David Gaider Discusses Dragon Age II’s Flaws and Dragon Age III

Rock Paper Shotgun continues their interview series with Bioware’s David Gaider, this time turning their attention to both Dragon Age II‘s themes, flaws as well as how the developer plans to address them in the upcoming Dragon Age III: Inquisition.

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.

Ultimately, if you’re doing something that you think is right, at least you know one person thinks it’s right. The worst thing to do would be to act entirely based on what you think the fans want, even if you don’t agree with it personally. Chances are you’re not going to please anyone that way. We do try to keep abreast. We have to mentally compartmentalize and put that aside. (We’ve heard what they said.) It’s like they’re a voice at the table. They say, (This is what we want.) We say, (Okay, we’ll take that under consideration. We’ll talk about it.)

RPS: It’s an interesting time to be doing that, especially with Dragon Age III. You’ve directly solicited feedback. You’ve said, (What are you looking for out of the next Dragon Age game?) That’s happening at a time where Kickstarter is emerging as this big thing. It’s create much more directly collaborative development, because people are putting their money into it. Developers are saying, (You have a stake in this now. What do you want? We’ll actually do what you say.)

Gaider: The Kickstarter market is definitely more niche-oriented. The niche isn’t a bad thing. It’s a segment of the audience that is intensely interested in this particular thing. They don’t have to worry about going broad and having mass appeal. They don’t need it. They’re doing smaller teams, smaller budgets. That’s something that they can do that’s very strong. That’s a strength that they can really work from.

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RPS: Even so, are you going to elaborate on any of Dragon Age II’s themes in Dragon Age III?

Gaider: We have some balls that are up in the air. We can’t just let those go. Those are things we need to deal with that we left up in the air after the end of DAII. We can’t just move on to something completely new. We can’t just jump across the continent and suddenly we’re dealing with something else entirely. There are things we have to address. But we probably will move on to new overall themes. We will try different narrative elements.