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

[Dantus12]

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!!!

You are right , together with the others, like VoD's comment, but lets do some theory:
Perma contract,
Non-compete clause,
minor things like-everything You ever created within the time span of Your contract belongs to us,
entrepreneurial culture,
magical things like "Chacka, " not babbling just bad English writings skills, hope that someone with a German background heard of this, it's like media coaching for motivation of employed peoples.
In Your spare time You can not work for someone else, You can try but there is Alienbrain and other things, and all Your focus belongs to us.

I have no issues with losing coolness points, so the person wins over the gamer, the cinematic approach
brought many nice things to games- to clarify- it should be there to underline the greatness of the moment, not to mask the lack of it.
If someone would take today a quest from a classical game like Chrono trigger, and decide to describe
10 minutes of it by writing down all the events in it :
voices, effects, background descriptions-visuals that are part of the story:

"Geralt was standing in the Kar Morhen hal, the light was lazily falling on His face, He turned around and with a almost surprised tone said :
"Hm, Witcher George,". The painting on the wall strangely resembling saint George killing the dragon."
This is just a image, just one.
And then writing down all spoken lines, animations, effects, actions, reactions and interactions from backgrounds, random and essential NPC's and comparing them with a modern game the amount of content would be on the side of the modern game.
There is no more 1 stabbing animation, they are now multiple in a row, different and in proper games unique. What was depicted in numbers is shown in animation now.
Each one of them being part of the player characters mechanic, whether thru stats, moves, immediate or delayed acquisition.
What changed is the players control over things.
The unfortunate part is that it's being taken for granted.
The difference between Carrie-Anne Moss saying the lines:
"Don't fuck with Aria."
and Aria saying:
"Don't fuck with Aria." is 10 days or even more in money, man power, errors , mouth breathers behind Your back and frustration. A game is a visual medium now from the aspect of work, but is a interactive medium at the same time that is often mistaken for a movie, and the easiness of repetition that is taken for granted, originates from the linearity of movies.
Carrie-Anne Moss can repeat the same line 10 times within 5 minutes, She's paid a certain amount to do that, Aria will need 5 people to hold her hand while doing so.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

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.

Gaiders a tranny?

 

[RK47]

I don't get why everyone is so surprised by this. Bioware has been moving in this direction for a decade.

I don't know how much further they can fuck up. Baldur's Gate 2 had that 'hub city' going in but the the content are so much varied and interesting that I don't really mind not seeing much change happening since I'm more interested in getting new spells and exploring the new areas. Hell, even the extraplanar shit I stumbled into the random houses in Amn was quite exciting.

Compare that to Kirkwall....god. The drop in quality, and heaps of praises put on its writing is just too over the top. There's really no hope for RPG genre if people could claim Kirkwall and Hawke's 7 year epic tale have more good points than bad and should be regarded as a standard to aspire to for other RPGs out there.

Or why stop there, just license a Twilight RPG and make money hats. FFS.

 

[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.

Gaiders a tranny?

I always understood the P to stand for pubic, so that it can apply to both genders.

 

[Black]

David Gaider Speaks

He does that a lot, when in fact he should shut the fuck up.

 

[dragonfk]

The storytelling in DA2 had an enormous potential. If done well I believe it could rival contemporary fantasy novels. But every jump in time should have been accented not only in differences in Kirkwall, but most importantly in character development. Their actions during the time gaps should be accented during the gameplay. We should be able to see them achieve their goals or fail at them. They should grew older, change outfits to signify the change of their status in society, in their daily lifes. There was so much they could do with it, but failed. Bioware concentrated their efforts on Hawke while neglecting every other character. With little effect...

 

[Menckenstein]

The storytelling in DA2 had an enormous potential. If done well I believe it could rival contemporary fantasy novels. But every jump in time should have been accented not only in differences in Kirkwall, but most importantly in character development. Their actions during the time gaps should be accented during the gameplay. We should be able to see them achieve their goals or fail at them. They should grew older, change outfits to signify the change of their status in society, in their daily lifes. There was so much they could do with it, but failed. Bioware concentrated their efforts on Hawke while neglecting every other character. With little effect...

The problem with shit like this is the writers already have this character fleshed out in their head and what choice is given to the player ultimately has very little overall effect on the outcome of the game. No one wanted to be Hawke.

 

[Roguey]

So he's a sellout just as I said.

Everyone in the industry is a sell-out, that goes without saying. That includes everyone at Obsidian and CD Projekt too. Want to keep your principles? Better self-fund.

If Bioshit is too big to make a profit on a BG style game then whose fault is that?

The Biodocs.

Why is he defending that kind of corporate structure?

Cause he wants to keep his job, just like anyone else. I imagine writing/scripting games for a living is more lucrative than trying to go back into the hotel management business. You're quite right about his being a one-trick pony, I doubt any other company would have him.

 

[DalekFlay]

They could make a lot of money with a PC and maybe iPad focused game like Baldur's Gate. Budget it accordingly and sell it for a lower price and watch the money roll in. The problem is the profit margins are too small. They don't want to spend a million dollars to try and make five million. They want to spend a hundred million to try and make a billion. That's how corporations work.

I asked J.E. Sawyer on his formspring a while back about Obsidian making a core CRPG on a smaller budget and he said "no company would fund it." It's not because it would lose money, it would make money. It's because it would not make LOTS of money.

 

[commie]

Everyone in the industry is a sell-out, that goes without saying. That includes everyone at Obsidian and CD Projekt too. Want to keep your principles? Better self-fund.

True up to a point, but I believe that for many THIS IS WHAT THEY GENUINELY BELIEVE IS GREAT! I'm dirty on people like Gaider because they claim to be different yet do nothing at all to show it.

If Bioshit is too big to make a profit on a BG style game then whose fault is that?

The Biodocs.

Well just check out the credits on a Bioware game and see how the actual development staff numbers pale in comparison to all the marketing, regional management, assistants to the assistant managers etc. Compare that with the credits of games made in the 90's. You'll see two-three fuckers in some marketing 'department'(the next cubicle) and that's it.

Why is he defending that kind of corporate structure?

Cause he wants to keep his job, just like anyone else. I imagine writing/scripting games for a living is more lucrative than trying to go back into the hotel management business. You're quite right about his being a one-trick pony, I doubt any other company would have him.

There is a limit to the dick sucking though. Gaider seems a little too enthusiastic in his claim that Bioware is the greatest, DA2 is the greatest etc. I doubt that it's that lucrative a business anyway. Couldn't be if EA wants to maximise profits. If they paid everybody a lot, they wouldn't have much for themselves. Gaider obviously does well enough, far more than if he was independent. He also seems to have found his niche with his limited talent. It's not like any other company has worse writers and would benefit from his expertise, certainly not Obsidian or CDPR or Larian(maybe PB, but actual depth of writing was never a point of Gothis/Risen anyway). Bethesda of course could benefit though, I'd say Beth's writers are worse than Gaider.

 

[DraQ]

ten-year period

that's where they got all the gore in da2 from

 

[Volourn]

Has Gaider claimed that DA2 is 'the greatest'?

gAIDER IS AS GOOD AS WRITER AS ANY AT OBSIDIAN. aFTERALL, IT IS oBSIDIAN'S SHITTY WRITERS WHOA RE REPSONSIBLE FOR THE SHITTY ap AND ds3 AND soz.

l0llifukkingagz!

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Well just check out the credits on a Bioware game and see how the actual development staff numbers pale in comparison to all the marketing, regional management, assistants to the assistant managers etc.

Starcraft 2 credits, almost 8 minutes of scrolling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Pu_j9yHCg
(starts at 3:45)


However the ultimate winner in gaming credits history is Assassin's Creed Brotherhood at 12 goddamn minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXAGynCzmAs

 

[deus101]

What really befuddles me is when the story fags begins the "RPG is about the ROLE you Play in a GAME", ignoring the fact that there are no challenges in these games to roleplay a specific character with constraints given(not that we have seen that at all in CRPGs).

You can't even larp the way you want, since the everything is now a 3 lines dialouge, hardly much freedom for a player to "define their role".

 

[waywardOne]

It's the "role" part of RPG that has changed. Previously, especially of the 80s PnP ones, your character's role was mostly fixed and you put it on like a costume, an agreement between the GM and yourself. Now role means you're a faggot LARPer and the game has to adjust to whatever you feel like doing/being.

 

[deus101]

GAH! The comments on the article from gamasutra.

These people don't want an RPG, THEY WANT A DIY ADVENTURE!

Im getting so fucking frustrated of the amount of people thinking the narrative is more importent then the gameplay!

Fucking orwellian scumbags!