When you say collection of games – I heard you mention the pen and paper RPG -are there plans to try and take the direction into other types of games?

Yeah, we’re looking into –in addition to the pen and paper- we also have some people who are very active in the boardgaming community. We’re looking in those sorts of directions, like card games. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities within the IP to tell a lot of stories in a lot of different ways. I think there’s some things that you can do within a pen and paper system, or within a board game, that you can’t do easily within a computer setting.

I’m very curious about the role of the marketing of the game, in particular in recent months and how much of a connection you have to it.

I’m involved in the marketing, with the marketing group. They have more independence than most departments have within the EA structure. But yeah, I’m involved in selecting direction and approvals and such.

The direction lately has been emphasizing some of the more mature themes with the bloodiness of the game and the violence and sexual themes. How representative of the game do you think some of these materials we’re seeing are?

The thing with a game the size of Dragon Age: Origins is that you have 100, 120 hours, or more of material that you’re drawing from. So when you’re doing a marketing message, it’s a necessity to do sort of a concentrated aspect of one piece or another. So when we choose to focus on violence, you end up with something that’s extremely violent. When you choose to focus on like romantic interests, you end up with something that’s quite romantic. It’s representative of things that appear in the game, but it’s, of course, spread over the game as a whole.

Moving on a little, can you talk about the game’s antagonist and how he (or she) drives the story?

Yeah, sure. So, in the game you’re playing as a Greywarden. Greywardens are a society that has existed for millennia to help fight against darkspawn and The Blight, who are this corrupted force. Basically, corrupted humans, corrupted other races and - so, what you’re doing – basically you’ve been discredited because it’s been centuries since the last Blight and you have to bring these different groups together to fight this Blight.

Specifically I’m curious about the range of villains. It looks like from what I’ve seen from playing the game so far, there’s potentially a collection of villains or, at least, antagonists you have to contend with. Is that accurate or is it sort of you up against just the one big bad?

There is the overarching Blight, but one of the interesting themes within the Dragon Age universe is the fact that humanity, even in the face of something like the end of the world, will still have their internal struggles. So, even though they should be banding together and fighting against this Blight, they’re still fighting within themselves. So, while you’re trying to build forces fighting off this one big evil, which is the arch demon, you’re encountering lots of other antagonists that are going to be in your way; some for political reasons, some for evil reasons. There’s a wide variety.

What is a success story for this game? In six months, when the game has been out, what are you hoping for?

For me, what I really hope for is that this establishes this intellectual property as a place to tell stories. That people recognize it as a new look on fantasy that is sort of a departure from traditional fantasy and that it opens up the gates to us telling stories for years to come in this space.