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.
Time to install NWN. Never could get too interested in playing it, except perhaps listening to music and looking at maps while running around, especially with cheeky DnD character names and armor and looks and plot, but it’s a DnD game with decent custom campaign with multiplayer ability, the closest it seems for me to IRL DnD of those games, and really removing the need for remembering dozens of nonsense numbers and rules.
They also made Linux version of NWN in the olden days, if somebody perhaps remembers. When I was trying to become an advanced Linux user, I first installed Debian and liked it, then tried Gentoo and failed to find where my wireless drivers are, or to set wi-fi up, in any case couldn’t use it without wire, but got a look of vanilla Gnome 2 of its last supported days, it was very nice, and installed NWN from portage (it was there) and played it a bit. Then moved to Slackware, and also played Linux versions of NWN and old CK2 (somehow it was less laggy than now and seemed more balanced, history in the game seemed to develop more logically, except, of course, it was just a glossified and simplified European feudalism simulator with no ambition and no sense in playing anywhere but South Germany).
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.
Time to install NWN. Never could get too interested in playing it, except perhaps listening to music and looking at maps while running around, especially with cheeky DnD character names and armor and looks and plot, but it’s a DnD game with decent custom campaign with multiplayer ability, the closest it seems for me to IRL DnD of those games, and really removing the need for remembering dozens of nonsense numbers and rules.
They also made Linux version of NWN in the olden days, if somebody perhaps remembers. When I was trying to become an advanced Linux user, I first installed Debian and liked it, then tried Gentoo and failed to find where my wireless drivers are, or to set wi-fi up, in any case couldn’t use it without wire, but got a look of vanilla Gnome 2 of its last supported days, it was very nice, and installed NWN from portage (it was there) and played it a bit. Then moved to Slackware, and also played Linux versions of NWN and old CK2 (somehow it was less laggy than now and seemed more balanced, history in the game seemed to develop more logically, except, of course, it was just a glossified and simplified European feudalism simulator with no ambition and no sense in playing anywhere but South Germany).