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There will come a time (probably soon) when I’ll feel weird talking about Dragon Age because it will be someone else’s jam and I won’t want to steal any spotlights, but I’m going to tell a couple stories of subtle things from Inquisition that made me really happy.
The first is in Haven, when you get a chance to walk around and catch up with all the principal characters. Cullen, Cass, Varric, etc. What I don’t think a lot of people realized is that they have a lot of different dialog depending on whether you imported a save from the DA Keep
If you didn’t import at all, their dialog were a lot more introductory and didn’t deep dive into a lot of extra questions about the previous games. If you did import any world state, though, they had a bunch of extra things you could ask about, including previous relationships.
The reasoning for this was, basically, if you imported we could safely assume you were enough into the whole “state of the world” that the extra dialog would be rewarding and an early sign that your previous choices were listened-to and mattered.
While someone who hadn’t done the import was likely a new player, or not deeply enough invested in world state stuff to want to have those dialogs. As such, we could save those folks from clicking through a ton of possibly meaningless dialogs.
Normally I’m not a huge fan of “hidden reactivity” as it often goes unnoticed, but in this case we wanted it to be unnoticed. We wanted a smoother, less confusing on boarding for new players and I think in the end it was a successful endeavour.
The second thing that’s subtle but so cool falls largely on the work on a few key folks in design, sound, and localization.
In summary: at the very end of Trespasser, no matter how many characters are referenced, no matter what languages the lines are played in, the credits scroll ALWAYS end exactly as Cass realizes “he put her in the book.”
It was a matter of working backwards, and the designer assigned “lengths” to every possible comment she could make (which was quite variable, as some characters could be missed entirely and never met) by language.
The total added “length” of each line that would fire was then added up dynamically for the player’s specific state and then as the credits played they would transition from the bard songs over Trespasser’s credits to Cassandra’s reading at the exact moment to stick the ending.
I guess all this is to say: there were some really brilliant moments in the midst of all the bullshit, and I think every game has those subtleties and moments of real artistry.
I appreciate the teams who work so hard on them all across the industry...
I appreciate the teams who work so hard on them all across the industry...
...and I’m looking forward to being surprised myself sometime. ;)
