BioWare - RPS Interviews Gaider about DA2's weaknesses

David Gaider has been interviewed (again) by RPS.   This time he's talking about the weaknesses of DA2.

A quote about the forums:

RPS: You mentioned the forums. BioWare is a company that seems very tuned in to what people are saying about their games - even if you don't always manage to please everyone.

Gaider: Yeah, it factors not as much as some people would think, but more than some others would think. If you aren't getting feedback from somewhere like a game forum, then where are you getting it from? The worst thing is to just ignore it utterly and work entirely in a vacuum. Even with the input from the fans, the feedback from the fans, at some level you have to make what you think is right. With something like the forums, their opinions are all over the place. Often when a fan will speak on a forum they speak as if everybody on the forums agrees about their concern and they all think exactly the same thing. I've never found that to be true.

And Gaider on the themes in DA2:

RPS: Yeah, you were just sort of surviving. Is that what you were intending with that story?

Gaider: Yeah. The themes that were going on in Dragon Age II weren't about heroism, necessarily. That wasn't a theme. It was about freedom versus security, which I thought was a good, timely issue. How much freedom do you let people have versus how much security is necessary for people? Like the mages versus templars. That had more application than just that, that struggle between the need to have a secure society versus the struggle for individual freedom. We had family as a big issue we wanted to focus on. That came up a lot in the game. Maybe we had too many themes going on?

Thanks to Willowhugger in this thread at the Bioware forums.