21 réponses à ce sujet

[Karlone123]

It is bold of me to ask this, and I am not complaining of strictly being a Human in DA games as I majority of the time choose to play as a Human Warden. I can see race selection coming back but in the form muliplayer, but I wondered if Bioware would ever consider committing a game to the protaganist being another race like the Elves. Obviously I am not a writer and have no right to suggest what Bioware does, I just want to get my idea out.

This can relate to the City Elf Origin story and the first part of Hawke's story as a refugee. I was thinking of a story of playing as an Elf who was born in the city dealing poverty and racism, who then runs away to join the Dalish with another relative like a sister. Then they try to adapt livng with the Dalish, have a few rough encounters with outsiders and magic beings. That's just a hypothetical idea of something I would think would be new.

[Allan Schumacher]

It reminds me of how little thought was put into players making a brown or black Warden since his family was always default white.

Ouch.

[Allan Schumacher]

Their logic seems to run like this: "Oh, 75%+ of people only play a human. I guess that means we don't have to bother with elves or dwarves anymore! " I think they should be asking *why* people do that. My opinion on it is that most people just stick with whatever the default was.

It's more to the liking of "If we are going to choose only one race for the protagonist, which race would be best?"

And yes, you are correct that the fact that the defaults are our big numbers gives indication that some people just didn't bother changing it. This doesn't really mean anything, however, since those people will presumably still be content playing as a human going forward (i.e. they will be disinclined to care at all).

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 25 juin 2013 - 12:41 .

[Allan Schumacher]

It's incidental to you, but it isn't to me. That's the point. Why does
my non-white character need to be whitewashed in the telling of the
Champion of Kirkwall? Whether it's Varric or the world at large, why
does Hawke need to be depicted as white when he is supposed to be out
character? You're basically telling me that everyone thinks my non-white
Hawke was white, and that only adds to my frustration with this.

I find it disappointing.

On some level, it's still important to recognize that Unfortunate Implications are, in fact, unintended.

While it's unfortunate that you find it disappointing, and you're well within your right to feel that way (and to share it), when I see comments supposing just how little thought we give these sort of things, it genuinely disappoints me.

Yes, we'll screw things up from time to time and not do things as well done as we maybe definitely should have.  What you've effectively told me (and I'm sure this wasn't your intention, however), was that you would have been more satisfied with DAO's experience, if the Warden was just prescribed to be a white character, because it wouldn't have been as jarring to you.

To say we "didn't give it much thought" makes me innately defensive, akin to calling us lazy.  I'd much rather have a situation where our scene with Hawke pre-prologue shows a white Hawke, while allowing full customization after the fact, than to have just prescribed Hawke to be a white character.

Yes, it's something that could have been done differently.  We could have not had the pre-chargen scene at all, we could have covered up Hawke, we could have done a lot of different things.

But while you mention that you find it surprising that you even need to explain your perspective, in doing so you actually demonstrate that you're not understanding In Exile's perspective, either.

It ends up leading me to take on Devil's Advocate simply because it gets to a point where one is being overly difficult (and in the case, you both are coming across as obstinate).

Why do you think I would be accepting of the idea of Varric's tale making a non-white Champion of Kirkwall into a white Hawke?

Is Varric talking to you, or is he talking to Cassandra?  Are you unable to accept that Varric may be passing disdainful judgment on Cassandra, the Seekers, and the Chantry in general?

Why is it that you're assuming that Varric is telling the tale as it is, for your benefit?

A constant theme I have seen with your interpretations the past page, is that they are taken to the extreme.  That Varric is telling the story to Cassandra (who is affiliated with an institution that you have made your opinion of quite clear), does not mean that he tells the story the same way to other people.  This is an assumption that you have created, with you filling in the gaps the same way that you find disdain with your assumption that "everyone" is filling in the gaps by assuming Hawke was white.

This reminds me of David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" talk, to where he goes into detail about how we're in control of how we choose to perceive events, particularly where we're lacking in the context to actually know what factors affected the decision.

So, in this sense, and this is unfortunate (and I'm not saying that this is your fault), you have defaulted into not only recognizing the Hawke prologue scene be an example of Unfortunate Implications, but you have also let your mind accept the reasoning in a way that makes you take even more offense to the Unfortunate Implications, and you share your disdain by reciprocating disdain towards myself and my colleagues.  It sucks that reality has put you into a spot where that is your default assumption (and no, that's not your fault), and yes we can continue to try to do better (and we even tried, such as attempting to make Hawke's family more reflective of your chargen, with mixed results).  I'm of the opinion that becoming adversarial about it, however, doesn't actually do much to help the situation - it has a great way of putting people on the defensive.

No, I can never truly understand what it means to be non-white (since I am white).  So maybe I'm just a giant ass talking out of my bum who can't understand your perspective, and it's up to you to read into my motivations for posting this and determine whether or not this post should be respected by you or not.

I'm sorry that the whole scene comes across so inappropriate for you.  But, please don't think that we're not trying because the steadfastness of your position coupled with some remarks you've made does as much to make me feel "I doubt anything we do will really make him happy... at which point is it worth our time trying to do so?" as it does "He has some interesting feedback that I hadn't considered."


Before I read your posts (or maybe someone else's since your position isn't unique to you), you're right it was a conclusion I hadn't really considered.  In my mind, the whole pre chargen scene was always "pure make believe" so I definitely wouldn't have gone over it with nearly the discerning eye - but I view the whole scene (and whole game) differently because to me it started out as a bunch of stick figures on a napkin.  It doesn't exactly make me feel super awesome to learn about the mistake we made.  But what comes across as an attempt to shame me shifts my focus from "whoops..." to something else entirely, when really it's in your best interests to keep me on "whoops..."

So yeah, I'm sorry the chargen sequence makes you feel uncomfortable.  It's a very astute point, and not one that I had even considered during the entirety of development.  It's certainly something that I can take from this and learn going forward.  By the same token, would you say there are any ways to interpret Varric's pre-chargen depiction in a different way that is less alienating for you?  And if not, can the reasons only be purely external without any internal considerations at all?


Anyways, I'm about to be late for Volleyball now.... so I need to kind of cut this off here.

[Allan Schumacher]

I personally am not happy being locked into one race.

I understand that. You're not the only person.

Having a voiced main character like Hawke as nice, but I'd rather have a muted or at least only partial speaking character like the warden then be locked into a race.

People overstate the VO as being the principal reason for why a decision like this is made. Making Hawke silent would not have brought in player races. Voice work occurs after writing is done, and while it certainly does add a cost, writing elves and dwarves in a Dragon Age appropriate way is a challenge from a text reasons, less so because of the voice.

[Allan Schumacher]

Ragabul the Ontarah wrote...

That's kinda my point though.  It's essentially saying "why bother with offering choice since a huge chunk of our players apparently don't care?"  If they are content as a male human because it's the default, wouldn't they also be content as a female human or an elf or whatever?  Why is the presence of more choices an issue for them?  They can go on not caring just as easily if the choice is still there as they can if it isn't.  I had rather the question be "how can we be better at encouraging players to engage by making choices?" because choice is IMO the very best and most unique thing about Bioware games.  Catering to the lowest common denominator "I don't care" gamer seems like a money over quality decision.  I like to think limiting player race is just to expand choices in other areas, but given the difference in DAO and DA2, this doesn't appear to be the case.  It just seems like choice overall diminished. 

The presence of more choice isn't an issue for those players.

If you feel that choice overall is diminished, that more just comes across as a criticism towards DA2 in general, which is fair and valid.


As for "I don't care" gamer, since they don't care, then they aren't going to influence this type of decision.  Unless your frustration is more along the lines of being upset because there are more gamers that don't care as much than you do.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 25 juin 2013 - 06:03 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Withidread wrote...

Sorry Allan, only companies that make lesser RPG's get to use the "well, you know, these are difficult things to write" line. Bioware's history means you get held to higher standards. 

Fine, hold us to those standards, but at least understand what motivates our decisions.  In this case, it's not because VO was in the game.  So yeah, get on our case for making a game with too aggressive of a schedule for what we wanted to do and so forth.  It's not "these things are difficult to write" it's "We have finite resources to make said game.  WHat's the best place for us to put them?"

It's not like player race was in all of our big games, with KOTOR being probably th biggest game before DAO.  Yes, it's different because in DAO you were given player races so I can concede the feeling that it feels like something was taken away from  you, but we don't make these decisions purely in a vacuum, nor are we clairvoyant to know what decisions will be the right ones.

Not having player races means that we put something else in instead (and unfortunately, it's not like we can make a 1:1 match for which feature that means stays in.

[Allan Schumacher]

Nerevar-as wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...


Not having player races means that we put something else in instead (and unfortunately, it's not like we can make a 1:1 match for which feature that means stays in.

So what did you put instead in DA2? I saw nothing that couldn´t be done with elf or dwarf with only some writing changes. The "story only works with a human PC" excuse doesn´t work, especially in a game where any attempt at verisimilitude died the moment we where in KW with a mage in the party.

I find it interesting that in a post where I effectively say you can't expect me to say what is or is not in the the game as a result, you then ask me what is in the game as a result of the decision.

Are you of the assumption that people were just sitting idle because they didn't have multiple races to make?

KOTOR was a different case though, it was an established world where the heros where overwhelmingly human with bit parts and support roles for other species, (less so in the EU, but the films are what most people would have been familiar with) Dragon age was claiming to the spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate (and Origins succeeded in my opinion in living up to that legacy) which had multiple species playing major roles as it's established flavour.  I'm not overly bothered by a human only  main charcter, but I can see why people would be.

I literally stated "it's different because in DAO you were given player races so I can concede the feeling that it feels like something was taken away from you."

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 25 juin 2013 - 05:08 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

And yes, you are correct that the fact that the defaults are our big numbers gives indication that some people just didn't bother changing it. This doesn't really mean anything, however, since those people will presumably still be content playing as a human going forward (i.e. they will be disinclined to care at all).

As an experiment, the next time you offer race choices you should randomise the default during character creation.  See what that does to usage data.

I find this an interesting idea.

[Allan Schumacher]

Agreed, I'll shift my questions I had to PMs.

Return to on topic or the thread will probably be closed.

My answer to topic: each game that decision will get made, so unless we stop making games, the chance is never 0.

[Allan Schumacher]

while you sit back waiting another year

Adversarial pot shots are not necessary nor productive, and in the end ultimately undermine the rest of your post since you appear to be interested in reciprocating a disrespect you feel by being forced to play human, with disrespect in kind.

There are ways to present your point without concluding it with something that makes me frustrated, and hence, no longer interested in actually engaging your post.

[Allan Schumacher]

BasilKarlo wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...
<snip>

A
lot of your responses to criticisms are hollow and the rest are just
dancing around the point. You're not even actually responding to the
criticisms regarding race in Origins, just saying "We weren't too lazy to do it and we didn't just overlook, we just didn't think about it."
And your response to criticism regarding the race of Hawke is nonsense.
Varric is supposed to be telling the truth. That's reiterated numerous
times throughout the game. Making Hawke into a white person just
because is not a minor embellishment or some slight against Cassandra.
What the hell are you even implying?

If you read my post, you'd see that I said
"It's a mistake."  I didn't say "We weren't too lazy to do it and
didn't just overlook it it, we just didn't think about it" because "we just didn't think about it" is overlooking it.

When I say "So yeah, I'm sorry the chargen sequence makes you feel uncomfortable. 
It's a very astute point, and not one that I had even considered during
the entirety of development.  It's certainly something that I can take
from this and learn going forward" it means "It's something I overlooked."

The whole Varric stuff was because a poster was getting upset at the point another poster was making the suggestion that Varric was telling some myth'd version, and the first poster didn't like the idea that the myth'd version involved a White Hawke.  Going down that path, one can interpret it a different way.

And no, the stuff that Varric tells Cassandra pre chargen is supposed to be exaggerated.  Varric may be telling the truth through the rest of the game, but not at that point.


And yes, having the player's depiction of skin is something I didn't even think would be an issue.  Hence: I overlooked it.  It's a mistake, and something that hopefully doesn't happen again.

I am saying that, if you think we didn't do it because we're lazy (or even "just because"), it's important to note that you're giving off some Unfortunate Implications of your own.  Implications such as "BioWare is racist."  In doing so, you're going to make me very defensive, and you shift me from a position of empathy, to one of feeling guarded.

[Allan Schumacher]

I would say the chance might as well be zero, since this is now two games where it appears to have been the first thing you cut and announced long before you were ready to talk about anything else.

Is there any sort of non-spiteful-towards-fans reasons why you think that there may have been technical challenges for doing so? (with the move to Frostbite)

From the outside it seems like Bioware didn't even bother trying to include it. So why take at face value statements to the contrary when you're establishing a fairly clear pattern of not being willing to do it?

What makes you seem like we didn't even bother trying to include it? What would you need to see to convince you that some effort was actually put into it?

[Allan Schumacher]

as dwarves and elves are the only ones with different beliefs and basic structure different, and it being a staple of fantasy role playing, and having it available, and then not, a player making a character feels very limited as to their distinction and power.

I agree, and I think this is what lends itself to being a much larger task than say, race options in Baldur's Gate.

Letting the player play an elf, but not having the game play or conversations reflect that, would be pretty hollow (and I think it'd get us mountains of criticism).

[Allan Schumacher]

Background only give little differences in perspective. I give an example, Dwarf Commoner vs Dwarf Noble origin in DA:O. Both still Dwarves and both bound to Dwarf tradition. Dwarf Commoner may want to support Bhelen, Dwarf Noble may want to support Harrowmont but Bhelen is his/her brother so he/she may want to support Bhelen in sense to maintain family value Aeducan blood on the throne. Still, both origin are from the same race only different background and they both bound to the same belief and same culture. But both Dwarf origins have different value than any other races outside Orzamar

Part of the reason why they aren't too different is because making them too different creates a combinatorial explosion and increases the difficulty in terms of scope and whatnot. The fact that many dwarf lines are the same regardless of Commoner/Noble is a cost-saving mechanism.

[Allan Schumacher]

Partly, but while I believe race choice and not having it shown will make some upset, in most cases it will be similiar to blood magic, why can't my elf respond here, or others are not reacting?

I actually consider the way our games react to blood mages to be a non-trivial oversight. And it frequently comes up in discussions (although in this discussion, usually as evidence of "They didn't care on blood mages, so they shouldn't care on races!" Whereas I'm of the opinion "We should care for both." But then, if it was up to me blood mage would probably have never been a potential specialization - certainly not in retrospect).

[Allan Schumacher]

LobselVith8 wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Partly, but while I believe race choice and not having it shown will make some upset, in most cases it will be similiar to blood magic, why can't my elf respond here, or others are not reacting?

I actually consider the way our games react to blood mages to be a non-trivial oversight. And it frequently comes up in discussions (although in this discussion, usually as evidence of "They didn't care on blood mages, so they shouldn't care on races!" Whereas I'm of the opinion "We should care for both." But then, if it was up to me blood mage would probably have never been a potential specialization - certainly not in retrospect).

Can I ask why you feel that being a blood mage shouldn't have been a specialization? Aside from the mechanics and the issue of reactivity, I actually think it makes a lot of sense for a mage protagonist to use blood magic - whether it's The Warden using blood magic for the same reason that Duncan noted that some mages in the order turn to blood magic, to give them a necessary edge, or an apostate Champion of Kirkwall who needs to survive as an apostate in a city dominated by templars who could (lore wise) nullify his abilities if he uses ordinary magic. One of the things that's interested me about Inquisition is the developers talking about reactivity for a possible blood magic specialization, since I think this school of magic is very interesting.

The issue I have with Blood Magic in our games is that it's not reflected.  Wynne hates blood magic, but doesn't comment on it and can even become one herself.  As many people point out, it's a bit silly for Meredith and Co. to be so understanding of a mage in general, let alone a blood mage.

I agree that the school of magic if very interesting, and I'd wager someone (long before I started work at BioWare) agreed, since it exists in the game and people tend to like it.  For myself, it's a "hey this is cool" but I always have to wrestle with "though it's a bit silly I can do so without any consequence."

If it were up to me, blood magic would be a specialization and it would be de-emphisized in lore as the One True Power.

This would be another acceptable alternative.

If picking a blood mage specialization is going to prompt unique
reaction and possibly quests then I want picking a templar, spirit
healers, or bard specialization to do the same.

I'd consider this the ideal.  I'd love to have unique content for each of the classes.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 28 juin 2013 - 01:05 .

[Allan Schumacher]

If you're asking if I think it may have been cut due to technical challenges? I don't believe so, I'm not an expert but it seems like it should not be much harder from a technical standpoint to add additional race models to the player character than it would be to add a second gender.

Well, let's try looking at this from a different angle.

What sort of things would you expect to be impacted, in terms of developing the game, by adding character races?

[Allan Schumacher]

And you see that quick list as "not a challenge?". You should look up the dunning-krueger effect.

Play nice. Your post comes across as rather terse.

Perhaps you should pay more attention to what was actually said? I don't see it as 'technical challenges' (Allan's term) which from the sounds of it implied there was some sort inscrutable project killing difficulty involved not inherit in doing a human protagonist.

I think this might be part of the issue, because my usage of "technical challenge" wasn't really meant to be "Think of anything so fundamentally challenging that it just couldn't be done." Just challenges beyond simply writing words.

-Armour models would need to be resized for each race. Alternatively you could have fewer armours but make them rarer/better and race specific, so something like Orlesian Plate would be top end stuff for humans and truly valuable but wouldn't be wearable by elves or dwarves due to it not being crafted with them in mind.

This is definitely one thing. And it's keen of you to realize that in doing so, it likely means less armor variants (we take a bit from one pot and put it into another pot, so to speak) in general. Which may or may not be a bad thing, and if one is super keen on race it's probably a cost worth making to boot.

-Additional triggers to factor in race would need to be added to conversations/events when appropriate.

Yup. Much of this exists in our conversations and plot systems, so those flags would need to be created (probably not too much work), and then hooked up (this would be more work) properly via the scripting system. Fortunately the Eclipse engine had some tools in the Conversation Editor to try to make this fast for the majority of lines.

On top of this would be the QA work to playthrough with the various races. If there's any systems that are created to assist with race specific functions (cameras would be one thing) then those would have to be tested as well. I mention this just more as a "the web gets thicker, and the potential for bugs goes up with it."

-Cut-scenes would need to be abdjusted, more so for dwarves, elves if they were roughly the same hieght as humans like in DA2 would probably be fine with no tweaks for 90%+ of them.

There'd likely be some work here, yes. The most obvious ones are when the camera is design to track and follow the player character. There might be some where the player character is simply on camera. A less obvious one would be considerations for how the custom race armors end up working, which could create an X-Factor if we realize that some armors cause issues with particular shots.


I'm at home now so I'm going to just go off from the top of my head. Some of these you likely are aware of, and probably catalogued into your other points, but I want to list them just to make sure they get covered. I'll also try to mention the risks for some items as they pertain to Frostbite's engine, compared to Eclipse, for the system as a whole (not just for player races). Some of this will be repeat from your points too, and some of them I'll have more insight into than others (namely, Digital Acting stuff) since those things directly affected me in my work.


First off is writing. I think this is kind of easy, and probably something you factored in in your second point. The lines will need to be written, and the more variation/flavour, the more lines that will need to be written.

Frostbite challenge: Upon receiving Frostbite, first and foremost was the complete lack of any sort of conversation editor. All lines spoken in other games were set up manually. For our games, which tend to be conversation heavy, this would never have worked (and it would have been made more complicated with variations based on race/gender). The big problem with this is that some of the unknowns are not only creating the front end for the editor, but much of the backend pipeline as well.

Our games have a ton of lines (strings). Localization is also important, and something that couldn't possibly be done manually. So we don't just need to create a conversation editor, but one ensures that the lines have appropriate metadata for localization, meaning (all StringIDs must ultimately be uniqued.. there must be a way to flag lines as ready for Loc/VO, etc. etc.). This also includes having to build the Database to properly store all these references for quick look up and editing, while ensuring things like copy/pasting/cutting do not break the system.

So, there were questions: "Will our writers be able to write content as quickly into the engine as they could in DAO/DA2?" The answer was unknown (as many of them are) So we have to try to figure out how much writing are we willing to commit to in order to make sure we cover a story that we feel is appropriate in scope, length, etc. and this is without considering other dependencies that other teams might have (you can write billions of lines, but if your CinDesign team has the capacity to do 100, it's going to complicate how much the writers will actually be able to deliver, and force us to come up with alternatives than having "all lines must be touched by CinDesign" in order to get that content in).


Slightly separate, but related, is of course the VO. Aside from tracking different audio files based on player race, this is mostly a fairly easy to comprehend cost: we'll need to pony up for the VO if we want to have voiced characters (and we do).


From there, we'll segue into design. This is covered by your points 2 and 3. Level design will need to create the plot flags and hook them up in the editor so that the game can properly react to the choices. On top of this is the cinematics work.

Frostbite challenges: There was nothing resembling a plot system. We needed to create one from scratch, which involves creating the GUI front end for the designers/writers to use, as well as the backend to ensure the game itself understand what those bytes of data are for and how to use them. Frostbite uses a visual scripting environment, so there will have to be some alterations in how the editor was created from Eclipse (which had a more traditional, text based scripting system). Get the editor to a point where we can mimic similar workflows is a bit easier to conceptualize, but a risk is that there may be be some loss in velocity due to lack of experience. There may be some gains in velocity once people are familiar, but at the beginning of a project it's still an unknown.


Moving onto CinDesign, the CinDesigners are going to need to create/modify cutscenes to account for player race - you've recognized this.

Frostbite Risks: Outside of a sequencer that could play out some scripted animated sequences, there was really nothing resembling a cutscene editor. WIth the cutscene editor doesn't just come the ability to create the content, but to audition it in a speedy way to minimize iteration time. Ideally the designer can find this out without having to load the game up proper. There is a mode in Frostbite to let us do this (Called "GameView"), but there were some functions missing from it, such as variable party members, multiple camera viewports, and everything needed to be done manually. The only way for us to work on small scale changes at this stage of the project was to rebuild the assets every time (depending on size of the level, 5-15 minutes the first time, and 1-3 minutes for each subsequent time). This cripples velocity, so we need to build up the infrastructure and tools to allow this:

Stuff like:

A staging editor, that lets us create stage templates for quick references to stage marks and cameras
A new camera system that deals with the conversation cameras.
Building up the functionality of the current tools to allow CinDesigners to manipulate the scenes in a way that is efficient for them.
- We ended up agreeing that we should rebuild this system, which did have the plus side of having buy in from teams such as Frostbite Vancouver, who have helped out in a lot of ways since the idea was for these tools to be rolled out to all studios using Frostbite (indeed, I think Need for Speed used the "Timeline" system in some capacity, though I can't remember for certain).

This stuff is many man months of work just from the programming side (and my QA side.. >.>), and with it there isn't even assurances that the tools, once completed, will be as speedy as they were with DA2. In fact, our assumption is that they very likely won't, since Eclipse was a very mature engine with loads of iteration done on it.


SO now we backpedal a bit. Okay, some stuff that we typically put in our standard conversations may result in too much work. So now we need to go back "Are there things that we can do differently, that didn't even exist in DAO/DA2, to allow us to still get the word count in that we feel is necessary? And so on and so on.


I'll cut it off here (other things still come into play, such as animation rigging - for DA2 humans, elves, and dwarves did not share the same animation rig apparently - and so forth) since this post is already getting VERY long.

When there are a lot of things that are deemed potential high risks, and a lot of workflow efficiency is completely unknown since we don't know how well we can get to the speed at which we were able to deliver on. As such, on some of these things conservatism was the way to go, because for all this stuff multiple races just becomes an effective force multiplier.


Our original goal was to get a game out for the end of this year. Still doing so would have had some definite risks, especially in terms of employee health (crunch crunch crunch.... no one wants to do DA2 all over again!), so we were able to push the game back a year. Part of why we could push it back so far is because (at least in my opinion) we have some pretty promising stuff, as well as some solid foundations for other systems. We want the game to be super high quality. Some of the time extension lets us assure that we can get our original commitments to quality, but also awards additional opportunity to get in other stuff. What exactly that is (if anything) is part of discussions that I'm not directly able to really influence, but I do take part in on a tertiary level.


But yeah, player race was one of the first cuts because it was a quick way to reduce the force multiplier for the workload on several teams, since there was a lot of uncertainties because we were working with a new engine. It's also, in my opinion, a situation of "Don't let the fanbase get its hopes up if we are already pretty sure we aren't going to do it" since it was definitely something that some groups have been pretty vocal about.

There was quite a handful of stuff that got nixed earlier in development that people don't ask about, but I do think that for a feature like that, it's probably better to say it sooner rather than later.

[Allan Schumacher]

I can't really answer the "what would we have like to have done" since in many ways I'm not 100% sure what we were thinking, as preproduction results in a lot of idea spitballing.  (I also don't know if it'd necessarily help to be all "So we were going to do this super awesome thing!  You would have loved it!" either haha).

I don't think anyone wants to reboot with a new engine for our next games. One advantage is that pretty much all of BioWare is "all in" with Frostbite, meaning that Mass Effect will work on some things that we'll be able to use, and I'd be utterly flabbergasted if the new franchise doesn't also use it, which is a very different situation for BioWare (where switching projects meant higher degrees of context switching).

In my (not entirely extensive programming) experience, Frostbite appears to be a much more modular design than Eclipse was, so extending beyond will hopefully require much less of a conversion going forward. Frostbite 3 basically came along because enough work had been done on the Frostbite engine, that someone said "It's changed enough from when we first called it Frostbite 2, so lets increment the number."

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 28 juin 2013 - 06:50 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Nightdragon8 wrote...

@Allen funny enough all the things you listed was exactly what I was worried would happen when going over to the Frostbite engine. And so I feel is a very good justfied reason to push back the realese date considering all the crap you are going to have to go though.

Pretty much what you are saying is, you got the GFX engine, and now you are going to have to make the other 80% of the game yourselves.

We have a lot more than just a graphics engine.  There's all sorts of pipelines and build deployments, visual scripting system, asset depot management, and blahblabhalh stuff that most people probably wouldn't find too interesting.

We also have physics, audio, etc. etc.

It's just lacking in the RPG systems


Eclipse was long in the tooth (it has legacy going as far back as the original Neverwinter Nights) and I think moving on was a good decision (as is pushing back the release).

[Allan Schumacher]

Is this seriously one of your design rules?

No.  But it is a consideration when deciding to write new lines.

It's easier to add new lines that have limited dependencies.  A silent codex entry only really requires translation.

Want to add a big scene to the climax of a plot arc, there's more to think about.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 28 juin 2013 - 07:38 .