David Gaider on Romances and Followers Depth

While answering to fan questions on his Tumblr blog, BioWare lead writer David Gaider, who’s now busy on Dragon Age III: Inquisition, has taken the time to expose his views on romances and followers in his games.

Here’s a snip from the first post:

I don’t put a lot of stock in the fans who get upset at the amount of discourse regarding the romances, and who are very vocal about how it should be eliminated completely. Yes, some of the discussion can indeed be juvenile. but much of the complaining seems to be centered on the idea this is something only female gamers do. Fangirls. And whatever the fangirls are squeeing excitedly about is obviously diluting the (serious) nature of RPG’s. ignoring just how juvenile other gamers can be about the myriad of obsessions they have in these games as well as the fact that the fixation on romances is hardly exclusive to females at all (as the angst over the Morrigan romance back in the day would clearly attest).

I would, however, resist making the romance elements of our games more prominent without also changing the nature of that content. Adding an element of failure, for instance, or by having not all characters be available to all player characters (they’re attracted only to certain types, for instance). Adding different types of romance: tragic romances, romances where your partner cheats on you, romances where the character is already involved in another relationship, characters that don’t know how to relate to someone else on a romantic level or aren’t interested in such. It needn’t all be unhappy, of course, but were I to cross the threshold of making all followers possible to romance I’d at least want to change the approach into something more plausible. To me, the idea that a player should get their followers and then simply select one or more companions to be their romance, and that romance is their cuddly bunny for the entirety of the game and plays out exactly as they wish, would be the worst of both worlds. It would be wish fulfillment on a level that reduced the characters into romantic playthings sex dolls, really. And I have no interest in creating that, even if there are people who think it’d be grand.

And one from the latter:

Insofar as your question, I’d say my preference lies towards fewer but deeper. You need to walk a fine line there, however. We’ve discussed at various times the possibility of just having a single party of companions so, say, three. With three known companions we could make them incredibly deep and interactive, even having them change a great deal based on the player’s actions/choices. but would that be better? In some ways, but it would also sacrifice variety. You’d be giving choice on one hand and taking it away with another, not to mention sacrificing a bit of replayability (assuming that wasn’t replaced by having more variability in those followers, though that might be meaningless if someone didn’t care for them).