Interview The Writing Of BioWare's Dragon Age II: David Gaider Speaks

[Excidium]

there was no impact anyway but there was the decision.
I'm not talking about C&C, I'm talking about basic decisions that are masked and taken away from the player

that's the thing, different consequences means different cutscenes now, and illusion of substance is the new substance.

 

[GreyViper]

You know I get the feeling his talents are wasted at Bioware and he should apply to SQUARE ENIX just maybe he might bring about some improvement of their games plots and characters. Best example being FF13, but im sure he can come up some androgynus NPC that one can romance.

 

[commie]

"The guiding principle," says Gaider about how all these choices are handled, "is degrees of consequence. You can actually split choices up into several categories. Many are going to be flavor. You're asking the player to make a choice, but either there is no 'real' effect, or it's immediate. The player doesn't necessarily know that, however, and for them the fact they're being asked to decide something gives it weight.

My favorite.

So they are trying to convince us that the shitty C&C is actually a new and innovative type of C&C. Wow. Just wow...

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this basically translate into:
"The consequences don't matter. What matters is that you idiots think they matter. Har, har, har."

Actually I think it means that it's the CHOICE itself that is meaningless, but players think that it has meaning. To be fair, he does say that there could be an 'immediate' effect, which is technically a 'consequence', but he doesn't count it as such, putting it in the category of 'flavour'.

Shit, I remember you had the 'spare the Kobold and he may give you a clue to treasure(or lead you into an ambush)' or 'kill the fucker' in Gold Box games like Pool of Radiance, so it's not something new.

 

[Sceptic]

Yeah, but that's still a consequence. Read what Gaider said again.

"You're asking the player to make a choice, but either there is no 'real' effect, or it's immediate. The player doesn't necessarily know that, however, and for them the fact they're being asked to decide something gives it weight."

In other words, it doesn't matter if there's a consequence, or if it's a real choice; as long as you get to pick from a list it's all good, even if the consequence is either "immediate" (think BG dialog, where it only affects the next sentence from the NPC) or there isn't one at all (think of the dialog choices that all give out the same EXACT answer)

Bioware C&C in a nutshell, really.

 

[hoverdog]

It's like the tolling of some great bell.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

With a straight face.

 

[Johannes]

Gaider's right. If you care about the cinematic way in which your PC talks, choosing between different lines leading to same conclusion is a nice meaningful touch. In the end it's just a video game, getting different quest rewards or ending slides or dialogue choices or whatever is totally useless unless you're immersed into the game in some manner and care about the fates of characters and/or stat screens.
Sure there's some higher level C&C that actually presents you with different gameplay scenarios based on how you proceed (let's say the game makes you pick between a tetris minigame and minesweeper minigame), but the subtler things can make the gameworld feel more alive too, especially if you don't start dissecting the games design too much. The setting, writing and gameplay just have to be interesting enough to make me give a fuck.

 

[Regdar]

Dragon Age 2 - best C&C simulator simulator since presidential elections.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

What makes it funnier is the way it seems he tries to sound like MCA here.

 

[Cynic]

It boggles the mind to know that there are actually real breathing people out there who believe every ounce of this shit and allowing the knowledge of it to softly masturbate the backs of their decomposing brains as they devote their entire paltry intelligence into 'playing' DA2 all drugged up on these meta-expositions, feeling falsely secure in the flimsy bandaids that tie that wreck of a 'game' together.

It's like polished and wordy interviews/reviews nowadays justifying bad gaming products are almost a DLC in themselves. You need them to supplement the 'gameplay', lest you realise you probably need a proper education, or a radical improvement in taste.

Can't help it but at how bad products are protected, like DA2 (deficient technically and content-wise) and the market does not react appropriately.

 

[DalekFlay]

Bioware C&C in a nutshell, really.

Yeah. What I don't get is people expecting something different from them.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

"The guiding principle," says Gaider about how all these choices are handled, "is degrees of consequence. You can actually split choices up into several categories. Many are going to be flavor. You're asking the player to make a choice, but either there is no 'real' effect, or it's immediate. The player doesn't necessarily know that, however, and for them the fact they're being asked to decide something gives it weight.

My favorite.

So they are trying to convince us that the shitty C&C is actually a new and innovative type of C&C. Wow. Just wow...

ffs it's not shitty C&C if the player thinks it's meaningful C&C. Like, if you don't know that pink racoon is a drug-induced hallucination, then for all intents and purposes you've really seen it.

What your eyes don't see your heart doesn't feel, baby.

 

[Azrael the cat]

The unfortunate part is that Gaider no matter how much trashed He gets, can actually write, or batter said properly expand on other writers work

Can you give an example? I'm confused as to the origin of this "Gaider has talent" theory.

He's a terribad romance writer, but he can write good quests. Unfortunately, his (and Bioware's) greatest strength was always the creation of content-heavy urban environments with a lot of non-combat events and 'set piece fights' (rather than dungeon crawls) - and that element has now been reduced to include only the starting zone, or (in DA:O and DA2) scrapped altogether.

Even his worst writing is still far better than that woman with the 'let's write an interesting female romance companion - hmm...do I go ultra-cliched-emotionally-disturbed-woman-who-has-such-poor-selfesteem-that-she-can't-stop-talking-about-cock or do I go for paedophile-fantasy-cliched-virgin-girl? Because I can't possibly write a character who isn't a sexual cliche - that would be almost as silly as if I wrote a sexually confident character who actually has interests other than talking about sex all the time'.

Gaider's views on what makes a good game are rather different to my own, but I have some left-over respect for him due to his mods he did with BG2/TOB to give a full-ability demogorgon, improved AI with the boss fights in ToB, and the Ascension mod. It's a big call for someone to finish working on the game that they've been paid to make for the past few years, have that game sell bucketloads, and then spend their unpaid time making mods to bring it closer to his original intent. At that point time he was definitely a game-maker at heart, rather than the failed want-to-be-authors that fill Bioware's writing teams. And yes, I appreciate the intention behind getting professional writers in - but getting folks who failed utterly in their attempts to become authors and journalists, and have absolutely zero credibility in the literary world, is NOT 'getting professional writers in'. It's like hiring the kid who studied drama at uni, but has never actually landed any theatre/film/tv work due to lack of talent, and then saying you've 'hired professional actors'.

At least Gaider (originally) was doing what he wanted to do - make computer games. And that will always be a better policy than hiring folk who really want to be writing romance novels, but weren't good enough. Sure, if you could get someone who IS a successful writer, and interest them in making games, that would be even better, but failing that, why hire other media's rejects?

Of course, these days Gaider seems to be more and more like the writers I'm talking about - someone who would rather be writing fantasy novels. I suspect that it has changed the way he approaches game design, and for the worse.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I have a theory, I know it sounds crazy, but how about this: when Dave Gaider works on a BioGame he does what he's told to do. Almost like he would have a real job for making a living and others are the bosses.

 

[Bluebottle]

And that will always be a better policy than hiring folk who really want to be writing romance novels, but weren't good enough.

I spent most of yesterday shelf picking Mills & Boon titles for a customer, and Jesus fucking Christ that is such a scary prospect I just can't imagine it. Sub-romance novel writers. Kind of makes sense though.

I have a theory, I know it sounds crazy, but how about this: when Dave Gaider works on a BioGame he does what he's told to do. Almost like he would have a real job for making a living and others are the bosses.

That never seem to be the impression he gave when posting here. Maybe it's different under EA, but he always seemed to quite rigorously defend the Bioware method.

 

[commie]

I have a theory, I know it sounds crazy, but how about this: when Dave Gaider works on a BioGame he does what he's told to do. Almost like he would have a real job for making a living and others are the bosses.

It is crazy. If I worked for someone that wouldn't let me say what I fucking wanted in my spare time, I'd tell him to fuck off. There's nothing to stop him from releasing statements on his blog or off the record or 'anonymously'(in a way so fans would know who it was) telling what he'd REALLY LIKE to do. The fact he doesn't shows that he's happy with the things he's told to do, probably responsible for making them up himself too.

Thus I have an alternate theory in that Dave Gaider is a mediocre sellout hack and one trick pony.

 

[Gosling]

I have a theory, I know it sounds crazy, but how about this: when Dave Gaider works on a BioGame he does what he's told to do. Almost like he would have a real job for making a living and others are the bosses.

It is crazy. If I worked for someone that wouldn't let me say what I fucking wanted in my spare time, I'd tell him to fuck off.

Stockholm syndrome?
Or maybe he was forced to produce so much shit that all he can do now to justify it for himself is to start actually arguing that it's good.
Or maybe the indoctrination part in ME was invented just by observing Gaider's decline? Like he started with a noble goal of producing a worthy successor to BG series and then step by little step fell to the dark side and became an arrogant EA minion?

Anyway that head-nomming squeeing BIO chick is a lot more disturbing. I wonder what Gaider thinks about working with her.

 

[Roguey]

It is crazy. If I worked for someone that wouldn't let me say what I fucking wanted in my spare time, I'd tell him to fuck off. There's nothing to stop him from releasing statements on his blog or off the record or 'anonymously'(in a way so fans would know who it was) telling what he'd REALLY LIKE to do. The fact he doesn't shows that he's happy with the things he's told to do, probably responsible for making them up himself too.

Thus I have an alternate theory in that Dave Gaider is a mediocre sellout hack and one trick pony.

http://social.bioware.com/forums.xbox.c ... /4#4790308

Now I suppose you'll say he was just pandering.

 

[Callaxes]

Is he a programmer too? Or does he just write the storyline and act as a pseudo-PR guy?

 

[Roguey]

He's just a writer, scripter, scenario designer, and forum mod.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Mr Gaider has always reflected the current directives of the industry that he works in.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

My favourite Bioware game is MDK2. True story.

 

[commie]

It is crazy. If I worked for someone that wouldn't let me say what I fucking wanted in my spare time, I'd tell him to fuck off. There's nothing to stop him from releasing statements on his blog or off the record or 'anonymously'(in a way so fans would know who it was) telling what he'd REALLY LIKE to do. The fact he doesn't shows that he's happy with the things he's told to do, probably responsible for making them up himself too.

Thus I have an alternate theory in that Dave Gaider is a mediocre sellout hack and one trick pony.

http://social.bioware.com/forums.xbox.c ... /4#4790308

Now I suppose you'll say he was just pandering.

You know... and I say this as one of the people who wrote BG2... I'm all for nostalgia, but let's not forget that the industry has changed in the last ten years. Not only that but our circumstances have changed. BG2 was a great game, and I'll always remember it fondly, but the company that could survive on its sales would need to be a lot smaller than BioWare is now.

Me, I'd love to work on a game like BG2 again. I'm one of the people in this company that keeps trying to push us as much in that direction as we can go-- but there are limits as to how far that is, and as big a fan as I am of that sort of game I do truly understand why that is. I'm sure nobody enjoys hearing how their favorite type of game isn't considered profitable enough for big companies like they were 10 years ago (here I'm tempted to link to that Escapist article again) but there it is, for good or ill.

So he's a sellout just as I said. If Bioshit is too big to make a profit on a BG style game then whose fault is that? Why is he defending that kind of corporate structure? Herp derp, 'it's not like in the old days and I can't do much' is a bullshit excuse. He should just be honest and say that he's in it for the money and he can't do much else anyway than recycle the same shit over and over. It's one thing to cry on forums about how you'd love to make game like long ago, quite another while at the same time hyping the latest Bioturd as the GREATEST THING EVAH in every paid for interview!!!

 

[Regdar]

Well, I think Twilight is far more effective with its romantic elements than most people give it credit for. Granted, it has little else going for it-- but the romance it does well. I find it a fascinating exercise to analyze exactly why that is

 

[Menckenstein]

Well, I think Twilight is far more effective with its romantic elements than most people give it credit for. Granted, it has little else going for it-- but the romance it does well. I find it a fascinating exercise to analyze exactly why that is

He's storing all his good ideas in his FUPA apparently.