Was it the two of you that wanted to go back to the well with a Baldur’s Gate kind of heroic fantasy?

GZ: There were a lot of folks. A lot of people that worked on the original Baldur’s Gate and some of the Neverwinter Nights folks are on this title, and we try to match what people want to build with what they work on at Bioware. So that people who love sci fi work on Mass Effect. Fantasy people get to work on Dragon Age. And I think really what we thought is that while we didn’t own the D&D property or Baldur’s Gate anymore we also felt confident we could build something new of our own; something that could really stand out and that’s really what the motivation was.

RM: We were really looking to evolve it too.

GZ: Oh yeah. It’s definitely not as simple as just a spiritual successor.

RM: It’s got an edge to it. It’s got a bite. It’s dark heroic fantasy, so it’s not necessarily what you’d expect. It’s got the same level of richness and depth and tactical choices and things like that, and the expanse of the world. At the same time it will be a different version of fantasy than people have seen before.

There are not a lot of people making these large budget, epic fantasy RPGs anymore. The kind that can take 60, 80, even 100 hours to complete. Is this a risky game to do?

RM: Every game we make is a risky game to do in some ways.

GZ: You can never predict consumer response, right? But it’s pretty clear that people are starting to get excited about it.

RM: If you’re not taking risks, you’re not pushing the envelope.

I wanted to ask you real briefly about the more recent marketing campaign with the game, in terms of the “New Shit” trailer, the emphasis on –

GZ: That’s the old shit! That was the new shit, like six months ago.

In particular, though, some of the emphasis on blood and violence and sexual content and where do you draw the line between what is mature content and what ends up being gratuitous?

RM: That’s a good question. We’re not seeking to make gratuitous content in our games. We are delivering a mature-themed game. I mean you’ve played it. You’ve seen what the game is about. It actually has those kinds of elements in it, but they’re woven in it in a way that’s appropriate for the game and they actually help the story and help the characters in the game become more alive. So we’re not trying to present it in a gratuitous way, but we are certainly servicing it in a way that shows fans that this isn’t your standard fantasy, this isn’t the game you may be expecting, but you’re going to love it because it’s different. It’s dark heroic fantasy. It’s got a twist. It’s got an edge. It’s got a bite. We’re embracing that. We’re not shying away from that. It’s part of our core principle.

GZ: I was kind of being a little facetious, but I was also pointing out that we’ve refocused the plan for Dragon Age a little bit. Part of it, not sure if we touched on this or not, but part of it was a sort of wake up call to our audience to realize that – the way we described it – [to Ray] what was our famous phrase?

RM: Loose flutes and men in tights. That’s not what it’s about.

GZ: And this is the problem we have. This is the problem: That the market looks at traditional fantasy games as getting pretty long in the tooth and not with the current sort of edginess. So what we wanted to do was stake out, obviously, a very bold position to point out what this game was. What we’ve focused on since then is also not forgetting to show that it’s still a great game. There’s still edgy content, but the game is very, very compelling.

RM: It’s a good question, because it’s a line. You want to show what the game is all about to the fans, but you want to show something that has credible depth that’s more realistic and is more mature and show what the benefits of those things are for the fans. It is an M-rated title and that’s part of what we’re showing.

At this point we were told our time was up, and we'd like to thank both Ray and Greg for taking the time to talk about the game. Part I: Executive Producer Mark Darrah

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