Baldurs Gate IIset the model, and I obviously loved that model, says James Ohlen.
But there were a ton of people at BioWare who didnt like it.
Ohlen picked his side early.
He was telling BioWare stories even before he joined the company.
I didnt really have much of a life outside of Dungeons & Dragons, he says.
A merchant NPC of Ohlens invention sold him Boo, the miniaturegiant space hamster, in an apparent scam.
In my campaign he was just a hamster, Ohlen says.
I always thought of him as just a hamster.
Have you ever readMalcolm Gladwellon the 10,000 hour rule?
I owe a lot to D&D.
My friendships, my career, my mental stability.
I hadnt intended to do that, Ohlen says.
But he was right.
Once I started using them, I started getting things done real fast.
All the characters had personalities that I already knew.
That said, inspiration for Baldurs Gate IIs much deeper companion stories came from an unlikely source.
Im very competitive, Ohlen says.
That and Star Wars, of course.
I actually totally, entirely ripped off The Empire Strikes Back in such blatant fashion, Ohlen says.
And then, after kicking your ass, he does the big twist.
Its beat by beat the same thing.
BioWare had succeeded in making its biggest setpiece not a battle, but a revelation.
At launch, it featured eight story campaigns which unfolded across 19 planets.
Looking back, Ohlen views that as a fundamental problem.
If open-world is the enemy of storytelling,multiplayeris the arch-villain, Ohlen says.
Instead, keep it shorter.
Even though the Metacritic was pretty good, it wasnt new enough to really take off.
Because Im all Star Warsd out.
I have nothing else to say about Star Wars.
But if a whole new studio does KOTOR 3 that loved KOTOR, that could be an amazing game.
So hopefully Disney makes that happen.
But probably not, because executives around there are all probably going, Its too hardcore.
I had this whole PowerPoint presentation, he says.
We have Lord Of The Rings!
We have World Of Warcraft!
Or so the theory went.
It was always chasing the gigantic successes instead of leaning into what BioWare was good at, Ohlen says.
Yet this new direction felt like an abandonment of the studios strengths.
Anthem was the ultimate expression of that, Ohlen says.
It got away from everything.
Its kind of like the anti-BioWare game.
Ohlen left in 2018, intending to retire from videogames altogether.
The big games have a formula and they dont adjust it too much, he says.
He returned to the tabletop, putting together a newBaldurs Gate adventure bookfeaturing Minsc and the gang.
But then Wizards Of The Coast called and flew him up to Seattle to discuss starting a new studio.
I want control over absolutely everything!
I want all the power!
If youve seen the games I like to build, its that style of game, he says.
But then it leans into the people and technology that I have available.
I can feel the magic in the air.
