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Hyperspace Beacon: The BioWare schtick
I'm going to dote a little on BioWare for a bit. Specifically, I would like to dote on Knights of the Old Republic, the precursor to Star Wars: The Old Republic. I want to accentuate the positive up front here, because in a moment I will say things that may be construed as negative. However, they're not. I have complete respect for what BioWare has done and is doing. KOTOR was built on an original gaming engine (the Odyssey Engine). This gaming engine was designed as a 3-D version of the Infinity Engine, which is video game engine specifically designed to emulate mechanics found in the Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper game. In 1998, Baldur's Gate (Infinity Engine) -- which was said, at the time, to be like Diablo but more story-driven -- won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Computer Game. KOTOR, using a 3-D version of the same engine, is not lacking in its awards. It won game of the year from the Game Developers Choice Awards, Computer Gaming World, IGN, GMR Magazine, PC Gamer, Xbox Magazine, and G4, among other awards too long to list here. The point of this is to show BioWare's track record and to show that BioWare went so far as to build a story-making game from the ground up. Now, based on reports from Gamasutra, BioWare is using the HeroEngine for SWTOR, but that, obviously, does not mean there will be less focus on storytelling in the game. But has BioWare's storytelling energy finally run out? Have the original ideas presented in KOTOR and Baldur's Gate diminished to monotony? Has BioWare become -- dare I say it -- predictable? If it has, is that a bad thing? Continue reading to explore these ideas.
