Dragon Age Inquisition Head Writer David Gaider Reflects On His Final Salvo In The Series

David Gaider spoke at length about the production of Dragon Age Inquisition, in light of passing the franchise over to Patrick Week’s hands. There’s a lot to unpack here, but we’ll focus on some of the more salient details for brevity’s sake.

As a bit of context, Gaider has been working with Bioware since 1999. Gaider was made lead writer for Dragon Age Origins, and has been intimately connected with every Dragon Age game since. Gaider wrote the stories and many of the series’ most popular characters, including Alistair, Duncan, Morrigan, and Cassandra.

Gaider has always been open about the extensive degree of iteration Dragon Age received, and acknowledged how much fans were obsessed learning more about the cut content. He doesn’t want to talk about what’s been cut at all, knowing fans cling onto every word.

He does point out Dragon Age Inquisition allows them to realize ideas they couldn’t use in previous games. Bioware successfully executed on the idea of a game world where you were the head of this organization that moved the world, and you could shape that organization from the start.

Surprisingly, this gave Gaider more freedom to explore smaller stories, and connect them to the player character and giving him or her a sense of accomplishment. It did lead to other consequences, including a story campaign that’s smaller than some gamers wanted. However, this arrangement meant Bioware could pay attention to small details of individual characters. Dragon Age Inquisition is worth replaying under different character types and outcomes to see more of these details.

Speaking of character types, Gaider confirmed choosing races was not something everyone was going to use, but simply having the option made all gamers feel they had more freedom. This was, of course, a feature they wanted on Dragon Age 2, but they couldn’t execute until the last game.

Gaider acknowledges the limits of what Bioware could do to please older fans who had unexplored story angles and divergences from olderDragon Age games. As he pointed out, Dragon Age Keep was their way of keeping those fans happy. Dragon Age Keep read through players’ Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2 saves, and manufactured a history to import to Dragon Age Inquisition, adding some room for fans to tailor the backstory further.

Gaider has a word to say about the fans still unhappy with the many tough calls he made bringing the series forward:

That’s how we sold Dragon Age as a series. We talked about the series being one about the world, but it’s about a world that reacts to your choices, you’re cumulative choices.

 

Part of the issues of trying to write to that narratively is that it’s not something that’s going to work for everybody. As soon as you say it reacts to your choices, they imagine that every single choice they’ve ever made is a divergence that is its own plot. You’re going to have some choices that cause major changes. And you’re going to have some that that’s the choice you made, and it’s acknowledged that it happened, but it doesn’t really develop into anything.

 

And they’re angry because they’re like, but I imagined it being so much bigger. Well, that’s fair. That’s completely fair. It’s not going to fulfill every fantasy. But I think the feeling overall that this is an outgrowth of your choices, and that things are different because of your choices makes the player feel more invested in the current state of the world. I think that was the ultimate deal.