Bleszinski’s comment stemmed from his praise of Ken Levine, the creative mind behind BioShock, in an interview with Develop. He was impressed, not just with BioShock as a game, but with how Levine managed to disguise an RPG as a first-person shooter in order to enable a strange, unconventional game to sell millions of copies.

The Epic man went on to highlight the work of designers Harvey Smith (Deus Ex, Invisible War) and Randy Pitchford (Borderlands, Brothers In Arms) and declare that the future of shooters is RPGs. Later in the interview, when quizzed on where the Gears of War series might go next, he returns to that statement… but without further elaboration.

What does Bleszinski mean? It’s not entirely clear, save to say he views BioShock as an exemplar of this genre hybridisation.

Muzyka’s comments do offer slightly more insight, as he told Wired:

“Genres are almost a vestige of the past,” said Muzyka. “In a way, a lot of the best shooters are RPGs as well, because they allow you to have progression, exploration, combat or conflict, and a story.”

OK, so things are now starting to take shape. I think what both developers mean is that various elements of role-playing games are bleeding deeper into other genres. They’re looking at what other developers are doing across various genres and appropriating the best bits for their own use.

The thing is, RPG elements have been infecting shooters for years. (Or is it the other way around?) At launch in 1994, System Shock was – hilariously, in hindsight – damned for being a clunky clone of Doom, with its complex interface and inventory system and its emphasis on cautious exploration over trigger-happy fragfest. In reality it was a prescient vision of a gaming utopia free from the burdens of genre demarcation.

Deus Ex perfected the crossover, marrying stats-based character progression, functional stealth mechanics, meaningful dialogue options and a multitude of possible mission paths. Yet you could still play it as a shooter, even if it wasn’t necessarily the best straight shooter you could play.

Muzyka told Wired he believes the defintion of an RPG to be “broad”. But if he thinks it means having a strong story or letting the playing explore or having them choose some ability upgrades, he’s wrong. An RPG is more than that; an RPG is focused on enabling players to decide the role they want to play. It’s about choices: where to go, what to do, who to be?

The success of Call of Duty as an online multiplayer game has much to do with its co-opting of an RPG-style experience system. It encourages continued play by offering a clear path to obvious rewards. It doesn’t make it an RPG though it does introduce elements of an RPG. Every new shooter needs a similar XP and class system to stand a chance of building an online community.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a shooter operating within the structure of an RPG. Fallout 3 has much in common with Deus Ex, aside from substituting the latter’s linear mission structure for an explorable open world. Even Far Cry 2, while not conferring any kind of character advancement, lets you explore its world and tackle encounters at your own pace – both elements more at home in an RPG than a typical shooter.

Upcoming games like Borderlands, Mass Effect 2, Brink, Rage, Halo 3: ODST, Modern Warfare 2, BioShock 2, to name a few of the more high profile ones, are no longer quite so readily compartmentalised as strictly a shooter or an RPG. Rather, they all exist at some unspecified point on a fluid spectrum between the two labels.

So, sure, the future of shooters may well be RPGs. But also, isn’t the future of RPGs looking like it’s going to be shooters?

What do you think about the cross-pollination of the shooter and RPG genres? What are these hybrid games gaining and losing? And what are your favourite examples?

Instead, BioWare creative lead Greg Zeschuk envisions mainstream games driven by story and acting, not “battle moments,” telling GamesIndustry.biz that “we’re actually getting to the point where the acting is almost there.”

Obviously, not all games rely on lasers, swords, and laserswords to succeed. But even 2008’s bestsellers still relied on combat, whether that meant shooting Locust hordes in the face or launching blue shells at other kart racers.

Zeschuk and fellow BioWare lead Ray Muzyka believe we’re on the cusp of seeing blockbuster games “that are story-driven.”

Muzyka, in particular, thinks the video game industry is at its “mid-point of maturation.”

“It’s almost like we finally got our camera built in the movie sense,” he says. “It took a long time, decades in the movie industry, where we went from black and white to talkies to the point where we actually started to get rich acting and direction and the subtle moves of camera and things like that that are now accepted practices. From that point on the industry just flourished, and I think the videogame industry is at that point now…”

Doctors On Call [GamesIndustry.biz]

BioWare co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka, who is now heading up the merged division, says… mmmaaayyybbeee.

Anything’s possible. We can’t say it wouldn’t happen. There’s no active plans, currently to do that, but the teams at Mythic and BioWare I know from talking to all of them, they’re really excited about working together, so I think that fuels a lot of cool things. People start talking about ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if we did this, or did this together?’ That kind of thing might evolve over time.

Knights of the Old Mass Relay: The MMO? Oh, we can only hope.

BioWare Comments on Mythic Merger [IGN]

Creating what is effectively a massively multiplayer RPG development juggernaut, EA has tapped Muzyka to become Group General Manager of their new RPG/MMO Group, with fellow BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk acting as Group Creative Officer. With the departure of Mythic’s Mark Jacobs, Mythic co-founder Rob Denton will step up as the General Manager of Mythic, reporting directly to Muzyka. BioWare’s operations will remain unchanged.

So in effect, EA has handed the reins of Mythic over to BioWare, blurring the lines between the two entities by organising them under one group. It’s sad to see Mark Jacobs go, as he was a major contributor to the success of Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, but it should be very interesting to see what direction WAR travels in now that Dr. Ray is at the helm.

Mythic and BioWare Form New RPG/MMO Group [Warhammer Herald]

BioWare boss Ray Muzyka, “We’d be intrigued by the idea of developing on Wii but we have nothing to announce right now. We do have some unannounced projects that we’re not ready to talk about yet, and they are different from some things we’ve done in the past.”

Oh? “If we did a Wii game,” he continues, “I think we’d approach it with the target audience in mind first and the vision of delivering an emotionally powerful narrative and go back to our basics in terms of some of the pillars of gameplay we’d like to bring to bear — exploration, progression, customisation, conflict, story, narrative, and characters. How do we adapt that to the platform? That’s how we’d approach it.”

Muzyka goes onto talk about how interesting the Wii platform is, etc. Granted, Muzyka is speaking hypothetically here (apparently!) and not confirming a BioWare Wii game. If, if BioWare did a Wii game, it wouldn’t be the first venture onto a Nintendo platform for the company. BioWare previously developed DS title Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood for SEGA.

BioWare ‘Intrigued’ by Wii Development [Industry Gamers via Joystiq]

You can’t have a ginormous fantasy epic without at least three different races — elf, human, dwarf, etc. — and you can’t have elves and dwarfs without racism according to fantasy standard-setter J.R.R. Tolkien.

In typical BioWare fashion of reinventing the plot wheel, Dragon Age: Origins aims to redefine the fantasy genre; and it’ll start by rearranging the racial tension between your standard fantasy stock types. Normally, say BioWare headmen Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, high fantasy like Tolkien’s dictates that elves are creatures that “sashay through the countryside” – they’re very pretty, very aloof and very, very elitist.

“So,” said Muzyka, “here’s an example of elves being different in Dragon Age: Elves were enslaved by the humans at one point in Dragon Age, so they hate humans, they despise them. Humans in turn have a lot of disrespect towards elves. [...] That’s something that hasn’t really been done before is introducing a lot of racial tension and back story and intrigue behind the scenes that’s sort of totally optional, but it makes the world feel that much richer and real.”

Certainly, BioWare is no stranger to racial tension — you couldn’t expect the sheer number of alien species in Mass Effect’s galaxy to all get along with each other, right? But this is the first I’ve heard where you get to make a conscious choice to be the oppressor — or even the oppressed.

“Your experience… is going to be very different depending if you choose to play an elf origin story or a human,” said Muzyka.

In a way, it doesn’t sound different than making the choice to have Shepard be a man or a woman. But there’s a subtle difference to Dragon Age that you don’t see in Mass Effect or even in close fantasy cousin The Witcher: Shepard was Shepard; Geralt was Geralt — the main character was somebody else. If BioWare has their way in Dragon Age, there won’t be that layer of separation between player and character. You’ll be the racist; you’ll be the persecuted — depending on which race you play.

“We’re defining a new type of fantasy genre,” Muzyka explained. “That’s one of our goals is to make this a landmark event in fantasy, defining something that hasn’t been done before quite the way we’re doing it — dark heroic fantasy.”

The first Mass Effect tried to play like a shooter, but never really got there. Still, felt like an RPG, just one you played over-the-shoulder. The sequel, though, is going to be different.

Or so developers BioWare hope. Speaking at GDC yesterday, BioWare’s Ray Muzyka explains that, of the “bigger buckets of things we’re working on” for Mass Effect 2, perhaps the most important is the way the game feels in terms of its shooting and its action.

“One of them is the intensity of the action, amping that up so people will see this as a shooter RPG”, he says. “It’s going to feel like shooter fans are going to have a great experience”.

And RPG fans? Guess that’s a question for another day. In the meantime, enjoy the new piece of concept art up top there.

BioWare Talks Mass Effect 2 [IGN]

Some have given up on PC gaming and have already thrown it on the funeral pyre, but not BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka. He totally believes in it.

Muzyka optimistically says, “I think there are more people playing PC games and more dollars being spent on the PC space than ever before, but it’s taking a different form.”

More people playing, Muzyka believes, comes in the form of casual games. More money being spent obviously refers to MMOs. So don’t go counting PC gaming out. Ray Muzyka believes in it, and he’s not only a licensed medical doctor, but also a giant.

BioWare: PC gaming is in fine health [CVG via Massively]

“We look at every platform that comes along. Obviously, something that’s as big a cultural and technical success as the iPhone is something you really got to take a close look at. Certainly, there’s nothing written in stone yet but we’ve got a lot of folks looking at it. It’s intriguing. I think one of the things that we’ll have to see how it shakes out is what type of consumer buys games on it and what type of experience they’re looking for. You want to always mash the consumer experience with what you’re building. We want to understand what people are going to do with it. Who knows. We’re definitely looking at every platform.”

They were speaking, by the way, as part of an interview in which they reiterated their fealty to the PC platform, calling the market “vibrant”. So are iPhone games about to become “the hot new thing”, or are they already?

BioWare Confirms PC Support, ‘Looking At’ iPhone Development [MTV Multiplayer]

It’s very tasteful, but it is an emotionally intense scene, and there’s a number of similarly emotional scenes in the game, not just romances but across the board – different relationships between characters.

I see videogames as an art form, and they’re an emergent art form. They’re a commercial art form, but they’re still art regardless. And the good thing I think is the fact that people are talking about that kind of scene; it had an impact on them.

It proves that videogames are an art form and proves that Mass Effect is an innovator in that. It’s in some ways leading the way and willing to push the envelope a little bit and actually deliver stuff that’s really compelling.

During the interview, Muzyka also talks about “big plans” for DLC on both Xbox 360 and PC, discussing an “all about quality” philosophy for add-ons that he says will incorporate fan feedback.

Interview: CEO Ray Muzyka talks Mass Effect PC [CVG]