Interview: BioWare Talks Dragon Age, Narrative and Crossing the Uncanny Valley

IG: I recently had a brief chat with one of your Mass Effect designers who was saying, “You can blame me for the long elevator sequences,” and so I was nitpicking about some of the other problems like the game's horrible item management and repetitive textures and layouts. I loved the game, but those were just a few things that bothered me. I'm assuming you're working to correct all that for Mass Effect 2? 

Muzyka: Yes, those and many more. We've got a sharply circumscribed list of things we're working on; some are technical like you were talking about and some relate to the action and intensity. We really want to make the game feel like it's a shooter-RPG – we're amping up the moment-to-moment gameplay but also enhancing the RPG elements, so it's both things simultaneously. We're also really tying in the exploration and uncharted worlds; the optionality of the stuff will still be there but it's going to be a lot more integrated with the main experience and enhance it.  And with the personal moments, the moment-to-moment conversation, we're going to do things to really allow you to grab control. So those are some issues we're working on beyond the technical side. We want to continue to evolve and innovate in the gameplay itself.  

IG: Couldn't the loading issue with the elevators in the game have been avoided if Microsoft had put a hard drive in every 360? 

Zeschuk:  I think in many ways the hard drive issue is a bigger one with regards to downloadable content. We're really entering a phase here in the industry – and Dragon Age: Origins is a great example – where there's very extensive downloadable content planned. To take best advantage of that you've got to have the space to put it in. Even the size of the Xbox Live  downloads and demo downloads have gotten big... it's just becoming more and more digital. So one side is game performance – yeah, it'd be better with a hard drive – but the other side is that as we attempt to create platforms, and that in many ways is what Dragon Age is, we need the space to put extra content in. Not only will there be downloadable content we sell, but we're going to provide user tools, and so players will be able to create content and we're going to see if we can bring it over to console. All these things create a platform and a platform's got to have a landing pad for content. Without a hard drive I guess you could try memory cards. [laughs]

Dragon Age is definitely one of our most anticipated games

Muzyka:  We're planning some very extensive post-release DLC in addition to the stuff the fans will make. We want to make it all searchable by the fans, at least on the PC side, but we'd love to do it on consoles too, if there's a way to integrate that. 

IG:  BioWare has always excelled at telling stories in its games. Speaking of DLC, have you thought about perhaps creating shorter form, episodic content to tell stories in smaller chunks? 

Muzyka:  We have, yeah.  

Zeschuk:  We're starting to see some more of that out there with things like Sam and Max. It's exciting to see; it's probably one of the many evolutions the game industry will go in. 

Muzyka:  It's almost an alternate way to serve up content with a different business model. There are so many ways you can deliver great games and story or narrative, broader than with just story alone. It's an exciting opportunity in the future. 

Zeschuk:  Send it down the wire OnLive... 

IG:  That would be interesting if OnLive takes off... So switching topics, let's talk about Nintendo. I think everyone would like to see BioWare do something on the Wii, but can the typical epic story-based BioWare game fit the Wii? Would the Wii audience embrace it? 

Muzyka:  I think the question we'd ask is, “What is the Wii audience looking for, and what would we want to deliver that has emotionally powerful narrative?” And that probably wouldn't be exactly the same as everything else we do; we did a DS game and that was already very different from what we've done before, and the PC-only SKUs we did years ago were very different than the ones we've done for console... They're all different from one another. If we did a Wii game I think we'd approach it with the target audience in mind first and the vision of delivering an emotionally powerful narrative and go back to our basics in terms of some of the pillars of gameplay we'd like to bring to bear – exploration, progression, customization, conflict, story, narrative, and characters. How do we adapt that to the platform? That's how we'd approach it. The interface design on the Wii is very different from the other platforms, and that's really an opportunity because you can actually tell different kinds of stories and convey a different type of narrative. In the end the players are all human regardless of platform and they all want to feel something powerful and engaging. As a developer, you just need to really adapt and customize depending on the platform.  

IG:  So is it safe to assume that in the not too distant future we will finally see a Wii game from BioWare? 

Muzyka:  We'd be intrigued by the idea of developing on Wii but we have nothing to announce right now. We do have some unannounced projects that we're not ready to talk about yet, and they are different from some things we've done in the past... Our goal, really long-term, is to broaden our base and continue to differentiate and have diversity of choice on different platforms, because we know there are different audiences on platforms like mobile and Wii, and different geographic markets and distribution and business models.  It's exciting, but you can't do all things at one time.