Mike Laidlaw spent over a decade at Bioware, where he was credited for major releases such as Jade Empire (Lead Writer), Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II (Lead Designer), Dragon Age: Inquisition (Creative Director) before leaving the company in late 2017.
Laidlaw has been doing some consulting work since his departure from Bioware and when quizzed on the latest Game Informer Show podcast on how he would react if CD Projekt RED asked him to go work on Cyberpunk 2077, he replied:
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They would certainly, absolutely raise an eyebrow. I’m a giant Cyberpunk nerd, straight up, Neuromancer is my favorite novel of all time. Like, William Gibson could write on the stall of a bathroom and I would make a small pilgrimage there.
For the most part, moving to Poland and moving my family, and that kind of stuff, would be exceptionally challenging but Cyberpunk’s always had a draw.
Laidlaw then proceeded to talk about his relationship with CDPR so far and his opinion on the difference between The Witcher and Dragon Age.
[I hear from them] On and off. It’s not like we can go and grab a coffee since Poland is far away. But when I see them at conventions I tell them their games are absolutely fantastic and usually, they reply with the same thing. CD Projekt RED licensed from Bioware the Aurora engine, which was the Neverwinter Nights engine, to do The Witcher one. A lot of people forget that and are like ‘Oh, you guys must hate each other because fantasy!’ and I’m like ‘No, man! No. I get to play their game and I don’t know how it turns out. That sounds awesome!’
A lot of people are like ‘The Witcher is better’. Sure – unless you want a party and the other things that make Dragon Age stand out as unique. They make different games. We had to lean into tabula rasa characters since you can be a Qunari or an Elf, a male or a female, all these player characters are different, whereas they had the advantages and disadvantages of having a fixed player character in Geralt which led them to dig into his story, his relationships and so on.
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Frankly, I think it’s to the industry’s benefit. If we all make the same game it would kind of suck. I think we need Divinity, we need The Witcher, we need Skyrim.
