Bioware's Storytelling

I watched the first in a series of lectures available online from the 2005 Game Developers Conference. The session title was "Storytelling Across Genres: BioWare's Perspective" and the guy speaking was Greg Zeschuk.

It's a lecture about some of the techniques used to build up the plots in games, from intro to "drop of doom" at the end of the game. BioWare's portfolio includes: Knights of the Old Republic, NeverWinterNights and Jade Empire.

Interesting from Bioware's perspective is that they have worked with game IP both old and new, with "predictable trade offs" for both. Having seen the Dungeon and Dragon Online (MMORPG) communities moaning and complaining about which rule will or wont be available from the PnP game (pen and paper), I think original IP is the more attractive option, even if it requires a more creative imagination to set up in the first place.

Zeshchuk said that Jade empire contains 340,000 spoken words, over 300 voice parts. Gheesh... and when he highlights the art involved in making all the characters voices, movement, scripts, interactions believable, its easy to see why AAA titles are becoming so damn expensive to produce.

The level of detail BioWare go into to create an immersive game setting is fantastic. Knowing how well received both Jade Empire and KoToR have been, it seems that BioWare have a pretty successful formula for story telling. I hope that the innovation that lead to the forumulae helps it develop story telling in games further.

I think I'll head into town tomorrow and pick up a copy of KoToR and see if its "creamy middle" still holds it own two years on!