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Dragon Age: Origins

BioWare on consoles, online, tools and depth.

Robert Purchese avatar
Interview by Robert Purchese Associate Editor
Updated on
23 comments
Eurogamer You mentioned the grey moral area there; one thing BioWare has done in preceding games is have quite a clear good and evil divide and rewards for getting to the top or bottom of each path. Is there a similar system in Dragon Age: Origins?
Dan Tudge

There is a system that we've built around that, which I can't really get into. But you mentioned the grey area and there are obviously some good choices and some evil choices: we saw at the E3 demo I chose to kill the prisoner and take his key when I could have chosen to help him. But a lot of the choices are really treading down that line of difficult choice with no right or wrong.

Eurogamer Going back to something like Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins seemingly a PC-exclusive: are we going to see a toolset?
Dan Tudge

We did mention that we were coming to console in the future...

Eurogamer Something we were going to ask you about. Can we have a straight answer, is Dragon Age: Origins itself (rather than an unspecified game in the series) coming to consoles?
Dan Tudge

Yes. Dragon Age: Origins will be coming to consoles in the near future, yes.

And with regards to the tool-set: obviously we're leading with PC and we believe Dragon Age: Origins is a really strong PC title and we really want to give the PC the love that it needs. Definitely we will be having a Dragon Age toolset that will be available to the community, to anyone who wishes to build their own adventures within the Dragon Age universe.

Eurogamer Do you see Dragon Age having the same sort of online community that Neverwinter Nights did?
Dan Tudge

Definitely we will have that community, but it's going to evolve as well. We believe, especially with the PC, that community is a huge part of what we're doing online in Dragon Age: Origins, and the Dragon Age universe as a whole. We've a lot of plans to not only bring the users into the community through the tool-set, but also through a lot of initiatives we're taking within online activity: downloadable content, both pre-release and post-release; free content, paid-for content; online achievements. There's going to be a lot of community and online involvement outside of just the tool-set. But the tool-set will obviously be a very big part as well.

Floaty numbers: check.
Eurogamer Are all of those ways to battle the PC pirates?
Dan Tudge

It's really a decision to love the PC community. Obviously piracy is a really big concern for any PC developer and we're going to, obviously, protect our software. But our online initiatives are really about building that online community - supporting that Neverwinter Nights community and growing it.

Eurogamer Will Dragon Age: Origins have something like a Dungeon Master to lead online games?
Dan Tudge

No, we've actually gone in a bit of a different direction with that. The Dungeon Master experience was something that actually Neverwinter Nights was built on the back of. With our [Origins] tool-set we've really given the user the opportunity to create their own adventures within the universe, and adventures to share with their friends. It's a bit different, but other than that I can't really give you any details.

We're definitely going to be talking about the tool-set in the very near future.

Eurogamer You said that Origins was coming to consoles; we imagine you mean after the PC?
Dan Tudge

Yeah; later in the year as Greg [Zeschuk] mentioned in his press release.

Eurogamer So consoles in 2009?
Erik Einsiedel (BioWare PR)

Well we haven't announced any details about that yet, so plans for consoles haven't been finalised yet.

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