381 réponses à ce sujet

[Seagloom]

Lukas should have an easy time answering that question. I believe he wrote Minsc.

I vaguely recall the decision to make Throne of Bhaal an expansion was in part because of how high level the party was at Shadows of Amn's conclusion. Was the basic plot always intended to play out how it did, or was the BG saga's finale originally meant to play out in some radically different fashion?

Modifié par Seagloom, 25 juillet 2011 - 08:07 .

[Cutlasskiwi]

TheMufflon wrote...

Wentletrap wrote...

Lukas Kristjanson wrote...

Like I said, a design detail that is thrilling to like two people.

I disagree.

I'd gladly buy a book filled with such design-history tidbits - for both DA and ME. 

So, who's the other guy?

I also found it very interesting. Mostly becasue I tend to work in a similair way. Besides, I've always found other peoples creative process interesting and sometimes even helpful.  

[Lukas Kristjanson]

On Fenris: Dave likes the wolf imagery and the uncontrollable element, which is something we adapted for the elves previously with Fen'Harel, but I don't think he intended to take much more than that from Fenrir. There's rebellion in Fenris, sure, but we don't want to bludgeon to the point you wonder why Danarius essentially named his slave "Guy who kills his master." From Danarius' perspective and imperfect understanding of elven it's probably more about being master over something "wild".

On Minsc: I enjoyed writing him and tried to give him depth beyond the obvious joke. Writers working with the actors is relatively recent. Back then we described it as best we could and fired it off into the ether while crossing our fingers. I think my character notes for Minsc included “...and a little of the Tick if he was Russian.” Loved the result. Audio has cast Jim Cummings several times, and we’ve always been happy with his work.

On ToB: We weren’t interested in another side-plot addition like Tales of the Sword Coast, squeezing another full sequel out of the same PC (or the Infinity Engine, for that matter) seemed unlikely, and Neverwinter was beckoning. How many more side plots could we possibly cram into BG2, anyway? Better to wrap up the story in a way that did it justice. Dave would know more about what specific story elements may have changed during implementation. I moved over to Neverwinter, and while I did ToB dialogues for my main characters and the various character/PC epilogues, I wasn’t on the crit path for the rest.

[upsettingshorts]

Wentletrap wrote...

I disagree.

I'd gladly buy a book filled with such design-history tidbits - for both DA and ME.

That I would as well should come as no shock, seeing as I'm the OP.  Haven't had any good questions myself recently though.  Glad to see it's still going, though.  Thanks Lukas/Stan/questioners!

[Seagloom]

That sounds like what I remembered about behind the scenes Throne of Bhaal stuff. Thanks for the answer.

I'm posing this question to Lukas: were any of your characters challenging to write? If so, how did you overcome that challenge?

Related bonus question: what inspires your creativity?

[Dominus]

Isn't there always a challenge in creating a believable human being(or other sentient being) out of thin air? :-P Still a good question though. I'm really enjoying this thread, it's a much needed breath of fresh air

Modifié par DominusVita, 26 juillet 2011 - 01:13 .

[blothulfur]

Thanks Lukas.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Oof, big questions.

Every character has its challenges. What a cop-out answer, right? It’s a weird balance to write for, trying to mix strong characters with the goal-oriented needs of gaming as a medium. It’s easy to slip into letting the player “fix“ a character, but people don’t realistically go “huh, I never thought of it that way before” and change their nature, no matter how “right” the argument is. A smaller shift within a range is good, and results in a better and more believable arc.

The most challenging are the ones who seem the most simple, because you have to find a way to make them stand out while still hitting the role they need to fill. DA2 had some of that, I think, judging from reactions that changed depending on whether the character was kept around long enough to overcome initial assumptions.

Inspirations? Anything I can get my hands on when I'm not chasing my 4 year old around. Especially all those other games that some people seem to think can only exist in a black and white “if you love this, you must hate this” spectrum.

[Seagloom]

Thanks for the answers. The questions were admittedly broad. As a wannabe writer that has a long way to go, I can't resist asking professionals about their work.

Modifié par Seagloom, 29 juillet 2011 - 11:47 .

[Homebound]

Lukas Kristjanson wrote...

My take on names:
It’s a layer of design that shouldn't be obvious. You can name a character anything, but you get the most mileage with something that illustrates their nature either by reinforcing it or going against type, because going against type still acknowledges the type. Take Aveline, a soft name, easy to say, but it also sounds classical and several of the “A” gods of antiquity are war-focused. It’s mirrored as an in-game reference and she’s aware of the expectation it brings, which becomes a sticking point in her development.

Many try to drag names into literal reference, like the hardworking people pushing the Morgan LeFay/Morrigan, Alistair/Arthur supposed parallels, but a reference like that is far too distracting. I don’t want you thinking about another character entirely, just feeling the beats that our culture has attached to similar sounds. DA and ME both.

Also, the less you have to explain the character, the better.Costumes and body shape (mildly nsfw figure drawings) are critical, but as a writer I can only shape the intangible. I used it as shorthand in Leliana’s Song. For a DLC, I don't want to spent time introducing people, and worrying about if you “get them” or not. Sketch and Tug were conjured in the first paragraph of the pitch for their design. “She’ll need backup that feels familiar, like a twitchy mage and a fireplug dwarven tank. Like Sketch and Tug.” I used reactions and codex entries to deepen them while still avoiding talking too much, and I really like how they came out. Sometimes talking is good, but that wasn't the point of LS.
Edit: and how could I forget Commander Harwen Raleigh? I love that name, it's like it has a self-important sneer built into it.

so you used bodyshape to shorthand character descriptions for the characters like Sketch and Tug in the Leliana DLC? Am I getting you right? Or did am I misunderstanding?

I dont see the morgan lefay/arthur dynamic between morrigan and alistair. The two characters really came into their own. Im glad they turned out the way they turned out. The two are in my mind, one of the groups of characters that bioware will be remembered for.

Wrex, we had a clear idea of his role, his tone. For a name, we wanted something that sounded blunt, immovable, with maybe a snarl. It’s a statement of course, with a busload of literal added in because wrex=wrecks=Rex=seething grrr sound to say it, which led to other “action” names among the Krogan. Urdnot is “thick” and stops you, and to me it sounds like it should be an anagram of something. Makes the viewer ask “Is there meaning there?” (there isn’t, or at least, not when I suggested it. He's certainly not "rotund"). Many didn't like Wrex as a name until a month later when no one could remember calling him anything else. So it goes.

Speaking of Anagrams..Do you know Etrigan the demon from DC comics? Ive always wondered if his name meant anything special or if it was just a name...does it spell out something im missing?

In my notes from the naming meetings Tali was initially Talsi Orah, with the intent that Orah would become the familiar one. But Talsi Orah flows oddly, feels like there's sort of a half-stop in the middle. And it’s too "soft" for where we wanted to take her.

THE TALI THREAD IS GOING TO LOVE THIS!! TY!!

Now, after all of the above, there’s a good chance you’re going “wow, I didn’t get any of that while playing.” Hopefully you didn’t, because if a name beats you over the head with how much "sense" it makes, it does more damage than good. Unless that's what you want it to do, and you embrace it as a tactic. Like I said, a design detail that is thrilling to like two people.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Hellbound555 wrote...

so you used bodyshape to shorthand character descriptions for the characters like Sketch and Tug in the Leliana DLC? Am I getting you right? Or did am I misunderstanding?

No, the original question was about names. Because of the length of the DLC, I didn't have the bandwidth to do extensive introductions, so Leliana's party needed to be instantly recognizable, which you can do with costume, body, and (the writery bit) name. That sentence in a design doc labeling them as Sketch and Tug was almost literally the first thought I had about them, because in my head, everything about their role and relationship was instantly telegraphed. I had initially considered going back later to give them "real" names, and if they had been party members in a longer game I might have, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like unnecessary complication. Plus having them use nicknames in an intimate circle gives the player another element of their relationship. They are secondary characters, the kind every story has, but little things help make them feel like people who could exist. Their stories just happen elsewhere so they don't distract from the events the DLC needs to focus on.

[Nerdage]

Was similar thinking behind Worthy, Elegant and (to a lesser extent) Tomwise in DA2? I don't think they were nicknames, but it seemed odd that they all had similarly odd names and filled similar roles in the game (crafters you meet off-screen in the first year).

[Ryllen Laerth Kriel]

Lukas Kristjanson wrote...



On Minsc: I enjoyed writing him and tried to give him depth beyond the obvious joke. Writers working with the actors is relatively recent. Back then we described it as best we could and fired it off into the ether while crossing our fingers. I think my character notes for Minsc included “...and a little of the Tick if he was Russian.” Loved the result. Audio has cast Jim Cummings several times, and we’ve always been happy with his work.

That is awesome. I completely appreciated the reference to the influence from The Tick. I kind of wondered about that as I was playing BG but figured it was too obscure to be a reference. Alot of the writing for the original comic book is golden and still damn funny today. Does that make Boo Arthur or is Boo more the inspiration like The Tick's battle cry of "Spooon?"

[Lord Sullivan]

Hey I have a question for an old game... Neverwinter Nights

Whats the progress on the issue with the old website and the Master Server?

Should we expect it back up sometime in the near futur? or is it all over and neither
will be back up ever again? It would be nice to know... you know?

[Ryllen Laerth Kriel]

Neverwinter Nights isn't an old game....harumph!

And I'm guessing there might be issues with the master server support due to the game's age and the fact that Bioware is no longer part of the Atari family of developers.

[upsettingshorts]

I have a question about worldbuilding, although it is admittedly vague:

When designing a world, how much is created that you might need, or as a foundation to make the world believable and full of detail - and how much is created ad hoc around whatever stories you want to tell? Is there a difference? Any insights into where to stop with the former and move on to the latter? Does it even work that way?

Put another way, how much of a world is built before or independent of the story?

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 31 juillet 2011 - 10:10 .

[Nerdage]

Don't know if it's the same process for all the studios, but there have been a few dev blogs about world building / writing on the TOR site. [1] [2] [3]

Modifié par nerdage, 01 août 2011 - 12:18 .

[upsettingshorts]

Star Wars already has/had years and years of lore building from numerous authors - not to dispute that the TOR writers clearly had a lot of work to do given the amount of content in the game - but the Jade Empire, Thedas, and Mass Effect are all original properties and as such are more the kinds of worldbuilding stories I'm interested in.

Thanks for the links though, I'll check them out.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

On minor names: Some of the smaller characters get names that amuse us in the moment, because their overall role doesn’t move from your immediate interaction with them. Sometimes inspiration is a thesaurus. I think Tomwise was a straight up, “we need a name, oh what the hell” nod to Tolkien.

Arthur and Boo: Minsc and Boo actually predate BG by a good bit. Much darker versions were in a P&P campaign Lead Designer James used to run years before BioWare. I wasn’t around in the before-time, so I took them in a different direction. Jim Cummings fun fact: he did voices for the Tick cartoon, including Leonardo da Vinci, who now sounds to me like an Italian Minsc.

Neverwinter tech issues: sorry, you’ll have to take current issues to the appropriate tech support forum.

World building: A big part of this job is making sure everything fits and makes sense. Just as important is knowing when you’re getting into overcomplicated detail that will bite you in the butt. You need to leave yourself hooks for future development, because if you tried to lay absolutely everything out first, you’d never ship, and worse, you've nowhere to go when inevitable changes need to be made. You need room to maneuver. The comment in those links about grabbing unused planets for TOR is the same logic for why KotOR was set in that time period in the first place: a decade ago very little material was set there, so there was room to move and still feel like Star Wars.
A new IP setting can’t match the content of a franchise that has been percolating for decades, but you can match the potential depth by being careful and establishing and sticking with rules and boundaries. If your foundation makes sense, you can continue to build on it. You can't know what you might need, but you can decide how the setting could develop without actually laying it out comepletely. If the story matches the forward thinking of the setting, you'll see things just start fitting. One or two of the “OMG they always knew!” moments over the years were woven backwards like this, because the setting had logical hooks in place. No, I won’t tell you which ones.

[Homebound]

Lukas, whats your favourite bioware ship? both past and present.

[Il Divo]

I know this is a departure from the naming discussion, but I did have a separate question:

how do the people at Bioware feel about the Vancian casting system for spells? It's pretty integral to the DnD experience, but I never was a huge fan and was curious if Bioware was glad to move in different directions.

[Stanley Woo]

Il Divo wrote...

I know this is a departure from the naming discussion, but I did have a separate question:

how do the people at Bioware feel about the Vancian casting system for spells? It's pretty integral to the DnD experience, but I never was a huge fan and was curious if Bioware was glad to move in different directions.

You're assuming that BioWare is a singular entity with a unifying opinion on something. we have a variety of developers from all sorts of backgrounds, and I'm sure you could find fans of many different ways of dealing with magic, just as you'd find fans of many different ways of dealing with alien characters, FTL travel, dragons and ponies.

[Il Divo]

Stanley Woo wrote...

You're assuming that BioWare is a singular entity with a unifying opinion on something. we have a variety of developers from all sorts of backgrounds, and I'm sure you could find fans of many different ways of dealing with magic, just as you'd find fans of many different ways of dealing with alien characters, FTL travel, dragons and ponies.

Fair point, Mr. Woo. I was getting ahead of myself. Let me narrow the question a bit more: how do you feel about the Vancian casting system (positives/negatives)?   

[Xewaka]

While the Infinite Engine games have a clear base on DnD, what other, different RPG systems does the staff used as inspiration on other, non DnD licensed games?

[Genly]

Sorry if this has been asked... I was playing DA:Origins again and I noticed "Brecilian" forest sounds familiar. Did it come from/suppose to remind "Brazilian forest"? Besides the pronunciation, the scenario sort of fits too (even though I'm not aware of werewolves in the Amazon forest >.>)