In the final interview from his visit to the BioWare offices, Senior Staff Writer Chris "Pwyff" Tom sat down with Dragon Age 2 Lead Writer David Gaider to talk about the creative process of game writing.

If you've been keeping up with our Dragon Age 2 coverage over the past week, then you know that I visited the BioWare offices in Edmonton with a few other journalists to check out what all the fuss was about over BioWare's latest foray into the fantasy RPG world. That, of course, ends up making this week a very Dragon Age 2 intensive week, and you can check out my first Dragon Age 2 impressions over here. Yesterday, I followed that up with an interview with Executive Producer Mark Darrah, and that's a definite must-read for any BioWare or Dragon Age 2 fan.

For my last interview, I got the chance to sit down with Lead Writer David Gaider, and I must say that it was a great opportunity, both as a fan and as a writing enthusiast. Below, you'll find some great answers from Gaider about how he created those memorable characters of Dragon Age: Origins, as well as some useful insight into the world of novel and video game writing. Read on!

ZAM: I'm here with David Gaider, lead writer for Dragon Age 2 and author of the Dragon Age: Origins prequel novels. Thanks for sitting down with me to talk, David!

David Gaider: Glad to be here.

ZAM: Coming out with a fairly broad question here: a lot of players I've talked to have noted that many of the characters and stories created within Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 are  unique compared to pretty much any other forms of narrations (books, movies, games). How do you approach the creation of something like Dragon Age?

David: If we're talking specifically about the followers (party members that join your main character's quest), the followers are really ciphers for our larger story - and it's a big story! With a video game, versus a movie or a book, you're going to spend around 50 to 100 hours puttering around in there. Because of that, we have a lot of story to tell, therefore our requirements for these characters are very practical. So for us, we basically look at our followers and we ask, "What are our requirements? What are our themes in the game?"

So, for example, let's say we have the theme of Dalish Elves struggling to reclaim their lost heritage. If that's a major theme in the story, then we want a follower to tell that story. They're ciphers, right? Players will not care about the issues unless there is a character that he or she cares about that cares about the issues. Otherwise it's too abstract. It's like saving the world. 'The world' is an abstract concept; saving the world doesn't really mean anything to you unless you're saving someone - a face - that you do care about. We use followers and other things in the game as potential hooks. We never know what, necessarily, the character will care about, so we offer lots of potential hooks, and we just need one of those to sink in. If none of them work, then we've failed. The player might enjoy the game, but he or she won't feel that emotional connection.

So, ultimately, we're trying to figure out how each of our characters can appeal to a different type of person, because we want to cover as many bases as we can. There are people who appreciated the stoic Sten or Leliana with her soft side, and there you have it. You can think of that as being kind of mercenary with us cold-heartedly deciding how these connections will work, but it's organic when we figure out what kind of story we want to tell. We'll get excited and we'll really want to figure out if everything we're putting into the game fits the themes of game or adds to the overall story. That's important, because you could have characters that have nothing to do with the story you're telling. Sure, they're interesting, but they need to fit.

ZAM: So it's almost like reverse engineering; you have an overarching story and overarching themes, and then you find out who best fits into those roles.

David: Yeah. Although it's not all reverse engineering. For instance, there might be a character that helps inspire the direction of the story. For instance, Alistar was a character I knew I wanted to write prior to making the story of Dragon Age: Origins. Morrigan as well; her place in the story was something I knew I wanted there. It's not to say that I knew exactly how she was going to end the game, and so on, but I wanted that type of character. But that's really how anyone will approach a story; you'll have pieces that you put together. I remember wanting one of the plots to be our take on the hunt for the Holy Grail in Dragon Age: Origins. So I brought it in, I incorporated it, and then I did the reverse engineering, fleshing out the plot and growing the characters within the setting.