Bioware Dev: RPG Could Be This Gen’s Dominant Genre
In a lengthy interview with PC Gamer, Bioware‘s Executive Producer Mark Darrah - currently working on the last adjustments for Dragon Age: Inquisition - offered an interesting view on the Golden Age that the genre is now witnessing. He mentioned that with every console generation the dominant genre switched, and that a specific game heralded this change; clearly Bioware hopes that Dragon Age: Inquisition will be the one, this time around.
I think we’re seeing two things. With games like Wasteland 2, I think we’re seeing sort of a recapturing of that old school, top-down role-playing game from the late Nineties. I think, as well, something that’s happened pretty much every time the console generations turned over is we’ve seen the rise of a new dominant genre. Like, shooters were not a dominant genre a generation ago, they became dominant in what is now the last gen. And I think we’re about to see that again. I mean, granted, I’m not exactly unbiased on this topic—but I think we may see this be RPGs moment again.
What you’ve seen before is right around the generation switch a game arrived that sort of signaled that change. Halo 1 signalled shooters on consoles. I think Skyrim, Far Cry 3 and those kinds of games signalled big, open world games. Not necessarily RPG games.
Darrah also had an explanation on why the RPG moment could be coming right down - technology might be part of the reason, apparently, along with gamers having more sophisticated taste.
Certainly when you look back and you dissect it you can explain it as a pure technology thing—because it was racing games before it was shooters, and from a technical perspective it’s a little bit easier to make a good looking racing game than it is to make a good looking shooter. So the hardware got better and suddenly shooters got out in front. It’s even more difficult to make a good looking role-playing game. I don’t think it’s purely technology, but I think it’s easy to tell that story. I think gamers are getting more sophisticated, looking for a more nuanced experience I guess, and I think role-playing games are already ready to fulfill that desire.
As a huge RPG fan, I couldn’t be happier to see so many different, yet equally enticing incarnation of the RPG spirit. Could Bioware’s upcoming third installment in the Dragon Age franchise be the game that tips the balance towards RPG being dominant on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One? Tell us your opinion below.