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- [00:01]
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- [00:25]
Charlotte Reber
welcome to the new Books Network.
- [00:30]
Rudolf Inderst
Hi everyone and welcome back to New Books in Game Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. On this channel we explore new scholarship that unpacks what games mean, how they are designed, how they are played, and how they resonate far beyond the screen. I'm your host, Rudolf Indust, professor for Game Studies at the University of Applied Sciences, Neue Ulm, Germany. Before we get started, if you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or whichever platform you prefer. It really helps others discover us. And of course feel free to share this very episode with your community of or gaming groups. And now, let's dive into today's conversation. I am thrilled to welcome Charlotte Reber, who's here today to talk about her book Dragon Age 2, published by Boss Fighter Write Books. Charlotte, welcome to the show.
- [01:31]
Charlotte Reber
Thanks so much for having me.
- [01:33]
Rudolf Inderst
So, to start us off, could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us what drew you to this specific project? What inspired you to write the definitive behind the screen story? Sorry, that is behind the scenes story. Maybe behind the screens, you know, you never know. Story of a game that was, as your description so vividly puts it, rushed through development in just a year.
- [01:58]
Charlotte Reber
Well, I am a fiction writer typically, so this is a little bit of a departure for me writing nonfiction. But I used to be a video game blogger and in the course of playing lots of games, I played Dragon Age Origins, the first Dragon Age game, which is a classic fantasy rpg. Really enjoyed it, and I waited a while to play the sequel because I just kept hearing very negative things about it, that it was just kind of rushed, a mess, just very odd. Not at all like the first one. But then someone recommended it to me and I finally played it and I just almost immediately fell in love. It is a bit of a mess of a game, but the characters, the writing are all so, so good. And then not long after I played it and loved it, I was reading a book of interviews with different women in game development that was edited by Jennifer Hepler, who's actually one of the writers on Dragon Age 2. And in her section of the book she talks a little Bit about the development of it and how it was. Yeah, just they had basically a year to develop this entire game and it was this rush, this very small staff creating this game so quickly and how much fun it was. But then how it just had a terrible reception and how that was very tough. And I just became riveted by this account. I wanted to know more about what was going on behind the scenes. And with boss fight books, I saw a chance to kind of tell a behind the scenes making of that really focused on the writings. That's kind of the only side of game development I can comment on, you know, at all is. Yeah, the storytelling and the narrative and so on.
- [03:36]
Rudolf Inderst
Now, your book, the book's description highlights this very incredible tension. So games develop under immense pressure, resulting in a. And you don't see my air quotes here, ramshackle sequel with repetitive quests, but also what many consider some of the best characters, dialogue and storytelling BioWare has ever created. Based on your interviews with key writers and editors like David Gayer, Jennifer Hapler and Lucas Christiansson, how did the team even begin to approach this impossible assignment? Again, in air quotes here, what was the initial mindset? What would you say?
- [04:12]
Charlotte Reber
I think one of the key things they did early on is the game's lead designer, Mike Laidlaw, kind of recognized that this is going to have to be very different from the first game. They had one year to develop this. The first Dragon Age game, Origins, had seven years to develop. And while Origins is kind of this epic quest where you're traveling all over the country of Ferelden, The Dragon Age 2 instead is set in just a single city, the city of Kirkwall. But instead of taking place over several months, it takes place over the course of years. And so that was one decision, was to just simplify the number of levels they needed to do. Just make it one location, one setting, but have the story be about time and rather than space. And the other main thing that Laidlaw brought to the design at the beginning was deciding to do it as a framed narrative. There's a storyteller at the beginning and then it cuts away to the game and we return several times. The storyteller, this character, Varrick, who is effectively the narrator of Dragon Age 2. So with kind of those two things in place, like the three act narrative structure and the time, not space, they were able to kind of condense down the amount of material they needed to create. But beyond that, it was a lot of just the same kind of skills they'd honed as a writing Team doing Dragon Age Origins, the first game, applying that to the second game, what David Gator, the game's lead writers, did to me was it was measure twice, cut once, because you don't have a chance to cut a second time. You've really got to nail it the first time. And so some of these tricks were things like of the main characters, they assign each character to a specific writer. So that writer just gets really familiar with writing that main companion or that main character. There's a lot of dialogue that happens between two characters, and the way that they divvy those up between the two writers who are doing those characters, other kind of tricks. The tool set they used to write dialogue, they were all familiar with. So I think it was very important that the. The writing team, which was just these five people, had all worked together on the previous game and kind of knew each other, knew how to work together. Gator described it to me as a very small box that they were working in, just with the time constraints and the limitations of what they were able to do. But they were also, just because there was no time for oversight, they were kind of left to just do whatever they want and trust it to do whatever they want. So it was very. Just take the assignment and fly. Do what you can with it. And I think they embraced the limitations of that very successfully.
- [06:41]
Rudolf Inderst
This answer is actually an excellent bridge for my next question, because one of the DA's two most celebrated innovations is its fully voiced protagonist and the charmingly unreliable Renato. We just have mentioned, your book promises to tell the story of how these elements came to be under such time constraints you were talking about. This box is a very vivid picture to me, but could you share a key insight into how these narrative tools were conceived and executed and how they might have saved or complicated the storytelling process?
- [07:16]
Charlotte Reber
So, yeah, so Hawke, the main character of Dragon Age 2, is a little bit of a departure normally in Dragon Age games, and I guess at this point there was only one to compare it to. But you. You create a character, you choose what their name is. You have several different fantasy races to pick from. They could be an elf, a dwarf, or a human. You could design their appearance, their class. All very similar to kind of tabletop RPGs. And with. With Dragon Age 2, to simplify and streamline development, they limited it to. It's a single character named Hawk. You can change their appearance of their class, but they're going to be human. They're going to have the same backstory no matter what. And that allowed them to speed up a lot of things and kind of streamline the writing. But one thing really interesting they did with Hawke is that they made them a fully voiced character, which was not how it had been done in Origins or kind of earlier Bioware games. Like Baldur's Gate is normally the main character's not voiced. You just see their dialogue on the screen and you pick it, and characters respond to that. But that was by the time of Dragon Age 2, starting to be seen as kind of archaic, so they were shifting into this new role of Hawk being voiced. And I think that there was a little bit of backlash to that initially, I think, from fans. I think a lot of people thought, oh, you're making it too much like Mass Effect, where it's this voice character and you have this wheel of picking options. I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. A lot of what it was doing really, was just kind of lining better with, like, the way things were designed behind the scenes. Like in. In Dragon Age 2, when you pick dialogue options, you're picking between three colors, typically that. The blue for, like, kind of the diplomatic response, red for kind of blunt, aggressive, or purple, which initially the design idea was going to be, that was kind of the neutral track you could take. But the writers went, no, no, we want to have some fun with this. So if you pick the purple option, it's like the sarcastic or snarky response, which is actually one of my favorite things about the game is not having to pick kind of between this, like the Mass Effect binary of Paragon Renegade. It's like, no, I'm going to be the jokester. And sometimes that works well. Kind of humor could diffuse the sit you're in. And sometimes it backfires and people are very offended that, you know, you're taking this, you know, this character's death very. You're just going to joke about it. That's your way through it. But I think it really gives Hawke a personality that a lot of other kind of blank slate RPG protagonists are. Are lacking. And then for Varrick, the. The narrator, the notoriously unreliable narrator was one of the things they wanted to do with that. And you see early on in the game, there's a scene, a cut scene, you see where things are happening, and then it suddenly cuts back to Varrick telling the story he'. Interrogated. And his interrogator says, no, no, no, that, I don't believe you. That's not what happened. And then you see the same scene again, and subtle things have been changed. And the writers really wanted to do more with that, but it was a little bit tricky. Some of it got cut like there was meant to be a kind of fake scene like that at the beginning of each of the game's three acts. And you only get one of the. The prologue, which I think is a shame. I would have loved to see more of that. But they also were aware that if they did too many things and then said, actually, no, that's not what happened, that becomes frustrating to the player. You have no idea what's real if what you're seeing, anything that you're seeing is real. So I think they. They had to walk a little bit of a tightrope with that. And I think for all that Varric is known for being an unreliable Derridar, he's actually pretty trusted in the game, but he ended up being a very, very beloved character. I think he's kind of become the unofficial mascot of the series as a whole. So I think it was a success in that sense.
- [10:49]
Rudolf Inderst
Yeah. Maybe now is the time also to talk about beyond the characters. The book also covers the game's quote here, mishandled marketing campaign and its pretty harsh reactions from some players, not all of them, certainly from user research. What was the biggest disconnect between what the team was trying to achieve under the circumstances we have heard about them right now, what was promised or framed by marketing, and what players ultimately expected from a successor to Dragon Origins?
- [11:20]
Charlotte Reber
I think the number one marketing mistake that was made was they called IT Dragon Age 2 for most of the game's development. Short as it was, the game was going to be called Dragon Exodus, which is a title that fits the game much better. Virtually all the main characters, including Hawke, are refugees or fugitives of one kind or another. But at the last minute, an executive said, no, we're going to call it Dragon Age 2 because we want to tie it to the first game. We want people to know that this is a sequel and it's really not a sequel. There are a couple of character cameos from the first game, but it's otherwise a completely different story. And Mark Darragh, the game's executive producer, talked about this, talking about how that was just a major. It set up expectations for fans that were not true. This was not meant to be a bigger, better, you know, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age harder. It was meant to be a separate story. They only had a year there couldn't possibly build something as big or expansive as Origins. And so not only did fans not get the game that they were Maybe led to expect by hearing, you know, Dragon Age 2. They also found that because of how little time it had to be developed, that there were a lot of things that they were missing. Both just, you know, the single location. But also there was a lot of kind of nitty gritty details that disappeared, kind of conventions. Some of this was conventions of kind of gaming RPGs that were becoming a little more archaic, things becoming more streamlined, like some of the tactics, menus and things were not present or more simplified. But then there were also things like kind of the top down camera was gotten rid of in Dragon Age 2 because it made level design much harder. And so that was a thing. Well, this is an easy thing to cut because it saves us time on development. But then fans are upset that it's missing. But yeah, just that the title change and the implication that it's a bigger, better origins was, I think, really did the game no favors in setting up its reception with fans.
- [13:19]
Rudolf Inderst
Before we continue, a quick note to our listeners. If you're involved in running an academic program in game design, development or game studies, this podcast might be the perfect place to share your vision. Our listeners include engaged scholars, educators, students and professionals across the field. Consider placing a short promotional segment to connect with this thoughtful international audience passionate about games and research. Now, you frame the book as raising quotes again, a mug of ale, a very nice picture to the game that was and the game that might have been. Without giving too much away, what for you was the most surprising what if scenario that emerged from your conversations about the game's lost potential, say one of
- [14:12]
Charlotte Reber
the big ones would be there was a number of. A number of things that were cut, especially from the game's third act, which is the shortest of the whole. The whole game, because they were really running out of time by that point. The, the games, the main conflict that's kind of the final conflict of the game and that takes up Most of Act 3, is between two factions, the mages and the Templars. And the Mages are magic users and the Templars are kind of a religious soldier group that, among other things, is supposed to keep mages under control and locked away because Mages are seen as being very dangerous. If you misuse magic, you can get taken over by a demon and, you know, horrible things will happen. The, the game skews, I would say, heavily towards showing the mages as sympathetic and the Templars as unsympathetic. And there was meant to be a lot more content to show mages as being dangerous and showing that Maybe the Templars actually do have a point. One of the final decisions of the game is you're meant to kind of side with one faction or the other. They didn't have time to include kind of a nuanced option between the two. They didn't have time to really show how both sides might have a point. And I think the. The storytelling suffers from that a little bit. I think another thing that was cut is there was a lot more. More stuff, as I mentioned, with Varric being unreliable, that I think would have been really fun to see. There was supposed to be a scene where Varric narrates his own death. And, you know, it's Hawke cradling Varrick in their arms, screaming no. At the sky. And then it fades away to Varric very much alive in the interrogation room with his interrogator glaring at him, going, I don't think you died. You're sitting right there. I think we could have seen some more fun stuff with that. So a shame we didn't get to see all of that.
- [15:58]
Rudolf Inderst
So, finally, for fans of the series and for game developers and writers listening, what is the most important lesson or legacy you believe the development story of Dragon Age 2 holds for our understanding of game creation, studio pressures, and how we critically evaluate games altogether?
- [16:17]
Charlotte Reber
I'd say two things, and the first one is that game developers are people, which maybe seems obvious, but I think this is both. Don't put them on pedestals. They are not gods or infallible. They're very human. But on the other hand, they're not expendable cogs in a machine. They are professionals doing an incredibly wonderful thing with this, the amazing worlds they are creating for our entertainment, and that they're. But they're very much human. And the other thing I would say is the kind of. The main takeaway I have from. From this whole story is that imperfection and can be really incredible and maybe embrace that rather than trying to avoid it. One of the things I heard several of the writers echo is that this was kind of the most special game they got to work on in a way. They don't ever want to live through something like this again, just the. The rush development and so on, but something about how just raw and incredible the writing turned out to be because they didn't have time to polish it down and go, well, we're taking too many risks there. Or, you know, we might offend people with that.
- [17:28]
Rudolf Inderst
They.
- [17:28]
Charlotte Reber
Or, you know, this won't be appealing to a large enough group. They really just wrote what felt right and let it go. It will never be perfect anyway. You might as well embrace the rawness and you might create something special, which was very good advice for me to hear when working on my first book. And if only I can learn to follow that advice right?
- [17:51]
Rudolf Inderst
So Charlie, thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing this deep dive into such a fascinating chapter of RPG history. Maybe, once again, what's the book title and where can you get it?
- [18:03]
Charlotte Reber
The book title is Dragon Age 2 and it's from Boss Fight Books.
- [18:07]
Rudolf Inderst
All right, dear listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are an author or editor working in game studies or game development or game design and would like to discuss your latest work, please feel free to reach out@rudolf.inderstooglemail.com you can also find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky under amestudies. And please leave X and and one last reminder. If you want to support the show, head over to gamestudiesmerch.de and check out our game study hoodies. Until next time, keep playing and thinking. Good night.