The creator of our running RPG of the year weighs in on BioWare's closure: 'They were fundamental to the genre'

Whipping out MDK2 was a flex of flexes on Bodegård's part, the pinnacle of niche BioWare esoterica matched only by 1996 mech sim Shattered Steel, the medical imaging equipment the company worked on before pivoting to games, and Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood for the Nintendo DS.

MDK (Murder Death Kill, nice) was a singularly weird, fast-paced, third-person shooter from Shiny Entertainment⁠—Digital Foundry has a great video retrospective focused on that first game by Shiny. BioWare, weirdly enough, headed up MDK's similarly cult and well-liked sequel.

Its development would have been roughly contemporaneous with the original Baldur's Gates, and it feels like a final, vestigial holdover of the pre-BG BioWare that hadn't settled into its RPG-centric identity yet. Both MDKs are available on GOG and Steam, but I'd wait for a sale: $20 a pop after 26+ years is a tough ask for my money.

When I spoke to Bodegård earlier this year after the release of Esoteric Ebb, our conversation mostly focused on Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment as his major influences. But even these two RPGs are downstream of BioWare: PST borrowed Baldur's Gate's foundational Infinity Engine, while many of Disco's developers cite Baldur's Gate as an inspiration⁠—I was struck by the pride of place BG1 and 2 had in Disco's special edition artbook by iam8bit.