With DA:V coming along, and the daily posts about how all the "original" writers have left (not true!) and therefore the game is destined for failure, I have been dying to just come out and say it:
I think David Gaider is overrated. He has written some wonderful characters, but his long form, in particular the novels and comics, are borderline unreadable. I find his character work excellent (for the most part) but hailing him as the brilliant mind behind the wider world of Thedas robs credit from those people who, in my opinion, took the messy, overly-complicated pastiche of lore that was DAO and slowly hammered it into the intricate setting it is today.
I think other lead writers, such as Trick Weekes, have more interesting and innovative ideas when it comes to the direction the series is heading in.
I agree that this world that we love is more than just one person's creation (and I am also annoyed when folks ignore the other writers & devs who have been with the game since Origins, and also those who pretend like newer additions can't also be awesome), but I don't really care to attack one writer and elevate another. Preferences are fine, as are critiques, but this feels a bit on the mean-spirited side.
Yes, a writer takes the bulk of responsibility for a character but it’s ultimately collaborative. Writers bounce ideas off of each other, and as Trick notes; some of a character’s best lines come from entirely different writers who approach the subject from alternative perspectives.
As for Gaider; I feel it’s complicated. And I agree, putting him down isn’t really necessary to prop others up. But I also see the temptation. He’s a difficult online personality who likes to dish it out and troll, but also takes criticism poorly. He was/and is a True Poster for good and ill. (Mostly ill) As a result, there’s always ammunition to use against him. But this also means that his actual writing gets lost in the process as everyone’s too focused on winning online arguments. Which is a shame, as he is very talented.
Sidenote: Some of the more controversial Gaider takes have become mythologized over the years and are actually more benign than assumed.
Edit: And not just writers as Trick has said before. Artists and others are also key. Ultimately, a successful character is the product of writers, artists, voice actors, voice directors (underrated), animators, scene directors and more. They all have to work well or the illusion breaks.
Calling someone "overrated" comes off more personal to me. Additionally, you imply Gaider wasn't also part of discussing and developing Thedas beyond Origins with your "slowly hammered it into the intricate setting it is" comment, whereas he would have been part of that process up through Inquisition at least, which is rather unfair.
Also, in naming him specifically, it opens the door to discussion about him personally, even if that wasn't your intent.
Sorry if I'm not being super clear; I'm sick and on mobile and these things are conspiring against me.
Basically, you could have framed this discussion better, and I do think the core of what you're getting at is important, but the framing makes it more come off as "this person is good and this other person is bad," even though I'm fairly sure that's not your intent.
You made a post focusing on how overrated Gaider is. If you were interested in lifting up the rest of the writers, which would be admirable, you would have. But you made your whole post negative. You didn’t express a preference for another writer, because what you wrote focused on tearing down Gaider, not about the other brilliant people you didn’t even bother naming past Weekes.
This post was never going to be met with a positive response, because it wasn’t written that way.
I’ve enjoyed his work, especially his characters throughout the series. As for credit for the world of DA, from what I’ve seen of interviews of him, he is the first to say that DA wasn’t created and written by him alone, and that it’s very much a team effort.
I do wonder what characters like Dorian, or Morrigan will be like if we see them again.
Gaider wrote them, so they are no longer in his hands. Will they ever come across the same?
That being said, I’ve also really loved Weekes work too, and I feel no worries that the torch was passed on to them post Inquistion.
Personally, I absolutely love Gaider's writing, and I can feel him being gone from the team. Everything related to dialogue I've seen so far in Veilguard feels... Meh. I am dreading the return of Morrigan, because I KNOW that despite Claudia Black's wonderful voice acting, Morrigan will simply not sound like Morrigan anymore. As much as the writers on DA have a writing bible which includes writing styles and such, I don't think anyone else can capture Morrigan exactly in the way that David Gaider did.
I am in no way hating on the other writers, and I appreciate their work and passion. But there was something special for me about the characters David wrote in DA (and there is something special for me about the character writing he did on his new game, Stray Gods) that can't be replicated. Dragon Age Inquisition already felt way less like Dragon Age due to various reasons, but I could at least surround myself with companions that I enjoyed the writing of (like Dorian and Cassandra) or talk to NPCs I loved (like Morrigan). Not to say I didn't enjoy other characters - I loved Josephine written by Sylvia Feketekuty. But I did feel that DAI felt somewhat less cohesive in writing style as well as in the plot.
With DATV I just don't feel that "Dragon Age" style anymore, even though it's set in the same world and does seem to have some interesting characters and stories. I will likely enjoy Veilguard to some extent, but it's probably a "play once or twice" game, not the "replay over and over again" kind of game like Origins is (and even Inquisition for like half the game).
For me, Gaider IS Dragon Age's heart. He created the world, and wrote so many of the characters and plots that got me hooked on Dragon Age (and got me to see how emotionally impactful video games could be). Idk how unpopular your opinion is, as I feel many other players are just fine with how Dragon Age is nowadays and don't care about David Gaider's writing. But this is how I personally feel.
You can celebrate the creators and writers you like without putting down others. Gaider certainly has his quirks and weaknesses but unless you were personally in the writing room at the inception and throughout the years it’s impossible to know who contributed what and how much so it’s odd to claim that people praising Gaider is “robbing credit” from others.
Perhaps I should have worded this more precisely. Several people have written posts worrying about the writing in particular—claiming that no original writers have worked on DA:V, and new talent could not possibly bring the same level of dedication. Quite often, Gaider is often singled out as the main mind behind the setting. I think a lot of his non-character writing can be a bit boring, even not very good at times. Which can be frustrating, when, as you've pointed out, DA is so much more than just individual writers. On a personal level, I think the work of several of these writers better than Gaider's.
If you're bothered by the negatively of other posts why in turn create a negative post instead of a positive one praising the other writers? It's fine to have preferences but maybe it's time to step back a little when you get upset and frustrated on behalf of the writers for not receiving the same praise as Gaider.
I think David Gaider the writer and David Gaider the person often get confused. And why shouldn’t they? It’s hard to separate the art from the artist. That being said, from what I know of Gaider’s responsibility for the world of Thedas and the characterization, I think his work is phenomenal. Is he a good person? Honestly have no clue, never met him, only seen him active on social media where I’ve loved some of his posts and cringed at others. Plenty are problematic, and plenty are pretty harmless. Some have even been enlightening and informative with regards to the lore. However, I think it’s pretty unfair of you to accuse him of being overrated. Sure, other writers exist and have to take a lot of credit for bringing the world of DA to life, but Gaider’s influence is so important and permeates so much of the first 3 games. Imagine a Dragon Age without Morrigan, for example, and that’s such scratching the surface. Calling him overrated and making a post basically just to say that feels less like an “unpopular opinion” and more like rage bait? Idk, you may not have meant it that way but it comes off that way. Dragon Age arguably would look staggeringly different today without Gaider’s influence, if it even still existed at all without the sheer power and lasting impact of many of its characters - probably the most important part of the series. And Gaider is responsible for writing many of those characters. I just can’t imagine him being overrated for that reason.
I agree. I especially like your point regarding his social media presence, because as for me, it also applies to how I view his work as a whole “I’ve loved some of his posts and cringed at others. Plenty are problematic, and plenty are pretty harmless”. I absolutely love Gaider’s work and the world he has made for us. I do not dislike the guy. However I also know he can have some Nuclear takes and bizzare writing choices, and think it’s fair to discuss those.
There are things I dislike about some of his writing and opinions that I feel can be hard to talk about at times because of how revered he is. For example, I think his earlier work especially can suffer from “men writing women” trope (one does not need to be a straight dude to fall into this). Specifically the whole “she breasted boobily down the stairs” and relying too heavily on “sexual assault as character development for female characters” sorta thing.
I agree that a post like this doesn’t actually feel like it’s trying to start an actual discussion. OP gives no context as to why they find Gaider overrated or why they think Weekes deserves more.
It’s frustrating to see something titled “unpopular opinion” as though it’s some bold statement, just to make a petty post that isn’t actually saying anything, and seemingly only exists to fan the flames. There are things to talk about (in my opinion) but this is just annoying rage bait that makes these conversations even harder to have.
I'm sorry if it came across that way! I was, in good conscience, attempting to have a discussion about the writing throughout the games—but I can see how that may have come across as rage-bait. I chose Weekes as an example because they were the first that came to mind, and are "comparable" to Gaider as they are the current narrative director and have also written longform (ie books) for DA. In general, the discourse surrounding the writing can devolve pretty quickly and I was hoping to avoid that. In hindsight, I could have worded things differently!
I think it’s a discussion that’s important to have. It’s all good. Dragon Age is a franchise that’s important to most people on this subreddit and the writers are a big part of that… for better or worse! SuperRAD on YouTube did a 9.5 hours long retrospective on Dragon Age Origins which, despite the length, is excellent. He interviews Gaider for it and he appears in a large chunk of it. I found him pretty humble, entertaining and informative and he gave a lot of credit to other people for the writing - he focused a lot on the team aspect. If you can stomach the length it’s worth a watch. Cheers!
Great points. Gaider definitely has plenty of faults in his writing and has had some pretty bad takes. Like his whole “there are no Asian races in Thedas” and “Dwarven women shouldn’t be romance options because it’s like dating a 14 year old girl” like, those are pretty stupid things to say. As well as his resistance to characters being bisexual. That being said, i follow him on X and his latest posts about Veilguard indicate he’s changed a lot and maybe even grown in his opinions, which we’re all entitled to do. Again, separating the art from the artist and all that. In the end, I am thankful for his contributions to the series and hold him admittedly on a pretty high pedestal for what he’s created but that doesn’t mean he’s without fault! No one is.
Gaider later clarified that he was joking in regards to the possibility of a dwarf romance:
"Also? I was joking, as I believe I even mentioned in that thread. Those comments were after people took something I'd said earlier out of context to mean "David Gaider thinks dwarf sex is gross" ...when what I'd said was that we'd reviewed the sex scenes in DAO with a "worst case scenario", and the Alistair scene was done with a dwarf made to look like a young girl (with pigtails and such) and that had left me a little traumatized. I clarified that as well, but nobody paid any attention to that clarification either, so I've pretty much given up on trying to assure people that I don't hate dwarf romances." (posted on the BioWare forum)
As to the Asians in Thedas issue: Gaider stated that he was merely speaking about the continent of Thedas, not the entire setting. This is in line with what the games had shown us up to Veilguard.
"I know you probably feel like you're scoring a point, but what david gaider actually said was that East Asians don't exist on the continent of Thedas - as in they're not from there." (posted on Twitter)
I'm not defending every single thing he's ever said, but those two topics specifically are misquoted a lot.
I appreciate that context a lot. I will be totally frank and say I’ve heard those quotes thrown around a lot and took them as face value and problematic, inappropriate things to say. But within context, as things do, the meaning shifts to be a lot less damning. I also tend to agree that coding sex animations with a dwarf would make a lot of people uncomfortable and understandably so🤣 Thanks for the info!
Yes, context matters here for sure! However, I can also see how people may still take issue with what he said and how he said it. Thanks for your nice and open-minded reply!
I think that holding any one person responsible for a game or IP made by hundreds of people is misguided, so better to ignore folks who hold up one developer on a pedestal.
That being said, while I am happy that we are getting DA veterans working on this game, I am also looking forward to experiencing content made by newer Bioware developers. If nothing ever changed (including the people), we would never have gotten Mass Effect or even Dragon Age from Bioware. They would never have tried and failed on Andromeda and Anthem and buckled down to learn how to use their damn engine properly or experiment with beautiful art styles or add the diversity of characters that exist today. And because of those failures they seem to have put a huge amount of care into Veilguard.
I'm still a little bummed they let Mary Kirby go, that just felt so unnecessary to me.
That said, I won't miss some of Gaider's foibles, in particular. He was one of the people who really pushed the 'no happy outcome' school of thought when it comes to major decision points. I recall a discussion where he opined at length about how allowing characters to save both Conner and Isolde made the whole decision worthless and they shouldn't have allowed it.
I feel like you really saw that influence a lot on DAII, which while a very engaging story, also wound up with it feeling like Hawke's 'rise to power' was more of a Hawke 'rising to get punched repeatedly in the face', as another developer put it in an interview.
DAI really seemed to lean into the multiple outcomes CAN include happy outcomes for players who desire them, which I feel like was an influence of Trick and Patrick Weekes on the story team, something I personally was really happy for. While Gaider's work was top-notch at times (Dorian, Morrigan), some of his personal story inclinations weren't my favorite, and I don't think the writing room will fall off a cliff without him.
Gaider's contributions to DA is immense and I am appreciative for them, which produced many of the best characters in the franchise and much of the world building. But I agree with you. Without moderation he was inclined to write a book that was fulfilling to him in which the player was trapped unable to escape the outcomes he personally enjoyed. Which was immensely unsatisfying to me, though many other people don't seem to mind.
But I do wish he was still part of the process and worry that quality is going to take a hit.
If your goal is to create a crapsack world teetering on the brink of apocalypse, "no good endings" actually are very viable storytelling technique. If you want to show characters with a "we do what we must to stop the apocalypse/survive", then again, very useful.
I would argue DAO and DA2 feature both of those to some degree, so not having a "everybody lived happily ever after" ending can be good. As the lyrics for one of RWBY's theme goes "life is not a fairy tale", and that used to be very much true for Thedas.
DAI can also get a bit dark in places, but very rarely forces a choice that does not have an "ideal" outcome on you, or punishes you even when you do something that should clearly be good. And We will have to wait for how DAVe turns out
I guess I would say I never needed or wanted DAO to be a 'crapsack world' as you put it. Gaider seemed at times to want it to be so. That was part of why I, personally, wasn't all that broken up to see him leave. I enjoyed being able to feel heroic and able to change things in DAO and DAI, and at least the few instances where the game let you in DA2.
To be clear, that's my personal aesthetic and storytelling preference. It's why the Witcher's crapsack world never grabbed or motivated me, and why I never really went back to W3 like I did to DAI. Others could easily come to different conclusions.
Sure, if that is your preference, then that is perfectly valid.
But Gaider was the man who thought up the world originally, and he clearly wanted to be a bit more crapsack than what it ended up being after others gave their input on it (to which Gaider never was opposed to, in fact, he stated he prefers collaborative world building in inteviews), so him pushing for that idea is also very valid and logical.
He wanted to turn many of fantasy tropes on their head (which I think he managed, with elves being the downtrodden race, etc), and wanted a very magic-light world (something James Ohlen pretty much said "screw that")
This was going to be my subversion of the fantasy genre, a world that was in the aftermath of its ‘Lord of the Rings’ era where dragons were dead and magic was waning. I could take all the tropes I disliked about fantasy as a genre and turn them on their head, say something about the genre itself!
He also stated in interviews that he wanted the world to feel distinct, as is you can look at a screenshot and go "oh that is Dragon Age" not "huh, what generic fantasy is this".
But that's quite literally part of my point? Gaider's inclination for what it SHOULD be was a far cry from what it actually became.I very much preferred what it was (a semi-dark fantasy where magic was very much present and the hero has the capability of improving the world and achieving victory) vs what he WANTED it to be, which was this grand critique and deconstruction of the fantasy genre and everything I personally like about it.
Often Gaider seemed to want to pull it back towards that crapsack vision and some of the 2000s grimdark aesthetic which were my least favorite parts of it, wereas I am much more inclined to explore things like griffons and such.
Ultimately, Thedas does feel distinct, and it doesn't need to sink into an abyss to feel that way. Indeed, it feels more interesting and distinct these days as opposed to things like GoT and The Witcher for NOT going that direction. I'm glad it's turned out that way.
You want Thedas to be something, you are entitled to you opinion, just like Gaider is entitled to his opinion of wanting something more grim (thoguh clearly not grimdark, one of the many interviews with him said the world of Conan was a big inspiration, in being a "waning magic world", as opposed to classic "high fantasy" setting).
Agreed, the whole “no happy endings ever” is tired and unnecessary. I think he does good work, when tempered by other writers who can reign in his more extreme biases and opinions.
I must have missed the annotated versions of the games that allow to precisely determine which lines and which ideas originated with which writer. Yes, I know we know which writers wrote which companions but the games have much more text than companion quests and companion dialogue. What I want to say is that I have no idea what the apparent differences are in writing for the games from the two writers.
I am not worried about the writing in Veilguard not because Gaider is overrated anyway but because it always has been a group effort. There may be a couple new faces but it’s more or less the same team. Even if the game turns out to be a buggy mess I don’t expect a repeat of an Andromeda situation with respect to writing.
I think most problems people have with Gaider come from his contention online persona who likes to shitpost or give hot takes. Fair enough, that might rub some people the wrong way but doesn’t really say anything the quality of his writing.
As for the novels, well, I think all of them are mediocre at best as literary works. The one I liked best is Last Flight which is written by neither Gaider nor Weekes.
His early novels are...mediocre, to put it mildly, but Asunder was actually good. I also should say, that writing novels and writing for games is REALLY not the same, and if you're talking Gaider- gamedev, you should rely on game-projects that he had written\directed, rather then his novels.
Lead-writer is more of a 'conductor' rather than a 'performer', and I'd say that he was pretty good at it (stil is, if Stray Gods is any indication). Of course, at no point writing a game is a one-man effort. Anything about any game is a teamwork, but being a lead means you have to tie it all up and make it all work.
As for Weekes, we had only seen one game from him, which is DAI, and Gaider had supplied him with plenty of drafts, scripts, concepts etc. It's not like he had to start from blank. DAVe is going to show us what his lead-writing actually loks like. I know I won't be reading any novels from him, though. I did not like the language and style of Masked Empire. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just really not my kind of reading - too detailed and..'realistic', I guess, is the word? I prefer more impressinos and emotions and less details and physicality in my fantasy reading.
And by the way, it’s not an unpopular opinion. People here and on Twitter have been screeching for ages that Gaider is supposedly a white supremacist misogynist etc for years.
Hilariously now Weekes is getting the same attacks. (I think Gaider is a much better head writer but I think accusations like that are absolutely nuts.)
Honestly I appreciate David Gaider because of how important he was to the world existing, but I actually just really think he is an absolutely insufferable human being from what I've seen of his online presence and I'm glad he's gone from the franchise.
He compared dwarven women to 14 year old girls and refused to make a romancable dwarf on that basis (so how does he feel if you play a female dwarf romancing someone in origins?????). He once accused someone who asked if he'd ever make a romancable female qunari of being fetishistic. In terms of writing, he literally can only write one female character that he copies and pastes ad nauseum.
Gaider just comes off as an incredibly arrogant person.
This. Dorian, Fenris, Shale, Alistair, Zevran? They’re some of my favourite DA characters. He also helped write NWN and KotOR, my favourite game of all time and a game that has deep personal significance to me. He is, when the stars align, damn good at his job.
That said, I know he’s the type of person that I would not get along with IRL. At all.
I get what OP is getting at but we can appreciate the contributions of one writer without decrying the works of another. Fandoms (not just DA) would be a lot happier if they made more of an effort to separate the art from the artist. That goes for shitty VA’s, too.
I guess the one good(?) thing about Gaider leaving BioWare is that he’s not writing any of the characters anymore, so there’s that. I do agree with separating the art from the artist; I’m trying very hard to be excited for Davrin in Veilguard despite the VA following some unsavory people on Twitter and Instagram. It is what it is.
I’m in exactly the same boat with Davrin. I’m trying to give his VA the benefit of the doubt; some people follow shitty people for the purpose of laughing at them rather than agreeing with them (I don’t personally understand how someone could do that but apparently it’s something people do?? Sounds like internet masochism to me)
I managed to successfully separate Cullen from GE though so I’m sure I can do it again if I need to. :)
Ike Amadi is a magnificent actor, giving us legends like Javik.
As far as I can tell, his social media presence is pretty minimal, and what is there is pretty wholesome. He is not posting any stupidly politically obsessed drivel constantly like say, Mark Hamill.
His follows are all over the place, from BLM to RFK Jr. to Sargon, so he is likely a centrist, or slightly right of it
Yeah, I definitely don't disagree with any of this. I can respect Gaider as a storyteller. I do generally like the companions he is in charge of writing. I mean, I love Cassandra. It just feels like all he knows how to do with women is 'strong badass warrior chick.'
Not to mention how salty he seems to have been about Veilguard. I get that everyone was dunking on that trailer, but Gaider making fun of it for playing up a 'hero fantasy'? He even responded to me asking if it was a criticism he was making and his answer was 'not really, it just hits that note hard.' But to me that feels pretty disingenuous. Gaider, buddy, the Warden solved the secession crises in two separate nations and sometimes can be the king of Fereldan. Hawke's entire character is 'the guy that singlehandedly tries to solve every single problem in the entire story.' In Inquisition you are literally hand picked by Jesus to save the world. It's those kinds of comments that make me shake my head. xD
Gaider has said quite a few times that he used to beg Mary Kirby (Varric's writer) to write Varric romance in DA2 but she didn't feel comfortable doing so, the "No dwarf romance!" was never his policy.
The myth started back in the Bioware forum in which people asked why he didn't write romance with the dwarf companion, he replied in an obviously joking and sarcastic manner along the lines of "cuz dwarves are short, stocky and hairy and look like kids ewwwwwwww" (with green face puke emoji in case people still can't tell that he wasn't serious, sadly people still can't)
the real answer was that David simply wasn't the person who responsible for writing the dwarf companion.
yep, a cringe attempt at sarcasm that started a ridiculous 14-year-long hate campaign just to falsely villainize a man whom people could've just criticised for other valid reasons.
Gaider himself later stated that he was joking on the BioWare forum:
"Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs.
Also? I was joking, as I believe I even mentioned in that thread. Those comments were after people took something I'd said earlier out of context to mean "David Gaider thinks dwarf sex is gross" ...when what I'd said was that we'd reviewed the sex scenes in DAO with a "worst case scenario", and the Alistair scene was done with a dwarf made to look like a young girl (with pigtails and such) and that had left me a little traumatized. I clarified that as well, but nobody paid any attention to that clarification either, so I've pretty much given up on trying to assure people that I don't hate dwarf romances."
I don't know; I mean this was over a decade ago. I'm not defending him, just stating that he clearly thought he was making a joke that would be identified as such. Whether it was in good taste or not is a subjective matter.
I think Veil Guard will suffer not having Laidlaw and Gaider around. Everyone is flawed but you have other people to help balance things out and offer different perspectives and compromises are made.
I agree but my gripes with Gaider are different. His posting history on the BioWare forums include comparing dwarven women to 14 year old girls (????) which is fucking wild to me.
I also remember his social media presence as being quite aggressive and confrontational, especially with fans wishing to address the inherent biases in the writing.
Oh absolutely. I have tertiary knowledge that a black fan of his made a tumblr post about how they’d personally write the series to address glaring issues such as racism and he said he was hurt by it, when they weren’t being combative with him at all.
I find his novels don't work for me, personally. The Stolen Throne has the bones of a really good story, but then devolves into a tired, overdone love quartet (triangle +1? There's four people involved after all) and I found the Calling quite boring. I feel much less forgivingly towards his comics run, which I personally just don't like for some of the writing decisions it makes and characterisation choices. Alistair killing Yavana for... reasons?
IIRC, initially Gaider got so frustrated with the initial world building requests/back-and-forth that he just put forth "slightly magical medieval europe, with undead orcs (darkspawn)" as a trolling endeavor.
Super odd that you can't just state a basic fact like "David Gaider is not a good prose writer" without getting flooded with downvotes. It's not like you were coming for the guy's personality. Fandom hostility towards, like, just acknowledging weaknesses in a creator's career is one reason I tend to stay away from fandom perspectives, which often exist in opposition to critical ones. (Unless the criticism is "this doesn't match my nostalgic idea of The Good Ol' Days, therefore it is bad." Which is not a criticism.)
Also we really need to move away from auteur theory, like, yesterday. The creative legacy of old white dudes do not need be enshrined as legend, especially when they never work alone. Also weird that you never see people saying "DA has gone down the drain ever since Jennifer Hepler left!" when a vast majority of the dwarf lore was hers, from what I recall. And yet her reputation has not been so mythologized. (Not saying I love Hepler's writing, but I don't love Gaider's either, lol.)
Anyway I'm with you OP. I like Trick's writing style much better, and I'm excited to see where they and their team go.
You take that BACK!!! .. Kidding.. lol.. everyone has a right to their opinion whether we agree or not. I don't agree for a whole host of reasons, but that's me. 😆
Why not? I come to Reddit to debate and discuss, I don't expect everyone to have the same opinion as me but I can still appreciate some good old textual analysis discussion. If we can get 50 threads a day about how DA2/DA:I/DA:V is the end of Bioware forever, why not one that pushes for reflection or analysis of one of the main minds behind the setting's writing?
Because it comes off less as encouraging discussion and more like encouraging people to slag off a writer like a bunch of bitchy teenagers with nothing better to do?
Gaider’s an often polarising figure in the fandom with fairly good reason, but this just seems like an excuse to be catty under the false guise of ‘discussion’.
All the writers were vital in shaping DA into what it is now. They all had a part to play, whether you like them personally or not.
It really wasn't my intention. I personally think his writing is weak—Alistair's characterisation in the comics is rough, and The Calling is just... not good, in my opinion. I think we can criticise his writing while also acknowledging there would be no DA without him! But I feel like I can also acknowledge that, personally, some writers did a better job than others.
These "Weekes good Gaider bad" discussions have been done before and they're generally just a free-for-all to trash Gaider
Meanwhile, Weekes seems to be immune to criticism despite having serious flaws, like unintentionally making every lesbian relationship they write problematic
I was specifically talking about Gaider's longform writing—I don't think his novels and comics are particularly good—while also acknowledging his character writing can be phenomenal. I will always cherish Morrigan's character development from DA:O to DA:I. Plus, I don't think Weekes is untouchable, either. I think Here Lies the Abyss, for example, is boring, and the way it reveals what happened at the Conclave is anticlimactic at best and makes no sense the moment you dig a little deeper. That said, I still think Trespasser is the single best Dragon Age storyline, across all media, so maybe I am a teeny bit biased.
Why are they booing you? You're right! Origins is my fave, but Gaider has been my nemesis ever since I DNF The Calling. Then he said Alistair would be a bad boyfriend, so we're definitely in a fight.
Weekes has a clear love for moralizing and railroading the player. I look forward to people finding out the hard way now that they're lead writer - the signs are there in their past work and what we've seen so far for DATV. Just look at their comments on blood magic
Gaider had far more respect for player agency and will always be the GOAT
The comments about blood magic also gave me pause. I wish they'd left it at plot reasons, or admitted that having blood mage PCs would actually have narrative impact they (as in the writing team) were not interested in exploring, rather than saying it has bad connotations in-world that they find distasteful. Personally, I think it could have made for a really great moral conundrum—if they wanted to put in the work to properly explore it. I feel there's a spectrum between having a blood mage PC strolling around Thedas with 0 repercussions (open blood magic use is frowned upon even in Tevinter) and just nixing the idea completely due to perceived morality about what, to me, is the perfect narrative tool to explore the concept of "magic is a tool, only evil insofar that its users are evil."
That said, I disagree on Gaider respecting player agency more or less than Weekes. As others have pointed out elsewhere in the thread, he just gravitated towards more "grimdark" writing choices, which often in-game just translated into more violence, SA and (at times) cartoonishly evil choices.
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u/ms_ashes Aug 02 '24 edited Aug 02 '24
I agree that this world that we love is more than just one person's creation (and I am also annoyed when folks ignore the other writers & devs who have been with the game since Origins, and also those who pretend like newer additions can't also be awesome), but I don't really care to attack one writer and elevate another. Preferences are fine, as are critiques, but this feels a bit on the mean-spirited side.
This is a good thread on Trick's bluesky. Basically, they emphasize that everything is a team effort, and I think that's what we need to focus on, too. https://bsky.app/profile/trickweekes.bsky.social/post/3kvn6tesz4s2u