Oh my word! There's a new Dragon Age coming! Everyone, stand up and get very excited right about now!
Ok...so maybe we all kind of 'secretly' knew this was bound to be announced. Last year September, lead writer Alex Kennedy indicated that he was working on unannounced game for Bioware. In an interview with Eurogamer a few days ago, even Kennedy expressed how open this secret really was.
There are huge differences between all of that and what I'm working on at BioWare...which I can now legitimately say is in the Dragon Age franchise, although it has been known for a while. Notionally it was a secret but, because of who I was working with, everyone who cared knew. And then the day I started, Mark Darrah [executive producer of the Dragon Age franchise] tweeted saying 'welcome to the Dragon Age franchise', so I thought, well, I guess that's official now then.
So now it is again confirmed officially. It appears that a new Dragon Age title is indeed on its way. And it also seems that Kennedy has been given some scope on the writing of quests and storylines.
What I can say is I have been given considerable autonomy to work on a storyline bit of lore which is well-segregated from other parts of the game, which makes a lot of sense with me being remote. And yes, if you've seen a lot of my work before you will probably not be surprised by the choice of subject matter. It's familiar stuff.
What interested me the most about the interview was Kennedy's discussion on how he operates with others in the team. He mentions that it feels like he is chatting to astronauts on Saturn, where he would ask something and have to wait until Edmonton wakes up before he gets a reply. It was his talk about the restraints he faces that gave me a good chuckle.
Something I've enjoyed at BioWare - possibly because I'm a masochist - is the constraints. I knew they were constrained by being fully voice-acted. But I hadn't realised how much of a constraint it is. It's much easier to breeze through [writing] huge quantities of text when you don't have to worry about it being voiced. It's very difficult to put the player's name in dialogue - which is why you have the names Shepard and Ryder in Mass Effect, or the title of Inquisitor.
Not something we writers think about every day, but I could imagine how frustrating it could be, and so tedious. Good thing they have a masochist working on it then. We await further news from Kennedy and his team on any further Dragon Age updates.
Source: Eurogamer; Destructoid
