Scott Greig
Project Director/Producer
Joined: 05 Apr 2002 |
 Posted: Friday, 28 May 2004 06:21AM
OK, here are my thoughts on the matter.
One of the ways of looking at things is to treat text, VO and animations as information channels. Trust me this will make sense shortly 
In the BG days, our writers had to convey all story and characterizations through character dialog. If they wanted to give the impression that the character was angry, they had to write angry words:
"No! damn you".
They didn't even have the option that a novelist has of adding non dialog descriptors:
"No!" he said angrly.
I don't think that very many people realized how much of a challenge this was and of course one of the side effects of this type of writing is that it can become quite "wordy".
When you have full VO like in Kotor, you now have a second channel to convey information about the player:
"No!" (VOICE DIRECTION: Shouts in angry voice)
If you have full VO and a sophisticated animation system, you now have three channels of information
"..." (ANIMATION DIRECTION: Snarls and shakes head)
The net effect of having this systems is it allows the writer more flexibility. It will also have the effect of reducing the total number of words, but not necessarily the number of dialog options.
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Scott Greig
Dragon Age Project Director / Producer
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