Dragon Age: Origins lead writer David Gaider has revealed in a post on BlueSky that there was friction between the Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams at BioWare, insisting they didn’t get on.
You see, the thing you need to know about BioWare is that for a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team. Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios. And they didn’t get along.
The company was aware of the friction and attempts to fix it had been ongoing for years. [This was done] mainly by shuffling staff between the teams more often. Yet this didn’t really solve things.
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Gaider also touched on his work with Anthem, revealing he was asked to transform it from a “beer and cigarettes” sci-fi into a fantasy-based sci-fi affair on a similar wavelength to Star Wars. However, the team wasn’t happy and frequently accused Gaider of his working being “too much like Dragon Age.” As a result, he felt the writing was on the wall for Anthem, and departed BioWare.
I won’t go into detail about the problems except to say it became clear this was a team that didn’t want to make an RPG. Were very anti-RPG, in fact. Yet they wanted me to wave my magic writing wand and create a BioWare quality story without giving me any of the tools I’d need to actually do that.
Following his departure from BioWare, Gaider has since gone on to form a new development outfit, Summerfall Studios, who launched their debut project Stray Gods back in 2023. Last June, Gaider chimed in on the romance options available in the then-upcoming Dragon Age The Veilguard, stating they weren’t surprising considering the success of Baldur’s Gate III.
[Source – David Gaider on BlueSky via TheGamer]