“性感女巫与赤膊战士”：《龙腾世纪》早期美术想以《野蛮人柯南》为基调，设计师大为光火

Former lead writer David Gaider on the perils of not having a "vision keeper"

Buried in the vast and sooty-fingered Summer Eternal anthology, there's an interview with former BioWare developer and Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider, who is now creative director at Stray Gods outfit Summerfall Studios. The interview is a podcast-length account of BioWare's transformations over Gaider's career, stretching back to Baldur's Gate 2. Amongst other things, it explains why the Dragon Age games feel so different from sequel to sequel.

Gaider discusses the original trilogy's fortunes under RPG-phobic parent company Electronic Arts, commenting that 2009's Dragon Age: Origins made it to release partly thanks to "sunk cost" thinking after EA bought the studio. He also talks about Dragon Age's lack of a properly defined vision, early on, which led to a lot of overcorrection between releases. As regards Origins, there was something of a faction war initially between departments over what exact flavour of fantasy fiction the new RPG should draw on.

"When we started, Dragon Age's big premise was 'it's D&D, but it's not," Gaider began. "We'll just file off the serial numbers enough to make it our own. That was not great because there are different kinds of fantasy."

Specifically, a rift emerged at BioWare between developers who wanted to channel Tolkien, and those who wanted to invoke Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. "If you look back at the E3 Expo, where we announced the existence of Dragon Age, and you watch the video, you will see," Gaider went on (the screening in question was behind closed doors, sadly, so all I can do is point you towards IGN's coverage at the time). "It was mostly made by our art department. They were part of the Conan group. And if you watch it, you'll see sexy sorceresses, the fighter is this bare-chested barbarian riding around… it looks very Conan.

"And that part of the team was determined that their vision was set out," he said. "The design department was mostly like, 'no, this is Lord of the Rings, man, okay? Fuck Conan.' But Art didn't want to listen to us, so we're like 'If you're going to ignore us, we'll ignore you.' And that's really why the Dragon Age that came to be is the way it is. If you look at Dragon Age: Origins, if I said to you, this is the art style of a Conan world with the writing style of a Lord of the Rings, then you'd be like, 'Oh.'"

When teams are at odds in this way, it's helpful to have a third group intervene to thrash out a compromise. The producers, for example. Unfortunately, Gaider continued, Dragon Age's production team had their own wild ideas about the project's direction - they thought it should be Diablo. This did, in fairness, have some kind of unifying effect. "Both the art department and the design department completely ignored them. Like, no, we're not doing Diablo."

Nonetheless, the producers persisted. "They wanted that if you hit creatures, they'd just explode in blood," Gaider said. "We actually had presentations where the people in charge were like, 'Yeah, Dragon Age, we want that the theme is blood! Dripping with blood!' And I'm like, 'That's not a theme.' They did get their way a little bit, Dragon Age was pretty bloody. People did almost explode in blood. We had to tone it down a bit because that just didn't feel right."

I realise there's a serious argument being made here about the necessity of knowing your game's heart, before you commit to knocking out scripts, models and trailers, but I am also having fun imagining the inter-departmental squabbles. I picture Gaider bumping into one of the Dragon Age artists outside an elevator in Edmonton, sometime in 2004. The artist's eyes narrow. "Tell me, David," they growl. "What is best in life?" Gaider's knuckles whiten. "To take the ring to Mordor, throw it into Mount Doom, and hear the lamentation of Sauron," he hisses. At this point the elevator doors open and a producer appears, apoplectic and roaring: "Ahh, fresh meat!"

According to Gaider – who would eventually become "vision keeper" or "educator" for Dragon Age as a series - BioWare did a much better job of getting the band together with Mass Effect, mostly thanks to project director Casey Hudson.

"Mass Effect went through much the same kind of struggle," he said. "It's science fiction. It's 'their Star Wars,' is what that was supposed to be. But there's so many different kinds of science fiction. And they had the benefit that Casey Hudson was the responsible person, and realised sooner than Dragon Age did that we need a singular vision. And he eventually put his foot down and said, 'This is what it is.'

"I think, honestly, Mass Effect as a series had a much stronger throughline of vision," Gaider concluded. "This is a game that is very clear on what it is and what it isn't. Whereas Dragon Age started off kind of a jumble and we figured it out as we went. With Dragon Age: Origins, versus Dragon Age II, versus Dragon Age: Inquisition, you've clearly got a team that is figuring out the world of the series by the seat of their pants and reacting with each release."

To address the Qunari in the room, here: Gaider left many years before Dragon Age: The Veilguard, whose development was a whole 'nother layer of troubled. EA - who are now owned by a consortium consisting mostly of Saudi Arabia's sovereign investment fund - appear to have paused the series in the wake of Veilguard, though modders are trying to keep the flames alive.

What's your poison, then? Conan, Tolkien or Diablo? While we're talking office politics at giant corporate developers, the Summer Eternal anthology also harbours a lengthy chat with Dragon Age's former executive producer, Mark Darrah. He has words of warning about "over-specialised" studios and $100 million projects that need to sell ridiculous quantities to break even. As far as I can remember, Darrah doesn't spend any of his chinwag lamenting the great Diablo-like that might have been if it weren't for the Gandalf-loving pinkos in the writing team or those Cromulent numpties in art.