Dragon Age 2 lead wanted players to have strong opinions about every character in the RPG: "If some people are ambivalent […] I guess I didn't really do my job"

David Gaider - the lead writer on the first three Dragon Age games and the man frequently credited as the architect of Thedas - wanted people to have very strong reactions towards every Dragon Age 2 companion.

People have passionate opinions, good and bad, about every aspect of Dragon Age 2, from its action-oriented combat to its story that has less to do with saving the entire world and focuses more on a singular city's struggles. When it comes to the sequel's cast, those heated fan reactions were part of the plan.

"If some people are ambivalent about a character, I'm like, I guess I didn't really do my job," Gaider says in an interview with TheGamer looking back at the RPG. "All I want to do when I'm writing a complex character is be able to justify their world viewpoint in my head. If I can make that make sense in my head, whether it's Anders or Loghain, then I know that I've got it."

Part of that emphasis on strong, sometimes divisive characters came from Dragon Age 2's slightly stripped back stakes. "Do we really need to have a big bad? Do the stakes always need to be [that] you're saving the entire world? Can we do something that's a bit more character-driven and more about surviving?" are all the questions Gaider posed during the game's production.

"It's very hard to make a player care about a fantasy country or fantasy world, but it's easy to make them care about a person," he adds. "That's all the followers were for us, six different ways for us to get the player invested in the plot."

Dragon Age 2 was originally planned to be "much bigger" before EA made other demands, former series lead says, even though BioWare "did not know how to make a small game"