During last week's GDC extravaganza, I listened to quite a few podcasts; on a few of these shows, I heard the BioWare guys touting their upcoming RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. My first reaction to this title way back when it was announced was nothing more than ambivalence. While I'm sure the folks at BioWare are capable of making fantastic games, if there's one setting I'm sick of, it's traditional fantasy--and we Westerners tend to make it as ponderous and needlessly epic as possible. But it's important to note that we're not the only ones with this problem; the Japanese also abuse and overuse the fantasy setting in their RPGs as well, which is why games like Earthbound and the Persona series stand out so much from the crowd.
For whiners like me who are sick of swords, dwarves, and dragons, BioWare does have an answer, but it really only pays lip service to the problem of fantasy RPG oversaturation. Essentially, Dragon Age is not the Lord of the Rings ripoff many thought it would be; instead--BioWare claims--it's a mix of Tolkien's high fantasy and the low fantasy seen in the novels of authors like George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire). Obviously, this line was cooked up (and repeated multiple times) to assuage the fears that BioWare is taking a step back in creativity; after a stunning take on sci-fi with Mass Effect, it's more than a little disappointing to see BioWare spinning their wheels in the ground they previously tread with games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.
The big problem with all of this is that BioWare isn't being honest with themselves. They obviously like the fantasy setting; why tiptoe around that fact? People who love old-school fantasy (and there are a lot of these people) are going to buy Dragon Age in droves, but those of us who've grown tired of the medieval style will probably never be convinced. BioWare is full of talented developers who know what they're doing, but I'd be more impressed if they made a new game with a setting that wasn't so obvious--as long as we don't see anything like Jade Empire again.
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