Dragon Age: Inquisition - Writing Villains

[aries100]

The Bioware Blog for DA: Inquisition has been updated with an interview where the Bioware writers explain what it takes to write villains. The interview is with David Gaider, Sylvia Feketekuty and Lukas Kristjanson. David Gaider answers the first question:

[DRAGON AGE]: Before we begin, who is your favorite villain from the previous Dragon Age games, and why?
[DAVID GAIDER]: I'd say Loghain in Dragon Age: Origins, primarily because I couldn't blame him for feeling as he did. Was he paranoid and ultimately wrong? Yes, but I could imagine myself stepping into his shoes and taking some of the same actions he did... which is a little frightening.

A quote about evil characters:

[DA]: In your opinion, what makes an evil character truly memorable?
[SF]: A good dynamic foil. A viewpoint that fascinates, even if it's self-serving or covering an agenda. (There's a reason everyone remembers the cuckoo-clock speech from The Third Man.) The antagonists who stay with me typically change a story's protagonists when they clash, whether by forcing them to adapt or by irreversibly altering their entire worldview.

A quote about how Bioware creates characters:

[LK]: You need to be able to do both because it really depends on when you join a project. If you're in early enough, you can craft the character along with the role, but a lot of times the role and/or plot is necessarily defined already. I prefer knowing where they need to fit because then I know the pieces I have to work with. A lesson from growing up with LEGO: limitations breed creative solutions. The freedom to make stuff up also comes with the uncertainty of what will need to be cut. In either case, I can't do anything without keeping the needs of the overall game in mind.

More information.

 

[Wisdom]

Holy is struggle if I spend hours writing a good character then they came out and said… actually make it evil. It's one of the questions I always ask authors. How do you keep characters and stories separate. Most of the really good authors have said they almost have the character existing as a seperate entity in their mind and they don't have a lot of "control" over what it acts like.

As a reader it becomes painful when 3 books in the character does something totally "out of character". If it's not explained in the plot it seems like a gaping hole.