en route pour le 3eme podcast (part #1):
"Dragon Age II
Official Podcast
Episode 3 Transcription
Victor Wachter (VW) - Community Manager for Dragon Age
Mark Darrah (MD) - Executive Producer for Dragon Age
Mike Laidlaw (ML) - Lead Designer for Dragon Age 2
VW: Hello, and welcome to the official podcast for Dragon Age 2. I’m Victor Wachter, Community Manager for the Dragon Age franchise, and I’m here with Mark Darrah, Executive Producer for the Dragon Age franchise. Hi
Mark, how’s it going?
MD: It’s going good Victor, how you doing?
VW: Doing well, doing well. Thanks for being here with me, and answering some questions for the community. So, just to kick it off, what exactly is your role in the Dragon Age franchise, and specifically with Dragon Age 2?
MD: Yeah, so I’m the Executive Producer for the Dragon Age franchise, and I’m the Project Director for Dragon Age 2. Let me break that down a little bit, because I think people won’t have any idea what that means. Executive Producer on the franchise means I guide all of the decisions from the creative and the production side for the franchise, so that means I’m the ultimate person that decides what products we do, where we’re taking the franchise, the things that we might want to do in the future, and all the things that have to do with the franchise. So not just the games; also the ancillary products like books, cartoons, other things that people may have heard of.
As a Project Director on Dragon Age 2...that’s really more focused on the game itself. So I’m the ultimate decision-maker in terms of trying to make sure Dragon Age 2 can be the best game it possibly can be in the
time we have to make it.
VW: Gotcha, okay, okay. What’s the overall vision behind the franchise, not only with DA2, but also looking at future games and other media like the animated movie and the comic books?
MD: The goal for me, really, is to make Dragon Age into one of those Fantasy franchises you really think of when you think of Fantasy. Right now, when someone says “Fantasy,” you think of Lord of the Rings, you might think of Harry Potter, Conan, those sorts of things. I’d like to get us on that same footing. So when you think of “Fantasy,” Dragon Age might be one of those first top 5 things that come to your mind.
VW: And so, thinking of Dragon Age 2, what do you think are the biggest and best advancements from [Dragon Age: Origins] to [Dragon Age 2]?
MD: Well for me, I think we’ve really worked on so many things it’s hard to pick one, but overall I think it’s really the responsiveness that we’re able to do in the story. Where in the past we’ve reacted to the decisions and choices that players have made, in Dragon Age 2, because of the way we’re telling the story, we’re able to really ramp that responsiveness up, we’re able to react to your choices more quickly and more completely than I think we’ve ever done before in a game. And I think that really pays off in the way that the story is told. It makes you more involved; it makes your choices more impactful.
VW: I see. So how do you plan for a game series that is reactive to that kind of past gameplay where actions players took in the choices they make could carry over from not only just one game but also to many new
games in the future?
MD: I think this is one of the big advantages of the way the Dragon Age universe has always been set up, and I don’t use the term “universe” lightly. It’s always been conceived of as a universe, as a series of stories, as a living world, not just as a series of games or a series of moments. So because the universe is set up that way--where there’s all this history that exists, and we know not just what characters have done or will do, that we know what their reasons are behind actions--because we have that motivation for NPCs, it makes it easier for us to react to the actions that the player character is taking, because the world is able to be more holistic in its existence. So this one character who is able to be worked with independently by someone else--by the player--the universe itself is more able to react and respond to that, yet it doesn’t fall apart under that stress.
VW: I see, I see. What’s it like developing a game for multiple platforms? How do you make that distinction between developing for a consistent experience in the matter of how you play and optimizing for each
individual platform?
MD: It’s a challenge to work on multiple platforms, but I think it’s important. The most important thing to do is to make sure you play to each of the platforms’ strengths. So consoles are really good at doing a small number of things very quickly, whereas the PC is much better at doing a larger number of things, but maybe not quite as efficiently. So in Dragon Age: Origins, we really focused on trying to bring the console up to where the PC was, and I think we did a fairly good job there, but in Dragon Age 2, I think it’s about bringing everything forward. So we’re focusing and strengthening the experience on all three platforms. Part of this is just strengthening the core engine overall, improving the graphics, and improving the gameplay style--things that will pay off on all three platforms. But also, we are focusing work on each of the three platforms to make sure that we do something that improves the experience for the specific player that’s playing on each platform.
VW: As you develop the game, and you’re considering the gamer who’s playing, what do you hope will be the game elements or plot points that stick with them once they’ve played, and how do you hope they feel after playing?
MD: That’s a really interesting question, because, really, when BioWare sets about making a game, we’re trying to make the player feel lots of different emotions. I mean combat, at its base level, should be about accomplishment, exhilaration when you’re doing it, but storytelling...we’re trying to get you to feel a whole range of emotions, everything from comedic moments to lighten the mood, to really heartwarming things where romances are going on, to heartbreaking scenes where one character may have to kill another. It’s about a range of emotions, it’s about being able to make the player feel something throughout their experience.
VW: Does community feedback influence game development, having already released Origins? Do the things you’ve learned influence Dragon Age 2, and can you give any examples?
MD: Absolutely. I think community feedback is extremely important to us, to all our games. But I think one of the opportunities, or differences, about a sequel is that the community has a lot more to go on than it did
with the first game, because now they can play the first game and comment on their experiences in that game, and this really lets them be a lot more specific, give a lot more pointed feedback about things they
liked, things they didn’t like. One place that we really are listening to the fans is about the kind of interactions and the specific characters they like interacting with. So I’m not going to announce anything right now, but in terms of followers or just recurring characters, we really like to listen to the fans and really get those characters they really engage with.
VW: So we’ve already seen the community feedback towards Hawke and Varric; have you had a chance to look at any of that, and what do you think of it?
MD: The growing movement to have Varric as a romance option is quite impressive, as is his chest hair following. I like the direction the Garrett Hawke feedback is going; I think that people are going to be really impressed when they see the female version of Hawke come out in screenshots soon. So I think everyone’s going to really like that. I’d love to see something like you see with Garrus from Mass Effect, the line of things like “Garrett Hawke doesn’t spend time, time spends Garrett Hawke”--that is the worst thing I’ve ever said in my life--but that line of things. I’m very pleased with the feedback we’re seeing on our characters, what we’ve shown so far, and I think as we get more, I’m hoping that the feedback will remain as positive.
VW: So is there anything else you’d like to add and tell the community about Dragon Age 2?
MD: I think that, really, what I’d like to say there is that I’d rather have them see it, rather than me trying to convince them with words. I’d rather have them look at what we present to them, and come to PAX, give it a try, play it, look at videos that we release from gameplay in the coming months, and I think the game stands on its own, and hopefully I don’t need to talk too much to convince people that it’s gonna be a great experience.
VW: Well I appreciate you being here Mark...
MD: You bet, Victor.
VW: ...Looking forward to seeing more, and I’ve had the chance to play the game, and hopefully we get more and more people to play. I know we’ve had a great reaction at Gamescom to the playable, and looking forward to seeing what people think at PAX.
MD: Yeah, I’m looking forward to PAX a lot; I think Gamescom was a great experience for us and we got really good feedback. I think PAX, it’s a different audience, so I think it’s going to be really exciting to see how that fanbase reacts.
VW: Cool, cool. Well thanks a lot for being here, and hopefully we’ll have you back for another podcast sometime soon.
MD: You bet. Thanks a lot, Victor.
VW: Thank you. See you later.
MD: See you later.
, je rigole, bien entendu. 
Gameplay:
