Seems I ran out of room for the title. Anywho, remember BioWare's somewhat negative comments towards the JRPG genre? It seems they feel their comments were overblown, and in a recent interview with Industry Gamers have decided to point out some of the games from Japan that they do appreciate.
A few words from Greg Zeschuk, head of BioWare:
Greg Zeschuk: Well, it’s interesting. I think in the past year we saw a very interesting counterpoint to that argument, which was Demon’s Souls. That title was, in my mind, probably one of the most innovative RPGs/games in ages. So, there’s still flashes of brilliance, obviously, and I think… I haven’t played Final Fantasy XIII yet, but obviously I hear a lot of how they’ve gone a very different direction than one they’ve traditionally gone: much more streamlined, which is interesting.
[...]
Greg Zeschuk: I think the other thing, too, is that the Japanese market has gotten quite a bit weaker and weaker. It’s just not as strong a market. It used to be a tremendously strong game market, so I think they’re kind of looking at it going, “man, we’ve got to figure out where else we can sell these,” and I think the traditional, very structured, old-school structure RPG wasn’t selling anymore; so now, I think we’re going to see some changes. I think Final Fantasy XIII, you know, I can’t say first hand... but I know definitely Demon’s Souls was a very, very different direction than any Japanese RPG I’d seen before.
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And a comment he made on gaf:
Specifically - I said that Demon Souls was awesome - and to be clear, if you haven't spoken to me in person about the game you don't know how awesome I think it is. I believe it's one of the most unique and well-crafted games to come along in years. The clever merger of the mechanics (death, souls, respawn, game invasion) and the fiction (the "dead zone" containing souls of adventurers) is pure brilliance. The actual gameplay and atmosphere are also stunningly good. I've played a lot of games from From, and I wasn't expecting something like this from them. In a sense, this game shoots a big whole in my argument, but I can't help but think of it as an outlier.
