MagicNakor
08-10-2010, 11:01 AM
BioWare has revealed that Dragon Age 2 will not contain the tactical view option from the first game, or have any new tools for modding - as the console community does not value them.
In an interview with French magazine Joystick, lead designer Mike Laidlaw revealed that development of the sequel to BioWare's hit RPG would be more console-focused.
"To be short, DAO 2 will not have a toolset. I think that DAO I toolset is very powerful but very complicated" said Laidlaw.
He later clarified on the BioWare forum that the feature was omitted because the tools for 'Dragon Age 2 are very, very close to the tools' used in the first game.
Laidlaw also confirmed that the game wouldn't have the overhead tactical view, a feature that PC players were particularly fond of.
While the tactical view was outright dismissed for the console, the PC version would be getting a modified version that has the 'key elements' of the view.
"As to the subject of tactical view, I can confirm that we will not be doing a tactical view on consoles, though we are looking into some expanded party control that I think will make console players quite happy."
"On the PC, however, we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical experience there" said Laidlaw.
According to the translation of the magazine, the changes were inspired by the game's success on consoles.
It reads: "For budgetary reasons, we focused our work on a third person view, that asks for very detailed and nice textures so that the player can admire the game with a close-up view," he said. "With an aerial view [isometric] we should cover much more ground and so create other textures. Now, the game mainly sold on console, so we're going the way of the audience."
Bioware co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk recently said that 'consoles are the past', and encouraged studios to branch out, these changes indicate a conflicting attitude.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=259160
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Dev clarification post:
Victor managed to hunt me down, and I wanted to clear up a few things with regards to what I'm seeing as the two major concerns on this thread.
First off, let's talk about the toolset issue. Obviously in this community there's going to be some concern that we wouldn't release a toolset, so let me clear the air a little: The tools we're using to make Dragon Age 2
are very, very close to the tools you guys have used to make your mods for DA:O. They're not identical, as we've made a few in-house improvements, but they're almost identical. As such, there isn't a new toolset to release, per se.
While we won't be releasing a toolset update in tandem with Dragon Age 2, we ARE investigating what it would
take to update the community toolset to match ours, along with providing DA2 content in the future.
As to the subject of tactical view, I can confirm that we will not be doing a tactical view on consoles,
though we are looking into some expanded party control that I think will make console players quite happy.
On the PC, however, we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical
experience there. I was actually playtesting some new camera code when Victor found me, in fact, so I can give you the latest news on that front.
While we likely won't pull as far up as we did in DA:O, I have always felt that the key to tactical play was actually freeing your camera from the character you're controlling to issue precise orders, which is what we're tuning now. So, this means you can still maneuver the camera around the battlefield and issue orders from a remote location, just as you could in Origins.
As you can probably tell from my phrasing, all of this is a bit in-flux right now, so things may change between now and ship, but I wanted to update you guys on the current direction of things.
:shuriken:
In an interview with French magazine Joystick, lead designer Mike Laidlaw revealed that development of the sequel to BioWare's hit RPG would be more console-focused.
"To be short, DAO 2 will not have a toolset. I think that DAO I toolset is very powerful but very complicated" said Laidlaw.
He later clarified on the BioWare forum that the feature was omitted because the tools for 'Dragon Age 2 are very, very close to the tools' used in the first game.
Laidlaw also confirmed that the game wouldn't have the overhead tactical view, a feature that PC players were particularly fond of.
While the tactical view was outright dismissed for the console, the PC version would be getting a modified version that has the 'key elements' of the view.
"As to the subject of tactical view, I can confirm that we will not be doing a tactical view on consoles, though we are looking into some expanded party control that I think will make console players quite happy."
"On the PC, however, we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical experience there" said Laidlaw.
According to the translation of the magazine, the changes were inspired by the game's success on consoles.
It reads: "For budgetary reasons, we focused our work on a third person view, that asks for very detailed and nice textures so that the player can admire the game with a close-up view," he said. "With an aerial view [isometric] we should cover much more ground and so create other textures. Now, the game mainly sold on console, so we're going the way of the audience."
Bioware co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk recently said that 'consoles are the past', and encouraged studios to branch out, these changes indicate a conflicting attitude.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=259160
------------------------------
Dev clarification post:
Victor managed to hunt me down, and I wanted to clear up a few things with regards to what I'm seeing as the two major concerns on this thread.
First off, let's talk about the toolset issue. Obviously in this community there's going to be some concern that we wouldn't release a toolset, so let me clear the air a little: The tools we're using to make Dragon Age 2
are very, very close to the tools you guys have used to make your mods for DA:O. They're not identical, as we've made a few in-house improvements, but they're almost identical. As such, there isn't a new toolset to release, per se.
While we won't be releasing a toolset update in tandem with Dragon Age 2, we ARE investigating what it would
take to update the community toolset to match ours, along with providing DA2 content in the future.
As to the subject of tactical view, I can confirm that we will not be doing a tactical view on consoles,
though we are looking into some expanded party control that I think will make console players quite happy.
On the PC, however, we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical
experience there. I was actually playtesting some new camera code when Victor found me, in fact, so I can give you the latest news on that front.
While we likely won't pull as far up as we did in DA:O, I have always felt that the key to tactical play was actually freeing your camera from the character you're controlling to issue precise orders, which is what we're tuning now. So, this means you can still maneuver the camera around the battlefield and issue orders from a remote location, just as you could in Origins.
As you can probably tell from my phrasing, all of this is a bit in-flux right now, so things may change between now and ship, but I wanted to update you guys on the current direction of things.
:shuriken: