Dragon Age - Choice and Consequences

This must be the day for DAO news. IGN has an article that has been linked to the C&C videos we reported a couple of days ago. It makes for interesting reading, so here is something to whet your appetite:

Most RPGs tie the player to a very explicit code of morality, defining their personal character within varying shades of good or evil. In these situations, saving someone would be considered a good act, while killing someone else is frequently seen as a vile deed. These extreme points of view frequently don't take into account that there could be more to these actions than it would initially seem. For example, players might discover that saving a person allows them to commit heinous crimes that you'll have to deal with later, or that killing a supposedly innocent person prevents the deaths of dozens or hundreds of others. On top of this, aside from agreeing or grousing about a decision, the impact on your party is relatively minimal. As a result of these limitations, you play more to a pre-defined sense of good and evil than making your own path, determining what works for you.

Bioware is hoping to break players of these limits in their upcoming RPG, Dragon Age: Origins by eliminating the morality scale that places a character's ethical progression on a good/bad meter. Instead, whenever you come to a conversation with a potential moral dilemma, you're presented with a variety of choices. None of the choices are particularly tinged with any principles that you need to follow or avoid for a particular overall goal; you are given free reign to act however you want in a situation. As a result, you feel as though you're free to act based on what you feel is appropriate to that incident and the characters you're talking to. That's not to say that you won't have to deal with consequences of your actions, because specific decisions that you make will affect the world and characters around you, either resulting in an immediate impact or setting in motion items that would be resolved later. These consequences will also affect your immediate party, potentially improving or destroying your relationships with them outright.

Thanks again Leth