Beamdog - David Gaider joins as Creative Director

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Game Informer reports the former Bioware writer has been signed on as Creative Director. Baldurs Gate 3 confirmed?

In January, David Gaider surprised Dragon Age fans by announcing his departure from BioWare. Today, we know that he hasn't gone far.

Gaider announced that he has joined Beamdog as creative director. The company has released updated PC and mobile versions of both Balder's Gate games. Gaider was a writer on Baldur's Gate II.

A note on Beamdog's website details his new role:

We're very pleased to welcome David Gaider to the company as our new creative director. Originally we advertised for the position of senior writer, but when David contacted Trent about the position, we upgraded the role.

David is well known for his design and writing work on Baldur's Gate 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age: Origins. He brings 17 years of experience to our little team and we couldn't be happier to work with him. David will lead the writing team and direct new creative endeavors for the company.

Welcome, David!

With any luck, this might be the first part of an announcement Baldur's Gate fans have been waiting for since the second entry was released in 2000. In 2012, Beamdog producer Phillip Daigle indicated that if the Enhanced Editions performed well that there might be hope for a third game.
More information.
 
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It's... interesting.

Judging by his later work, I assumed he had left Baldur's Gate behind him for good. Not that I'm really looking forward to his involvement, but then, Beamdog is just the kind of place where he can't do any real damage anyway.
 
Weird. Going from a well-funded team numbering in the hundreds to… a small operation of couple dozen rehashing and porting old games. Weird transition.
 
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Weird. Going from a well-funded team numbering in the hundreds to… a small operation of couple dozen rehashing and porting old games. Weird transition.

I think creatively you can do more with a small outfit than with a large one. Especially on the writing and design front. Thats probably the appeal for David in this move, plus working with some of his old buddies helps too.
 
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Ah titles. One would think that you would either need to be a leader or creative to obtain that title. Clearly not.
 
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Weird. Going from a well-funded team numbering in the hundreds to… a small operation of couple dozen rehashing and porting old games. Weird transition.

The larger the studio, the more they have to focus on the "common denominator" to sell a lot of copies to pay for all those salaries. A smaller studio can afford to go niche and be more creative which would appeal to many game developers/creators.

Beamdog have been hiring to make a new game after they are done with Siege of Dragonspear (will release soonish). Everyone call it BG3, but I doubt it's going to be related to it outside of "in spirit". Beamdog have been looking for a new (3d) engine and any games set after ToB would have to be 5e Forgotten Realms and Wizard seems to want games to follow their campaign release plan going by Sword Coast Legend and NWN Online.

I can assure you the new game will be a tactical party based RPG though. They hired Brent Knowles too (which I consider a much bigger news) and that is all he is interested in making.
 
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I could imagine that, if I were a fantasy writer, and I'd been writing copy for corporate marketing campaigns for years (which is what I imagine working for EA must be like), I might be very happy to go back to writing D&D campaigns for a small outfit that values my contribution.

For me, the adventures in BG2 and KOTOR hit the spot pretty well, so this could be interesting.
 
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I see several people aren't too keen. Is it known what specific writing he's responsible for, to explain the scorn?
 
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Weird. Going from a well-funded team numbering in the hundreds to… a small operation of couple dozen rehashing and porting old games. Weird transition.

Yeah, this isn't really strange from my perspective whatsoever. I work for a company now that was the real trailblazer in what we do. But now we've grown a ton, we were acquired by a large corporation, and while business is still very good, that yearning for what we used to do, and the influence people used to have, is very strong. It is severely dininished when you grow from 20 people to several hundred people. Almost all the people that were here during the real building/growth period have left for smaller start-ups. I am struck with that feeling a lot myself.
 
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I think creatively you can do more with a small outfit than with a large one. Especially on the writing and design front. Thats probably the appeal for David in this move, plus working with some of his old buddies helps too.

I know BeamDog was suffering a lot of doubt that they could create an appealing new title. Now M. Gaider gets to work on new projects with fewer management fetters, while BeamDog gets a known name to enhance their respectability when they try to publish a new title. It seems like a potential win-win for them. Presumably they have something in mind and can attract the funding to pull it off.
 
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This can only be good for Beamdog, Gaider is one of the better RPG devs around: has some interesting ideas and this will give Beamdog the confidence with new content they need.
 
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I can only see this as very positive news. Beamdogs trio of "Enhanced Editions" were all quite well done and helped to preserve the legacy of these great games. However, the new characters & content failed to impress me much. Not bad per se, but also nothing really extraordinary, really innovative or very creative about them.

So, my "no.1 concern" for both BG: SoD and BG3 has not been technical expertise but rather how much creative talent the team had available to do justice to both the saga and the legacy of interesting characters. Minsc & Boo 4evah! ;)
 
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This is good news if Gaider can get back into his Bg2 state and not his DA2+ state.
 
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I see several people aren't too keen. Is it known what specific writing he's responsible for, to explain the scorn?

Since it's known which characters he has written, that should be enough. It's not really about one specific line, as far as I'm concerned. It's the focus on romance which for me isn't a part of high fantasy adventuring but should be confined to dating simulators.

The fact that you have to be inclusive and write a romance option for every physically possible combination of genitalia just compounds the absurdity, his homosexuality isn't a red flag for me in itself.
 
I consider this excellent news. Both BG and KotOR are among my favorite games of all time, so I can only hope that Gaider now gets to work on something similar.
 
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They should move next game to that place with Loviathar chicks…Faerun has a ton of unexplored locations that look damn interesting from the given lore.
 
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Since it's known which characters he has written, that should be enough. It's not really about one specific line, as far as I'm concerned. It's the focus on romance which for me isn't a part of high fantasy adventuring but should be confined to dating simulators.

The fact that you have to be inclusive and write a romance option for every physically possible combination of genitalia just compounds the absurdity, his homosexuality isn't a red flag for me in itself.

Ah - he's a gay that's written romances at Bioware. Now I get it.
 
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