mikelaidlaw
Mike Laidlaw
mikelaidlaw

It's an ongoing process throughout the game, so essentially "as long as the game takes."

Corypheus needed to punch you one more time after Haven, I think, for both increasing his threat and giving you another chance to interact with him. Hindsight.

We try to bring characters to the party (and surrounding story) that have "stakes" in what's currently happening around the world, and then make sure that they have conflicting views with regards to those events. Doing so creates natural points of intersection, agreement and division so that the characters can respond

Wicked Eyes was a tricky one. Not everyone wants to be political, but we wanted to have a venue by which being political would be worthwhile.

Persona 4

1) The majority of the war table content is there to provide reactions to things you've done. There are more than 200 operations, and in a single game I think you can only see in the neighborhood of about 100 of them. They are designed to react and act as mini-epilogues more than to start off new plotlines.

That's exactly what it's referencing, yep.

It was important to us that he be more than just a plot device. We wanted to make sure he came across as a real kid with real hopes, dreams and aspirations, and we wanted him to have had a distinct effect on Morrigan, which I think helps make his character feel real for players who knew Morrigan in Origins.

We considered it, but as with each of the DA games, we like to focus on the current group and situation.

One of my favorite uses of music in all of DA:I was during...

One thing Jaws of Hakkon experiments with is integrating larger stories into the more open world space. The one environment, for instance, has roughly three times more "story" (as in, word count) than the Hinterlands, because we wanted to see what expanding beyond smaller sideplots while still keeping the player

Pillars is great, and while he is a certified SASSYPANTS, (you heard me, Chris!) I want to high-five Chris Avelonne and his team for what a great job they've done. I'm glad that it's particular "feel" is back, and I think that's one of the great things we're seeing out of kickstarter: so many sub-genres coming back in

It was one of many, many factors, yeah.

Favorite characters: I'm a big fan of Leli, Siggrun, Cass, Sten and, perhaps weirdly, Bann Teagan.

That's so cool to hear. Thanks!

One day Mark will let the writing team just go crazy and make something like a "Nug Dating Sim" or something. That will be a weird day.

One thing we actively try to do is to find reference points that are topical, but not explicitly in the fantasy space. If you can find a historical character, or biography, or recounting of a particular war, battle or political situation that deliberately couldn't be "lifted" or copied directly into your setting, it

1. Pretty unlikely, which I know disappoints some folks, but I have some pretty serious concerns about making a character who had no voice suddenly have one. It feels as if it will be dissonant. The Warden is and was an awesome character, and I don't want to risk "wrecking" those memories, even unintentionally.

We'd sure like to revisit it, though, because having those open spaces be more reactive to how you have played the game? Yum.

HA HA! "Laid"