BioWare founder believes games can be entirely story-driven

Posted Jul 6th 2009 8:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Culture, RPG, Mass Effect Series, Dragon Age: Origins, Star Wars: The Old Republic

When we think about games we mostly think about features; what weapons and/or powers we can we get and how combat works with them. But could a game like, say, Dragon Age: Origins be made that allowed the player to just experience the story with no combat at all?

BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk believes that answer is, "Yes". In a new chat with Gamesindustry.biz he states, "We talk a certain amount internally about whether you need to have combat as part of the experience. Are there possibilities to actually start separating pieces of the game and actually tailor it to the audience?." He added, " . . .there could be really good opportunities created by different people coming to games that are story-driven. And primarily, that's the main thing. "

So the question is: Would you buy a game that focused mostly on telling a story with little to no combat or is that kind of combat interaction still needed in an RPG game?

Gallery: Dragon Age Origins

Tags: bioware, dragon-age-origins, null, star-wars-the-old-republic

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Note: There's already a type of game that can do such a thing.
Visual Novels. Despite almost all of them having shitloads of sexytime scenes that would make Fox News ejaculate (You know, with Mass Effect? Get the joke?), there are some that have such great stories. Examples are works by Type-Moon(Tsukihime, Fate/Stay Night) and Key(AIR, Kanon, Clannad). Posted at 8:59PM on Jul 6th 2009 by Tye The Czar

Yeah, almost all of them have that happyfunsextime scenes to give the people a reason to buy that instead of a book with similar material.
Would you buy a book you have to read through, with no pictures, or a small cartridge that you can pop into your DS and all the work you have to do is click and look at the images?
Exactly.

What they are suggesting has already been done, its called a movie. I am not going to spend 50-60 bucks for a "movie" when Final Destination does the same thing for 10, and we see how well that movie did.Posted at 4:37PM on Jul 7th 2009 by devilsei

Two words: Dear Esther.Posted at 12:44PM on Jul 8th 2009 by Gastrodon