voila que le 1er podcast officiel sur DA2 est dispo.
on y entend Mike laidlaw'lead designer) et Victor Watcher discuter sur le background, le style narratif et aussi la mécanique des combats.

Oreille anglaise fortement conseillée.
Alors si quelqu'un pourrait nous faire une traduction, ce serait cool.

le thread
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/3182271
le podcast:
http://na.llnet.bioware.cdn.ea.com/u/f/eagames/bioware/dragonage2/assets/podcasts/podcast-01.mp3

Podcast part #1

"As Lead Designer and Creative Director

If you don't feel like you can go in with a battle plan, then I think we're failing in terms of getting that tactical, and that Think like General side of it.
Mike Laidlaw

Victor Wachter

Hello and welcome to BioWare Podcast for Dragon Age II. I'm Victor Wachter, Community Manager for the Dragon Age Franchise, and I'm here with my good friend, Mike Laidlaw, Lead Designer for Dragon Age II and Creative Director for the Dragon Age Franchise.

ML: Hey Victor, how's it going?

VW: Good, how are you?

ML:Oh, doin' well.

VW: So we're here to talk about Dragon Age II. As we speak it's just been annouced yesterday that DA II is in development and we wanted to use this first podcast to give our community a little bit of insight into what it's all about. So there's already conversation and speculation on our forums and elsewhere across the internet...

ML: Yeah, there's been a ton of speculation, It's been kind of cool to watch it go back and forth. I know it's kind of an informational drip feed, which can be kind of a bit frustrating but at the same time, it's neat to see people come up with their theories.

VW: Yeah, exactly. I mean, what's interesting is DA II has been no secret, you know? And now the community is in a position where like "Oh my god, we're actually going to start learning about it." So, that's what we're here to do.

ML: Yeah, we'll hopefully what we're here to do is to clear up a few questions that seem to be lingering and just, ideally, have a chance to talk about, kind of I guess the WHY, a kind of a philosophical approach.

VW: So Lead Designer (LD) and Creative Director (CD) what does that mean, what's your role on the DA team?

ML: Well I look at it as kind of wearing 2 hats. LD is the hands on, working with the design team, you know, David Gaider, your own Jacobs, all the old Vets of the DA Team, and really carrying through the vision and making the decisions as to what features are going in, what are we improving, what's our key kind of goals for the game. And working with all the different design departments and ofcourse with Art, and Audio, and Programming as to kind of make the best damn game we can.

So that's kind of on the ground, kind of leadership of the team. Um, and really trying to maintain a sense of excitement and keep the vision for DA II pretty clear.

CD kind of expands on that role and is the hat I wear when dealing with anything external, so when it comes to the DA Comics, in a lot of ways through the approval of the Novels, even though that's still Dave (David Gaider) and I working hand in hand, and of course we just announced the anime treatment for Dragon Age as well. So any of those kind of ancillary products are part of my role of CD is insuring that not only are they fitting within the DA universe, but , and my personal goal with this, is that they enhance the DA universe.

So Kind of the rule I've been running with, is I don't ever want to take a step backward. I don't want to rehash something that you could see in another place. I don't want a novelization OF the game, I want a novelization that ADDS to the game. and I know thats an approach that Dave uses as well. That's how the novels kind of add that extra layer to Logain's character, and Duncan, and Maric and so on.

VW: Interesting, so it's not just Dragon Age II, it's Dragon Age, from Origins through Awakenings, to Dragon Age II and beyond into future games.

ML: That's really the approach we've been taking. The Executive Producer, Mark Derrick, and myself have had any number of long talks about this and we kind of look at Dragon Age as a Grand kind of campaign. It's not an individual adventure, it's not just a single movie, and it's not even something that we really want to limit to something like a trilogy. We want to treat this like it's a world that evolves, and changes, that I guess as the players are interacting with the games and the novels, you name it, but definitely with the games being the Flagship items. That' they're seeing Thedas, and the setting, and the characters that they know grow and evolve over time.

It's been a really challenging approach because it'd be really easy to just knock off, " oh lets just do , lets just staple two Arch Demons together two wardens together, and we're done, there's a sequel."

But instead what we wanted to do is kind of look at a new angle for the world, with new stories, and what can we do to tell a story not just of Bob, but of the Age that Bob lives in.

VW: Right, and you're covering 100 years of that world which to me, is just awesome. because, if you think about anything that can happen in a century, any century, even the 21st century, and we're only 10 years into it, the history playing off of each event, and specific individuals. We have that continuity.

ML: That's exactly it, and I think that a similar even of course would be the kind of Liberation of Fereldan right around the beginning of the Dragon Age. and in a lot of ways, what effect did that have on the world, and politically, it's certainly changed the relations with Orlais, Economically, Fereldan became a nation again, stopped being a subjugate kind of Kingdom, and of course that led to it being not in that strongest of positions. And if you play through Origins, there's even hints that it seems like the Darkspawn or the Arch Demon seem to always start the blight when things are weakest, where they can salvage a good beach head, and in part, why Fereldan suffered the Blight as it did. and then the things I'm looking forward to exploring are that what happens in a situation where essentially, Fereldan HAS suffered some devastation, what does that do to the political shift of power.

And again, so this is why it's really important for us to remember with any of the games, and any of the novels, is that all this stuff has to live in context. and again is kind of tying back to that Creative Director Concept

VW: Right, and when you consider the fact that We're not even done with Dragon Age Origins, there's still some stories to be told there, to build on, and that may even have their ramifications in DA II (talking about coming DAO DLC???) Is that fair to say?

ML: Absolutely, I'll be frank, I don't think we'll ever be done with Dragon Age Origins, the team worked for years on building up the world and what it established in my mind is an amazing jumping off point.

When I look at what Origins provides, it's just this tale riddled with story hooks, What are the Qunari really up to?, What's going on with Mages and Templars? What kind of struggles come out of the Orlais and Fereldan Debate, what kind of tensions could flare up there?

Seeing the Ramifications, and the effects that the Warden had on the world, and I mean this is the very specific and personal thing for the gamers, What did their Warden do to the World of DA?

That's something that we honestly have to honor, we have not just a goal, but a responsibility that even though DAII isn't the continuation of your Warden, It IS a continuation of the specific Thedas that you've created and kind of continue to create as you go forth through the different games.

VW: Nice, nice. And I think that that's the hook that people are looking for. They want their decisions that made in Awakenings, and Origins, to matter, right?

ML: I think not just "matter", but this is where video games come into their own as an Art Form, is that not only do they matter, but we can react to them.

Honestly one of the most challenging things is that how can we make a game that can account for the choices that you've made, and I mean you made some heavy, heavy choices in Origins. and yet still have some decisions for the Canon, and the core, because there ARE people out there who I think, would love to play DAO, would love to dip into the world, would love to explore this rich lore, but they may not know about the game, they may not be able to play the game, it might be too hardcore, too tough. There were some difficulty elements in Origins, I'll definitely admit that.

So I think in a lot of ways, what we want to do is make sure that we're presenting this story , that we're doing DA II, and the tale of Hawke, and his role, and his flight from Fereldan, what we're trying to do is make a new story and a new character, but a world that is intimately familiar, and intimately reactive for the players who are coming forward, so we don't want to alienate people, to make them feel like " Oh well I can't possibly play this because I didn't play the first one" but we want those who did, to understand, that we love this world as much as they do, and we want their interactions, to be something that the game celebrates.

VW: Right, because even in Origins, you made some pretty world shaping decisions, so I think the future of Orzammar, basically the future of everybody you visited, I mean like, What does Arl Eamon's family look like at this point, what are the Dalish Elves doing, you basically determine the fate of all these groups, and I think that that'll be really cool, to see how that plays a little further down the road in future games..

ML: I think that's a really good point. I think that even there could be a reaction to where like

Podcast part #2

"Well, you didn't cover EVERYTHING in DA II" and I don't think we're going to be able to cover everything, every single decision, but I think from a long term approach what we really hope to do is see that the decisions you make in DAO WILL matter, Far into the future, not just for one game, not just for Awakenings, that things should come back to surprise you later, when you thought " Oh god, I thought they forgot about that"

VW: Right, so speaking of things that shape the world, apparently Hawke, the main character of DA II is according to the press release and everything we've read so far, is "The person who changed the world"

So that's a pretty bold statement... um so lets talk a little about Hawke. Who exactly is Hawke?

ML: Hawke is a mystery. He's like a walking enigma, and in my mind, DA II is in a lot of ways, like an experience in which the players are asking a question, and that question is "Who is the Man/Woman who changed the world?"

So the role of Hawke is one where, we already know that Hawke has had a dramatic impact, that things have already shifted as a direct result and throughout the game, we'll be exploring the most important moments in Hawke's life, It's the largest span of time we've ever done before.It's where, a full decade is something we're exploring. through the course of that decade, we get to see not just how he changed the world, but WHY and in a lot of ways, these are questions that I don't honestly know the answers to, I don't know Hawkes motivation because that's where the player comes in. They're the ones answering this question.

So the things that we know about Hawke, that are kind of fixed in stone are that he DID have this dramatic impact on the world, and I don't want to spoil what exactly has occurred, but we know that Hawke escaped from Lothering, the town that burned during the course of DAO, You travel through it, your Warden travelled through it and this is where he's from.

His family has fled, escaping the Blight, and managed to fight for their survival and managed to escape a Fereldan that's not just at war, but that's being torn apart and corrupted by the Darkspawn. Through the course of that, he makes his way up to Kirkwall, which is a city that's just absolutely steeped with History, an imperial Port, that, since the Tevinter Imperium has kind of pulled back, this city has become a hub of trade, and because of their position just north of Fereldan. They're the gateway to the larger continent and right along the major shipping route to Orlais.

In this city, Kirkwall, this is where Hawke has his impact, this is where the changes begin.

VW: so it sounds like, from what i'm listening to, it sounds like the Legend of Hawke in some ways, is written, but it's not. It's like there's this legend that already exists, and the players deciding what that legend is. It's sort of an interesting story telling technique.

ML: It is, it's something new, something that we, I mean, it's been done historically for years, is that sense of, ok, something happened, and we're investigating how. and in alot of ways in like a CSI episode is like, Someone is dead, How did that happen? But this is the glory of video games, is that DA II lets players kind of determine what happened, rather than it being this predetermined plot that runs through.

So the mechanic that we're using to do this is called a Framed Narrative. It's a Story telling technique it's where basically one story, is effectively telling another story. It's where, the play, within a play within Hamlet is an example of this, or a more modern example of this would be something like the Princess Bride, right? Where you do have the story of Wesley and Buttercup and all this grand adventure happening, but around it, you have Fred Savage, and his grandpa who on a sick day are reading from this Story Book.

So in a lot of ways, there's as much story as watching this kind of feverish and disaffected young man get more and more entranced by this story his grandpa is weaving. so to me, that's a really compelling technique, because that means that not only can we have characters who know where the world is headed, but they can ask the questions to get us to those most important moments.

What I don't want to do is feel like any moment of DAII is wasted shoe leather, I want to dive right in to the heart of it, the politics, the struggles, the grand discovery that Hawke makes.

VW: Cool, so how much choice does the player have in determining the course of this narrative, would you say it's uh, as it progresses through the decades.

How linear, or non-linear would you say it is?

ML: Well the game itself will move forward through the decade. your period of time, so we're not just going to build a game that just jumps you around a timeline, where that can get a bit confusing, though there are games like Eternal Darkness that really just nail that as the effect, but i think that it's , when you're trying to get inside your character's head, you're really trying to dive in and feel like you're role playing, You're not hearing the story of a family which was the Eternal Darkness model. In this case we're trying to have you tell us how this world turns out. S

So in the course of that we're trying to have you get big swaths of freedom, meet characters to kind of understand them and to kind of achieve your objectives your own way . To work your own way through these political and you know, historical situations. and then we're going to advance time forward and take a look at how that turned out.

At how the decisions you made affected Kirkwall, Hawke, people around Hawke, and so on. So, that we get, you know my favorite parts of DAO where that we fire up this epilogue and I find out that oh, Bann Teagan got married, look what happened to Arl Eamon, and all those kinds of elements, but you get to see them happen more than once and you get to see them happen in the middle of the game.

For my mind, if we have any major sucess, it's that the thought that there's a player who sees how things turn out and course corrects his character and goes "Oh god, I was too much of a dick to that group of people, I need to rectify that"

When we do that, that's when I think players get really engaged and feel they are telling their own story.

VW: So this framed narrative, I liked the example of the Grandfather in Princess Bride, so um, who's telling us this story?

ML: it's not so much a story being told, as more of an Interrogation. Two characters named Cassandra and Varric and I don't want to get too deep into who they are yet, we'll get to that later, but suffice it to say that Cassandra is a representative of the Chantry, who is desperate to find out about Hawke because what she's trying to do is understand why he made the decisions that he did, and in many ways, is trying to find him/her, and look at the way the world is standing on the brink of war. Because that is something she establishes very early on, that things are very very bad right now, and that perhaps if they can find the person who was there when it all began, that there's a chance they could fix things.

VW: and By fixing things we generally mean dropping some swords, casting spells, dropping enemies. Lets talk a little bit about Combat

a suivre

au pire, un google doc, pour tous:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1H2Fk-tooxKl-DL7FaEx_gvaAdUTpc26VZQHsyrK6llw

bonne lecture

Merci ! pour tout ce que tu fais Abouna-ababa

Merci Abouna pour le texte du podcast.

j'aime bien l'idée du concept "cross class combo", un simili de "spells combo" mais élargi à plusieurs perso de classes différentes.

j'ai hâte d'en savoir un peu plus la dessus

Etant nul en anglais, j'ai la flemme de tout lire ce pavé xD

Si quelqu'un peu juste résumer ce qui est dit, je le bénirais pour ses sept prochaines générations.

Kohlastrasz étant feignant professionnel au même titre que moi ...

Je vais te sortir une phrase que j'aime bien : Google est ton ami

Il peut te sauver la vie

Il y a un super outil pour les super comme toi et moi d'anglais :

Traduction Voilà :

- Français -> Anglais (vice-versa)

- Français -> Allemand (vice-versa)

- Français -> Espagnol (vice-versa)

- Français -> Russe (vice-versa)

- Anglais -> Espagnol (vice-versa)

- Anglais -> Allemand (vice-versa)

- Anglais -> Portugais (vice-versa)

- Italien -> Anglais (PAS VICE-VERSA !)

- Allemand -> Espagnol (vice-versa)

Sur ce de rien et bonne research à tous !

http://tr.voila.fr/

Certes.

J'irais lire ou me peter les yeux devant ça quand j'aurais la motiv'.

oups, j'avais pas fini...

et

dsl, je déteste cet ordi!

Abouna, merci bcp et bravo pour ton travail. ^^

"Absolutely, I'll be frank, I don't think we'll ever be done with Dragon Age Origins, the team worked for years on building up the world and what it established in my mind is an amazing jumping off point."

Qu'est-ce que ca veut dire? on ne reverra plus jamais notre warden?

J'ai l'impression qu'ils vont faire plusieurs DA avec chaque fois une nouvelle histoire, pour en apprendre plus sur thedas.

la transcription et le google doc ne sont pas de moi,j'ai juste fais un copier coller du fofo'fficiel,
mais merci quand même

voici de nouvelles images.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/3/topic/145/index/868796/22

c'est sur toute la page, certaines on les connait déjà.

j'ai pas trouvé le lien ou ils avaient eu ces images.

je trouve celle-la très intéressante:

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/fb381120-d760-4a7f-8c63-f85a1520b1e3.jpg

je vois qu'une seule solution, qui correspondrait parfaitement en plus: flémeth!

Nouvelles images (pas vu sur le fofo)

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/5d508b6e-ccfc-45dc-9364-0234cd4a13ea.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/e0437eca-a5ac-48c1-8600-ffe6c376e944.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/22611769-1f7b-4d1f-b660-02bf4e38e399.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/17d192c0-9bfe-40aa-9435-1989c1690fd1.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/87fd9a90-7d4e-415e-9410-7902af9624db.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/38af0658-92e4-4e8e-bf3d-bb96b2cb3dc8.jpg

Franck.

"je trouve celle-la très intéressante:

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/fb381120-d760-4a7f-8c63-f85a1520b1e3.jpg

je vois qu'une seule solution, qui correspondrait parfaitement en plus: flémeth!"

Surtout que selon un membre du social Bioware, à ce moment précis elle dit : "Et bien, et bien, qu'avons-nous là ?"
Tout fan respecté de Morrigan se rappelleront forcément de la première rencontre avec elle par l'intermédiaire de cette phrase. (pas mot pour mot, mais c'est à peu près ça). Ce qui peut confirmer l'identité de Flémeth.

Franck.

J'adore l'architecture de cette ville... Kirkwall ?

merci, j'avais déja vu la "landscape", mais celles sur les architectures je les connaissais pas.
En comparaison avec tout le reste, mon impression est que ces 3 la ressortent du lot tant par leur qualité graphique que par le fait qu'elles ne correspondent à aucun élément de décor connu.

J'en arrive à me demandé si elles n'ont pas subit un photoshopping, ou si elles sont la pour inspiration architectural et environnemental.
En tout cas, si ils nous mettent des décors de cette qualité, alors la chapeau les graphistes

Regardez ce screen

http://i29.tinypic.com/2w66ihx.jpg

Et celui là (celui que Franck a linké)

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/fb381120-d760-4a7f-8c63-f85a1520b1e3.jpg

Elle tient encore le cadavre de l'engeance à la main sur les 2 screens c'est bien et bel Flémeth =D