I was trying to find a quote from somewhere in the game and found this post instead. Holy shit! Look at those playlists! All those soundtracks. I used to get teased for listening to soundtracks! So many names that fill my headphones every day at work. Hans Zimmer! John Williams! And–and–cripe, look! Cloud Atlas! Doctor Who! My people!

And on the non-instrumental end of things, oh my god, K.D. Lang’s Hallelujah for Solas. I didn’t even know she did a version of that song.

And they divide up characters for writing! How fascinating! I mean, okay, it makes perfect sense; you don’t want characters to suddenly clash discordantly with the version of themselves written several chapters ago by someone else. I get that. I just didn’t know they’d have the money or manpower to protect against such pitfalls. I rather obviously abhor spoilers and so exposed myself to zero percent of this production-type stuff, pre-release or before I finished a first playthrough. (Ah, I see that this was only posted December 12–so I feel slightly less like I missed something glorious due to my head-in-the-sand position on spoilers. Likely I just missed it because I was neck-deep in finals, work stuff, or…well…playing DA:I…) But this is marvelous! I love seeing the divisions, how the person who wrote Character X also wrote Character Y, etc.

And ahahaha, I see that Dorian was written by no less than lead writer David Gaider himself. How I wish I’d been around when the call had gone out, I think it was via a Twitter poll several days ago, to see who we’d like to reprise their roles in future DA games! Dorian, Dorian, a thousand times Dorian. Though it is sad that realistically, choices have to be made. That the carpet of possibility can’t just keep unfurling ad infinitum, paths branching and branching again, allowing for infinite narrative, infinite reprisals, infinite trotting loyally after much-beloved characters. This being, of course, impossible, I know. And for good reasons. That aside, the fact that the lead writer wrote him gives me hope. Maybe he’ll stick around. There are a metric fuckton of fans who’d surely love to see it.

Anyway, this post kicks the stuffing out of my tongue-in-cheek DA:I “alternate” playlist. Which playlist was heavily if successfully contributed to by his husbandly self, since my exposure to 1980s pop culture is very, very piecemeal. But it was only ever meant in fun. This epic playlist the BioWare writers posted, though–that is stuff to create to. (If I, er, could listen to music whilst writing. Which I can’t. But I can get up and pace frantically with music blaring, and then put it on pause and sit back down to type! That I can do.)

Also, you have to love the line: “Sacrifice/ascendance/wonder etc.” Yeah, you know. Etc. And then: “Guitars and sudden silence. Stuff is on fire.” Ayup.

I tend to try to close my ears and eyes to the people behind the creative works I love (with the notable exception of David Mitchell, because that man’s charisma, when he’s talking about something he cares about, does this to your heart) because I don’t want to be disappointed. But this post is the shit. Finding it was like stumbling onto a herd of unicorns in the subway. Brewing lattes. Made of rainbows.