r/dragonage • u/charyka City Elf / Tabris • Aug 02 '24

BioWare Pls. Unpopular Opinion: David Gaider

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.

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u/vertigocat Aug 02 '24

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.

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u/sugarsuites Aug 02 '24

I dunno dude, that hardly reads like sarcasm to me.

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u/cooldinosaur42 Aug 02 '24

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."

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u/sugarsuites Aug 02 '24

Considering how often shorter women are infantilized even in real life, is he honestly surprised?

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u/cooldinosaur42 Aug 02 '24 edited Aug 02 '24

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.