Mike Laidlaw explains how the Dragon Age writers' room tackled companions

pcgamer.com:

Companions are a defining feature of BioWare's RPGs. The band of NPC followers who join your party in games like Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age weren't just a collection of yes-elves who quietly went along with every decision you made. They pushed back and disagreed, and would sometimes leave to go do their own thing. Each of those companions had a distinct personality and voice. That's why there's still no better argument-starter among BioWare's players than asking who the best and worst BioWare companions are. (Jacob defense squad, represent.) 

And so, when a group of veteran RPG designers came together for a recent GDC roundtable hosted by PC Gamer, the question of how the writers managed their casts came up. Obsidian's Josh Sawyer took the opportunity to ask Mike Laidlaw, «At BioWare, was there a standard method for the development of the cast of companions and individual companions?»

Laidlaw was former creative director of the Dragon Age series, as well as being lead writer on Jade Empire and a designer on the first Mass Effect. But it's Dragon Age he knows most intimately, and so he answered by explaining how the writers room worked across the three Dragon Age games he worked on—dividing companions between them and collaborating when those characters interacted.

«We were firmly in the [camp of] 'You own this character, you are the voice holder for this character,'» Laidlaw said. «I imagine that's fairly common—then you have someone do a pass at the end of the game to go through the character and make sure it fits. But we would typically sit in writing rooms, and the writers would shout out, you'd have Mary [Kirby] owning Varric and Lukas Kristjanson would be like, 'Hey, what would Varric say to this thing that Sera