Dragon Age: Origins Tailored for Each Platform

Dragon Age: Origins is slated for a release on a multitude of platforms, including the PC, 360 and PS3, with some major differences between the PC version and its console counterparts.

Interviewed by polygamia.pl, Bioware online producer Fernando Melo answered questions about comparisons between Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

He stated that it would be very easy for anyone who enjoyed Mass Effect to transition into a game like Dragon Age, especially on consoles as the game was converted from the ground up to play much more like a traditional console game. “The action is a little bit quicker, even though you have the same access to tactics and pause and play, there's no need for you to use much of that. So it feels more like an action game. So these gamers will probably consider Dragon Age a good addition to their library.”

Whereas Mass Effect is primarily an action game with a strong story component, Dragon Age: Origins was always thought of as a successor to the Baldur’s Gate, Bioware’s first RPG.

“Dragon Age was always thought of as a a successor to Baldur's Gate, there were many things that we wanted to transfer from there, and part of that is what we enjoy about that kind of game, the combat system, pause and play tactics, party members, these things are the core of the game, and it doesn't translate as well to an action game. But it depends on the kind of gamer that you are. You can totally play it without pausing as well, but on the PC you have a lot more advantage, a lot more incentive to use pause and play and more tactics than you would on the console.”

Asked about the differences between the platforms and why the axonometric view was taken out of the console versions, Melo answered that the biggest reason was due to memory limitations on the console. “For us to do something like that, we would have to sacrifice a lot of things that we didn't want to.”

He elaborated by saying that the console experience, the balancing of combat and the way the controls are set up on the console are done so that it should feel like a console game, rather than a port.

“And for me, to enjoy a console game, you shouldn't need a top-down view, you shouldn't feel like you're missing that. But we also know that we have a lot of PC fans that also have 360 and I'm sure that they'd love to have that as well, but to do that we would have to sacrifice other things that were much more important to the game.”