Dragon Age II Interview

GameZone is still going strong with their series of Dragon Age II Q&As, with the most recent interview posing a handful of questions about voicing the protagonist, creating more in-game romances, and more to lead writer David Gaider.

GZ: What have you learned from the feedback on the romances from the first game that you’ve now taken to the second game?

DG: I don’t know, but there’s a lot of feedback for us. I’ve done a number of our romances, going back to Baldur’s Gate II. I always like to try something new. Origins was really quite in depth with the characters and the romances in particular. From what we get from the fans, there were a lot of people that the romances were more important to them than the story, which is great. It’s very gratifying to hear that. There’s only so much we can do, but I think trying out some different things like DAII takes place over a large span of time, and I always found that the romances can be a bit strange and that they don’t grow organically. It’s sort of a situation where you’re in this life-or-death adventure, you’re comrades that have been thrown together and passion springs out of that. It was nice to get the opportunity to have a romance that took place over years as opposed to a month at best. That was interesting to try, until I learned.

GZ: Do you expect the reactions to be the same for Dragon Age II?

DG: No, like I said, we are trying different romances. Alistair, for instance. He was a bit of a ‘˜woo-bie.’ A very cute romance, and a lot of people loved him a lot, which was great. But I wouldn’t want to have an Alistair-like character in a romance, because we’ve already done that. We could do something similar, or maybe revisit that in the future. However, the idea is about finding that happy medium between fans, especially ones who are the biggest fans of DA:O. They have that conflicting desire, which is they want everything to stay exactly the same, nothing change, but they want it to be new. You’ve got to find a line to walk in between there, and no matter which way you go they’re probably going to react negatively. However, you’ve got to sort of forge your path.