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[My Member Is Long]

http://www.rockpaper...-tougher-morer/

So there it is.  I could copy paste the whole article like Bioware does with environments but that would be taking site views away from the source.  So I'll only quote a few interesting tidbits.

Is he nervous about the upcoming release? “That’s a good question,”
Melo says — though apparently not good enough for a direct answer. “If
somebody comes in and they’re expecting that this single DLC is going to
solve everything — whatever everything is for them — then clearly this
is not going to meet their expectations. If it’s somebody that enjoys
DA2, they will absolutely love it. If it’s somebody that enjoys the lore
and story of Dragon Age, I think they’ll absolutely love it. If
somebody was kind of on the fence with DA2 and they’re still willing to
come in with an open mind and give it a chance, I think they’ll be
pleasantly surprised with what they find here. Hopefully.”“For
sure there are certain people who probably wanted Origins 2 with Dragon
Age 2; we did not go in that direction,” Melo adds. “This DLC is not
going to solve that for them.”

Well that's reassuring now, isn't it?

Melo puts the playable content of what he calls the “route one” main
quest at about two-and-a-half to three hours. But take note, you “boo!
on rails” people: “The really nice thing with this content,” Melo says,
“is that there’s a lot of additional side quests and exploration areas,
and a couple of easter eggs as well. This is one of the things we wanted
to address from previous feedback.” All told, Legacy is maybe five
hours of content, Melo says, depending on how puzzley you are and
whether you backtrack at all.

So.  Let's talk about backtracking.  Generally, if you backtrack, that means you're going back to a place you've already been.  The same environment you've been to previously.  So basically, to get the most out of this DLC, you have repetitive environments.  I'm glad they're listening to feedback.

When I ask Melo how make-or-break this release is to the Dragon Age
franchise, he replies, “It’s not really a make-or-break thing. It’s our
privilege to be able to serve additional content to the fans. So long as
they want it, we will make more content for them. But clearly, if
people do not like this and the numbers show that and the feedback we
get shows that, then we either will take a new tack and a different
approach on the next piece of content, or we’ll see what that means.

Safe to say this is probably the last DLC then.

But Dragon Age II has been successful. We’ve attracted a lot of new fans
and even old fans who said, ‘You know, I struggled with Origins or I
wasn’t able to complete it, and I found DA2 much more palatable’. At the
end of the day, right now that is our audience. There are a lot of
people who enjoyed DA2 and they’re looking for more content, and that is
the primary audience for this. But I’m hoping that we can also win back
a lot of people that were perhaps expecting something else with DA2 and
are willing to give it a chance.

Now this to me is maybe the most disturbing part.  Not just because of what he's saying, although the thought process behind it is... odd, but because how many times have we heard Bioware employees issue this same exact statement almost verbatim?  They've repeated that exact prewritten statement surely provided by their EA overlords almost as much as they repeat environments.

Don't want.

Modifié par My Member Is Long, 20 juillet 2011 - 05:36 .

[John Epler]

Ahh, spin. It's not just for corporations!

I'm not certain what was objectionable about the first statement. Certainly, if what you're looking for is essentially another Origins, well, this is still the same game at the core. We're not removing the voiced protagonist, we're not slowing down combat animations, we're not returning to the old art style. So, yes, if what you're hoping is that this DLC turns DA2 into Origins, then you will be disappointed.

As to the backtracking comment, it's minimal. The majority of the DLC content is done without any backtracking - however, yes, there's some content that requires you to go back to a part of the level you've already visited. It's minor, it's optional, but it's there. That's still not to say that we're reusing environments, and we're certainly not passing off the old environments as 'new' environments. It's just that, if you want to hit all the content (including the easter egg'ish stuff), you'll have to backtrack a few minutes.

And I'm really not sure what you find objectionable about that last quote. Obviously, the primary audience for any DA2 DLC is people who enjoyed DA2. It'd be rather foolish to focus it on people who didn't like the game - that's not to say that we don't take the concerns of people who disliked aspects of DA2 into account. And that would be the second half of that statement - we're hoping that we can show things with Legacy that indicate we've seen what the fans felt strongly about and worked on improving those aspects. Obviously, not everyone's going to feel that what we do is enough. Some people will feel we didn't address their specific concern. But in the end, the evidence one way or another will be in the content we provide.

[John Epler]

happy_daiz wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...

I'm not certain what was objectionable about the first statement. Certainly, if what you're looking for is essentially another Origins, well, this is still the same game at the core. We're not removing the voiced protagonist, we're not slowing down combat animations, we're not returning to the old art style. So, yes, if what you're hoping is that this DLC turns DA2 into Origins, then you will be disappointed.

Hooray! 

Well, let me clarify by saying that this is simply true of the DLC. I have no idea what our future plans are on the franchise, but anyone expecting a massive overhaul of these sorts of things in a DLC will be rather disappointed.

[John Epler]

DraCZeQQ wrote...

Poor Bioware ... first TW2 is released soon after DA2 to show us, how real RPG should look like and now Obsidian released Old World Blues to show us how real DLC should look like ... i dont get why other RPG making companies can be so mean! =(

We'll just have to bite our lip and think of happy things to keep the tears from flowing.

Whoops. That's my snarky comment for the month.

[John Epler]

Savber100 wrote...

I don't know.. I feel a little disappointed.

Maybe because I hoped that Bioware would focus on some elements that would reassure fans of DA:O that they still cared about this particular group that helped DA to reach where it is now.

The impression I'm getting is that the new fans is where the money is at and the old fans just need to get used to DA2's direction for the franchise. Sure Bioware will probably fix the repetitive environment and wave combat but DA2 will still be seen as the base for the NEW DA direction rather than Origins which means that the inherent problem still exists.

Bioware aims to please everyone but fails to realize that no one is happy when you aim for everything. It's either specialize for a particular audience and excel or spread to please all and achieve mediocrity.

At least, they are clear who their audience is so I thank them for their honesty.

Again, I'm uncertain what people expected Fernando to say. Certainly, the underlying mechanisms of DA2 haven't changed for the DLC. The combat is still as fast, Hawke is still the protagonist and the visual style is still the same. None of these are things that are going to change for the DLC - DLC adds to a game, and can certainly adopt a somewhat different design philosophy where content is concerned, but the framework in which that content fits - that's not going to change. That's not the purpose of DLC.

What -can- be worked on, however, is the specifics of that content. That's where we can react to what we read on the forums and on other websites. And I don't think it's fair to claim that we're ignoring our fans by using the basic framework of DA2 to create the DLC for DA2. We never pretended otherwise. Again, the content itself can be different, and I think we've done a rather good job of reacting to the community's feedback in how the content was built. On the Cinematic Design side of things, we've tried to bring back things that people asked for wherever possible. But this was never going to be an entirely different game. And taking that as evidence that we've completely abandoned a segment of the fanbase feels a bit like confirmation bias, because that was never something we promised or even hinted at. Again. It's DLC.

[John Epler]

To clarify my last post - am I saying people can't be skeptical? Not in the slightest. If you were disappointed in DA2, well, I think you have every right to take its DLC with an enormous grain of salt. If I had a product I wasn't pleased with, you can bet that any future iterations on that product would be something I'd be very careful about. What I am saying, however, is that to declare it evidence that we're abandoning any section of our fanbase is a little premature. Particularly if it's in reaction to news that, well, is true of pretty much any DLC.

[Stanley Woo]

AquamanOS wrote...

I'm more annoyed that much like many other Bioware interviews the speaker doesn't really say much of anything new, and is cautious, as if afraid a squad of Bioware/EA ninjas will pop up and kill them if they say something not company approved.

Or afraid that the internet will pick apart every sentence and phrase and speculate wildly on anything it doesn't understand and/or agree with and/or fit within its preconceived ideas of what the product should be.

[John Epler]

Allow me to remind everyone that being civil on these forums is not optional. If you want to fire off vitriol and insults, then find another forum in which to do so. The internet is full of places where your own personal brand of self-righteous, rage-filled posting might be welcomed. This is not one of those places.

Modifié par JohnEpler, 21 juillet 2011 - 02:28 .

[John Epler]

Let's get off the side-topic of 'my opinion is more correct than yours' and back onto the main topic, how about. We have enough places where people can express their bafflement that others have different opinions than their own without this having to become one of them.

[John Epler]

happy_daiz wrote...

@JohnEpler

So was Legacy DLC created by the same team who did Shadow Broker, or are they completely separate?

There's some overlap, but most of the work was done by the DA core team. That's not to say that the expertise the ME gained from Shadow Broker wasn't tapped, but most of the folks who worked on Shadow Broker are hard at work on ME3. 

Mass Effect and Dragon Age have small 'core' teams of people in each department who are, essentially, the 'franchise experts'. The particular departments will grow and shrink according to the project needs across the company - so when Dragon Age 2 was in production, for example, Cinematic Design swelled to about 250% of its current size. When ME3 started ramping up, most of the Cinematic Designers moved over to Mass Effect, with a group of four people staying on board to handle DLC and any post-production work (hammering out a consistent style guide for future content, for example). That's not to say that some of those core people won't change projects if the need is great, but usually, DLC will be done by the 'core' group of the particular franchise.