https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLPdL_EfbGY[[ “At BioWare you’ve got Dragon Age and Mass Effect, if you’re making a new IP you want something that isn’t relatively normal fantasy with some bells and whistles or relatively normal science fiction. Thus you get something like Anthem which is science fantasy. It’s science fiction but it doesn’t have space travel, the technology is more magic-y, and it sort’ve fits in a space all on its own. You could imagine BioWare going into the modern day or urban fantasy. Different enough from the two existing established franchises.”
On primary themes:
“What is the primary conceit of the IP or setting or series? This might be something that is not going to live with your IP forever, but it’s worth at least starting there. So, for Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 it’s all about the relationship between humanity and technology. It’s really something else in Andromeda, so. Dragon Age has always been about groups and found family and about the over-arching corruption that comes with power. […]
Additionally you probably wanna set some broad thoughts about what your game looks like. Does it look like Syd Mead like Mass Effect, or does it look like Kurosawa in the Northern Renaissance like Dragon Age: Inquisition is trying to look? […]
Anthem is three big rules that are mainly set from a visual aesthetic perspective, but I think some of them come and impact the game design and worldbuilding as well. The three things are ‘coffee cups and cigarette butts’, which means that the world should look lived in and dirty and like people are using this technology and just keeping it going as best they can, which is a way to separate it from Mass Effect, which is very clean and smooth and a lot of things look like they just came out of the factory. Number two, similarly, is there is no mass production. So as much as possible things should look unique, like they were hand-crafted by a magical science fantasy blacksmith in the background and things should look more like they were one-offs as opposed to punched out of a mass production line. Now that’s not always completely possible in a video game because you’re going to stamp some assets around, but as much as possible, no mass production. And then the third, which has the biggest impact on the worldbuilding and game design, in addition to being a visual aesthetic thing, is no wheels. Which of course makes no particular sense, because obviously all the arms and things on the Javelin suits obviously have wheels inside, but you never see a wheeled anything in Anthem, which means that there are big walkers or you have things moved by hand and that is a major thing that really sets what the game looks like really strongly. This implication that this is a world without wheels, why do you have striders? Why do you even have giant flying mech suits? Well this is a world without wheels so you can’t have tanks or semi-trucks. Doesn’t really make sense, but it’s a science fantasy game so you’ve set this rule and you’re able to then grow the world around that fact.”
On how many sources there are for magic or super tech & worldbuilding:
“If you have any sort of super tech or magic then you want to ask this question: how many sources do you have for that magic? […] Dragon Age has been in this state for a while, where magic has a bunch of sources, but not enough to quite qualify as 'many’. It has lyrium but it also has the Blight and sometimes you have magical artifacts that don’t seem to involve either of those things and sometimes you have magic from other sources. So is it three, lyrium and the Fade and the Blight? Is it two, because maybe the Fade and the Blight are somehow related to each other? Is it one? And that’s what Dragon Age has been spending Inquisition and is gonna spend, I suspect, Dreadwolf doing, is, collapsing this down so we go from 'a few too many’ to be a fully logical metaphysics, but not enough to be just 'magic comes from wherever’ into something where the gears start to mesh together.”
On onboarding new players:
“A major streamlining of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s opening was done by removing a bunch of information about red lyrium from the opening of Dragon Age: Inquisition and pushing it later into the game when it was actually relevant to what was going on. Does the player actually need to know this right now? If not, tell them when they need it. Leave as much information out of the intro of your game as you can because it’s gonna improve your pacing and fatigue the player a lot less.”
On the world’s rules and IP Bibles/wikis:
“[…] lists the rules of your IP. If you have decided that you do not have teleportation, like Dragon Age has, that is something that should be in your IP Bible. Now you might decide that you’re going to go right up to the edge of that rule without quite breaking it, which is what’s been happening in gameplay for Dragon Age for a while, put it down, ideally put down the reason for that. […] Similarly Dragon Age has the rule that any sort of enchantment [blood?] magic is seen as incredibly evil, as being one of the most evil forms of magic.” ]]
