Dragon Age 2 - Interview @ GameZone

BioWare's Mike Laidlaw speaks with GameZone about Dragon Age 2:

Dakota Grabowski: How much free roaming do you have? From the experience of playing through, you talk about how one person opens up three branches, but there are some interesting characters. I think was walking down in the Lower End, and there were guys that I can tell that later on in the game will be a character that will open up to have interaction with, but right now he’s just sitting there waiting for me to open up the quest. Is most of the dynamic of talking to that person to open it up, or is it free roaming so that I can just go do my own quest?

Mike Laidlaw: There’s a mix of directed and discovery; that’s really how I look at it. That’s largely to a BioWare style, when you get in to the beginning of Hawke’s story. “We need to make this money, we need to go on this expedition because the Templars are coming for us.” There’s that urgency. The approach you take is largely up to you. At the beginning, you have a few leads, but over time that expands and based on the experiences that people have playing that don’t know the story at all, what they find is that it’s like it’s constantly unfolding. They always find new stuff to do. Until eventually, you decide, “I’m ready, let’s go on that expedition.”