BioWare Explains the "Massively Single-Player" Elements of Dragon Age

BioWare caught our attention months ago when they said they were making Dragon Age: Origins into a massively-single player RPG. Obviously that sounds a little odd, alluding to a massive social experience for a staunchly single-player game. Fortunately, BioWare has given some details on how the whole MSOPRG thing will work.

BioWare is trying to shake up the RPG genre by making a single-player game a more social event. Apparently you don’t have to feel lonely just because you play alone. Dragon Age will give players, both on PC and console, a social network of sorts where they can interact and “tell” the tale of their game experience. As is common with many other BioWare games, certain decisions in the game can have an enormous impact on where the story goes and how it is resolved. BioWare wants you to be able to experience all the different nuances of the game through all the other players that have traveled each path.

And to be clear, this really isn’t an MMORPG. There is nothing multiplayer about the experience; you still play in your own version of the world with NPCs that react to your decisions.

Here’s how it works. BioWare’s new “Social Network” website will allow players to create a free account and link their copy of the game to the Social site. The site then records the player’s choices and achievements as well as how the character changes and levels up. Other players on the Social site can see your character, stats and all that you’ve been doing in the game. The adventure log will list the quests you’ve completed, actions you’ve taken and relationships you’ve forged. Each item in the list will expand to give more information, so other players can go as deep as they like to see how your story played out (or is currently playing out).

PC players will actually have an additional feature that let’s them take and share screenshots of their gameplay. Dragon Age will automatically take screenshots of major accomplishments in the game, such as killing a boss, or you can take your own manually. Console players don’t get the ability because it slows down the system too much.

The screenshots will allow players to make their adventure logs and account in general more personal, and thereby lend their own story more importance. Fernando Melo, online producer for Dragon Age, said, “You'll have the ability to see a friends' character and go, 'That's a cool helmet, how the hell did you get that?' Or 'You completed this quest and I didn't even see that.”

Basically, BioWare’s Social site will allow you to delve ever deeper into the game without needing to replay it again and again, though seeing what other people accomplished may drive you to replay it so you can see things for yourself. As an example, Melo said one particular dilemma in the game has 52 different ways to be solved. You wouldn’t want to discover them all yourself, so you can see what others did and come up with your own plan based on how you think it should be done.

If you’re worried that other people playing ahead of you may spoil the story, you can opt out of the different features on the Social site. You can connect to whoever you want to and follow their progress, and BioWare also plans to include an array of community-wide events that anyone can participate in without being connected to other players. One example given was the entire player base being challenged to kill a certain number of enemies in a set time.

This may be a risky move for BioWare, simply because it straddles a middle ground. It’s more connected than classic single-player RPGs, and yet it doesn’t allow the same level of interaction found in MMORPGs. But it may just be the kind of innovation that single-player gaming needs to update the genre in this era of connectivity.

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