14 DAY TRIAL // The main designer working on the upcoming role-playing game Dragon Age 2 from BioWare has said that mechanics taken from the genre have become widespread throughout the gaming industry, meaning that a lot more people are actually prepared to try out a more traditional experience in the same space.
Mike Laidlaw, who is the leading designer working on Dragon Age 2, told Gamasutra that, “These are people who will play FarmVille. These are people who have shot enough people in the head that they've leveled up in Medal of Honor. They've gained XP and have received awards as a result.”
He talked about other experiences that have borrowed elements from the role-playing genre, saying, “That's an RPG mechanic. They've played San Andreas and they've run enough, and gotten buff enough, that their endurance is a higher. They've leveled.”
The more hardcore fans of Dragon Age have complained that, because of the renewed focus that BioWare has on console development, the second game in the series might be too simplified when compared with the first one.
Laidlaw says that any changes are designed to make it easier for gamers that are new to the role-playing field to enjoy the game, engage with it and finish it, widening the audience, creating sales success for Dragon Age 2 and ensuring that more titles in the series are created.
Dragon Age 2 will tell the story of Hawke, a simple refugee that is fleeing the Blight and reaches the town of Kirkwall, where he begins a journey that will make him one of the more important powers in the game world.
Dragon Age 2 is set to arrive on March 8 and will be playable on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC.
We took a look at the demo for the game BioWare and Electronic Arts released and saw a game that could be worthy successor to Origins, which arrived in 2008.