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[Stanley Woo]

Khayness wrote...

Does BioWare use focus groups on their games/part of their games? Are there even such a thing as focus testing products in the video game industry?

Yes.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Nameless one7 wrote...

Lukas Kristjanson wrote...

We’ve got a concept archive of past potential projects that would blow your mind.

Could you give us some general info about this concept archive of past potential projects?

Nope. And that's as much a tease for me as it is for you. I really, really wish I could.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Upsettingshorts wrote...
To clarify:  For a choice/consequence to meet the acceptable standards of this wonderful community, it typically has to be of the big, loud, plot-flag setting variety.  For save game imports not to be derisively admonished for leading to a bunch of emails the results of those big, loud, plot-flag setting choices have to appear in the sequel. At some point, you'd practically have to start writing 2+ games just to keep track of it all.

Off topic, shorts. You started this thread to ask about old games. For shame, hijacking yourself.

I think there’s an opportunity for a series that builds a narrative based on absolutely nothing but player action and reference of that action. I would play the hell out of that game. And I would have plenty of opportunity to do so, because it would be very, very short AND/OR very, very weird. And there's room for that in the industry. The current conflict isn’t between branching choice and continuity, it’s between execution and expectation, as you alluded. Different titles/franchises/companies will handle that as needs be. I can only assume the ride will be wild.

So, back on topic?

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• What's your personal favorite moment in any bioware game?

I usually know the game backwards and forwards before I get to play, so I don’t get plot discovery like you guys. My favorite moments are either incredibly specific things like how a particular element was used, or broad swaths that came together because of really cool collaboration. I really enjoyed the sum total of the “playing as Joker” part of ME2. So many elements combined for an incredibly tight experience.

• Secondly, concerning KOTOR, why choose to go to the Dantooine Jedi Enclave instead of the main temple on Coruscant?

There may have been some concerns of overlap I suppose. After all, a major reason for going that far back in the setting in the first place was to have room to move without clashing with canon. Plus we open with Taris, a major urban environment in its own right. Hitting both could have been a bit much.

• I've always wondered about the process behind writing dialogue options for the player character.

The PC is of course player defined, but operates within a range so they aren’t an alien in their own world. Unless they need to be, I suppose. Our editors are often assigned as guardians of the player voice, making sure the various writers stay on the same page. Editors are the unsung heroes. They do a hell of a lot of support writing in and out of the game.

• Look I just want to know if there are any of these "Jade Empire 2:  It's time to take it to the Zu" posters left and if I can have one.

I printed three. They are jealously guarded and full of swipey photoshopery, so sadly not seeing the light of day any time soon.

• What's the deal with the Bink-format?

I couldn’t tell you why that specific tech is used. But rest assured that for every spot where you’ve said “This could look better,” there was probably someone here screaming the same thing, even as they had to do X in Y way. Tradeoffs are a necessary evil if you actually want to ship.

• Which games from Bioware have you played?

Played? All of them. But the ones in my sig are the ones I personally wrote for.

• Which one is your favorite and why?

So, which is my favorite child then? Oof, nasty. They all had their appeal at the time (and still do). Like I said, we make the games we want to play. Which corny copout answer is worse: "All of them," or "the next one"? 

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• This might sound silly but will there ever come another SS? I really liked the story behind it ( yeah it had a story if you paid attention to it). when it comes to mech games SS and Heavy Gear are my favorite ones.

You never say never in this business, but I'd put a Shattered Steel sequel in the highly unlikely column. But there was a time when it was investigated. Much like how our own fantasy pitch became an opportunity to work with the D&D franchise, I think our action craving helped secure the opportunity to work with MDK. They don't seem alike, of course, but it filled a similar need at the time.

• Was the concept for Anders in Awakening done by Mary Kirby? I can't seem to remember....... Who Wrote the story behind Warden's Keep?

Pretty sure it was Dave who did the majority of that for Awakening.

• I'm not sure if this qualifies for "older game" but I'm curious as to who wrote Tali in ME1-3, and the Geth/Quarian plots in general.

Chris L'Etoile did a considerable amount of work on the Quarians, but I think Drew was ME1 primary on Tali. Patrick Weekes was the primary for Tali through ME2 and 3.

On identifying who writes what, I prefer to leave that to others unless it's ancient, mentioned elsewhere, or I clear it personally. But it's not actually a clear-cut question. That's why I say someone was the "primary" or whatever, because deciding what role a character fills is collaborative, or maybe it's coming from a particular need of the plot or game or franchise. And everyone on the writing team writes some of everyone. One person owns the "voice" and the bulk of their plots, but generally we all know the characters and can riff on the themes. And if not, we turn around and ask. A few times a player looking for someone to praise-blame has said they liked writer X better than writer Y, and the examples quoted were actually both me. I mean Z.
And then someone else jumps into the thread and says that Y is better than X and that the other player doesn't know anything about writing. You kind of just shrug and get back to work.

• Anyone have time and desire to talk about storyline and player character of Baldur's Gate? What is the birth history of the whole Children of Bhaal - setting? Did you ever throw around some really wild/tame/good/bad alternatives to this?

James Ohlen was the primary architect of the setting, drawing on years of tabletop DMing. Many NPCs were adaptations of characters in his games. James pitched a number of story ideas for BG1 up the line to TSR, because as the owner of the IP they had veto. One was actually a proto-version of what eventually became the story for BG2. This sort of thing is why we don't generally talk about early development or reveal undeveloped concepts. Things change all the time, and you never throw anything away because it can come back in surprising ways when circumstances change.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• I'm curios as to what other stories influnced the game.
• How did you all come up with the twist in Kotor?
• And who/what did you right in KotOR Lukas?

Inspiration is a mishmash of everything we've ever seen. We've drawn on classics, sure, but if it's conscious I try to mix and match so the result isn't "on the nose." Unless I'm doing a tribute or reference of some kind, for whatever self-indulgeant reason I use to justify it. Sometimes it's just unconscious, and players work way too hard to imagine connections that were never intended. You can feed that fire just by not contradicting something, you don't actually have to make the reference at all. It's also fun to do with internal lore. And no, I won't say if or where I've done that.

I can't take credit for the KotOR twist. We tossed around a number of ideas internally before sending things up to LucasArts. Some were too big, some weird. I don't know who pitched the one we went with, but everyone worked on the crit path in one way or another. I think Drew was primary on the core stuff, though.

I did miscellanea where needed on all the planets, but I was main on Tatooine and Kashyyyk, so I got to introduce HK and Jolee and do Zaalbar's stuff. So yeah, I'm to blame if you get tired of chatty wookies. And who doesn't, really?
I had the opportunity to do some deep lore delving on those planets, so that was fun.

• Why didn't you do KOTOR 2? Was obsidian's story direction or gameplay direction something they took from you?
• Did Lucas Arts have anything to do with Kotor's setting?
• Was Kotor 3 ever considered? Did those concepts (story, or whatever) make it in either the book about Revan or SWTOR itself?

It's great getting to play in a world you've loved since you were a kid, D&D and Star Wars both, but eventually you want to try new things and maybe work hard for yourself and your own properties. And that's not just about the IP owner saying "no" to something off the wall. If you know and love the IP you are working with, you also know when you need a new home. I don't think we dictated anything to the Obsidian team. I imagine they did much the same as we did, and pitched a number of ideas up the chain. Those talks were nowhere near me, though.

I don't think there were many changes from LucasArts once the main story was approved, so long as the universe could eventually sync up with established events. Again, back then there was very little set in that time period, but we referenced the hell out of what there was, so there was a lot of indirect influence. Some of what we did has also spread to other parts of the IP. Dave wrote the Sith Code, for example. The hardest part was trying to avoid contradicting EU things that weren't out yet, but would be soon. That was a strange minefield because they couldn't tell us specifics. We also backwards-referenced things, like borrowing elements from the Millennium Falcon to make the Ebon Hawke, so it would look like an early model that might have come from the same factory that would eventually make the Millennium Falcon.

I'm sure there were talks about KotOR 3 at some level immeasurably above me. Wookiepedia says more than I knew at the time. We were deeply committed to our own IPs, so I imagine it would have been a painful non-starter for Ray and Greg even if it had been offered to us. But we couldn't say no to the possibility of returning to the setting with SWtoR. There's a lot of lore in there that continues what we started, and many familiar faces (or their progeny). My meatbag Bounty Hunter got her butt handed to her by a certain assassin droid the other day. That made me smile.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 06 avril 2012 - 12:40 .

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• Who created Imoen and how did you get her lines?
• How did you reacted when the community fell in love with the NWN toolset?
• In DA:O who came up with Oghren's lines and will we ever see him again?

James decided Imoen was needed and I think named her after a character in his tabletop campaign, but I wrote her, so thank you. There's an interesting story about her creation here. As for lines, as a writer I get a solid grasp of a character in mind and then I let them talk. That's a good place (and possibly the only place) to look for relatable stories: take interesting characters and hurt them in interesting ways, then see what happens.

How did we react? Relief, probably. But it wasn't all sunshine and bunnies at the time. The tools were the easiest we had ever used, but that was still far more complicated than most players were prepared for. They are the actual design tools for the game, so while almost anyone could bang out a basic hack-fest, understanding the real potential took considerably more. A small core found a home with those tools and many never left, which is very gratifying.

Oghren was mainly Jay Turner, polished by Sheryl. Will he show up again? Can't say one way or the other. He's a pretty resiliant SOB, though.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• How is the ME3 development team taking the "fan" feedback
• Would it be possible to "Shadow"(Like an internship, but not paid and temporary) at Bioware.

There are more than enough threads on the ME stuff. I'd like to keep this one on topic.

Also off topic, but we do indeed have intern programs, and several people have trained that way and then returned as full time employees. You'd have to have your school contact EA about their Intern and Co-Op programs.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• Who Wrote the Architect, and who voiced him?
• What is the character that you feel most embodies the spirit of the Developer team of Bioware?

Pretty sure Dave wrote the Architect. I wasn't around for the sessions, but he was voiced by Jamie Glover. IMDB says he's got himself a gig as Darth Malgus now. Neat.

• Which character embodies the spirit of the dev team

Oh, lets go with the butt-kissingest answer: The Player Character. Really though, that's the only one with the breadth to even come close to having ownership across the whole team on a project. Almost every other character is isolated to particular plots or area.

• Coke or Pepsi?

Coffee, intravenous during crunch.

• After finishing off BG2, were there any particular aspects learned from that project.

Scope control, scope control, and let me think, oh yeah, scope control. BG2 was three games by itself. 1.2 million words. It was beautiful madness, but damn near killed people. A lesson you can forget with unfortunate regularity if you're not careful.

• Quick question about DA2, why are the quests "Fool's Gold" and "Finding Nathaniel" mutually exclusive?

We wanted players to have alternate content if they imported a save, so they were exclusive deep roads plots. I think early revisions had them echo each other more, but iteration took them farther apart in theme and in the timeline. It seems a little arbitrary now, but it happens.

• My "on-topic" question is which character that you created did you feel the most attached to? And who came up with the Revan plot twist in KOTOR1

I can't narrow that to one. I suppose I could bookend them all by calling out Jaheira and Aveline, because I like to think they went some interesting places. But also Leliana. I didn't get to create her or define her voice, but I did get to craft a contained story moment with Leliana's Song that I found really satisfying.

Sorry, I don't know who actually pitched the KotOR twist. Drew did a lot of the crit path though, under James' direction.

• Might I ask to what particular parts of the game (BG1) Mr. Kristjanson contributed?

Several had a hand in it, but I probably wrote about around 70% of the word count in BG1. So yeah, a good chunk. Minsc is mentioned a lot because he's a fav, but I wrote most of the party members and more sundry characters than I can remember (Also, confusingly, this, because I was tired and putzing around with SoundForge). I was the first dedicated writer at BioWare, and got to help puzzle out how the D&D kitchen table dynamic was supposed to emerge. Crazy times. And then we went bigger with BG2. "I wrote most of the party members" sounds like a lot, but I'm pretty sure Jaheira alone in BG2 had more to say than all of the followers in BG1 combined, and there were 24 of them. Like I said, beautiful madness.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Oof, big ones. Let's see if I can break this down.

• How have the development cycles changed since BG and BG2?

I don't know what I can say about dev cycles, but we're constantly learning. BG2's definitely did not match its relative size, and it was pretty brutal on the team. We've certainly done shorter games that had more breathing room in the schedule, but some with perhaps a bit too much. Darrah used to have a sign on his wall that said "Show me a game with infinite resources (schedule, etc) and I'll show you a game that never ships." The finish line for creative things is necessarily artificial, because you're never done, there's always something you want to make better. But eventually you have to send little Gamey out into the big wide on his own and hope he does well.

• Did you ever feel gated or bottlenecked by other departments?

Sometimes. And sometimes I'm the block, especially early on in a project. Around here, writing is often first in, first out, but things happen. And at the other end, sometimes you have to cut because there just isn't time to make something work, whether that's editing time, art time, recording time, cine, or just plain old rewriting what didn't turn out like you thought.

• Can you describe the sort of direction you get as a game writer? What sort of editorial control is there?

It varies. Sometimes it's explicit from the Leads, sometimes you just have the in/out: the info that feeds the section and dictates where it has to end up to make the next part make sense. There are a huge number of dependencies attached to every word that you try to anticipate, but sometimes they are already in place and you're just filling a slot. Generally, the bigger the moment and more resources attached, the higher the degree of oversight. In all cases there are multiple stages of review, both inside and outside the team.

• What sort of scoping constraints did you apply to the writing of characters like companions?

For followers, we decide on a structure and budget ahead of time because standardization is the only thing that makes implementation and testing possible. It's easy to go off the rails if you don't have good limits. You get in their heads and just want to let them talk, but that's a recipe for getting your stuff cut by someone else's schedule. Sometimes the limits are out of everyone's control. I wrote Joker for ME2, and after writing was complete, we learned we had a very small window for recording with Seth Green. I had to cut his lines by a literal third, but I had a week to do it, so he became a sort of "greatest hits" that was much tighter. It was painful, but the result was way better than the wordier version. And then the initial recording went so fast, it looked like we might not have enough lines to fill the sessions, so I brainstormed the "stand behind him" one-liners with the rest of writing the day before the last booking. A little chaotic, but you have to be able to adapt.

• In the first Mass Effect, there was nothing in the dialoge or plot that I ever saw that established Garrus as a dedicated sniper.

I think you'll find that there are rarely any lines that lock any character into a particular mechanic, weapon, or style of play. Combat balancing must be free to move as the game needs it. If a character is totally defined by a mechanic, his entire reason for existing can disappear overnight. Like the player character, the followers have to be somewhat modular.

• Do the guys who work on Dragon Age work on Mass Effect in the same capacities?

The Leads are usually specific to one project so there is a consistent vision, but there's a lot of crossover below that as the project ebbs and flows. Staggering the development schedules is a big strength, and ensures a lot of sharing of experience. Depends on the size of the team, though. As far as writers go, I think I've logged the most time crisscrossing projects.

• who stickied the my little pony thread?

I don't know nuffin 'bout nuffin.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

• Who wrote Death's Hand & Black Whirlwind?
• What books were inspiration for writing Jade Empire?

I wrote Death’s Hand as part of the crit path. Mac Walters was primary on the Black Whirlwind. We based a good chunk of Jade on traditional Chinese folklore and Wuxia, although we didn’t spend quite as long describing the richness of the food and how many bowls of wine people could drink. Outlaws of the Marsh was a major inspiration, which is obvious when you look through the character names and courtesy titles. Adapting to the tone and navigating the Celestial Bureaucracy was a lot of fun. The floating palace and waterspout through the core of the planet was a nice change of pace.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

I remember the stink raised when we announced the feature. Our forum back in the day was full of concerns that if romance existed in the game, that was all the game was about. A lot of BG1 players yelling "how dare we put *whatever* into BG, that's not what role-playing is to me!" comments. The more things change, etc.

HoonDing wrote...
Was there anything more about the
background story of the conflict between Dynaheir and Edwin? Or is it
just the typical enmity between wizards of Thay and wychlaran of
Rashemen?

That really was the core of it, at least when the character concepts were created. I tried to imply more when writing them, or at least leave it open for interpretation. As I recall, I dropped hints that Dynaheir was actually looking into the Bhaalspawn threat. Edwin wasn't quite so informed to start, but he could sniff out a path to power from miles away. Ah, looking at the wiki, we let you Charm exactly that out of Dynaheir. And now I remember having to write those "what if you Charm them?" lines for damned near everyone and everything. Weren't we a clever bunch. Charm was the bane of every game that had it. So many edge-cases.

The BG1 characters were threadbare in most of their motivations. They had to be, there was 24 of them. I've mentioned elsewhere that Jaheira in BG2 had more dialogue than all the followers in BG1 combined. And like Dave said, her romance and plots were a house of cards as far as scripting goes. Juggling that complexity is a hard skill to learn. I'll let you know when I'm done.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Blastback wrote...
Wait, you could use charm to get extra dialogue???!!!! Nobody told me!!! Is that feature present in BG2 as well?

Don't get too excited, it was a couple lines max, not interrogations. Honestly, I can't remember if we continued it through BG2 or limited the Charm spell to avoid having to give alternate lines. Hard enough including options for enemies who surrender for plot reasons, having an uncontrollable number of NPCs alive at the end of combat is a massive headache. Charm was barely tolerable, and many NPCs were simply made immune. There were other spells that had similar issues and we cut them outright. Polymorph ended combat by permanently turning the enemy into a squirrel or something, and the game didn't understand that as "dead." We left a wand in somewhere, unfortunately. I remember someone on some forum confused because they managed to hit a load-bearing NPC with it and the plot broke because the character never "died."

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Lukas,
Out of curiosity... will you play the new Baldur's Gate Enhanced Version now that it is out? Or have you had enough of the BG world to last you a lifetime (or two)?

I spent a double-digit percentage of my life on BG related titles, but I'm sure I'll load it up. I've a hell of a backlog right now, but it's great to see it accessible. They have good people there and I'm sure the new followers and areas are fine, I just hope they got the old voices right. I felt like I closed a book on those characters when I wrote the epilogues for ToB, so having them come back is exciting but also strange.

In Exile wrote...
Regarding DA2, was there ever an idea to have more exagerrated scenes than just the introduction, like Varric's own discussion about his brother? I thought that was a neat cut-away... and sometimes wish the game did it more, to deconstruct the traditional fantasy tropes more, and to show the "gritty" truth, so to speak, of the whole affair?

"Gritty" seems likely, but Varric has a peculiar relationship with "truth." Shorts is right that the whole thing is meta to a degree, playing with how we changed up the style. Come to think of it, maybe we should've exploited it more. I mean, hey, Varric's a surface dwarf, maybe all caves look alike to him.
I think there were a few more scenes in early planning, but like Dave's recent tumblr posts have said, cuts are inevitable and happen in every project. Would I have liked more? Sure, but there were other trade-offs to be made and we got the ones we thought made the point.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 07 décembre 2012 - 10:50 .

[Lukas Kristjanson]

starmine76 wrote...
How the heck did you guys get Ed Asner to agree to play Vrook?

Heh. They were going through characters in a VO session, and the description for Vrook was something along the lines of "Ed Asner type". I can't remember who it was, but the actor in the booth said "You know, Ed is actually one of my neighbours, would you like the real thing instead of the 'type'?" Yes, yes we did.

Sable Rhapsody wrote...
Have you guys ever considered going back to the D&D settings? Or will it be original IPs from here on out?

Considered it? Sure. But while it was great to be able to play in settings we had loved for years, it is also quite frustrating at times. IP holders are rightfully protective of their worlds, and sometimes are very cautious about allowing outside developers contribute to setting. And I remember some edits we had to make to KotOR because of lore in EU novels that weren't even out yet. No amount of research would have helped us avoid that, and they certainly couldn't fill us in on all their potential projects.

And some licenses get complicated when companies change hands, as happened with TSR. We dealt with I think three or four separate parent companies? Each with their own varying levels of oversight? Ultimately, we decided that we could world-build at least as well for ourselves as we could for someone else. Not saying it would never happen, though. We did go back to Star Wars, after all.

This is probably a can of worms, but is there any possibility of getting David Gaider's semi-official Ascension mod incorporated into BG2's Enhanced Edition? (When/if that becomes a reality)

I have no idea. As much as I like to see BG out and accessible, we have zero involvement in the EEs. I would guess Beamdog would prefer to keep them as compatible as possible, given the fanbase they would like to court, but you'd be better off asking on their forums.

How do you go about getting more famous actors (Seth Green, Kate Mulgrew, etc.) on board for VA? Is it more challenging with VAs who aren't as familiar with gaming?

It's getting less difficult to lure bigger names if you have the agent relationships. Games are big business for a relatively small amount of time in a recording studio. Guys like Seth Green have multiple sessions, but many are single full-session, or one or two half-sessions in the booth. You can get about 100 to 250 lines done in a full session, depending on actor experience with the format and complexity of character/scenes (so about a jabillion lines if you're Brian Bloom:P). It's challenging if they don't understand the multi-threading of conversations because the scripts for those are very disjointed. Our tools are built for conversation trees, but at some point that has to hit paper in a studio across the planet. Messy.

The caveat is that it is getting easier to get name actors if we want them. The closer to the A list you get, the more you're trapped by their schedule. I mention the cuts I had to make to Joker earlier in this thread. Another example: we couldn't have been happier with Eve Myles' performances for Merril, but she unfortunately had limited availability because of filming for Miracle Day. I had to construct a couple of her banters out of old lines because of that. No, I'm not saying which ones. Your move, internet.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 13 décembre 2012 - 05:43 .

[Lukas Kristjanson]

The thread, it liiiiiives.

I'll ask....what is the strangest inspiration you've gotten for something of past games? I recall reading about Dave's oddball inspiration off of a BBC show for HK-47.

CBC, not BBC . Arty-farty answer, No inspiration is strange if it takes you somewhere new. Newish, even. But I've taken elements from old tabletop games, sitcoms, oscar winners. Side plots have tiny bits of everything because they are moments.

I read somewhere in the KotOR script (dev files) that Korriban was supposed to have a maze/tunnels connecting the tombs.

The original narrative plan that Dave wrote assumed a more dungeon-like path. No specifics because it was never implimented, just bendy with more rooms, etc. An example of a design assumption that got lost somewhere. It happens, and it's expensive. No department wants that.

Who drew the (DA) map and did you have any inputs?

Dave sketched the original DA map on a scrap piece of paper. No one was more surprised than he when they actually used it as the base for the real thing. He positioned things according to some rough ideas of national conflicts, so I suppose proto-plots were concurrent with the proto-map. Both were later expanded and polished.

Obviously, areas had to be cut for whatever reason in games. Sleyheron for instance in KotOR... Did it hurt to cut it - where cool ideas lost? Did you cut any areas in Dragon Age (so far I've only heard about the different Origins)

Cuts always hurt, but they are necessary and you suck it up and shelve your precious word-babies for later use. Sometimes the idea is unique to the moment and gets lost, but more often it is simply worked into something else. Features like Interrupt came from dead things, as did some new conversation functionality you'll see in Inquisition.
In Origins we cut the Landsmeet. Then uncut it. Then cut it again. Then uncut it. Then cut it again and, obviously, uncut it once more. Somewhere, somehow, Mary just shivered. That was an example of continually weighing a BIG chop versus sudden leaps in process that freed up resources and people.

Who came up Taris' destruction?

Don't know. Probably James Ohlen, as whomping a city in someone else's IP takes some high-level bargaining. Even back then when pretty much all that existed in that time period were a few Dark Horse comics.

Do you have a list (of voice actors) available somewhere (ideally for KotOR and DA:O)

Not available, no. Some actors do dozens of small parts, maybe only one or two lines each, so I suppose "additional" is a necessary catch-all. But despite not getting the "name" characters, actors who can bust out tons of little roles are highly valued.

Also, I'm a big fan of your concept arts. You should take the time to share them and/or game documentation after release. I get that you aren't always allowed to talk about certain stuff but still. Who can enjoy them if they are locked in a vault?

I couldn't agree more. There are some crazy things that I wish we could show, but some are creeping out for DA with the World of Thedas lorebooks.

I always wondered what individual developers from Bioware considered to be their favorite side-quest or companion style quest (non-main plot) were from games prior to the ME and DA franchise. From such ones as BG, Kotor and NwN...

It wasn't one of mine... I don't think it was one of mine, maybe Dave's. In BG2. A young group of adventurers come to you with a story of a minor threat in some cave. You can tell them to take care of it for you. They come back with a harrowing tale of struggle and heroism, and having to cast *gasp* magic missile! You pay them. And then, like every group of adventurers ever, they take a shot at killing you. You turn into the Bhaalspawn and obliterate them. The game fades to black, a line says x group "reloads", and then, fade-up, everyone is alive again. They sheepishly take their money and run for the freaking hills.
Best. Plot. Ever.

For the most part I remember characters better than plots. Kang was a lot of fun. Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom THE Magnificent Bastard of course. Small things in BG2 were great, just because sheer volumn meant you had to try new things. Lilarcor was fun. Writing Minsc's answers for riddles. Oh, there was one jerk I did for BG1 where I had a ridiculous option the player could choose to rant at him because they were sick of fetch quests. Portalbendarwinden. Man, was I tired by that point. I also had a lot of fun writing the thief-only stuff with Narlen Darkwalk and Rededge. They spoke in "thieves' cant" sourced from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Obnoxious, I must have been a translator's nightmare.

What's the cafeteria/eating situation like in the Edmonton office?

Fruit and such in the mornings, bagged from the store, not laid out like a buffet or anything. Coffee machines through the day because NEED. Supper is brought in when there's crunch hours. That varies from "awesome" to "I'll bring my own." But it all beats the different-pizza-every-day for months during the BG days before Ray and Greg hired someone to make better life choices.

Also, probably more on topic... what type of differences do you find writing for DLC's versus writing for core game content?

Not really a functional difference, unless you have constraints like needing to slot into the main plot, or pass variables to it. Which, of course, you often do. But the tone is mainly different because you're in a different place as a designer. Sometimes you're just really tired and punchy because DLC is effort above and beyond the already monumental task of the main game, and all these puns just come out of nowhere and suddenly Varric is surrounded by ghastholes and whose fault is that really?

And sometimes it's a farewell, because you're likely never writing those characters again. Remember, we've been with these stories sometimes years longer than you guys. Can feel like putting down a pet.

Personally, I liked working on the self-contained stuff like Leliana's Song or (slightly less contained) Mark of the Assassin and Legacy. All let me expand on characters in ways that weren't available in the main game. MotA and L essentially had 5 new followers, because in addition to Tallis, the siblings were back, and I did Carver and Bethany's Act2/3 Templar/Warden/Circle mage writing very different. It let me answer some things in their voice. I also really liked branching the ending of Legacy with Act 1 still around mom, or the later memory of mom that can only speak how you remember her. Subtle things. Too subtle. Subtle can be a bad word.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 23 août 2013 - 08:47 .

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Beerfish wrote...
Lukas, who was primarily responsible for Durlags Tower? It's one of the very best dungeon adventures ever design wise and story wise.

I don't remember who suggested the location, but we all agreed that we wanted to do a big "proper" dungeon, and Durlag's Tower was a legendary D&D spot that became the obvious choice because of location. And probably because we weren't mean enough to go full Tomb of Horrors on your butts. I was lead again, but Kevin Martens and Rob Bartel wrote on it as well. And yeah, most of the credit should go to art and tech design for that place. One of the most important lessons you can learn in game writing is get the hell out of the way. I want to integrate and write to support the art and gameplay, not dictate. And in turn, art and gameplay should support story inherently. And as always, I'll let you know when I actually learn how to reliably do any of this.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 23 août 2013 - 09:31 .

[Lukas Kristjanson]

OdanUrr wrote...

I was wondering, who came up with the origin story for the Tuskens in KotoR?

I wrote Tatooine. I remember wrestling with "Sand People" a lot because "Tusken Raiders" came from an event 100 years or so before the movies, and we were 4000 years before. At the time, there was very little specific detail in the lore. There were various "source books" from art books and RPG materials, but they had nonsensical fire-and-forget mentions of things like Banthas introduced to Kashyyyk adapting to the canopy in about 3000 years, which from an evolutionary standpoint seems to require that they breed like fruit flies. There were massive gaps that didn't pay much attention to the cause-effect nature of history. On Kashyyyk I explained things with a giant radioactive terraformer run amuck. For the Sand People, lore had only broad strokes, so I threw the filter of human emotion on it and tried to draw some logical lines. They were trying very hard to stay apart from everyone else, which leant itself, of course, to the heresy that perhaps they aren't so apart.

I though it was an interesting twist. I also thought having HK47 actively translate was fun, a feeling not shared by audio who had to implement it.

Modifié par Lukas Kristjanson, 23 août 2013 - 08:46 .

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Do you ever shoot the shirt with your ME writing counterparts (I'd have to imagine you would in some way)? Did you ever pick their brains on writing some of the ME3 DLC, and how that process felt for them after the way the ME3 endings panned out?

Sure, but it was personal enough for me too, even if I wasn't on ME3. After all, I helped create and wrote many of those characters while on 1 and 2. And we're not worlds apart, Patrick sits behind me now on Inquisition. I'm not going to pick at that particular fuss, except to say that the entire game is "the end." The weave under the hood of ME3 is mind-boggling.

I thought it was a pretty engrossing tale in and of itself and I really wanted to scavenge around for any signs of that ancient civilization. Maybe if there's a KotoR 3 I could do just that?

If cost was your barrier, I really recommend giving SWtOR a try now that it's free to play. There's 8 sequels worth of content there and the project director was Lead Designer of the original KotOR. I especially like the non-force-user story arcs. My trooper is drifting dark and it feels good.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Lukas, can you tell us anything about the early, EARLY BG days? I mean, were they spent heavily with TSR folks, determining what could and could not be done? Were you all left to your own devices until you had a strong plot, and then TSR had to approve it?

More the latter. When you license an IP, you're paying to use the setting, not to make the game with the IP owner. So they raised issues, but their concern was guarding the setting, not making BG. They rejected several plots, including an early version of the storyline for BG2, as being "too big." Which seemed more about not understanding the scale of the project. They were in a real Journey to the Rock mindset about the little game we were making. And to be fair, at the time, D&D was hot and RPGs were not. And given what had come before, how big could it be? Certainly not eight hundred thousand words.

And then we pretty much outsold all other D&D branded products combined, which probably scared the crap out of some people. And us.

Also, was the game planned from the start to have the main character be a Bhaalspawn, on the run from another Bhaalspawn? How far in advance was the pantheon of gods incorporated into the story?

The bhaalspawn angle was always a part of it, far as I know. Maybe not the super early concepts, but that would have been long before any production started. The D&D pantheon were always--and would always be--involved. In that world, divine power is manifested literally daily for any number of people. A big campaign, it's just inevitable their influence or agents are going to show up.

Who wrote Saemon Havarian? Because you should totally sue Disney for stealing your character xD

I wrote him in BG2. But I've no defensible claim to the template, he was specifically requested by James Ohlen as pure homage to a character in a Jack Vance novel. Dying Earth, but I can't remember exactly. Those books were a huge influence on James and Ray both, and one year we gave Ray a signed copy as a Christmas present. Aw, I just Googled and realized Vance died in May this year. Vancian magic is a term occasionally thrown around and for good reason. There is no Dungeons and Dragons, no Baldur's Gate, without inspiration from Jack Vance.

I just want to say that this scene was by far my favourite moment of DA2. I didn't even realize the dialogue was different until I decided to try Legacy before Act 3, and it was very, very interesting to see the shift.

Thanks. Jon Epp nailed the cine on that moment. Carries the whole thing.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Which Mass Effect game are you the most fond of?

I have the strongest memories of working on ME2. Things got a little wacky when everything including broken bones took a toll on the rest of the writing team. As a result, there's not much I didn't have a piece of. One of those "that hurt like hell... it was great!" times that you look back on with rose-coloured glasses, but in the moment you want to quit to take up a career in artisanal swearing.

Another question... who wrote the Drizzt section of BG and BG2? Was there any discussion with R.A. Salvatore during that process?

I wrote Drizzt in BG1. I think Dave was primary on that in BG2. No, Mr. Salvatore wasn't involved, beyond me reading to get the voice. Drizzt belongs to TSR, so he was fair game to use, so long as we didn't do anything weird with him, like accidentally let players pickpocket his swords. Same went for Elminster, Volo, or any other names that inhabited the Forgotten Realms.

I've always thought that past writing experience would be a little difficult to translate into RPG video game writing, simply because there are more variables to account for in terms of player choice, as well as the fact that not every player will see all the same content or complete every action/option. Couple that with the fact that video games usually have geometrically more written lines than your average movie or novel and there's lot's of differences.

Plenty of novels have complex variables to track, and plenty of authors can crank out lots of content. The problem is maintaining agency while giving up control of voice and motivation. The player character in our games has multiple motivations at any given time, and all have to be able to be argued as equally valid. Many writers can write different kinds of characters, they just aren't practiced at writing them concurrent, giving up control of motivation and pacing, or managing that branching efficiently.

But I was wondering if you thought last television writing would possibly offer a lot of analogies?
*snip*
Would you agree with this assumption/analogy? And have you all ever thought about trying to draw or recruit writing talent in from some of the television industry?

We already have. Our past and current writers have come from all over, including television, movies, plays, improv, teaching, modding, tabletop, other game companies, etc. Screenwriting is definitely complimentary to what we do, but more important to all successful candidates is an understanding of games. The tools of this job are relatively easy to grasp. "Getting it" takes a bit more.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Is there different writers for the PC when you make a game? And if so, is it usually tackled by whoever writes the character they are talking to?
*snip*
And, as a side note, were there separate writers for Hawke's different tones (dip/sar/agg)? Or for Shephard with the Paragon/Renegade dialogue?

Generally we divide ownership by plot and by follower. So if I'm primary on X plot, I write everything, all the PC and NPCs including tones and interjections. Then it gets an approval pass, reviewed, nuked, rewrites, reviewed, editing, maintenance, etc. At some point, the various primary owners of the other followers do a voice pass to make sure I haven't contradicted something, or used language the character wouldn't use, or would/wouldn't comment if they haven't/have. We all discuss the tonal range of the PC, and his/her voice is policed by our editors, a task that usually means scrubbing our various idiosyncratic tics so it isn't completely obvious multiple writers are passing the character around.

We get into each other's heads enough that there aren't usually big changes during voice passes. In fact, that's where interesting relationships can emerge. You want a solid grasp of the nature of your characters, but not so much of a deathgrip that they never change or adapt. Unless that's their thing.

[Seb Hanlon]

Naughty Bear wrote...
...
So what would you do on a typical day? Same with Priestly and the woman who cosplayed as femshep? Her name escapes me. Jessica?

A day in the Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal a banquet, every formation a parade, every pay cheque a fortune!
Every day is different. That being said, a selection of things that might happen on any given day:
Daily standup meeting with scrum group to catch up everyone's progress and identify blocking issues
Review e-mail
Weekly combat design meeting
Bug triage to make sure issues are getting distributed to the right people
Sync the latest build and content
Playthrough meeting to go through the most recent build
Gameplay review meeting to most recent work on abilities, creatures, mechanics, etc.
1:1 meetings with the individual combat designers to get their feelings and chat with them directly
Firefighting - answering questions, directing people where to find answers, investigating bug reports, aligning or communicating design decisions with other departments or parts of the team
Planning the next few weeks or months of development
Writing design docs
Revising design docs
Reading design docs
Catching up e-mail
Writing performance reviews for my team
Investigating bugs - digging into content and code to figure out why things aren't right
Working with animators on technical issues in the animation tools
Chatting with programmers about how to implement features for maximum effectiveness and workflow
Design leads meeting with Mike and the other design department leads (writing, cine, levels, systems, etc)
Occasionally making content (design work in the tools) or writing code to make things go

Modifié par Seb Hanlon, 06 septembre 2013 - 03:42 .

[Seb Hanlon]

LPPrince wrote...

Dat wall of text

Edit- Touché...

sorry, the text widget doesn't work right on my ipad...

[Lukas Kristjanson]

I never hear that much about the Bioware editing team. How many do you all have working on one game at a time? Do they migrate between teams when there is less writing going on during one game's creation?

Unsung heroes. The editing team tends to migrate as a whole depending on load. There are 5 on the team at the moment, on DA and *shifty eyes* other stuff. It includes a lot of technical/organizational writing, like Ben Gelinas wrangling our internal IP wiki, which directly led to him working on the World of Thedas book.

I'm curious as to how the development of DAO occurred. Were you guys constantly working on it for all those years? Ultimately what was the reason that it kept getting pushed back? Were ideas just getting scrapped and reworked?

There were several speed bumps due to shifts in engine tech as it was developed, which meant a lot of time without a platform to evaluate the content. The first draft of the writing was prototyped in the Neverwinter Nights editor, which wasn't as much of a help as it should've been. Lots of issues migrating resources across tech streams, and it was simply too different for accurate evaluation. The extended design time resulted in some good iteration, but some naval-gazing too. You can overanalyze and "fix" things because you're too familiar with them, not because they're actually broken. That's a risk with all creative things. I've mentioned the sign on Darrah's bookshelf, but it remains relevant: "Show me a game with infinite resources, I'll show you a game that never ships."

BGs have an impressive amount of highly awesome, memorable NPCs. Was it ever on table to craft some sort of a spin off expansion/game involving some(one) of em in centerpiece of story?

No solid plans. But hey, Interplay's ghost could still bork up Minsc's Big-Head Racing one of these days.

What is it like working in Bioware?

In writing that could mean presenting shorthand pitches to the leads, and then "pod" meetings with various other departments as we plan out the specifics of areas/plots. Meetings on the scope of types of conversation/cine concerns. Writing design docs/narrative overviews of my plots/characters so tech knows how to piece it together, and meetings on that scope. Or reading through other plots to prep for peer reviews. The best is when you get some traction to just write, but then there are passes to add VO comments so actors know what FEELS to feel, or edit because cine/mocap can convey the meaning of a particular line better than words, or adding/removing skills because a new system came online or was scrapped, or rework the whole thing after one of the previously mentioned peer reviews. Near the end of the project I shift to "maintenance," and sometimes there are late fixes while racing final VO and scripting. I've tetris'd fully-recorded conversations apart and back together to change tone/fix bugs/accommodate gameplay, rewriting only the player lines/paraphrases to change context. I like that phase because you know the pieces, you know the deadline, so you make it work to quality or it simply gets cut. And then I do targeted playthroughs, because I can see in my plots where something broken didn't happen, as opposed to where something broken did happen. So it's like that, plus whatever else explodes. It's complicated.

The Hours are normal office hours until they're not. Then it's deadline by deadline, depending on what it takes to unblock others and get the beast shipped. But there's only so long you can work before diminishing returns kick in. Crunch with a goal is bearable and useful. Crunch for crunch's sake is a failure of management and scheduling.

[Allan Schumacher]

Do you get bored replaying the game over and over to hunt for bugs or testing stuff? My patience wears thin when replaying a game for the 2nd or 3rd time.

You learn ways to keep it interesting, but what you describe is always a risk. Though depending on the person, most of the time what you're doing is often a lot more focused. So when I am spending more time in game, I'm usually very focused on a particular aspect.

And how scary is it waiting for reviews? Do you all have a party if it does well? I saw Bioware had a Normandy cake.

I don't remember really waiting for reviews, personally. Though we'll have a release party after projects in any case.

What happens after a game is finished, after the dlc too. Do you go straight onto another project?

Depends. At the release of a game there is a bit of a split. I didn't do any work on DLC for DAO, and did about 1 week of work on Awakening, before I was put onto DA2 (and some were already on DA2 for some time before that).

Is the atmosphere relaxed? Do you have a kitchen and storeroom full of food? I remember watching a Bungie video or perhaps a Valve studio tour, they had a whole storeroom full of sugary goodness.

In general I'd say the atmosphere is relaxed. I have worked in more stressful environments, but it depends a lot on the person I find. Getting down towards the push on the PAX demo, some stress level was definitely rising, though for varying effects on the person. Though there's a crescendo and then as it all starts to come together things start going "Oh yeah... this is going to be great" which means that, despite the stress, it's still pretty easy to go on.

As for food, BioWare provides some frozen snacks and whatnot, and also feeds us breakfast and there's some dry goods food like cereal around. When the team at large starts working late they also bring in catered food (which I love 99% of the time!).