BioWare's second Dragon Age 2 podcast with new race concept art

Dragon Age Origins Blog artstyle Podcast: Dragon Age 2s Art Direction

A big point of focus for BioWare in Dragon Age 2 is going to be refining and defining the art style. The developers themselves have admitted they weren’t completely satisfied with the look of Dragon Age: Origins. Art director Matt Goldman sat down for a lengthy interview on how the art team is overhauling the look of the upcoming game to make it instantly recognizable and deeply ingrained into the world itself.

The podcast came with a new concept art looking at both male and female drawings of all four major races: Qunari, Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. We’d link it here, but BioWare wants to keep it exclusive to their blog, so we’ll respect that wish. You can visit the blog post and check out the new concept and the podcast at the official BioWare Blog.

Definitely take the time to listen to the very interesting podcast. But here’s a quick recap of some of the things Goldman talks about in the interview:

  • Defining the look of Dragon Age 2: As has been covered in previews before, a major sticking point for the developers is making a product that will be instantly recognizable as Dragon Age 2. While Origins sometimes had a “whimsical” look to it that didn’t seem to fit the darkening world of the Blight, the art in the sequel will be more appropriate to the world around it. The pic used for this posts banner, Pieter Bruegel’s “Triumph of Death,” was noted as Goldman by an inspiring piece toward defining a new art style in Dragon Age 2.
  • Uniformity: Goldman touches on making some of the art for the world more uniform amongst itself. Highlight the darkspawn in particular, he says that some of the visual changes are being made to tie groups together. So the darkspawn in Dragon Age 2 will look more like they belong together and although genlocks and hurlocks and shrieks are each unique, the style of how they are designed will help link they together better so they look like they’re all “part of one army.
  • Race tweaks: We already saw an early glimpse of a revamped Qunari and were promised some tweaks to how elves and dwarves look too. In the new concept art we can see some of the early differences made in the elves and dwarves. Goldman described the humans as “Men’s Fitness” magazine while the elves are “Runner” magazine and the dwarves are “the world’s strongest man” who can toss a beer keg over the house.
  • Character design: Goldman talks a bit about how character creation works in Dragon Age 2. Although players are restricted to only humans now, your Hawke will still be fully customizable. Along with being able to customize your Hawke to your liking, your character will be fully expressive, unlike the blank emotionless Warden of Origins.

There’s plenty more than just this quick recap. Listen to the podcast and feel free to discuss below.

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