BioWare's incredible legacy will continue as long as there are RPGs

Dungeon Master(Image credit: Future)For my column this week I was going to write about climbing all over monsters in Dragon Dogma 2's chilly Dark Arisen expansion, but then EA decided to finally murder BioWare after years of slowly poisoning it. So sadly I am pivoting to this eulogy.It's hard to discuss BioWare's demise without detailing the corporate meddling that led to one of gaming's most celebrated and enduring studios getting the axe. BioWare made mistakes, undeniably, but the buck stops at the executives who gutted its teams and never understood, for instance, the popularity of Dragon Age.But things are bleak enough and you know all this already. So instead, I want to celebrate BioWare's impressive impact, which will continue for as long as studios are designing RPGs. Even if BioWare ceased to exist after its incredible run of Infinity Engine games, it would still be considered an icon. Baldur's Gate was, for so many people, the CRPG, defining an era of roleplaying games and echoing across the decades. We're still talking about it, and studios are still designing games built on that old foundation. Owlcat, Obsidian, Larian—three of the biggest RPG studios of the current era have all dipped into that well. Without BioWare we'd not have the Pathfinder CRPGs, Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny, and Baldur's Gate 3 certainly wouldn't exist. (Image credit: BioWare)Obsidian as we know it would likely be a very different studio without BioWare, if it existed at all. It formed after the closure of Black Isle Studios, which published Baldur's Gate, and it relied on BioWare's Infinity Engine for Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment. That relationship continued under Obsidian, with the team following up BioWare's Neverwinter Nights and KotOR with celebrated sequels, before making Pillars of Eternity, BG's spiritual successor.Obsidian as we know it would likely be a very different studio without BioWare.The modern resurgence of CRPGs, born out of a love of BioWare and Black Isle's library, probably would not have happened if the two studios had not made such a huge impression. Disco Elysium, for instance, owes a great deal to Planescape: Torment, and if ZA/UM had never created Disco, we wouldn't have games like Esoteric Ebb or Zero Parades either. Following Baldur's Gate, BioWare gave us Neverwinter Nights in 2002, a game that was still undeniably a CRPG, but one that catered to the demand for 3D graphics. Neverwinter Nights was solid, but its real legacy was the Aurora Engine and the Aurora Toolset.(Image credit: Beamdog)BioWare gave players the power of game creation with the toolset, with which they spawned countless worlds, modules, mods and persistent servers—effectively community-run MMOs. It was my first foray into modding, when I created a D&D adventure for my flatmate's birthday. I was a broke student, so I couldn't afford a gift, but I could absolutely skive class and make a cool game. Folks are still playing with the toolset today, in a community that has persevered for over two decades. Also in 2002, a small Polish developer was founded. CD Projekt started life as a localisation studio, and it worked with BioWare and Interplay to create the Polish version of Baldur's Gate. From that relationship, it was given the job of porting Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance to PC. Unfortunately, that port was a victim of Interplay's demise, but bigger and better things were on the horizon. The company formed a new studio to develop its own games, known as CD Projekt Red, and started work on the original Witcher. The studio then licensed the Aurora Engine from BioWare, which it heavily modified to create Geralt's first big videogame romp. CDPR's joint CEO Michał Nowakowski paid tribute to BioWare after the closure announcement, saying, "Bioware has been a massive part of CDPR history. We befriended them when localizing and selling Baldur’s Gate games in Poland, Czech, and Slovakia. And later they were [a] great help when lending us their engine for Witcher 1, sharing their wisdom and even giving us a spot at their booth at E3."As the popularity of CRPGs started to wane and consoles began to dominate, BioWare adapted and pivoted.As the popularity of CRPGs started to wane and consoles began to dominate, BioWare adapted and pivoted. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was still secretly a CRPG, but one that you could play on console with your controller, with so much of the classic CRPG complexity hidden from view. KotOR kicked off a series that continued with KotOR 2, from Obsidian, and BioWare returned to the series for SWTOR, a MMO that continues today under developer Broadsword. At the time of its launch, it was the most expensive MMO ever made, and it continues to be an astonishing achievement in terms of the absurd amount of dialogue and voice acting. (Image credit: EA)With KotOR, BioWare really started to refine the features that would go on to influence so many RPGs (and games in other genres). BioWare RPGs have al

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