{sidebar id=1}The buzz continues around Bioware's smash hit Dragon Age Origins, which has sold millions of copies in its first two weeks after release. AbleGamers was very impressed by the accessibility of this new RPG and wanted to find out more about why the title had so much accessibility included. AbleGamers' Steve Spohn was given the opportunity to sit down with Mike Laidlaw, Lead Designer of Dragon Age Origins. Was the development team disabled? Will they fix the few problems with accessibility for the visually impaired? Why did they remove the storage chest from the original game? Do you have a plan for distributing content? And, is there indeed a plan for a sequel? Those questions and more answered in the following interview.

AbleGamers: Many gaming magazines are already calling this the most highly anticipated title of 2009 and people are already beginning to whisper about "game of the year" possibilities; were you aware of the large following this game would receive while making it or did the popularity take your staff by surprise?

Mike Laidlaw: I think we had always felt that Dragon Age would do well, and be well received. Certainly, after finally playing its locked-down build, I knew it was a project that we could all be proud of. The question mark was how people would react to a return to fantasy. On one side, you had a very loyal fan base of Bioware's games, but they were very concerned we were "riding on our own coattails." On the other hand, you have people who were all too quick to dismiss Dragon Age as just another fantasy game.

Still, we had a lot of faith at the studio level and from the folks at EA, so we really pulled out the stops to get the word out, and once the game was in people's hands, I felt they would love it. So...surprised...no. But were we on pins and needles a bit? Yeah. But you always are when you ship something you love. 

AbleGamers: Dragon Age Origins is an extremely accessible game. Was accessibility on the priority list for the development team to help accommodate disabled gamers or was the accessibility coincidental?

Laidlaw: We always try to make our games to a broad audience, and keeping things accessible is a part of that philosophy. I've been doing a lot of traveling in the past few months, meeting folks at events like PAX, or the Warden's Calling event we just held, and there have been a lot of times where people come up to me and just thank Bioware for making games they can play, and making games that let them lose themselves in those epic struggles and stories that we love making. It's been immensely rewarding, and I've tried to share that with the team: that feeling that while, yes, we're just making games, we're also making a lot of people happy. If that means adding a few features, then we're more than happy to do it. 

AbleGamers: Was any of the development team disabled? Or is accessibility just becoming increasingly important?

Laidlaw: Besides an abundance of glasses, no, but many of us have friends or family that could fall under that term. I think, ultimately, it is all about awareness. 

AbleGamers: Can you name a few examples of features added to add more accessibility?

Laidlaw: Some of the things we think about range from hearing impairment, vision impairment and even color blindness. So features like subtitles, variable resolutions and fonts that scale accordingly, and even something as simple as not designing puzzles that demand you tell red from green are all things that have been incorporated into many of our games.

For Dragon Age specifically, the controls were a big deal for us, certainly making them work on an Xbox or PS3 was important, but also offering a variety of controls, such as two-button running with the mouse, helps keep the game playable for everyone.

Funnily enough, I think the thing that makes Dragon Age most accessible, though, is one simple feature: you can pause the game, but still issue orders, rotate the camera and so on. For someone having trouble seeing, or controlling, it puts the pace of the game completely under their control, which I've had people say is one of the reasons they love our games, that sense that they don't have to rush, if they need to assess the situation.

AbleGamers: Agreed, the accessibility is incredible from the multiple ways to move your character to the multiple subtitle options. Having said that though, the one problem we found in the core of the game is that the health bars are slightly difficult for any gamer to see, let alone the visually impaired. Any hope that the width, color, or size of the bars could become adjustable in a future patch?

Laidlaw: That's a good point! At this point, it might be a bigger change than we can make easily (I'm not a GUI specialist, so I'm not entirely sure what's involved), but I can bring it up with the team and see. 

AbleGamers: Along those lines, a subtitle option for ambient noise is incredibly rare, what made the development team think about adding that kind of thing?

Laidlaw: I firmly believe that games are at their best when they're immersive, so including the ability to see the comments people are making while shopping, or just wandering the streets lets everyone see what's going on in the world around them. The nice thing is that while awesome for players who can't hear, they're also good for players who want to see all the comments happening around them written out.

Adding notations like (laughs) to our dialogs was an idea that came out watching how subtitles are done in movies, as they are our best marker for how subtitles are done right. The Dragon Age writers really did a good job of adding notes like (laughs) and (sighs) to help sell the emotion, I think. The only tricky bit was reminding our actors that they could move the laugh around, or chuckle through the line. We got a few early takes back that sounded a bit stilted. "That will show them, ha ha." Didn't take long to iron that out, though, and it paid off in the end. 

AbleGamers: The control scheme is reminiscent of both RTS and traditional MMO RPG style, which we love, was this intentional to attract players from the bigger online RPGs with a familiar feel.

Laidlaw: Yes, with the note that the control scheme isn't toooo far off of our own Neverwinter Nights, or even Baldur's Gate, so I don't feel too bad about being inspired. Still, I firmly believe that when a genre has control conventions, you do yourself and your players a favor by keeping as close to them as you can. No one wants to struggle with things like "walking" or "putting on armor," when there are perfectly reasonable and conventional ways to do so in an interface. I'd much rather people instantly know how to play Dragon Age so that they can get into the story, customizing and leveling up their character, and kicking butt as quickly as possible! 

AbleGamers: Do you believe the accessibility of this game is a trend we can look forward to seeing continue in future BioWare/EA titles?

Laidlaw: I certainly think so.

AbleGamers: We sure hope so. Now, on a more gameplay centered note, Fidget.com has been making a lot of noise that the inventory screen is horrible, and that EA is responsible for having the storage chest, which adds additional inventory room to your camp, removed from the game so that they can offer it as downloadable content for seven dollars.

Laidlaw: The storage chest was not tied to the DLC originally, but the problem we encountered was that there are multiple versions of your party camp, and we had no easy way to "clone" the chest between them. As such, the decision was made to put the chest in a place with only one location, rather than leaving players going: "Wait! Where's all my STUFF!"

Honestly, I look at Warden's Keep as a way to explore the back-story of the Grey Wardens, a change to get a very awesome looking suit of armor, designed specifically for that purpose, and a way to find new abilities for your Grey Warden, not as "you pay money for a box." 

AbleGamers: Also, would it be fair to say that the focus of BioWare was on developing exceptional content and a strong storyline, not eye candy? A few user-reviews state the facial models are substandard when you compare it to the likes of Mass Effect.

Laidlaw: Story and content are certainly our focus, but I don't think that means you have to sacrifice visuals to get it. Mass Effect 2, for instance, is jaw dropping, and yet tells a really amazing story, so I've seen it in action. Dragon Age's visuals hold up really well, I think, but what I'm really impressed by is that they scale really well. Lower-end machines can run this game without too much problem, which means lots of folks can play it, and we can do things like the crowded "Kings Camp" area of Ostagar. Important when you're making a game about forging an army, after all. 

AbleGamers: Downloadable content is the new selling point for most videogames today, how often can we look forward to new downloadable content for Dragon Age Origins? Will we see several large content patches as in Fallout 3 or more traditional expansion packs released after so many months like most MMO RPGs?

Laidlaw: We haven't announced firm plans on the release schedule yet, but you can look forward to a two-year content plan. There's some really interesting stuff in the works, but alas I am forbidden to talk of it. 

AbleGamers: Any possibility of a multiplayer, LAN, or an MMO version of the Dragon Age saga down the road?

Laidlaw: When you call a game "Origins," you are making a bit of a statement that there's more to come (and, apparently, that you have six different openings), so I wouldn't rule it out! 

AbleGamers: And most importantly before we wrap up, Morrigan or Leliana?

Laidlaw: Tough call! Personally, it's Leliana all the way. I'm an absolute sucker for her accent, and every so often she busts our something a little chilling, and then blithely goes on to talk about how she prefers pretty shoes to clunky Ferelden boots. It's that seeming guilelessness that makes her so compelling, because there's a lot more going on than she lets on, and it's pretty clear that she has the rest of the party fooled.

Morrigan, though. Wow. She has some pretty amazing moments over the course of the game, and I honestly can't speak highly enough about how her story plays out, or how well Claudia Black did understanding the nuances in Morrigan's writing. 

Epilogue

AbleGamers would like to thank Mike Laidlaw for taking the time to sit down and answer our questions. One thing in particular that he said which we feel needs special attention was, "...yes, we're just making games, we're also making a lot of people happy. If that means adding a few features, then we're more than happy to do it."

Let me highlight that again. "If that means adding a few features, then we are more than happy to do it." This was a statement I had never heard from a developer before and one I had dreamed about since when I first started working for AbleGamers. Mike and the Dragon Age team understand that is more important to spend a small amount of time in the beginning adding features that can include a greater segment of the population, then to go back later and try to fix what went wrong.

The features he mentioned as the most important such as, detailed subtitles, avoiding colorblind issues, and adding double-button mouse movement are features that do not take much additional development time but can open the game to the disabled community. If developers can continue to keep in mind that we disabled gamers desire very small adaptations that should hinder no one, yet make the game more accessible at the cost of very little additional time or money; there will be no reason for developers to continue ignoring accessibility opt

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0 #5 COMMENT_TITLE_R E AbleGamers Dragon Age Origins Interview Talks Sequel, Multi-player, and More — Joesquires12 2010-03-11 16:06

FANTASTIC game, but don't forget - fable 3 could rock the world - better make the sequel very free roaming with LOTS of equipment

 

 

0 #4 COMMENT_TITLE_R E AbleGamers Dragon Age Origins Interview Talks Sequel, Multi-player, and More — Akira 2010-03-01 13:21

by far in all my years of gaming, from the very first nintendo to the most advanced game system of this day, whether you think it is wii, 360 or ps3, this game tops EVERYTHING ive ever played, ive gone through mario sagas, sonic sagas, halo sagas, this game took me by storm. if nothing else i think all dragon age gamers can agree on the personal feeling you get you play. youre not some random human playing a game, your a mage turning an enemy to ice, a warrior decapitating another darkspawn, a rogue landing another backstab for a mssive critical. i personally, upon learning the morrigan would leave after the battle felt a dagger driven through not only my toons heart, but my own. when alistair ran away and jowain betrayed me, i felt it all, i could never get so intuned with my games before. and ive played games as long as theyve been out, you name a rpg, mmorpg, action, any game, ive either tested or beaten it, but dragon age origins took me completely by storm. i know im not the only one who thinks this, but nothing would be better then a sequel to this game. im sure everyone has their preferences as to what they would want to see, all i want is a chance to hunt down morrigan...as ive said, ive personally grown attached to her, some may think im weird or odd. i admit i truly am, but i must find her, find my child. gather up the old group, leliana, stan, ogrhen, my mabari, alastair, and hunt down and finally end the darkspawn horde, forever, in their hell hole in the deep roads. Thank you for this truly amazing game, may the maker smile upon you all. see you in the codex's.

Archmage of Denerim and Queen Anora,
Akira, Shapeshifter and Arcane Warrior

 

 

0 #3 COMMENT_TITLE_R E AbleGamers Dragon Age Origins Interview Talks Sequel, Multi-player, and More — Grendel 2010-01-21 02:37

Shale was smaller because he was "shrunk down"

 

 

0 #2 COMMENT_TITLE_R E AbleGamers Dragon Age Origins Interview Talks Sequel, Multi-player, and More — Gemo 2010-01-02 11:16

I think all us Dragon Age: Origins fans are ready to get on their knees and beg for an amazing sequel! Die hard fans like myself would be overjoyed to hear even a mention or rumor of a sequel! Not to mention, character roll over! Most gamers like myself love this kind of idea! Seeing as it's more of a personal touch that makes you feel even more engrossed in the thrills of games!
I applaud Bioware and EA for the truly amazing RPG! First time I laid my eyes on the Bioware's announcement of their new game, I was hook, line, and sinker for this game! I'm rambling now ha ha.
Wrapping it up, I was extremely involved, emotionally and mentally, in the character and main plot all the way through! We eagerly await a sequel that will keep us holed up in our houses and keep our noses inches from the TV to not miss a single moment of your incredible RPG! Much love, much loyalty, and much applause!

 

 

0 #1 COMMENT_TITLE_R E AbleGamers Dragon Age Origins Interview Talks Sequel, Multi-player, and More — Kyle Michael Robinson 2009-12-28 23:08

Game was perfedt just polish up the graphics. You maybe would like to include character roll over for new games and you my also want to make the DLC cheaper and longer I mean REALY I finished one of the DLC in under an hour. Ohh finaly I was sad that Shale was so small compared to the others of his kind. Most importantly keep the game for all the systems/ Computers it came out for. If microsoft realses a new xbox Make the game for it and the 360 it will please alot of people believe my. Thanks Bioware and EA for an experience we gamers will never forget.

 

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