Dr Ray Muzyka Q&A Feature

Without doubt, Bioware is one of the premier RPG studios in today video game industry, with a back catalogue of titles that stand out as key examples of the genre, including Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Jade Empire.  Twelve months ago, the Canadian outfit became part of Electronic Arts following the publisher's acquisition of VG Holdings, which also included Pandemic Studios.  At the moment Bioware is working on several projects, including Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, together with Star Wars: The Old Republic for LucasArts.

It's a busy time for Bioware, so TVG had plenty to ask the studio's CEO, Dr Ray Muzyka, when we recently caught up with the executive at Electronic Arts' UK headquarters...

TVG: At the moment, Bioware is working hard on Dragon Age: Origins, but what do you think of the current state of the Role-Playing Game genre in gaming?

I think there's some amazing things in development.  I know the stuff we're working on at Bioware is really exciting, and I think our best work is still ahead of us.  I think some of the our competitors in the industry as doing some great games too, like Fallout 3 - Bethesda, I have a lot of respect for them.  Blizzard too. 

For me, the diversity of RPGs today is very impressive.  The range of things that people are doing in all kind of different platforms and formats, from single-player to multiplayer, [is impressive].  I think that maybe the definition of RPGs can be expanded to what it used to be; it's not longer a small, niche genre.  It's also merged and blended into other types of games too, look at GTA; I would argue that that's an RPG because they've got a lot of progression and customisation, the story,  a lot of diverse choices with consequences. That's all something that we at Bioware strive to put  into our games to, the strong storyline and choices.

TVG: So the genre for you has become more mainstream?

I would say so, yeah.  The way people define RPGs has expanded - some of the features like story and progression, customisation, exploration, tactical choices in combat - there are a lot of ways that you can get those sort of experiences now, and they're not always called 'RPGs'.  GTA IV in many ways is an Role-Playing Game, but it's approaching it from an action side of the fence, and not the RPG side which is where coming from.  But we're all aiming at the same place, which is a wide expansive universe with lots to do, an epic and deep backstory, character customisation, tactical choices.

TVG: One of the comments you've made about Dragon Age is that it's the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.  That's quite a big pair of boots to try and step into, even though Baldur's Gate was one of Bioware's own titles - what do you base that on?

Well I can base that on a few things.  First of all, Bioware did Baldur's Gate, and we have a lot of the same people working on Dragon Age.  Secondly, I was one of the producers on the original Baldur's Gate, so I know it really well.  I can look and play Dragon Age, and see how a lot of the things are an evolution of the gameplay to a darker, grittier, fantasy universe.  It's a mature approach to traditional high fantasy; so it's different in that sense, and yet it's got a lot of the same things that Baldur's Gate that fans love, but taken to the next-generation: tactical choices, beautiful graphics, a much richer and deep storyline.  We still have the same pillars in our games, as we did back then, but we've now evolved them to a higher level in every case.

TVG: You mentioned there about beautiful graphics, something that Bioware titles have had.  From a PC point of view gamers are going to have to have a hefty rig to see those visuals, and at a time when people are also trying to deal with the current economic climate, I was wondering whether you felt that high-end PC gaming is going to suffer as a result?

Well I think at Bioware one of the things we try to do is make our games very scalable so you can play them on a range of systems, and of course Dragon Age is on console as well.  It's going to be on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, so people can choose how they want to play it.  I think that people are going to be be very pleasantly surprised to see the range of systems that will run it on a PC and still look really great, and play really well; of course, the high-end systems will have an amazing experience with all the bells and whistles on.

TVG: When it comes to multi-platform gaming, genres like Real-Time Strategy continue to struggle on the consoles.  Do you think this can be said about 'traditional' RPGs?

Maybe not as much.  You can argue that its possible for RPGs to transcend platforms a little bit more.  One of the things we do at Bioware is spend a lot of time making sure that we lovingly convert each conversion, making sure that things like the interface and the controls and the content are adapted, so that they're suitable for each platform they're on.  Our goal is to make each version of a game as good as it possibly can be for that platform, optimised and lovingly converted, handcrafted.

TVG: Obviously Bioware is also working on Star Wars: The Old Republic at the moment...

Yeah, we've got a great team down in Austin.

TVG: ...what do you feel about the reaction from the Knights of the Old Republic fan base when it was announced that the next title would be an MMO rather than 'Knight of the Old Republic 3' - and those over-sized lightsabers?

We've addressed the last point, as you can see from our latest screens.  It was a bug more than anything else, and it's kind of amusing in retrospect.

In terms of 'The Old Republic' versus 'Knights of the Old Republic', it is set in the same universe and a lot of the team did work on Knights of the Republic.  We joke that it's really like playing Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, just from the sheer volume of content.  I think fans are going to be really impressed with how rich the story is, and how rich the progression in customisation is.  I think they're going to be very impressed.

TVG: So a Knights of the Old Republic 3 is now dead in the water?

Well you'd have to talk to LucasArts, because Star Wars is their IP.  We're partnering with them on The Old Republic; they were great partners to work with on the first Knights of the Old Republic, and beyond that you'd have to talk to them.

TVG: But as far as Bioware is concerned, the MMO is the only title you're working with LucasArts on?

The project we're working on with LucasArts is The Old Republic.

TVG: Going back to the subject of video game development in the current economic climate, many RPG studios seem to have faltered over the past twelve months...

How so?

TVG: Well studios like Iron Lore went bust after the release of Titan Quest for example, and many of them produced PC only titles.  Do you think that Dragon Age as a brand will be stronger because it's going to be available on the consoles?

I think we want to reach the widest range of consumers and audiences that we possibly can.  We know that some fans love playing PC games, and we love them; they're great supporters and we want to make sure that we continue to make content for them.  We also have fans that love console systems; we have fans that play all kind of different games.  We want to make a games that appeal to a wider audience as possible.

TVG: Dragon Age: Origins is the first PlayStation 3 title from Bioware.  How has the team found development on the console, given that there were many stories of its difficulties in the first year post-launch?

It's been great.  Every platform has its challenges and its advantages.  We've enjoyed working on every platform to date, from PC to Xbox 360 to PlayStation 3; they all have advantages and different fans who support them, and we want to reach lots of fans.  We love making great games and getting them into the hands of as many people as possible, and make sure that every version has loving attention to detail.

Quality is our watch word, and we always want to make sure we're delivering high quality.

TVG: Bioware is a year into being a wholly owned subsidiary of EA...

Even a little bit longer, because even though it was formally completed in January [2008], we were effectively working together as a team for a number of months before that, knowing that it was going to happen.

TVG: ...how has that continued to develop since the acquisition, and is it what you expected perhaps?

It's great to be a part of EA.  It's great to be a development studio, but we're also a publisher now.  Both on the retail and digital front, we're developing the games and now distributing them to our fans - we get to control all aspects of the marketing and the messaging.  That's really powerful, to be able to make sure you're able to message the product you're making so that it reaches your fans.  That's been a really good experience.

TVG: I guess being under the EA umbrella offers Bioware a greater level of security during the recession than it would have if it was still an independent studio?

Absolutely, I really glad that we're part of a strong, stable company like EA.

TVG: Western RPGs generally follow a dungeon-crawling format.  What do you think is the real innovation offered by Dragon Age: Origins that perhaps has been found lacking in RPGs in the past?

Well I think that there's a bunch of things that we're doing in Dragon Age that's really innovative.  The universe itself is something quite different.  I think the fans are going to really love it because it's not your traditional high fantasy, it's fantasy that's more gritty - we call it 'Dark Heroic Fantasy'.  It's aspirational; I think they're going to be really surprised and delighted to know that they can make choices with such consequences and have such impact.  It's mature, and that's innovative.

Just the way we get to build a rich, deep world.  One of the things that really impressed me when I looked into the plans the team was putting forward, was that every origins story really affects the story twists that you get to see as a player.  So choosing a different origin story, there are six origins, you're going to have a very different experience, with different dialogue, different cinematic sequences, different experiences in terms of customisation, progression, and tactical choices in battles - different endings in the game depending on which origin you pick.

That's a huge investment by the team in building a game with such a diversity of choice, and more than that, just the choice leading to different effects and experiences.  You're going to want to replay this game because it's so rich - and it's a big game, there's a ton of content.  It's really returning to our roots, and I think that's something that fans can be excited about; they can really sink their teeth into Dragon Age for a long time.

We're also innovating in post-release content and user-generated content with our tools.  We're releasing tools for the game that are really powerful, they're going to let players create new adventures and new content.  We're going to support and release lots of new content after release too, so even though the adventure is huge it doesn't end when you finish the game.  There's going to be more content that continues onwards and afterwards.

TVG: You're talking about user-created content for the PC there, but what will console gamers get post-release in the form of downloadable content?

We haven't announced any plans yet, but fans will be pleasantly surprised to see some of the things we're planning.  We want to make it as wide as possible; if there's a way we can explore to allow user-generated content to more fans then we'll try to pursue that.  At the very least, we'll release a lot of content ourselves.

TVG: Including Premium content with new missions, not just some fresh loot?

A mix of everything really.  Maybe some stuff will be free, maybe some stuff is paid content.  Naturally, when people pay for something they have high expectations of it, and rightly so.  They deserve to get good content if they're paying for it - they keep us in business, and we appreciate that.

TVG: You spoke about the narrative web of Dragon Age: Origins with its multiple choices.  The Holy Grail for RPGs must be where every small choice can have an impact on the overall story...

I think players want big decisions, they're not necessarily looking for minuscule decisions; they're looking for macro, for big, decisions.  They want to be a hero.  Dragon Age: Origins is all about being a hero, [it's] an aspirational fantasy, a dark heroic fantasy that's doing big stuff with impact.

TVG:  You've spoken on a number of occasions about Dragon Age: Origins being a darker, grittier universe.  Do you think that high fantasy as a genre has relied on 'Tolkein-esque' fantasy too much for its ideas and depictions?

Maybe.  I think that there's a place for both.  We're trying to pursue a path that's going to have a nice mix of both low and high fantasy that we're calling 'Dark Heroic Fantasy' and has the best of both worlds.  You could argue that there's been a lot of high fantasy with dancing elves and things like that; certainly there's been a lot of that in recent years.  Maybe that's why we made the choice to do something a little bit different.

We have elements of that; we have elves as you saw.  They're not your traditional expectational races; they feel gritty; they feel like they're people with motivations; they going to want you to side with them and if you don't, there's going to be consequences for that.

TVG: Aside from the main quests, what sort of side-missions can we expect from Dragon Age, and how do you avoid them feeling like Fed Ex quests?

Well I think we have lots of light content, but I hope a player's experience of it isn't as a Fed Ex quest, because I don't think that would be very fun.  You have to put it into the context of the world, even if it's a little lighter.  You have to make it feel like it's important, that it's got its own place, that it's got meaning - it should feel like you're dealing with real people that have their own motivations, and ambitions, and desires.  I think that when you're meeting characters in the game they feel that way; they feel rich and alive.

TVG: Where do you feel the RPG genre will be in five years ago?  What would you like to see as being technically achievable in the genre by then?

I think for us it's a continuous evolution; we're always looking for each game to be better than the last.  You can look at Bioware's history and time-line, we did this a while ago as an orientation for new employees, and it was just really interesting to see fifteen years of our Bioware RPGs in a row.

If you trace the arc up, you can see that we're getting better with each game.  If you continue drawing along that line you can see we're evolving the graphics to make these rich, deep worlds real, and incredible places.  The maturity of the content, not gratuity of the content, making it appropriate and sensible for whatever universe is something that we always strive for.

Every one our games, including those we haven't talked about, has they're own sensibilities in order to feel alive.  That's really what RPGs are all about; it's not just the moment-to-moment experience, it's the summation of your activities.  It's the activity chains you get in between progression and customisation, tactical combat, exploration, making deep choices with consequences in the storyline - exploring a world where you feel like the hero.  That's the meta-view of it, there are a lot of technical things you have to solve in order to make that happen.  The exciting thing for me is that with every generation of hardware the bar gets raised, enabling us to deliver greater and greater things as creators and artists for our fans.

TVG: That increase in the bar also raises the budgets of developing high quality titles; there has to be a ceiling on that though, where it's just not viable to push the technical barrier further because of cost?

Well it also gets easier when you have higher levels of technology.  If you have good tool paths, and you're trying to raise your technology and your tools smartly, then you can make content more easily too.  That's something that we're striving for, and I think there are a lot of studios at EA that are doing that really well too.  User-generated content is another way to enable your fans to become creators, and join you in the quest to deliver great post-release content, and we're pursuing that with Dragon Age as well.

TVG: Last year, Bioware release the Sonic Chronicles RPG on Nintendo DS.  What's the future hold for the studio on the Nintendo platforms?

We enjoyed developing Sonic Chronicles, and Nintendo platforms are really exciting to us; we think they're great systems to develop on.  There's obviously a different audience; Sonic Chronicles was aimed at a younger audience than say Dragon Age, which is for a mature audience.  I can't say what the future might bring, but we've enjoyed our experience working with Nintendo so far.

TVG: So it's not quite the time for casual party games for Wii from Bioware?

One of the things you can rely on is the thread that binds all of our games together, the activity pillars in our games; we talk about them a lot - the rich, deep universe, tactical combat choices, exploration, progression - those are the things that bring our games together.  As a result, they're always going to feel like a Bioware game, even though they're set in different universes and you get to do different activities. They're always at the core of very rich experiences.


TVG would like to thank Dr Ray Muzyka for talking to us.  Dragon Age: Origins will be available on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 during the second half of 2009.