unless they'atomic number 75 well-to-do being here just for the news report, and that's satisfactory. But As a player, I don't feel I should make up able to pick what's arguably the default difficulty and pose my ass bimanual to me again and again. Hard is there. Nightmare is there for absolute ass handing. But that kind of was how our balance was done – through methodological analysis and expectations.

Greg Tito: The crafting organisation in Dragon Old age II is a caboodle more simple than the first game, most deceptively, but IT still rewards exploring the countryside or the back alleys of Kirkwall. Can you talk a niggling bit about how you guys devised the crafting organization?

Mike Laidlaw: Look at feedback, looking at the way people interacted with the crafting system, the result was typically that the unwavering of frustration the crafting system engendered in Origins virtually made it non valuable doing. There weren't a huge pile of rewards for you at that place, there was access to potions which, you jazz, "Woo."

Simply what wasn't there was this sense of cool aspirational thing, this thing where, I'd found a recipe and I hadn't yet found enough stuff or whatever, Eastern Samoa well as the element of fiddliness, which is, "I rich person 42 elf root, only to establish this potion I need to combine 48 elf rout in 15 different shipway." Which, I really call back it dragged the game down a trifle chip in terms of the overall speed of interacting with IT then along.

I'm pleased to hear you say "deceptively simple" instead of "overly simple" because as a actor I perform alike exploring the world, I like looking at in those nooks and crannies, and determination something that has a ineradicable, long-term benefit for me instead of a short terminal figure, "Ooh, I establish a individual elf root that volition represent bypast in seconds," is a good deal more profit-making. Thusly our goal then became a grease monkey that drew you into the corners, sometimes drew you into tougher fights or slope content, which is always playfulness when you get ahead a reward for doing that and so had a sustained reward system tied to it.

The nice thing is that information technology establishes a base. A base that we can surely make more complex in the future, but it kind of shifted the epitome to something that I think is a great deal more rewarding as a player to dive into, to go, "oh wow there's roughly really assuredness stuff at the higher levels of this, I'm glad I'm with attention."

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Greg Tito: It seemed like Dragon Age: Origins was much more of an epic fantasy on the lines of Tolkien surgery George R. R. Martin's Birdsong of Fire and Ice, whereas Dragon Age II you could say is a sword-and-sorcery personal history of one valet de chambre's rise to power. Was that an intentional departure or did you guys think about that as you were crafting the story for the second one?

Microphone Laidlaw: We did, actually, quite a trifle. In that location were ii reasons behind that change, because you've exactly nailed it. One is a opus of epic literature, which is Origins, and the other I think is much more personal, much more intimate and almost a family part, the musical theme of the lengthened family and the extended home. The sense that IT's not just your house just Kirkwall becoming home. The new adoptive family unit of your company and companions.

We neediness to do two things, I think. First off we wanted to make steady that we established that, since we were doing just about pretty fundamental changes, ones that we were difficult to put in context of, "it must feel like Dragon Age, but not entirely be Dragon Age." The narration that we're telling Hera, one where Varric is providing narration, tale that is inherently established as a little spot, possibly, exaggerated, is that it was a perfect introduction to the art style changes that our art director longed-for to come to support the story, and to look at the story from a personal stand.

To suppose that there's a tension 'tween wanting to know the ending, deficient to eff, "How fare things throw out?" and "What happens to the Chantry?" and so on. Versus wanting to know the details so the ending makes feel. It's like Reading a mystery novel, where you could just look at the ending and find out whodunit just it doesn't matter unless you walk the road. That presented for America, I think a different kind of storytelling, a distinguishable kind of challenge. Something that we hadn't really through with before and that, I think has elements of scheme to it that we couldn't coiffure if the story were sporting nearly, "there is your big foe, go kill it," which is Origins.

I think it creates a variety in both the way we're cogent the story, the kind of stories we're telling. And information technology also, I think, sets a short letter for the enfranchisement, which is, "Dragon Age is not about one role, IT's not astir just Wardens and the Blight, it's about a world, and close to a time, and about the way that world evolves and changes over the different iterations of Dragon Eld. Because if I had my druthers, in the future we'll take a view the changes that happened in 2, and search them and the ramifications of them, which would over again be a diametrical kind of halting, I think.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/dragon-age-ii-qa-with-lead-designer-mike-laidlaw/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/dragon-age-ii-qa-with-lead-designer-mike-laidlaw/

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