DA:Inquisition - David Gaider Interview

GameReactor.eu has talked to David Gaider at this years Gamelab in Barcelona. Topics being discussed were The Witcher, Star Wars, inclusitivty and writing characters.

Here's a quote about on Bioware writes characters and dialogue:

What would you say about what goes into character-specific writing and the dialogue between characters, NPCs, etc? 

A lot of writing. We had about eleven or twelve major characters [in DAI], and each of them had a long personal character arc, some had romances... So I have a team of up to seven other writers, but it's not just the writers. We're working in conjunction with tactical designers, with artists, with the programmers, there's an entire team of people..... So it starts with the writers, we're proposing the ideas, and if it catches on with the rest of the team, then we start breaking it out further. 

Here's a quote about the topic for David Gaider's speech at Gamesklab 2015:

"Storytelling: challenge vs expectation", that's what you're talking about here at Gamelab 2015. What can you share about this speech? 

The premise is that when we're making narrative for videogames, there's an expectation for players when they come into it, in that they haven't trained to look on narrative as one type of thing. If you look at narrative in a movie, or a book, it's very linear and it requires no interaction. But that's what most people think of as narrative, so when they think of narrative in a videogame, they think it's like a movie or book but better, and the "better" is supposed to come when you have agency.