Paula Simons
The offices of BioWare sprawl through four floors of a nondescript office block beside the Radisson Hotel on Calgary Trail. The parking lot outside, filled with mud-crusted pickups, looks about as boring as an Edmonton streetscape can. Inside though, some 275 writers, artists, animators, programmers and game designers are creating brave, new, fantastical worlds.
BioWare, founded in 1995 by Edmonton physicians Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip, is one of this city’s biggest high-tech success stories, the production studio that created hit video franchises including Baldur’s Gate, Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Last Friday, the firm won the first Game of the Year award in Las Vegas for Dragon Age: Inquisition, which was just released last month.
“As a maker of role-playing games, we do our best to make you a role to play,” says Aaryn Flynn, studio general manager for BioWare Canada. “Books, TV and movies are all linear. When you and your friends watch or read them, you all enjoy the same experience. There’s a power in that. But there’s also a power in pushing yourself into a world, and having it push back.”
That’s the real magic of Inquisition.
The story-world of Dragon Age isn’t terribly original. It’s a knock-offof Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien, with a smattering of Game of Thrones. You’re the Inquisitor, on a quest to restore order to the world of Thedas, where rival kingdoms struggle for power, where elves are a subjugated race and exiled and Qunari giants act as mercenaries. But the stereotypical “swords-and-sorcery” is leavened by some cheeky humour and snappy banter that often challenges sexual stereotypes and corny fantasy cliche. In an industry often criticized for misogyny, such calculated insouciance about gender and sexuality is audaciously subversive.
What makes the game more unusual – and wins it rave reviews – is the extraordinary degree of control and diversity of choice it offers.
You don’t just pick the race, gender and sexual orientation of your character. You decide, moment by moment, which way the story goes. Do you fight your enemy or run away? Do you have a love affair, or spurn romance? Do you wander offto sightsee, or stay on task? Instead of passively accepting a narrative the writers have dictated for you, you choose your fate.
It’s like a choose-your-ownadventure children’s story. But instead of choosing chapterby-chapter, in this rather adult game, you do it line-by-line.
“You’re part historian, part tourist and part actor,” says Mark Darrah, the game’s “visionholder” and executive producer. “Sometimes, you get to be a warrior. Sometimes, you’re a detective. You’re always engaging in some way.”
“This is an open game, with lots of room to explore, to see the world and immerse yourself in the space,” he adds. “But there’s still, at the core, a strong narrative thread. The end is always the same. But the path you take to get there, and the state of the world you leave behind at the end, is always different.”
Darrah and Flynn estimate it takes a minimum of 80 hours to work through the quest. But depending on what adventures and romances you choose, it could easily take 200 hours or more. No two players will ever experience quite the same story.
Dragon Age: Inquisition took home the Game of The Year Award at this year’s Game Awards. Bioware
Why would someone want to devote that much time to one video game? Flynn says it’s about the story and the adventure – but also about giving players a sense of control and power they may not find in everyday life.
“There’s lots to do and lots to feel in this world. You can discover it. And when we do succeed, we are offering people a level of agency that can sometimes surpass what they’re getting in real life.”
Flynn won’t reveal the precise cost of developing the game. But he says it took “tens of millions” of dollars, and four years of staff time.
More than 200 people worked on Inquisition, including eight writers, 70 artists, 75 gametesters and more than 30 actors. Some were Hollywood stars such as Kate Mulgrew and Freddie Prinze Jr. Many were British stage and television actors, including James Norton and Indira Varma. And some are stalwarts of Edmonton’s theatre scene: Mark Meer, Belinda Cornish and Farren Timoteo. The original score was written for full orchestra and choir by Canadian composer Trevor Morris, who also composed the music for The Borgias, The Tudors and Olympus has Fallen.
Darrah says the game’s visual esthetic was inspired by Dutch Renaissance painting and Japanese print-making. While BioWare was bought by American gaming giant Electronic Arts in 2008, the Edmonton studios maintain their Edmonton identity.
