Be of service, but let them understand that they need you
more than you need them’,” Gallagher remembers. “And
he wasn’t being confrontational or gnarly. It was just, ‘Hey,
man, you’re an essential voice here, and your contribution
means a phenomenal amount to the process’. That was
his bit of advice for me, anyway—be your own boss, don’t
take their s**t, and you’ll be fine.” McQuarrie also told
them, “Enjoy the process itself.”
Luckily, Gallagher wasn’t left alone to create in a
bubble. Every step of the process was a collaboration
between BioWare’s art, design, and writing teams. No
single person was responsible for a given character.
“James [Ohlen] and I had a creative shorthand,”
Gallagher says, “and we’d finish each other’s sentences
when it came to design. James would usually just say,
‘Well, make somethin’ cool’.”
Growing up, Ohlen had served as Dungeon Master for
his friends in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and the West End
Games Star Wars RPG was a favorite pastime. “I took
characters from the campaign I ran, their names and
personalities and stuff, and those inspired some of the
characters in Knights of the Old Republic—Carth, Bastila,
Zaalbar, and Mission,” he says. “That was a quick source
of inspiration. I’d done that with the Baldur’s Gate series,3
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