Dragon Age II Interview

The Examiner had a chance to grill BioWare’s David Gaider during last weekend’s PAX about the writing approach he’s taken for Dragon Age II. A couple of questions and their answers:

So what have you done differently in Dragon Age II with regards to the writing, the story, and the characters?

“One thing we’ve done is change the character interaction a bit. We’re still using a very familiar system, but we’re getting away from ‘making the rounds in camp’. When a character isn’t adventuring with you, for example, they go out in the world and continue living their life. There is no ‘camp’ like there was in the original, although you’ll still be able to quickly locate the characters if you want them back in your party.”

“Also, we’ve improved the approval system. In the original game you were pretty much limited to Good Approval, which yielded side quests and other benefits, or Bad Approval, which dead-ended you with a character. This basically forced players to ‘game’ the dialog system instead of interacting more organically with the characters.”

“In Dragon Age II, ‘bad approval’ may lead to a rivalry and create an argumentative relationship; more importantly, however, is that it can still lead you to a situation where you might be able to ‘have it out’ with a character, and maybe change their point of view and come to some kind of an accord.”

Dragon Age II definitely feels more like an action-RPG from a gameplay perspective. Do you think this has compromised the story at all?

“Really, action RPG is a very loaded term, because many players equate that with a lack of story. Similarly, ‘hardcore’ RPG is also loaded, because players often equate that with a lot of reading, a deep story, and slow gameplay. Dragon Age II is an RPG and an action RPG.”

“The Dragon Age games are all about giving players difficult decisions to make and not simply drilling through ‘good, bad, and neutral’ conversation options.”