Dragon Age 2 - Interview with Mike Laidlaw at Gamespot - Final Thoughts

Gamespot has a very long (and good) interview with Mike Laidlaw, the game's Lead Designer.
The interview covers the usual info such as DA:O in contrast to DA2, the story in DA2, the followers, the combat, the skills and much much more.

A few snips from the 5page! interview:

On the comparision between DA: Origins and DA2.

I do think Dragon Age II is running up against some elements of Origins, and it's not something we went into completely blind. We certainly knew there would be some friction between what Origins players have come to expect and what Dragon Age II delivers. But I don't see the two in opposition to each other. I've talked to Origins players who said, "As soon as I moved it to hard, I totally see where Origins is again." That's fair, and I think that's something over time we'll continue to tune and capitalize on that fusion between the Origins experience and Dragon Age II.

On combat:

ML: The thing I find most intriguing is the concern that combat has been dumbed down because the earlier fights are less punishing and because they are faster. Somehow this translates immediately into stupid, which I strongly disagree with. There's some balance tweaking that we will continue to do through patches, but really, the things I see in combat are being able to rely on characters to execute orders quickly and being able to rely on cross-class combos, which are a significant step up in terms of their overall usefulness

On feedback:

You have to take a read of what the fans are saying, what reviews are saying, and what the non-fans are saying. Are there people out there who are saying, "I could not play Origins, but love Dragon Age II" or "I couldn't play Origins and this is more of the same." You have to keep your ear to the ground. Look at forums. Take a look at what comments are coming up. What are the common concerns? What are the common perceptions? I think the big key is to not adjust 180 degrees again, because we've done this.

And Mike's final words:

We wanted to make RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs, accessible, cool, and interesting to people who have been playing RPGs for the last seven years and not realizing that every time they ate food or went for a long run in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, they were essentially grinding constitution. 

To me, that represents a huge audience that may have disregarded RPGs, especially fantasy, as being too hardcore or too confusing. And making certain changes to make the game palatable without ripping out the mechanics that make RPGs so fascinating to a stats guy or what have you. It keeps this genre evolving into something that's fresh and not stagnating.

Do you agree with Mike Laidlaw?

Thanks to TheConfidenceMan in this thread on the Bioware DA2 forums for finding this.