BioWare - Interview @ Gamesindustry.biz

Gamesindustry.biz has posted a Q & A session with Bioware's Dr. Ray Muzyka and creative director Greg Zeschuk, focusing primarily on hardware innovations such as Microsoft's proposed controller-free system for the XBox 360 known as Project Natal, but also touching on narrative, setting and story and how they may play out in Bioware's future games:

Q: You are very much a story-driven company as far as your creative output. But your output is also – correct me if I'm wrong – almost entirely sci-fi and fantasy. Is it too soon to have more contemporary stories in games?

Ray Muzyka: No. We're interested in a variety of settings. We've already pursued a few different ones too. Jade Empire was very different for example from Mass Effect or Dragon Age. We are interested in contemporary settings. We haven't announced anything on that front, but it's safe to say that we think it's rich with possibility as well.

Q: I guess what I'm getting at is, when do we get to the point where there's for example a romantic, story-driven game on a sort of AAA scale?

Greg Zeschuk: The romantic comedy in game form?

Q: Yes, exactly.

Greg Zeschuk: That's a great question. I think we're actually getting to the point where the acting is almost there. We talk a certain amount internally about whether you need to have combat as part of the experience. Are there possibilities to actually start separating pieces of the game and actually tailor it to the audience? Certainly the core gaming experience, folks that are used to playing games over the last ten years, they want to have those battle moments, and the fighting. But there are different audiences that would maybe just enjoy the story. I think it's actually possible. I think the interesting thing about it too is I don't know if it's even necessarily a technology thing. I think once we've got the breadth of audience available to us, there could be really good opportunities created by different people coming to games that are story-driven. And primarily, that's the main thing.