BioWare is dead, and my feelings are a strange cocktail of anger, sadness, and Jack\u2019s Complete Lack of Surprise. The legendary RPG studio was bought by a private investment group earlier this year, and history shows that venture capital frequently kills what it touches, extracting whatever value out of it that it can before moving onto the next victim. It\u2019s a hell of a contrast to the beginning of BioWare, which started out as such a pure thing. Two practicing doctors, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, quit medicine to pursue their dream of making computer role-playing games. Sure, the studio was bought and sold a couple of times between then and now, and yes, BioWare\u2019s recent results haven\u2019t lived up to its venerable past, but my goodness, what a legacy this studio leaves behind.<\/p>\n
Everyone knows Baldur\u2019s Gate now on account of Larian Studios\u2019 Game of the Year-winning, 10 out of 10 Baldur\u2019s Gate 3 from 2023, but what younger gamers might not know is that the first two Baldur\u2019s Gate RPGs were built by BioWare in the late \u201890s. While they weren\u2019t the studio\u2019s first games \u2013 that honor goes to the 1996 mech action-sim Shattered Steel \u2013 they were the two that put BioWare on the map. Each was an incredibly deep and sprawling RPG based on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset that was good for upwards of 200 hours of gameplay. At the time, they reset the bar for what a CRPG could be. Let me put it this way: Baldur\u2019s Gate 1 took home IGN\u2019s Game of the Year award in 1998\u2026 over Half-Life<\/em>. That\u2019s how good Baldur\u2019s Gate was.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nBioWare: Stories and Secrets From 25 Years of Game Development – Exclusive Book Preview<\/h3>\n