Until Knights of the Old Republic came out, I didn’t really have any interest in computer RPGs. I had sampled many of them, like Baldur’s Gate, Diablo, and even a bit of Neverwinter Nights, but none of them managed to grab my interest. Too much hack-and-slash and not enough interesting storyline. As I’ve touched on before, I felt the role-playing aspect of the computer RPG was missing.

When I got my xbox, several people recommended KotOR to me, and I gave it a try. I was shocked to discover that it was really well done. Character development, storyline and action were all well-balanced. Thinking that I must have missed something, I did a bit of research (not enough, as it turns out), and concluded that the common thread I had missed was Bioware. Their name is plastered all over the heavy-hitters of the RPG genre. Before KotOR, there was NWN, and before that there was Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment.

Things started connecting in my mind. I remembered all of those games getting really good reviews at the time they came out. Better still, I remembered Daniel raving to me about Torment. He had been trying very hard to sell me on how different it was. He told me about how it avoided Dungeons & Dragons staples like halflings and dungeons. The plane/dimension concept was almost more like science fiction than fantasy. The main character was a heavily scarred amnesiac who woke up in the morgue. Death wasn’t something to be avoided, it was a play mechanic.

Because I’m kind of a completist, I decided that I would play through Torment and NWN before I played any more of my modern RPGs (and I was already looking forward to KotOR 2, Fable, and Jade Empire).

When I got a copy of Torment and started playing, I was thrilled to discover that Daniel was absolutely right. The game was creative and unique, and kept me hooked from the first minute I started playing, despite the out-of-date graphics. It took me a few months because of my completist need to try everything, but I eventually beat the game as a magic user, and saw all of the endings.

Thrilled, I switched over to a copy of NWN and started playing. I was pleased with the improved graphics, but the game failed to hook me. The lengthy tutorial level felt like a remedial lesson, and it was quite awhile before anything happened, or I met the main characters. I stuck with it, however, convinced that the game was bound to get better.

Months later, my motivation flagging and interest dwindling, I was about two-thirds of the way through the game, and still not hooked. I gradually realized that the hook was never coming, and the idea of finishing the game itself seemed horrible, let alone playing through the expansion packs.

When Daniel was in town over Christmas, I mentioned to him that I was baffled that Bioware could produce an incredible game like Torment, follow it up with a stinker like NWN, and then go on to such incredible success with KotOR.

The answer, Daniel explained, was simple. I was tracking the wrong company. Torment was actually created by a guy named Chris Avellone at Black Isle Studios, and the only reason Bioware’s logo was plastered on Torment is because it was using Bioware’s game engine from Baldur’s Gate

So here’s where it gets interesting: Bioware created Baldur’s Gate in 1998, and Black Isle used their Infinity Engine for Torment in 1999, following their successes with Fallout and Fallout 2. In the early 2000s, Black Isle worked on the Icewind Dale series, also using the Infinity Engine, while Bioware pumped out Baldur’s Gate II and released NWN in 2002.

While Bioware was surfing on the success of NWN, they started work on KotOR, which they released in 2003. Meanwhile, Black Isle (after developing some Baldur’s Gate expansion packs) was working on Baldur’s Gate 3, Fallout 3 and Icewind Dale II when they got shut down by their parent company, Interplay.

Chris Avellone and several other Black Isle alumni took their Bioware contacts and started a new company, Obsidian Entertainment. They just released KotOR 2 in 2004 and are currently working on NWN 2. Bioware, meanwhile, has moved onto new projects, releasing Jade Empire in 2005 and are currently working on Mass Effect

So, while Bioware isn’t responsible for any of the excellent old-school RPGs, they seem to have learned a lot from working with Black Isle, because KotOR was really well done, as is Jade Empire. Black Isle turned into Obsidian, and is still putting out good stuff, though until NWN 2 comes out, it will be hard to tell if they’re just riding on Bioware’s coattails. I’m only about halfway through KotOR 2, and it’s really good, but it’s hard to tell how much of that is Avellone’s magic touch, and how much of that is because they’re building from a very solid foundation.

I suspect that if I knew more about the game industry, I could uncover another thread in the tapestry, like Chris Avellone, who could explain how Bioware suddenly figured out how to make good RPGs with KotOR, but for now I’m just happy understanding why NWN failed to live up to Torment.

And now I can uninstall NWN from my computer and move over to the xbox to finish playing KotOR 2 and Jade Empire. Then I can investigate my non-Bioware/Black Isle/Obsidian games, like Fable and Morrowind, a bit before I manage to get my hands on an xbox 360 and the new version of Morrowind it will have. Oh, and I suppose somewhere in here I should really try Daniel’s game, Dungeon Siege II, once I manage to get a copy of it…