The entire original Dragon Age trilogy owes a lot to David Gaider, who served as lead writer across Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Inquisition, before eventually leaving BioWare after a stint of 17 years in 2016. Even if he'd carried on a little longer, however, he says that EA's live service plans for the series would have pushed him out pretty swiftly.
Speaking with GamesRadar+, Gaider says that if he had stuck with Dragon Age rather than moving over to the doomed Anthem, "I think I would have stayed at BioWare longer than I did."
Even if he'd stuck with the series - through Joplin and Morrison, the two canned Dragon Age projects that eventually made way for Dragon Age: The Veilguard - he thinks that eventually, the departure of Mike Laidlaw, the director behind those canceled projects, would have marked the end of his time at the studio.
"I would have had no influence on that sequence of events," he says. "I would have been rolling with the punches just like everybody else. My read on what was going on internally was that the very same thing that led to Mike Laidlaw leaving would have led to me heading off at the same time. I really don't see a universe where Mike would have left the team, and I would have been like, 'Alright!'"
Gaider maintains that even if he'd been offered a senior management role on Dragon Age - something he thinks was unlikely given his relationship with EA and a desire to stand up for 'old-fashioned' mechanics - he would have made the jump.
That's mostly because of what happened after Dragon Age Joplin was canceled by EA. Nodding to another BioWare veteran, Mark Darrah, he says "I would not have survived the end of Joplin, because the end of Joplin would have been 'now we're making this live service Dragon Age'. Me, Mr. Old-Fashioned RPG Mechanics, and them coming down and saying, 'we're canning this whole narrative-focused Dragon Age thing, and we want you to make a live-service version?' I would have been like, see ya."
Gaider makes it clear that he would have been gone regardless, even if BioWare and EA had suddenly bestowed a creative director title on him after he was passed over for promotions for years. "Even if there was a world where they would have asked me to be creative director after Mike on Live Service Dragon Age - what a devil's contract that would have been."
In this universe, Gaider did depart BioWare in 2016. Somewhat bittersweetly, he got to see his opinions somewhat vindicated, the failure of Anthem pushing BioWare towards Veilguard's more traditional RPG stylings. I suppose it's just a shame that the studio had to lose so much veteran talent to make that happen.
Not just an RPG expert, Gaider also has some thoughts about JPRGs - as blacked up by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
