BioWare was shut down by EA earlier this week. While the studio had struggled through a long stretch without putting out a genuine classic, it’s no lie to say it was behind some of the best RPGs of all time. At its peak, with games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins, BioWare was a pioneer of not only building worlds, but filling those worlds with characters I (and so many others) actually cared about.
But BioWare went so much further than just writing some witty dialog and calling it a day. I always think back to the Mass Effect 2’s climactic suicide mission, where, unless you’ve completed all of your companions’ loyalty quests and built up those relationships, there was a real chance they would just die, never to return in the trilogy’s final chapter. BioWare built personal, heartbreaking consequences into its stories.
The games BioWare made in its heyday were incredibly influential, but I don’t think there are any games from other developers that tried to build on those successes that truly hit the same level. Even BioWare struggled to capture that same magic in its latter games. But while I don’t think there is anything out there close to the ultimate quality of the Mass Effect trilogy or the first three Dragon Age games, the spirit of BioWare’s best work does live on in the work of the games they inspired.
Just in the last few years, there have been plenty of games that draw straight from BioWare’s well, and there are quite a few projects in the works, including two that look like they could just be new BioWare games.
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