Mike Laidlaw, who worked for over a decade at Bioware and was credited major releases such as Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, says he is a “Cyberpunk” nerd and would definitely work for CDPR if he gets the opportunity. The following are excerpts from his latest Game Infirmer Show Podcast.
“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.”
He further added:
“[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. 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.”