Flush with nerves ahead of the pending release of his new studio's first game, Dragon Age writer David Gaider is, like many of us, finding comfort in Baldur's Gate 3 and its sheer commitment to the bit.
"If [Baldur's Gate 3] shows us anything, it's that it's worth doing whatever you're doing with your whole ass," he reasoned in a tweet. "Lean into it. Take those risks. Why we make games is why we play them, right?"
Gaider is now one of the leads at Summerfall Studios, and its debut game, Stray Gods, is out tomorrow, August 10. Our Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical review is already live with more than a few good things to say about the game, so it'll be interesting to see how it's received by fans.
- The Making of Baldur's Gate 3: "We really wanted to make it so that even if you don't know D&D or Baldur's Gate, you would still have exciting choices as a player"
- Legendary Dragon Age writer looks to Baldur's Gate 3 devs while giving EA advice after The Veilguard: "Follow Larian's lead and double down on that"
In case the name didn't give it away, Stray Gods is an offbeat RPG that's also not quite a "full-on RPG," in Gaider's words, and the writer says he knew it was a risky niche from the get-go.
"'Why a musical?' The first time someone asked me this it was someone I'd worked with, and it had a bit of flavor to it like 'Why would you make something so incredibly risky and not an RPG'" he begins. "Like making an RPG wasn't also risky if you didn't have massive cash lying around."
Gaider says he'd long been enamored with the way musicals could express a character's "innermost feelings" and wanted to work that into a game somehow, even pushing for a "baby step" through Dragon Age Inquisition's "The Dawn Will Come moment."
"After we did it I tried to think how we could improve it," he continues. "Could you make the musical part... interactive? That's what games excel at, isn't it? Just as the core of narrative changes the moment agency is introduced, so does the core of a musical. It's what we learned making Stray Gods, and tomorrow I guess we'll see if that clicks. If it makes even one person's heart leap and consider the possibilities, I'll smile."
"Maybe it won't work. That's OK. I knew going in this would be a risk," Gaider concludes. However, he adds that "maybe it will work," circling back to Baldur's Gate 3, which he says he's been playing "since there's no sleep to be had anyhow."
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