Its incredibly weird for anybody who knows me that Ive become the romance guy, David Gaider tells me.
Im the least romantic guy.
Apparently I did it so well onBaldurs Gate IIthat James Ohlen kept handing me this stuff.
And, god, I hated it so much.
I got this call out of the blue, he says.
I went in for the interview and it was great.
But it wasnt very much money, so I turned them down.
It seemed kind of sketchy.
The office they had at the time had boxes everywhere and ductwork hanging out of the ceiling.
He took the role at Bioware, falling into games just as he had the hospitality business.
I had no intention of doing this for a living, he says.
It just kind of happened.
But Gaiders new career gathered speed quickly.
They called me ‘The Machine’ back then, because I wrote so quickly, Gaider says.
Youre leading them through the plot with little bits of cheese.
Its really the same with narrative design.
The original Baldurs Gate had numerous recruitable companions, but they seldom talked.
Only in the sequel did your party members become complex individuals with gradually unfurling personal stories.
In other words, Baldurs Gate II was where the highly influential Bioware model was first nailed down.
I was just happy to be along for the ride.
Theyve become a crucial selling point of the western RPG genre, and heavily associated with Gaider in particular.
Thankfully, his initial hatred for romances subsided as he began to see them through the eyes of players.
I went to a website that was specifically for female gamers, The Ladies OfNeverwinter, he says.
And I asked, sort of polling, What didnt you like?
I got a lot of really good answers.
The deeper Gaider dug, the more invested he became in solving the challenge.
I became intensely interested, he says.
How do I solve this Rubiks Cube?
What is it that you want out of a video game romance, specifically?
Ultimately, he wrote an unofficialdenouementfor fans looking for closure with Carth.
His new roleplaying musical,Stray Gods, features no fewer than four romanceable characters across its short runtime.
And yet all of those relationships function as three-dimensional platonic bonds, too, should the player choose.
Sometimes it can be a little bit too overt, Gaider says.
Im playing throughBaldur’s Gate 3right now.
I was making certain mistakes.
It’s like, Oh, this is very Romance for Games 101, from my perspective.
Not that I mean to put it down, its lovely and Ive enjoyed it immensely.
But thats the feeling I got.
Thats how I got to where Stray Gods is, he says.
Knowing what these romance arcs mean to these players, what they represent.
You just avoid those.
By working a romance from the angle of friendship, Gaider steers clear of serving characters on a platter.
There are some players who prefer the whole hog, as it were, he says.
But I like a little more subtlety.
The feeling that this is a character youre dealing with that has agency of their own.
Yet in the early 00s, Gaiders approach was utterly different.
When I started, I was gay but nobody at work knew I was, he says.
I didnt think of it as something that was connected to my work at all.
I didnt think it ever would be.
It couldnt be explicit, because LucasArts wouldnt allow that, he says.
So she couldnt say I love you.
It just had to be very gal pal.
These gal pals are really close!
It had to be hidden.
LucasArts certainly shut down anything they thought was over-the-top sexual innuendo, he says.
Biowares first openly expressed same-sex romance came inJade Empire, and Gaider was bowled over.
Even when we startedDragon: Age Origins, on many levels, there was a lot of trepidation.
I had a character I wanted to make gay - Zevran, the assassin.
So he can do double duty.
Despite these concessions, Gaiders mind was blown by the progress.
That absence of queer relationships in mainstream art had a chilling effect.
I guess I always thought, Ill write fantasy romances, sure, but not for me.
Nothing that I would ever play.
I can write for other people, thats cool.
I never even thought that was a question that could be asked.
We liked working on Neverwinter Nights and Baldurs Gate, he says.
But having a third party as the IP owner was a constant battle at the time.
Hasbro was such an ordeal to deal with.
Gaider and a small team set about reinventing Baldurs Gate, minus the D&D.
It had to be a Eurocentric fantasy, he says.
The magic users had to be able to cast fireballs.
Ray Muzyka was a big magic user in D&D.
Theres no atheism in that world because theres no element of faith, he says.
To me, faith requires doubt.
Afterwards, he moved onto the early development ofAnthem.
But that project was not going anywhere good, he says.
The solution was todepart Bioware, Gaiders home for 17 years.
We didn’t really think we would get that, he says.
But we took a shot at it.
The project Gaider really wanted to make was a sequel toPlanescape: Torment.
We flew down to Wizards Of The Coast and they loved it, he says.
I came up with what I felt was a really strong story and a follow-up, he says.
Wed done all the documentation and made all the characters, started the plots.
We were ready to start writing.
And then it fell apart.
I question that to this day, Gaider says.
Planescape: Torment has this reputation as one of thebest RPG gamesof all time.
I think something coming out that built on it has a lot of potential to gain notice.
Then again, that notice might not have been entirely positive.
When I think of it today, I wonder how well that would have gone over, Gaider says.
Because the fans of Planescape: Torment are the most hardcore of the hardcore.
Would they want their baby to be touched by the guy who did the romance stuff?
This is the most direct expression.
I dont have to work in the box thats prescribed to me.
I can make something that is meaningful.
Its the same reason I became the romance guy - its the challenge of it.
