Dragon Age II Interview

BioWare’s Ray Muzyka answers a couple of questions about the controversial changes they made to Dragon Age II, their plans to integrate post-release feedback into its DLC, and the future of the Dragon Age franchise in a brief article-style interview on IndustryGamers. It’s pretty difficult for a man in his position to be apologetic about the changes they made, so his responses are fairly defensive, as expected:

“I think there was actually a tremendous number of people that came into the franchise and were delighted. So there were many people who critically thought it was wonderful, and actually a lot of old fans did as well. There’s no doubt that there was a polarization though. Maybe some of that can be attributed to some of the fans of Dragon Age: Origins who were maybe expecting a similar experience. But we actually innovated, we took a lot of risk, we were pushing the envelope on how we told the story, the gameplay, the action moments, the graphics – a lot of things were changed. And, actually, I really believe it was the right direction,” Muzyka began.

“We also recognize that feedback from core fans is incredibly important, so we take that to heart. We’re listening to it. We’re commercially successful, so we actually drew a lot of new fans in, exceeded our expectations, and what we want to do in the future is make sure we integrate that feedback from our core fans, so they come along with us for the journey, as we continue to build up the Dragon Age franchise and make the next ones even bigger and better so that all of our fans are delighted and surprised. We think we can do that. We can actually take the best of breed features from the original game in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II and put them together; and some of the changes we made in Dragon Age II, we were proud of the team. We think they were the right changes. We wanted the team to push in that direction, but we also want to integrate feedback from our core fans because they’re really important to us. So I think there’s a nice balance that can be struck to achieve that,” he added.

Hopefully they return to the Origins formula for Dragon Age III, though I suspect that the UI and fast-paced combat are here to stay given the sequel’s success on consoles.