Dragon Age 2 - Interview with David Gaider @ Fantasy Magazine

[aries100]

Fantasy Magazine's Matt London talked with David Gaider. Lead Writer and Heather Rabitech, Associate Producer. They talk about how they got into the game indsutry, how they start writing their games, what their duties are, cinematic design in games, and much much more.
First a rather telling quote from Gaider about how the framed story in DA2 came to be:

Much has been made of the framed story in Dragon Age II. What was the inspiration for this addition, and how does it affect the experience of the game?
David Gaider: The framed narrative was Mike’s idea, and the origin of it came from a desire to tell a story over a larger scope of time. In the past, all our stories began at point x and you played in a linear fashion through to the end. Having a larger time period to play with allowed us to introduce long-term consequences to the player’s actions in mid-game rather than at the end, and also have the concept of the “unreliable narrator”—such as in The Usual Suspects where you’re not certain by the end of the tale whether the narrator was telling the truth.

Heather then explained her duties as Associate Producer in relation to DA2

Heather, as Associate Producer, tell us about your specific duties on the game.
Heather Rabitach: As an associate producer, I play a key role in setting up the initial game plan. We have to ask a lot of questions like: How much time do we have? How many people do we have? How long does it take to do certain game-wide passes? Who is affected if we move these dates? It’s a lot of communication and collaboration with the project leads at the beginning because we are all so interdependent on other teams. You need to be able to maintain order within chaos and think on your feet as the schedule ebbs and flows. Being slightly OCD doesn’t hurt either.

And, finally, a quote about Gaider's hard day

Tell us about something you wrote for a game that you absolutely loved, but for whatever reasons were unable to implement in the final game.
David Gaider: When I wrote Knights of the Old Republic, there was an ending written for the female Jedi player who got to the end both romancing Carth Onasi and having fallen to the Dark Side. I thought it was fantastic—the possibility of redemption combined with a bittersweet sacrifice. But we couldn’t include it, for technical reasons. It’s always hard when you have to cut something you love. That was a hard day.

Thanks to fightright2 in this thread in the Bioware DA2 forums for finding this.
More information.

 

[CraigCWB]

Being slightly OCD doesn’t hurt either.

Is that what they call attention deficit disorder, these days?

 

[Couchpotato]

On a side note ditch the frame narrative next time. It wasn't used to its full potential just play Alpha protocol to see how it should be done. Just let me play my story and give me a beginning and an end. Who am I kidding the next installment will probably be the same.

 

[kalniel]

Hmm, haven't finished reading it yet, but it confirms some of my fears for DA2's development length - I had given Bioware the benefit of the doubt and assumed they had begun most of DA2 well before DA:O actually released. But comments like

David Gaider: There was a lengthy post-mortem process after Origins where each part of the development team discussed what worked and what didn’t work, and what we’d like to see changed for Dragon Age II. Then there was taking into account a lot of the feedback from the game’s release, both from the fans as well as the reviews—seeing what they wanted, or at the very least what they thought needed improvement.

suggest it was largely sequential. And is that a hint of blaming the fans for DA2? (at least what they thought needed improvement)

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

What does the abbreviation "OCD" mean ?

 

[holeraw]

It means: "google it".

—

Sorry, just teasing (though I do say that to people often lately)

It's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

I guess he means he's a bit of a perfectionist, which is obviously just bs…
(Kind of reminds me of the job interview scene from Trainspotting)

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Okay, thanks.

 

[aries100]

Just a quick note; last time I checked, Heather is girl's name in the US and Canada ;9 just FYI. And I also read the OCD commment as needing to be a perfectionist, although from what I understand OCD people will do a certain thing over and again, or else something bad (worse) will happen.

Also, didn't anyone of you pick up on Gaiders hint on the framed story; Laidlaw's idea e.g. not his, the Lead Writer's. Basically, very few games, and few stories can pull up a framed story. As I understand it (since I haven't played it) Alpha Protocol did it (very) well...

 

[darkling]

The frame story in DA2 was done just fine.

The only thing I'm worried about is that they'll dictate the events of DA2 in future games and cite 'unreliable narrator' as the reason. I mean, they've shown they're pretty lazy. I wouldn't put it past them!

 

[Motoki]

The frame story in DA2 was done just fine.

I don't really agree with that. They've cited being able to show changes over a span of time as one of their primary rationales for the framed narrative except nothing really changes. The town looks the same, people look the same, they wear the same clothes. I didn't really get much of a feeling that time passed at all except for being told it did in expository dialog.

I didn't really care for the time jumps. It felt like 'And then a bunch of random boring crap happened that we don't care about, but hey look, now we are getting to the AWESOME stuff!'. It also limited the choice and freedom since you were shoehorned into the bottleneck points that transition the chapters.

Another aspect I didn't care for is I felt like I wasn't really controlling the story and the events. It happened already so it's fixed and I was sort of just along for the ride to push buttons and make awesome things happen.

Like yourself, I suspect they will settle on one canonical series of events and any deviations individuals players may have made can be attributed to Varric's unreliable narration.

 

[aries100]

I've read on some of the forums (here included) that there is this poor, poor man (npc) who have waited 7 years (seven!) years to see the viscount - without even getiing in to see said viscount.

Just as an example of how things didn't really change...

 

[KapitanUnterhosen]

Hope you're being sarcastic about that in-game joke.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Quite a lot of ingame jokes in DA2, the whole game is an ingame joke.

 

[aries100]

No, I'm not being sarcastic - apparently, there is a man who everyday says 'i want to see the viscount'. Even after seven years...

 

[kalniel]

No, I'm not being sarcastic - apparently, there is a man who everyday says 'i want to see the viscount'. Even after seven years…

And it's not a joke, like the guy in mass effect 2?

 

[mediocrepoet]

The guy waiting came off as a joke. It just wasn't very funny because the rest of the game was so terrible with enough recycling that it seems at least possible it was the result of carelessness not the Bio-writers' razor wit.

 

[KapitanUnterhosen]

And it's not a joke, like the guy in mass effect 2?

It is a joke, with each time skip the guy complains about how much time has passed and how he is still waiting for his audience. An in-game joke with little effect to be sure, ironic at worst, but this is in no way an example of how things in the game don't change with time. Aries is apparently going off poorly interpreted hearsay.

And bioware should realize its games aren't good enough for self-deprecating humor: http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/star-wars-the-old-republic-fake-trailer