November 2, 2009

On the eve of the game’s launch, BioWare’s Mark Darrah talks about Dragon Age: Origins
By Michael Lafferty

“…this is the game that we wanted to make and it pushes the boundaries in a lot of ways”

It is one of the more anticipated games of 2009. When BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins hits retail shelves tomorrow morning, it will likely set a new benchmark for single-player role-playing games that has been long overdue.

Of course, GameZone.com will have a review of the title, but in the meantime, for those hungering for more information about the game, we thought to ease that a little bit with an interview from BioWare’s Mark Darrah, the executive producer of the game.

For those not in the know, perhaps just a little preamble is needed about the game. Dragon Age: Origins is an epic story that embraces a world struggling to turn back the tides of a Blight, the wave of demonic evil that threatens to engulf the world. Players take on the role of a Grey Warden, one of the warrior caste that is truly capable of combating the Blight and taking the battle to the arch-demon itself. Though a single-player game, DA:O is lengthy, with a compelling cast of characters and storylines that twist and turn with each choice the player makes.

Ok, so now on to the interview …

Question: I think it safe to say that BioWare is taking the bar higher with Dragon Age: Origins. Was that the intent from the beginning or did that just occur during the development of the game?

Mark: I knew to a certain degree we are always trying to raid the bar ourselves, to do better than we did the last time. In the case of Dragon Age, to a large degree, I do think this is the game that we wanted to make and it pushes the boundaries in a lot of ways because we refused to compromise on quality, and refused to compromise on length and told the story that we wanted to tell.

Considering the history of BioWare, how much has everything you have learned in the past fit into the design of this game.

Mark: it is very much a game that is heavily inspired by Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and the games we have done in the past. I think this is a team that has been through a lot of these games before so there is a lot that we have learned from the things we have done in the past. The story structure, in particular, the branching and interconnectivity of the story, making sure the choices matter – this is all stuff that we have worked with and improved upon from previous games.

Words like epic and immersive are often tossed about lightly but don’t seem to have the weight that one would hope. With this game, in the incredible amount of story, the interconnective storylines, the branching storylines – what that a daunting task in and of itself?

Mark: It really was. This is a story that has 800,000 words of spoken dialogue, a million words in the game itself. And that is supplemented by … well, an uncounted number of words of supporting documentation, so I think when you are trying to tell a story of this magnitude, you can’t just tell the story, you have to build the universe that it exists in or you start to see the edges of the box, you realize that ‘oh, this is just a painted backdrop and behind it exists nothing.’ There needs to be something back there so there is twice as much or more that was created in terms of storytelling, in terms of world creation that isn’t even in the game but it just needs to be there to make it a real experience for the player.

Choice is such a big facet of this game, it bolsters the dynamic of the game and that feeds into the concept that the AI has to evolve, and react to choices as well.

Mark: Absolutely. There are places in the game where there are 300-400 paths through a single conversation. And that’s just because everything you do has to have an impact because we want choice to matter. It’s not just about having the illusion of choice, it’s about the choice actually make a difference, it’s about knowing that what you are doing is actually making a difference in the way the universe is playing out, and that does make scripting a huge complicated event.

Every character has his or her own unique personality. For example, you have Alistair and Morrigan going back and forth at each other almost from the moment that Morrigan joins your part …

Mark: Morrigan has her own motivations for coming along with you. Her mom might have told her to come but she has her own goals, so she’s always going to be a little bit ‘off’ and Alistair – he is probably the most dedicated, next to you, to your goals. But he is almost this farm-boy character and Morrigan with a much darker past, they interact in a very good way. There is just a lot of great interplay and character between all the characters.

It’s about making (all the characters) real, having their own history and their own motivations to be with you, it just brings life to them.

The game itself is very immersive, because of the connectivity to the players. There is, at times, real emotional connection with the characters. Was that tough to realize, to insert the emotional elements without it getting too over the top, too cheesy, or even too understated?

Mark: It’s hard to get the player to feel something. It’s relatively easy to get them to feel anger or triumph, but to get them to feel sadness, or happiness, or laugh – those are difficult emotions to get the player to feel. It requires a real strength of writing, as well as a real strength of toolset and storytelling.

And that rolls over not just to the graphics, but also in the sound texturing …

Mark: In the end the sound engineers spent a lot of time with this. Inon Zur did our score and he is an amazing composer, and the background sounds all just bring a sense of a living existence. Sound is interesting to me because it is hard for me to hear great sounds, but easy to hear bad sounds. That sound is about making the world feel alive, it’s about it all filling in and bringing it all to life.

During the time you have been involved in the project, what has been the most significant lesson that you have learned that has redefined the RPG genre for you?

Mark: For me, the biggest lesson has been how much the change in the world can influence the way the player is perceiving the world. And giving them that freedom to make that choice and showing them what that choice can do is just a really powerful tool that we need to take increasing advantage of as we move forward.

Inasmuch as Baldur’s Gate was the foundation for the last generation of RPGs, would you say that Dragon Age: Origins is the foundation for the next generation of games in the genre?

Mark: I believe it truly can be; it can establish the bar that we can try to rise from. It sets the standard that I hope everyone tries to hit in going forward.

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