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BioWare Co-founder Says JRPGs Not Evolving
While up at BioWare’s headquarters in Edmonton, I had the opportunity to throw some questions at company co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. I was curious about how the duo felt about the current RPG landscape in general, and why we’re seeing more and more western-style RPGs while JRPGs have, at least among North American audiences, fallen somewhat to the wayside.
“The fall of the JRPG in large part is due to a lack of evolution, a lack of progression,” Zeschuk said. “They kept delivering the same thing over and over. They make the dressing better, they look prettier, but it’s still the same experience.”
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Interview: BioWare’s Dr. Ray Muzyka
BioWare has been creating Role Playing Games for many years now, but arguably their rise to mainstream fame arrived when the Canadian studio released Mass Effect on the Xbox 360. Playing like an interactive adventure book, gamers could experience a deep and engaging intergalactic story which seemed to fuse elements from Star Wars, Star Trek and Blade Runner together.
Leading the creation process is BioWare’s General Manager, CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Ray Muzyka, who recently attended Electronic Arts’ Winter Showcase to talk about Mass Effect 2, the so-called Empire Strikes Back in the game’s planned trilogy. We chat to Ray about the new faces we’ll see in the sequel, the improvements made over the original Mass Effect and why Ray believes this game is the best that BioWare has ever made.
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BioWare Could Integrate Co-Op Play into RPGs
Cooperative gameplay seems to be one of the most present videogaming trends of 2009 with a lot of titles, like Borderlands, selling well mainly on the strength of the experience they can offer when played with one or three other buddies.
Even Modern Warfare 2, traditionally focused on a single player experience and a separate multiplayer component, is offering a Spec Ops mode, where bits taken from the campaign can be tackled by two players. And it seems that role playing games might be next to be taken over by co-op, with BioWare poised to be on the front lines of the charge.
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Preview: Mass Effect 2
From a bystander’s perspective, it would be easy to mistake Mass Effect 2 as yet another cover-heavy shooter, where all one does is pop out of door frames, blast aliens in the face and progress to the next wave of enemies. And in some ways that’s what it has become – and BioWare is thrilled to bits with the result. We’re also sure that players of the first game will be inclined to agree.
Of course, it is still a role-playing game, and comes with a more targeted and adventurous story to carry it forward into a planned trilogy.