One of my favourite companions in Dragon Age: Origins is Shale. She's a deadpan, dry-voiced golem with a hatred for pigeons that does credit to her dwarven, grudge-bearing heritage.
She was also a day-one DLC character but, while discussing her, series creator and lead writer David Gaider reveals that was mostly due to a lack of time, and the fact she was downright impossible to write.
During a recent saga of Bluesky threads shared by the writer on the series' many companions, Gaider reveals that Shale was initially the darling of a BioWare writer who wanted to bring her stony-ness to life: «Shale was initially taken on by Jay Turner, then one of our junior writers,» Gaider explains. «Jay had an idea to make Shale more of a robot, an emotionless automaton killer… think HK-47, but without the layer of sarcasm.
I was leery, and told Jay he'd have to be very careful. 'Emotionless' can very quickly turn into 'boring', after all, unless you're VERY careful.
But Jay was determined.» Things, unfortunately, didn't go so great—and Gaider regards his decision to let Turner jump into the deep end as a mistake: «There's been a couple of times in my career when I've let a junior convince me with their enthusiasm to take on something my experience said they shouldn't.