Former lead writer David Gaider on the perils of not having a "vision keeper"

Image credit: EA / Rock Paper Shotgun

Buried in the vast and sooty-fingered Summer Eternal anthology , there's an interview with former BioWare developer and Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider, who is now creative director at Stray Gods outfit Summerfall Studios. The interview is a podcast-length account of BioWare's transformations over Gaider's career, stretching back to Baldur's Gate 2 . Amongst other things, it explains why the Dragon Age games feel so different from sequel to sequel.

Gaider discusses the original trilogy's fortunes under RPG-phobic parent company Electronic Arts, commenting that 2009's Dragon Age: Origins made it to release partly thanks to "sunk cost" thinking after EA bought the studio. He also talks about Dragon Age's lack of a properly defined vision, early on, which led to a lot of overcorrection between releases.…