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[upsettingshorts]

I wonder how many other folks like myself have lingering questions that either don't have answers or don't know where to find them regarding the design and writing of BioWare's older games like Baldur's Gate or Knights of the Old Republic.
 
I also wonder if BioWare folks would have any interest in spending some of their forum free time in answering them.

For example, one of mine would be, "Who wrote Jolee Bindo in KOTOR?"

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 14 juin 2011 - 08:00 .

[Stanley Woo]

Upsettingshorts wrote...
For example, one of mine would be, "Who wrote Jolee Bindo in KOTOR?"

I believe that was Lukas Kristjanson. Anytime you see a conversation that contains a terrible, terrible pun or joke (such as "I did it all for the wookiees." "the wookiees?" "The wookiees."), it's likely to be Luke. Luke was also responsible for Komad Fortuna on Tatooine, whose conversation contained the immortal "Look, i have your fodder." line.

[Stanley Woo]

ipgd wrote...
Why is the great Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom not in every game?

It wouldn't make sense because not all of our games share the same universe. Sir Roderick is pretty awesome, though, almost as awesome as Lord/Arl Foreshadow.

[Stanley Woo]

LTD wrote...

On scale 9001 to 9005, how much does Bioware regret not making a trilogy of games build around adventures of  Xzar?

I don't know that we've ever considered creating an entire game around a specific Baldur's Gate character, let alone a trilogy of games.

[Stanley Woo]

Xewaka wrote...
Why create amazing settings full of vibrant, new, and intriguing sentient species then deny us the chance to explore said setting as one of them?

Scope management. Permitting play as a different species would necessitate dialogue options to reflect different attitudes and options. This does not always fit within the scope of the game we have chosen to make.

[Stanley Woo]

leggywillow wrote...
I would also like to know who in the office groans and tries to beat up Lukas every time he comes up with these jokes.

Likely the other writers with whom he works. They're all a little wonky over there.

I would also like to know who laughs and WORSHIPS HIM AS A GOD.

Everyone else.

[Stanley Woo]

As I can't answer some of the story- or character-based questions on older games, I've been trying to get one of our long-time writers to visit the thread.

[Stanley Woo]

Xewaka wrote...
Okay, I have to ask: Whose wife inspired Henpecked Hou's panic?

Funny story. Originally, the name for the character was Henpecked Ho, but it was thought that people might take "Ho" the wrong way, particularly when combined with "Henpecked". I argued up and down for its inclusion, because a) it's a valid Chinese name, we had term tester whose last name was Ho at the time, and c) I didn't think anyone would care. Ultimately, they decided to err on the side of caution, which is fine. It just looks odd to me.

As for his, er, vociferous wife, I don't know that she was based on a specific person, but a particular stereotype.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Stanley Woo wrote...

As I can't answer some of the story- or character-based questions on older games, I've been trying to get one of our long-time writers to visit the thread.

I have things to do, you know. Important, writery things.

• I believe the Wookie line was Dave, actually. Credit/blame where due. Did my “Nobody expects the bantha’s in position.” make it to release? I distinctly remember giggling about that while working on Tatooine, but I can’t find it. I may have self-censored, an event rare enough that I usually remember.
• Jolee: Split writing duty with I think Drew? Sorry, long time ago. I did the earlier parts because I wrote Kashyyyk, where you find Jolee. Sort of the same deal with HK-47 and Dave on Tatooine.
• It is fully Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard, he would thank you very much. I got to help direct the recording session for that one. Meeting John Cleese was surreal.
• Biff the Understudy was an ugly but necessary band-aid that came out of programming. I can't remember who named him, but we brought him back for BG2 as an in-joke.
• Noober and Neeber were Rob Bartel's. I believe he is still working off the karmic debt.
• Patrick Weekes added the “Go for the optics” and the drone’s name for Tali, for which he received a deserved +1.
• First I’ve heard of the Sunrider issue, actually. Must have been resolved very early in preproduction. As for differences, I imagine we’d have matched her to established canon, which would have been fine but adds a layer of complication that you have to be very careful about. That’s pretty much why the game was in that era in the first place. When we started, there was very little published material about that period to step on, accidentally or otherwise.
• Plenty of characters or plots don't make it in to any given project. Sometimes they get adapted to sequels or a different setting, but usually they were cut for good reason and the moment has simply passed. You use what you learned to make something new.
• Hou’s wife wasn’t anyone in particular. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
• The pantaloons were a nod to how silly the macguffin in a fetch quest can get, and it just kind of became a thing, a tiny pants-based skynet that could not be stopped. Greg called my increasingly convoluted references to them Oscar Wildian. I was fine with that.
• Chris L'Etoile wrote the reporter, I did later polish for her in ME2. I prefer the verbal lashing you can give her, but she's fully aware of the game she's playing either way.

edit for formatting

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 15 juin 2011 - 01:01 .

[Lukas Kristjanson]

LiquidGrape wrote...

This particular question is of such monumental weight, I'm not sure I can do it justice.

- Who wrote Jacob Taylor's climactic romance scene in Mass Effect 2?

• Oi. Yes, I wrote Jacob, among others. You keep this up and you'll never get loud and spill some drinks on the Citadel. (but yes, I think the meme is funny too)
• Correction: Talked to Dave this morning. He wrote the bulk of Jolee. Drew wrote Mission and most of Taris and the Leviathan. You'd think I'd remember since I did Zaalbar as part of Kashyyyk. Canderous Ordo was written by Peter Thomas.
• The plotting roundtable in BGII: The implication was that they were either a group of Bhaalspawn or the group that was hunting Bhaalspawn. Intentionally vague at the time.
• Sir Roderick's cheese: I love that detail. I don't know who is specifically responsible for it. Matt Goldman was art director on that title, though.
• Jade sequel: That would be really unlikely, I think. But there was a lot of work done on several iterations of the property and it lives on in systems and style that you are seeing in both ME and DA. I did a mock Jade 2 poster as an in-joke for a select few people, like it was one of Sagacious Zu's action movies from the credits. Tag line:

                        It's a second date with destiny
                                     Time to take it
                                          to the Zu

• Other Pythons: It was a minor coup at the time to get Cleese. Who knows though, we occasionally spring for a name actor for impactful characters.
• Yeah, Foreshadow is my running joke. I leave it to you to decide if his hints are actual looks forward or excercises in how far people will stretch to make things "make sense". Or both. Muahaha.

[Stanley Woo]

Elhanan wrote...
Besides the dreaded pool noodles and trout, what in house game was most played for fun (ie; not work related) by the staff?

Well, a lot of our people are gamers as well (as we keep telling you), and we have little communities within our office, such as Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40k players, RPG-ers who take over meeting rooms after hours with their groups, and lots of board game enthusiasts.

But I think that, if you're referring to the dreaded trout and the pool noodles, you want to to hear about Nerf War, which had its heyday a couple of years ago. Few were the days when you didn't see (mostly) QA walking down the hall fully armed, preparing to raid an office on the other side of the building. Many temporary testers were "welcomed" to the company with a barrage of foamy darts fired from a vast arsenal of weaponry. Epic raids were captured on video, showing pitched gun battles, ambushes, and even nerf-to-nerf melees.

Such creativity we showed back then. Shields made from the back of a broken, unused chair. Paired 6-shooter Mavericks tied together with string so you could reload on the fly. Pool noodles used as blowguns around corners. Offices fortified with a row of chairs, each with a term tester inside, firing single-shot Nerf pepperboxes like their lives depended on it. The cry of alarm as the Nerf RPG thwocked a tester upside the head. Fully automatic Vulcans spitting darts everywhere. Ceiling mounted Vulcans with laser sights warning the wary traveler not to approach too closely. Modding guns to shoot farther. Getting tagged with the ouchy darts with the Velcro on the outside.

It was glorious, and we considered it the cheapest morale boost and staff bonding activity for the office EVER! Sadly, things started to calm down once work got too busy, and one of our number got laser eye surgery and could no longer participate. Nerf war just wasn't as much fun anymore without the large group playing, so we stopped. I'm sure a lot of our non-Nerfwar co-workers are glad of the quiet. We still have our arsenals, and sometimes we shoot at people randomly within our own offices, but the days of coordinated defenses and welcoming new hires with foamy firepower are long gone.

[Stanley Woo]

We had a fencer on our side, Flooba Dave, his name was, who used to charge in with a pool noodle in one hand and a chairback-shield in the other. We called him Flooba because his hair looked like it'd been cut with a Flowbee, but we was all laughing too hard to say Flowbee. Ended up coming out something like Flooba, and it stuck.

Poor kid, he had his whole life ahead of him. Showed me a picture of his girl back home, said he was gonna ask her to marry him after the Nerf war was over. Such grand plans in his head, he coulda been the guy to cure cancer or find out where that pesky sock disappears to in the dryer. So many things could have been...

We lost Flooba Dave on a Tuesday, raiding 526. Someone musta tipped them off, cuz they knew we were coming. Set themselves up a line of chairbacks splitting the office in two. Our bullets poofed harmlessly against 'em, and suddenly testers popped up from behind, firing like crazy. Then the office across the hall opened up, and a few guys in a table fort hit us from behind. Flooba Dave was among the first up and over, but by the time he engaged, we were all turning around to deal with the backbiters. Flooba Dave turned, and then the RPG thwocked. Poor kid never saw it coming.

We still see Flooba Dave from time to time, ghosting through the halls like he was still in 2009, like he was still working on Dragon Age: Origins. The docs say there's nothing we can do but make sure he doesn't try to check an altered file back into source control. We've patched the game since then. The Padre comes near to cryin' when Flooba Dave asks what we're all gonna do when the game ships. The rest of us, well, we tell 'im that we're gonna take a nice, long break and look forward to Dragon Age II. Flooba Dave always smiles and says he hopes they'll put him on that project. We ask about his girl, and we nod dutifully when he tells us he's gonna ask her to marry him when he gets home after the war.

Poor kid...

[Stanley Woo]

Rzepik2 wrote...
1. Do you have some kind of archive for concept art etc? I'm asking just out of curiosity:ph34r:

2. Who wrote Irenicus (best villain ever)?

3. Any interesting facts about things abandoned during development?
Especially stuff about BG2 companions, like Imoen's death in Spellhold or Yoshimo being Tamoko's brother.

1. We have archives of all kinds of stuff, like any creative entity.

2. I don't know for certain.

3. Things are abandonded or changed during development all the time. It would be impossible to name them all. Usually, things are cut in order to make the game better, to reduce the scope of work required, or it simply doesn't fit. Some changes or deletions can be made early on, some can be made during production, and some happen near the end of a project. this is one of the main reasons we try very hard not to "promise" anything, and why we might be hesitant to talk about our games--things can change, sometimes severely, at any point in the process. What might have been true a month ago may no longer be true today.

The main campaign in Neverwinter Nights was changed radically late in the project, so the story that you followed in that game was not the original story concept. It required a heck of a lot of work to put everything back in its place, however, which made that project more difficult for some of the developers than it otherwise might have been.

There was an idea for one, possibly more, additional planets in an early Knights of the Old Republic. These were likely shelved early in development. The only major changes I can remember from the project is the splitting up and cutting of areas that didn't fit within memory constraints. That forced designers to change the plot flow and move plot characters and triggers around a lot. Some levels ended up okay, while others were drastically reduced.

And, of course, Dragon Age: Origins originally had three or four origin stories that didn't make the cut. Some were cut early, like a couple of related origins whose art assets wouldn't be used anywhere else in the game, or an origin whose story just didn't strike anyone as being epic enough, not even after several different concepts were tried.

the folks who actually createe or plan this content could tell you more. I'll see if I can wrangle anyone.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Rzepik2 wrote...
2. Who wrote Irenicus (best villain ever)?

2. I don't know for certain.

Dave wrote most of Irenicus.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Hmm, this is more of a criticism framed as a question, but the answer would interest me nonetheless.

While replaying KOTOR1 I noticed a great deal of the dialogue, especially with but not limited to Carth and Bastila, is primarily composed of the character explaining why they, well, can't have a dialogue with you.

• Eh, I could break down pacing and the Grande Plan of plot weave and info drip and blah blah, but you're also looking at an ongoing evolution. That difference is maybe not so much a style choice as an early stage of the process of figuring out what our style choices actually could be. Or something.
• Loghain was mainly Mary.
• Kivan... took me a bit to even remember him, but then we had 24 party members in BG. I wrote a lot, but I think James Ohlen had a hand in Kivan. He's now lead designer on one of our obscure side projects.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• We all loved writing for Jan (This was one of mine because it was with Jaheira). I think Dave was the primary on Jan, but it could have initially been Kevin Martens(Lead Content Designer on Diablo 3 these days). Pretty sure the story after Melissan is Dave's, anyway. He's off or I'd ask him.
• I wrote Alora. James named her though. Many characters were drawn from old PnP games he ran.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I was checking the credits for Jade Empire - which, despite what my memory had told me, I'm enjoying more than KOTOR - and it shows the lead writers as Luke and... Mike Laidlaw. Is that correct? I had presumed he was and always had been a designer.

That said, I love the sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude in so many conversations and so many characters in Jade Empire, it's, well, refreshing and fun.  Which isn't to say serious stuff doesn't happen, or that the story isn't one to take seriously - but the game is filled with characters. 

Mike joined BioWare as a writer at the tail end of the “new guys have to build their own desks” years. He and I split duty on Jade, weighted roughly lead/writing for him and writing/lead for me, if that makes sense. It was a lot of fun. Wuxia is a genre full of strong personalities, and Jade was almost a love letter to the form. We drew heavily from classics like Outlaws of the Marsh, and of course every movie we could get our hands on. Jade’s resource library was one of the most fun just to browse through.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

[*]Jade2 direction: we worked on several iterations of story and worldbuilding before shuttering it. That art library got really interesting. Sorry, don’t know what I’m allowed to say about it, but you’ve seen (and will see) a lot of what we learned in systems and style developments in both ME and DA. Interrupt was a child of that, for example.[*]David Warner: He had a great voice and he was available. On BG2 we had the cred to spend the money. Not that we didn’t get quality actors for BG1, but we couldn’t afford “names.” Fun fact, we originally looked into Clancy Brown for Sarevok. No complaints with Kevin Michael Richardson, but, you know, Kurgan. Or Rawhide if you’re double-old school. [*]Twisted Rune: We mined the setting for every useable tidbit we could find, as the size of the game shows, and some got more extensive treatment than others. The Rune Assassins mentioned can be seen to allude to something larger, but sometimes that allusion is itself the goal. Wrap up every little detail and even a world that big can seem small. So yes, they were up to stuff, but no, there is no plot detailing it.[*]deVir slaves: I don't know if a plot was planned, Dave did much of the Underdark, but like above, showing that the setting has history can be reason alone for reference. Viconia's reaction or lack thereof can also say  something without saying it.
[*]Surviving Bhaalspawn: Bhaal was a randy bastard so it’s possible some were left alive. But your character decided the fate of Bhaal’s power, and that probably either killed them or stripped them of any chance at godhood. Refusing that power would be kind of hollow if someone else could immediately try to snatch it up. And if you kept it, those jokers couldn’t take it from you. Take the power of a god from you? Laughable. Say, what happened to original Bhaal, anyway…[*]Jade Facepalm: The thought behind it? “Hey, can we make these animations do something they weren’t meant to do in order to squeeze out a few more reactions?” Something like that, probably.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 05 juillet 2011 - 06:06 .

[Stanley Woo]

Hellbound555 wrote...
have any of the devs posted on the mass effect fanthreads in the guise of a user or something to that extent?

Not to my knowledge. More likely, if you see something like that, the user either posted before he worked at BioWare or after he left BioWare. All official BioWare devs use some variation of their real name on the BioWare Social Network, either their full first and last names, first initial + last name, or first name + last initial. And, of course, they will have a BioWare tag.

We don't need to disguise ourselves as regular users to manipulate the forum or cause trouble or influence discussions, not when our official presence can achieve just as much, if not more.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

-- Jade story structure: Good and Bad comes with every model. We experiment with each game so, you know, hang around and see I guess.

-- On Lustful Lao: We drew inspiration from works like Outlaws of the Marsh, and it’s very creative with the “courtesy names”.

-- Romances: When we announced there would be romances in BG2 there was outcry against it on our boards. But the reason we put them in was because people were inventing their own. In BG1 it was enough that we simply didn’t contradict it. Players read into all sorts of interactions, scripting or not, and they were eager to believe that relationships were developing. So we knew the appetite was there.

-- Actors/Celebrities: Some do multiple roles, and our VO Director keeps a good relationship with those who impress (Brian Bloom, anyone?). You get more time with the followers and player voices, but other things can make it difficult. Joanna Roth was in the UK, so most of the Aveline sessions were around 3AM our time. Great result, but hell on scheduling.

These just stuck out for personal reasons:
It was downright surreal to get John Cleese and meet him in person. I think my VO suggestion was something like “Sir Roderick is Cleese unless we can't get Cleese in which case he should sound nothing like him. You don't half-ass a Cleese.” Thrill for me, a pleasant day at work for him.

I did second pass to put the snarl in Arl Howe after we knew we were getting Tim Curry, and got to phone in for the session. That man is just as good as you’d think. 

I didn't meet them, but it was fun just writing for Seth Green, Carrie-Anne Moss, Michael Dorn, Martin freakin Sheen, Nathan Fillion, the list goes on.

Rick D. Wasserman (The Arishok). Most of our actors aren’t gamers and don't know the minutia of the setting. But with Mr. Wasserman, there was a line that was missing a comma and the placement could pretty much reverse the meaning. Before I could correct my typo he was arguing with the director for the correct placement based on the philosophy of the Qun. He understood the character well enough to speak for him, mostly just on context. Amazing.

Mark Meer is local to Edmonton. If you ever wanted to hear Shepard do sketch comedy with a talking sword, (and who hasn’t, really?) he and Donovan Workun (the voice of Lilarcor) are part of the Irrelevant Show.

And dozens of others. You may as well dump the credits of all our games here, because they make the pretty little words we write pop.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 07 juillet 2011 - 07:40 .

[Stanley Woo]

Hellbound555 wrote...

oh hey, what happens when a bioware user becomes an employee? does his or her old account get converted/deleted? and how does forum-behaviour play into employment?

When a BioWar user becomes an employee, we suggest that, if their user name is not some variation of their first/last name, they create a new account while they're employed. There was even a case of someone having an official forum tag, but when they moved to BioWare proper, they needed a slight variation of their user name so as not to cause confusion with their tags.

Their old account remains unmolested, so when the end their employment with BioWare, they have a non-BioWare account to go back to.

i didnt mean to say u guys were goin undercover to cause trouble, ive just kinda wondered if any of the devs or whatever signed up unannounced so they can goof off with the rest of the fans.

Unlikely. While BioWare employees do have lives of their own and can participate in any online community they like, there have always been guidelines on how to act/behave. EA policy on social media behaviour is even more explicit, but no more or less restrictive, which is why you can see us chatting it up here in the BioWare Social Network, why you see so many Mass Effect 3 developers talking about their work on Twitter, and why you sometimes see people mentioniing their work on their personal blogs.

But if you're hoping to see super secret information, you won't see us talking about it, as usual. New game announcement, DLC release dates, romance revelations, and new characters will be announced on the website first, same as always.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

--Sticking with BG: I don’t think license hassles were the biggest contributor, so much as where we wanted to go as a company and the games we wanted to make. We'd learned a busload, closed our story the way we thought best, and had the opportunity to break ground with Neverwinter and take on Star Wars (and had some fun with MDK2 along the way). After that (and during) we figured we could do just as well working with our own IPs as we did on external IPs, and publishers agreed. But we didn't shut the door on similar opportunities, as you can see by SWTOR.

--Open Palm/Closed Fist: It was a collective design choice that there be some kind of behaviour gauge in Jade. I named the paths, came up with the basics, and wrote Smiling Mountain to be the initial authority.

--Mike wrote Bladed Thesis, founder of the Closed Fist.

--The language created for Jade: It was an interesting and mixed experience. I’ve commented on that elsewhere.

--Dave wrote HK-47. I wrote Tatooine so I did the initial meeting and Sand People stuff.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 08 juillet 2011 - 04:25 .

[Stanley Woo]

Hellbound555 wrote...
uugh, the last 2 dev replies r depressing...licenses and policies? where is that youthful jubilance and whim i picture oh so foundly when i think of bioware headquarters?

You can put all the artsy people in a room to develop a game as you like, but without the money and business side of things, it's just a hobby. it's only with the business plans and the schedules and budget projections that you can make a living doing what you love.

heres a question, which "My little pony friendship is magic" character do you relate to the most?

i'd say Rainbow Dash, but I'm sure everyone who knows me would say Pinky Pie.

[Stanley Woo]

MinotaurWarrior wrote...

Have you ever played a game by another developer (or BioWare from before you worked there) and thought, "boy, I wish I had worked on this part of this game, that would have been fun" / had your head filled with spin off, mod, and sequel ideas? Any examples come to mind?

I always wished I had worked on the World of Xeen / Might and Magic games. Getting involved with story and plot testing on those games would have been a hoot. I loved playing those games and Isles of Terra was one of the first CRPGs I'd ever completed, which is quite the accomplishment for me.

[Stanley Woo]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

What characters, locations, or things changed notably or memorably from earlier in development before release of the game?

Many things change during development, as we try and find what works and what doesn't work. What works one month may not work the next month after all the associated content is built. You might find that a section of story is not paced well compared to other sections, or that what you thought was a terrible plot and abandoned would work extremely well if it were brought back. Some notable parts of games that changed significantly before ship include:

• the water planet Manaan in KotOR. The construction of he level changed significantly as we were getting nearer to the ship date, as we tried to juggle the needs of the story vs. our memory budget. not only di the size of certain areas need to be changed, but hte number of areas, period, needed to be looked at. While the final version of the planet still seemed pretty large, at one point during development it was larger still.
• Human Noble origin in DAO. Between prototyping and full production, this origin underwent significant changes in both layout and content. Iona was a very different character, the player had many different dialogue options, and the castle changed quite a lot as the engine was developed.
• the Official Campaign of Neverwinter Nights. There was a drastic change to how the OC of NWN played, such that a few months before ship, the entire first half of the game was essentially rewritten from the ground up. that was not a pleasant time, but I think we got a much better game out of it.