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[bluewolv1970]

 when the game itself is was rushed, still needs patching ( a year later,) and resolution to a  bizzare and incomplete ending...I mean it is great that david gaider is writing comics and doing interviews (where it is admitted the game was rushed) and yet no one is writing the clean up to the mess that was/is act three...

[Stanley Woo]

devSin wrote...

But they're not going to have a discussion with you (or anyone) about where DA2 went wrong. Not now, and probably not ever

Strange. We've had several such discussions about some of the less popular features and aspects of DA2 since the game was released, and Mike Laidlaw even participated in one or two of them. They were great discussions, with community members offering some great comments and criticisms and getting some insightful and sometimes rather candid responses in return.

i'm surprised more people don't participate in those discussions when they come up.

[Stanley Woo]

devSin wrote...

But I don't think you can say that the presentation isn't off. You may not care that the suck is there, but are you truly blind to it? Whatever BioWare usually does to make great games, they apparently didn't do everything on that list this time.

I have, in the past, said that the game won't be to everyone's tastes. I (and Mike Laidlaw) have also admitted that we did a poor job in managing our customers' (your) expectations in the weeks and months leading up to the game's release. We failed to let you guys know just how different the game was to what you were expecting it to be (ie. "Dragon Age Origins 2"). That's the kind of conversation we will have with you regarding the things you don't like about the game.

"Are you truly blind to the suck?" type attitudes are hyperbolic and counterproductive, as we tend to ignore the kinds of arguments that are not grounded in the real. We can't answer "Are you truly blind to the suck" and statements like that provide no foundation to work from. How do you begin to improve on "the suck"? How do we get "unblind" to it so that we can improve on future projects? This is precisely the reason why we encourage constructive criticism rather than emotional outbursts and the kind of "sensationalist hyperbole" you normally see on internet message boards.

When you say something like "Whatever BioWare usually does to make great games, they apparently didn't do everything on that list this time.," devSin, that's when we get into the kind of discussion territory that we can begin to work with. And you're absolutely right when you say that. We didn't do a bunch of the stuff on that list. For one thing, there were other priorities that we focused on that were new to that list and we chose to work on some of those this time around, namely things like faster combat and preventing dialogues from halting story momentum and flow. That's one reason why DA2 was so different from DAO.

And Mike Laidlaw, and anybody who is currently employed by BioWare, will not now or ever say whether they only skipped a few steps or threw out the whole playbook, nor why they chose (it was a choice) to do so.

As we are not beholden to you (ie. you are not our bosses or business partners or anywhere within our chain of command or communication during development), there are necessarily going to be parts of our business that you will never be a part of. That includes, at various times, reasons for some of the decisions we make, story plotting, character development, marketing direction, the number of plots or romances we include, etc. Almost all of it is behind-the-scenes stuff, and while we may choose to share some of it with you--either in bonus videos, website features, or in conversation here--it won't always be possible to give you the answers that will satisfy you.

If our discussions with you focused more on how to make future games better than continually harping on "you did something I didn't like," you would likely feel better about our answers. If you want your disappointment or dislike justified by some kind of apologetic begging for forgiveness or specific promises, then you're likely to be more upset by our answers, since we can no more promise not to disappoint you than you can promise to always like our games.

So no, we will never have certain conversations with you. But yes, we do try to be as open and honest with you guys as we can be, while taking into account your lack of knowledge about the way our industry works and how we work within it. i hope that, in the long run, it's enough.

[John Epler]

 It's been mentioned already, but it bears repeating - ancillary products are, by and large, not developed by the same people who work on the game-related content. Sure, exceptions exist (David and the various books & comics), but their impact on what we do as developers is relatively minimal - and we schedule with those exceptions in mind. Occasionally we'll offer suggestions and feedback, depending if our responsibilities and training lines up with the ancillary product's needs (Cine Design will look at content like webisodes, for example), but that ends up taking up a miniscule fraction of our time as compared to actual content needs.

If we wanted to, we could decide to contract someone to turn every minor plot of both Dragon Age games into their own all-singing, all-dancing Broadway musicals and it would still have almost no impact on our development schedule.

As for the reason behind the existence of these ancillary products - well, it's a big universe. If we tell only the stories we can fit into the games, we artificially limit the size of that universe. We like the Dragon Age universe. And so do our fans - some of whom will buy the ancillary products, some of whom will not. That's fine. We expect that, and as a result there's nothing in those products that is absolutely essential to understanding the plot of the games. But they can help, and they certainly add other layers to what we reveal through the core games.

In the end, the choice as to whether or not to engage with these products is up to the consumer - that is, all of you. We're not going to set up a situation where a critical plot element only makes sense if you read a book, or watch the anime. But for those who like that sort of thing? Hey, it's kind of neat to see a character you recognize from product X, and develop a slightly different relationship with that character based on the knowledge you got from reading the book, or watching the anime, or what have you.

But it's never critical, and it's also never a situation of 'well we can get this anime out there, but that means we're cutting three characters from the next title'. Let's be clear on both of those points.