RPG Codex - Brent Knowles Interview

Usually another news-editor would post news about The Codex, but I had to share a new interview they did with Ex-Bioware employee Brent Knowles. So here you go.

BioWare spent its early years under the wing of the publisher Interplay, and in close collaboration with its internal RPG development studio, Black Isle. Can you tell us a bit about the relationship between BioWare and Black Isle? To what degree were you guys influenced by them and their own approach to RPG design, as seen in games such as the original Fallout series and Planescape: Torment?

I can't say. I suspect the original design team (James and Kevin) were influenced by Black Isle but by the time I came on board, there wasn't much involvement anymore. I didn't really know what was going on with Planescape, for example, until I saw a later stage version of it. I suspect higher level people than me did have more of a connection with their peers at Black Isle, but by the time I became a lead, that was finished.

Were there any cancelled games that you worked on at BioWare, or projects that never saw the light of day? If so, could you tell us anything about them?

There were a couple projects cancelled during my time at BioWare, though none that I worked on directly. But as I have not seen mention of all of them online, I don't think it is appropriate for me to go into details.

I think game cancelations are a lot more common elsewhere in the games industry than they were at BioWare. I know I was fairly shocked each time an internal project was scrapped, so it was definitely not a common occurrence for us. I suppose we were a bit sheltered at BioWare.

Sorry I can't shed more light on this.​