Speaking with… Mike Laidlaw, Lead Designer on Dragon Age 2
In this week’s edition of Speaking With… Tom Wallis interviews Mike Laidlaw, Lead Designer on the forthcoming Dragon Age 2, the sequel to the massively popular Role Playing Game, Dragon Age: Origins.
Developed by Bioware, the makers of Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the game takes place in a dark fantasy world of witchcraft and sorcery. Due for release in March 2011, this is a hotly anticipated multiformat title.
Tom managed to catch up with Mike at Gamescom to get the low down on this hotly anticipated sequel. Below, we present a transcription of their conversation.
Can you tell us a little bit about where we pick up with Dragon Age II and how it leads on from Dragon Age Origins?
Sure. Dragon Age II is a new entry point into the series if people haven’t played Dragon Age Origins. But it also works well for people who have, simply because of where it starts. We begin our story in the outskirts of Lothering, the city that was destroyed in the course of Dragon Age Origins, during the game. Then from there we progress forward and cover an entire decade of history, following the exploits of one character, named Hawke.
Could you tell us a bit about the art style? It seems quite different to Dragon Age Origins.
I think so. It hasn’t drastically changed but it has more compositional elements to it. One of the big problems we saw in [Dragon Age] Origins is that it felt like the environments were fighting with the story. You would see people that were under siege by the un-dead, and they should be running for their lives but apparently had taken the time out to bake a stack of blueberry pies. That seemed a little odd. It was a much more cluttered environment and certainly very lived in and I think it worked well for Ferelden but for the Freemarches, which is where the game [Dragon Age II] takes place, we wanted to go with a darker more astir visual style. The end result is that we have environments that act as a real framing device for the characters. Dragon Age II, if nothing else, is a much more personal story than the story we were telling where you gathering an army and the story of the warden. So, with a more personal story it would seem like environments that give us really good framing, really astir places to shoot the characters against just adds to mood and style.
How has the combat changed in Dragon Age II?
Combat’s taken a pretty significant overhaul. We’ve kind of had this mantra, we jokingly use, which is; I still want to be able to think like a general but want to be able to fight like a Spartan. So that has two sides to it. Being able to issue orders, control a team of 4 and execute strategies was a huge part of Origins and we didn’t want to lose that. However the thing that I saw in Origins is if you tried to execute some strategies, they would fail simply because of the responsiveness. You would shield bash a guy and by the time he got back up you could get off another half a swing. That was not the intent of the shield bash. Similarly, if you tried to intercept someone that was moving in, you couldn’t actually cut them off, you would follow and awkwardly try and swing your sword. So we said; what if we could make it very simple. You press a button and something immediate and awesome happens? So the combat team ran with that and said we’ll start adding some closing moves and add that when you fire a critical shot the bullet is released immediately. We don’t have
that lingering sense of delay. And the end result is that we have combat that is much more up to the moment. Even if you are playing very tactically, you pause the game and issue orders, when you un-pause everybody goes “WHAM” and gets right in there, so you know with confidence they are going to act the way you need them to.
WHAM!
In the demo you showed that you’re now telling a framed narrative; the story is being told by someone else. How does that affect the narrative?
It lets us do two things. You have two characters; Casandra and Varric, who are kind of digging into the history of your character. It means that we can jump to the most important moments in this characters life. Not that we’re yanking you every time into “and now he fights the mumbears!” It’s much more like; here’s the context around it and here’s the major event that caused this kind of political shift. And again, over the decade there’s been a number of these shifts, and Hawke always seems to get involved. So these characters will dig in, try to uncover the rationale, what’s happening and the story that they’re telling as a result then changes based on the actions you take.
What enemies are in the game? Are there going to be more varied and different enemies?
We’re in a new part of the world, so you’ll definitely see some new faces and also see some old faces; Dan will be back, Dark Spawn for sure. They are a major part of the world. The big thing for me is not so much the enemy types but the enemy behaviours, and this has been a big focus for us; to try to make the enemies fight smarter, so they aren’t just swarming you. Instead we’ve got these architects that will be Assassin, a Commander etc and they have different behaviours that require you to deal with them in different ways.
You brushed briefly on the locations. Are there going to be quite a few different locations and is it going to be different to Dragon Age Origins?
Yes. Origins was set in the country of Ferelden, which is south of where we are now. We’re moving up north into Free Marches. It’s more of a rough and tumble city/state coalition rather than one kingdom united. As a result, it’s a bit more of a frontier feel, a little bit less settled, less explored so there’s a lot of wild out there. As well, the city of Kopola was formerly a slaver compound so it’s full of this grim imagery. It’s freed itself since, but it’s not the nicest of places. They used to call it the city of chains.
Combat is suitably bloody
Dragon Age Origins had a lot of DLC. What kind of DLC support are you going to give Dragon Age II?
I think you’ll be looking at something similar. We really enjoyed making the DLC, it really feels like it adds to the texture of the game. We saw very good downloads, good attach rates so people were obviously digging what we were adding. But now there are some lessons to be learned. I think there’s better ways to deliver it, there’s probably some better ways to integrate it and we’re still exploring that. But I think you’ll see a significant chunk being added into DA:2.
One thing we haven’t talked about is the new choices and emotion wheel that you put into the game. Can you explain what that is and what it allows you to do?
Sure. We’ve given the player a voice, which is the key to adding in the wheel. So it’s similar to the Mass Effect system where you have paraphrases that you pick and your character speaks in turn. One thing we wanted to be very clear is that the player needs to know what the intent belying is, as well as generally what they are saying. So adding icons in the middle means that you know that you are going to be; paying a guy or flirting or being diplomatic or sarcastic etc. And at a glance, you can tell by the colour of the line as well as the overall result that might occur. If you are going to attack someone, most people want to know that up front so that’s what the icon gives us. At a glance you can see that you are about to stab somebody and so on.
So the 3 options that we saw at the moment were; peaceful, aggressive and jokey. What kind of other options are there going to be?
Some of them are attached on flirting, pain, attacking, investigating, learning more and one other one you would have noticed would be the option to let the follower take control. Each of the followers has a certain something they bring to the table, be it political or skills. If they happen to be there when you run into a situation, you can let them come in and take the baton and run for a little while. The end result is almost always positive.
This beast did not respond well to the 'flirting' response.
How long is it going to be, compared to Dragon Age Origins?
We’re still adding content, working through the final cut. We’re estimating it’s somewhere about the time people spent with Mass Effect 2. It’s hard to say for sure because there are a lot of side quests to explore so it will vary a lot by player. You could charge through the game, you’d be missing out but if you wish, that’s a way you can do it.
Lastly, and this is more for me; are you going to do a Warden’s Quest 2?
I’m not sure. It’s certainly on the realm of possibility. I’m still not sure I was making sense by hour 23 but that’s fine. It’s a maybe at this point so we’ll have to see how things shape up. It’s possible and I think it would be really cool.
Thank you very much for your time and enjoy the rest of your week in Cologne!
Stay tuned to The Newb Review for more coverage on the games we saw at Gamescom over the coming weeks.
-Tom Wallis
Sounds cool. I may have a crack this time around if the console version is any good.
I’m glad they’re addressing the combat this time round. I can’t believe anyone that played the console versions though it was acceptable at all. Taking s leaf out of mass effect’s book is a brilliant idea.