From Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins to Mass Effect 2, BioWare helped define a generation of role-playing games. Its closure may not be entirely surprising, but that doesn't make it any less sad.

Really sad to hear that BioWare is closing its doors after 31 years. I can’t say it’s entirely surprising given how difficult the last decade has been for the studio, but it’s still a shame to see another enormously influential name disappear from the industry. This was the developer behind Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, among so many others. What an incredible run of games they had :(

I’ve written a little piece looking back at BioWare’s history, some of my favorite games from their glory days, and how depressing it’s becoming to see so many studios shutting down. Whatever you think of BioWare’s more recent output, I think gaming is a little poorer without them.

Clearly the news has been covered and re-covered, so this is just a brief look over their work.

  • DupaCycki@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    5 hours ago

    BioWare died long before this shutdown. And keep in mind not a single person who worked on their best games still worked there yesterday.

    (Okay, maybe one or two did still work there, but you get the idea.)

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    32·
    13 hours ago

    Joining Westwood, Maxis, Bullfrog and many other esteemed studios killed by EA. Farewell old friend.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
    191·
    15 hours ago

    I think BioWare had already been a zombie for years, might as well kill it off for good.

    • PerfectDark@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      10·
      15 hours ago

      I think everyone hoped for a nice modern KOTOR game, and it would have been so nice to see it. I guess Star Wars had a license change, and for so long EA just wanted a certain kind of game instead :(

      • Yamanashi@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        11 hours ago

        Disney acquiring Starwars definitely hampered any licensing at the time. Around that time I was looking forward to Starwars 1313. It looked like an absolutely amazing Starwars game that was going to play similarly to mass effect.

        • PerfectDark@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
          1·
          11 hours ago

          I heard good things about the new Star Wars XCOM-esque game, but I haven’t even started to look at trying it yet

          • Yamanashi@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            4 hours ago

            Same. The only things I’m aware about for that game is the poor performance and that most of the dev team is on furlough, so the updates are very very very slow.

          • WindyRebel@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 hours ago

            Never played an X-COM game, but I bought Zero Company and loved the ever living shit out of it. I was so sad when I finished it because I wanted more. I’ll be replaying it again for sure now that I’ve finished up some other games I wanted to get to.

          • jeeva@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            6 hours ago

            Definitely well worth a go. Lighter than X-COM but with a lovely smattering of Star Wars lore and Easter eggs.

        • zikzak025@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          8 hours ago

          The KotOR remake is still supposedly in development at Saber, but they’ve been radio silent on it. They are also fresh off of being acquired and have way too many concurrent projects. I expect news of its eventual cancellation any day now. That or they rush out a half-assed port with a bit of lens flare to capitalize on the Bioware void.

          At the same time, Casey Hudson from Bioware spun up a studio last year to begin working on Fate of the Old Republic, which is intended to be a successor to KotOR. I wouldn’t expect to see that project come out for a while longer, but at least there’s a second project in the same realm if the first one doesn’t work out.