Dragon Age 2 - David Gaider Interview @ Newsarama

Lilunebrium on the Bioware DA2 forums has found this interview with David Gaider about Dragon Age 2. It's mostly about how the writing process in DA2 worked, although some info on Legacy can also be found.

Here's a quote about writing the companions in DA2.

Nrama: Your companions affected the overall plot of Dragon Age II much more than in the past – is that something we can expect in the future?

Gaider: Yeah, I think it was more when we started thinking about what companions we wanted. One mistake we sort of felt we made in Dragon Age: Origins was we thought more about characters we would like to write, as opposed to what we did in DA2: we started off thinking well let’s have some characters that play an important role in the plot – because there’s a few, Isabela, for instance has a particular role in the plot that she plays – but also characters that take a stance on some of the central issues...

You may not care about mages versus templars, but if you care about Anders or you care about Fenris or your brother or sister, you might not but if you do that is another way for us to get the player engaged in the plot.

And here's a quote about what makes the Dragon Age game franchise stand out.

Nrama: As the lead writer of the franchise, what makes Dragon Age so unique as a role-playing game? What is distinctly Dragon Age?

Gaider: It’s about difficult choices. I don’t like easy happy endings. I don’t like when things are all tied up in neat bows. I don’t like fantasy only being a morality play. What I like is presenting decisions where the player has to stop and may be isn’t quite sure as to what is the right thing to do. Really what you do says as much about the player and the character they want to play as it does about the decision itself...

In a way, it’s the same as writing a novel, where it’s about engaging the player and getting them to care about the story, while in a game you have a unique aspect with the element of interaction and personal investment that you can’t really get some other passive entertainment. So it’s an opportunity to get the player to tell the story you want to tell and talk about different issues. At the very first breaths of a story, when we are talking about our ideas, it’s like, “What do we want to tell? What do we want to touch on?”