During last week’s Awakening promotion event in Germany we managed to grab an exclusive interview with Online Producer, Fernando Melo:

For those who’ve only recently started following Awakening or Dragon Age, could you tell us a little about yourself? Have you worked on any projects before Dragon Age and what is it like working for BioWare?

I’m the Online Producer for the Dragon Age franchise – which in the context of Origins means that I’m involved with most of what happens after game launch including downloadable content (DLC), Awakening expansion, patches, the Dragon Age portion of the BioWare social site, and Dragon Age toolset. I joined BioWare nearly 3 years ago specifically for this role so Dragon Age:Origins was my first BioWare title, but I’ve been a BioWare fanboy long before that.

You’ve probably seen a few of these from other BioWarians, but working here is pretty awesome. The culture here is special, and exists at all levels of the company – having worked for many years at other game companies and a couple other industries, I really appreciate that the most.

Prior to joining BioWare I was working for 2K Games, and consider myself privileged to have worked with some great dev studios and titles while I was there.

The delayed release of Return to Ostagar caused a fair amount of drama within the community. While these things happen in the world of software development it never paints a good picture of the company, at least not in the eyes of the average End User. Is there anything BioWare has changed in their digital distribution methods to better combat such a delay in the future?

This was a big blow for the team as well. We really wanted to make this a special content piece for fans to enjoy over their holiday season, and the team worked extremely hard to try to make that come true.

Instead Return to Ostagar (RtO) was to become something along the lines of a ‘perfect storm’ for us where a lot of small faults and circumstances, not only internally but also externally to us, all came together at the same time and in a really awkward time of the year. This managed to divide everyone’s efforts and attention in such a way that issues got through the previous processes that normally would have spotted it – certainly well before it ever made it to the public.

Since then, RtO has turned into an important case study for us, and we’ve changed quite a lot of our own process actually – not only with how we develop and test our content and patches, but also in how we will communicate these going forward.

Unforeseen circumstances are actually a very normal part of any software development, and in particular game development and the online space – but rarely does that actually get out and impact the public. Still, you don’t have to look very far for other examples of companies that have recently had online issues – it’s a very dynamic space to be developing in with a lot of moving parts, thus lots of potential failure points.

But they say sometimes your best lessons and improvements come from your missteps – and in this sense Return to Ostagar was oddly one of the best things that could have happened to us when it did. It helped us to rapidly mature all of our processes in a much shorter timeframe than our normal method of iterative improvement, and because of that it will benefit all of our subsequent content, and ultimately our players.

BioWare’s two-year DLC plan has excited a fair number of folks. What a number of Wardens are curious about, is whether BioWare will be releasing content for Origins, Awakening and any further expansions separately? As in treating each as a separate ‘game’, essentially, in the eyes of the DLC?

It will be easier to understand once we begin to talk about upcoming DLC.

But in the meantime I’ll reassure of you the following – you will be able to play the DLC regardless of whether you have Awakening or not. And where it makes sense, you will be able to play the DLC with your Warden from Origins or Awakening.

When the Social Network was first unveiled, and Dragon Age was released, it was a pretty impressive bit of kit: a Forum, Trophy Room & Modder’s Hub all in one. Are there any specific plans for the future, plans to expand or improve the Social Network that you can share with us?

The Social site (and social features in general) are a big part of our community and play an increasingly important role in all our games. We are continuously making improvements to the social site – although many of these rollouts are subtle and behind the scenes. For really big, and noticeable improvements you’ll have to wait until we’re ready to talk about those.

Moving onto Awakening, The Architect was first mentioned in David Gaider’s second Dragon Age prequel, The Calling. When were plans for Awakening first formed: were they tied with The Calling, or did The Calling come first?

That is probably the Dragon Age equivalent of the chicken and the egg question I think. Answering what started or finished actual development first is easy – at the time of writing this The Calling is out and Awakening is not – but that doesn’t actually answer your question.

As part of making Origins we spent several man-years developing the overall world and timeline that the universe of Dragon Age all plays out in. As big as Origins is, it only spans a very small fraction of time that the whole “age of dragons” covers, and is set across a portion of a single country called Ferelden. Awakening is set about 6 months after Origins, and covers another part of Ferelden – a region called Amaranthine. Similarly, both The Calling and The Stolen Throne before it are novels also set in that region but on slightly earlier (but still relatively close) time periods.

Given the common region and relative time, it makes sense that eventually you’ll run into more and more connections across the products – such as key figures like the Architect.

In a number of other interviews a ‘Runecrafting Skill’ has been mentioned. In this Warden’s experience, giving player’s such freedom generally results in the discovery (accidental, or otherwise) of an ‘unbeatable combo’. What steps have been taken to avoid such?

Runecrafting is a great way to help round out and customize the party. And actually it goes beyond just the skill itself, as we’ve also added the ability to add runes to armor now, in addition to weapons and higher tiers of runes.

Both Origins and Awakening are hugely complex games however. The sheer number of permutations amongst party member classes, specializations, skills, attributes, items, buffs, etc – not to mention that you can tackle the main story plots in virtually any order – make it all but impossible to balance the game for all cases out of the gate.

What we can do, as with any gameplay feature, is spend quite a lot of time tweaking and balancing for what is launched – and for the vast majority of players and their party composition, this provides a nice steady difficulty and reward progression throughout the game. We then watch for player feedback and game data after launch and plan for additional tweaks through patching.

This is actually a question from one of our commentators. Its been mentioned that Herren will be selling ‘Tomes of Respec’. Should one be used will it take into account Points gained from other tomes, or will these be lost?

The Tomes that allow you to Respec your characters are not cummulative.

Currently, I’m presuming, a lot of your energy is directed towards Awakening, but what of the future? What plans have been formed for future content, is there another DLC adventure on the books yet? Or is another ‘Return to Ostagar’ still a while off?

Well, it is no secret as we’ve said we would continue supporting Dragon Age with DLC – but as for specifics… all in good time.

Given all the new abilities and specialisations in Awakenings, which would you say is your favourite class? In addition, who is your favourite Companion and why?

I’ve always enjoyed playing a rogue. And I love the fact that in Awakening these (and Warriors) got a lot more love. As an example, I don’t feel the same urge to ‘depart’ my rogue and manage my party mages in order to achieve a successful outcome in tricky battles – with some great new specializations such as Legionnaire Scout, I can choose to stand toe to toe with the baddest critters as a second party front line fighter, if that’s my style. Or I can also wreak havoc on large numbers of enemies with my ranged attack rogue, thanks to some epic new talents like Rain of Arrows.

However, as far as companions go – my favorite by far will be revealed this week! I’ll leave out the commentary so as not to spoil it yet – but “J” always has a place in my party. (This is Justice, a mysterious companion who’s name has been leaked but we know nothing about, yet–Illiani)

So there you have it, lessons learned and ‘Justice’ soon to be announced. This looks like it is going to be a busy week for Dragon Age Fans and rightly so, Awakenings is released on the 16th of March which puts it just six days away! This Warden has his copy secured, do you?

Fernando Melo’s introductional speech at the event

Pardon the dark lighting. The cellar of the castle was absolutely dark.

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