Dragon Age 2 - Interview #2 @ GameZone

GameZone has a second Dragon Age 2 interview, this time with Lead Writer David Gaider.  Much of the article is wasted discussing a hypothetical TV series adaptation so here's a snip outside of that:

GZ: How about you shoot me your favorite character from Dragon Age II that you can speak of and why any of the side-stories that particularly should be revealed.

David Gaider: Aveline was a bit of a surprise, really. When we first started off, she filled this fighter slot and initially we didn’t know what to do with her. She very quickly grew. It’s one of those situations where if you have a group of writers and they’re all talking and throwing around ideas, eventually you can stumble upon something that gets everybody very excited. Luke Kristjanson wrote her. He’s been working here for a while. He wrote Minsc. He’s been with us since the very beginning. He’s a great writer. He took her and gave her this strong, sisterly vibe and it was really cleverly done and I’m really, really happy with how it’s turned out. A lot of times, it’s very easy for characters to fall into a mode. Sometimes you don’t even intend that. You start writing them in a certain way and then very quickly you find yourself following this familiar path with them. If you see it soon enough you can pull yourself out of it, or sometimes if you don’t go far enough people say, “Well, that’s an archetype.” Sometimes that happens. I think with Aveline, we actually got a nice, solid, strong female character that is neither bitchy nor overtly sexual. I really like where Luke took her. I don’t think people have seen anything like her.