Link: https://gardinerbryant.com/farewell-bioware-the-end-of-an-rpg-giant/

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.

KOTOR was one of my favorite games of all time. Why don't they make games like that anymore?

Because companies don't believe games like this are worth the risk.

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 :(

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

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

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.

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

I assume this means SWTOR is finally at an end state after 15 years?

Broadsword Games took over SWTOR from Bioware 3 years ago.

Wasn't it announced? What happens to it?

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.

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

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.)

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.

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.

If you want some super early hype there's a spiritual successor to KOTOR in works. It's called Fate of the Old Republic and the game director for FOTOR is Casey Hudson, the director of KOTOR (and also the Mass Effect trilogy). So there's a chance it might actually be good.