It's clear that Laidlaw loves role-playing games, loves thinking and talking about them.
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"To me, the hallmarks of a classic role-playing game would be: story-driven, stat-based, and to some lesser degree, there's a bunch of ancillary baggage that comes with it. I have inventory, I have customization."
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"I think [Dragon Age II] sidesteps what I see as almost like traditions. Traditional weak points of the classic RPG are ... they're daunting. High barrier to entry. They're hard to get into," he says. BioWare's own player-tracking statistics tell a similar tale: a significant portion of Origins players had their own mystifying "other" moments, dropping the game after only an hour.
"They weren't even getting an Achievement," Laidlaw continues. The team was tempted to chalk those dropped players up to rentals, but the stats made it clear that people simply dropped the game.
Those stats had a dramatic effect on Laidlaw and his team, prompting them to totally re-evaluate how Dragon Age II fits into the auspices of classic role playing. "So our goal with 2, I think, is to strip away a lot of that barrier to entry to let you ease into the game," says Laidlaw.
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