BioWare has shed a little light on the mystery surrounding its recently announced Sonic the Hedgehog RPG for the Nintendo DS.
Speaking in an interview with Wired, BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka and President Greg Zeschuk revealed a bit about the motivations behind their decision to take on a franchise so far removed from their normal body of work. “We’re huge fans of Sonic and of the Nintendo DS!” said Muzyka. “BioWare has also been interested for some time in developing games for handhelds that appeal to both younger and older gamers, both for domestic and overseas audiences.
“The handheld group at BioWare is certainly very excited about the innovation that can take place on the DS platform,” he added. “We’re very excited by the opportunity to use all the cool features on the DS, and to make BioWare’s first handheld RPG, one with a lot of action too, since it’s based in the Sonic universe.”
The announcement of BioWare’s involvement in the project in June raised many eyebrows among gamers accustomed to the company’s work on the PC and Xbox platforms. Both BioWare and Sega have remained tight-lipped about the project since then, and while Zeschuk said, “We aren’t ready to discuss detail of the game just yet,” he did indicate that BioWare was taking the Sonic franchise as seriously as it did the Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic titles.
“We have some of the world’s best writers and designers working on Sonic, many of whom worked on previous BioWare games,” he said. “The Sonic game will definitely have all the best elements that make up a great BioWare game.”
The as-yet untitled Sonic RPG is tentatively scheduled for a 2008 release. The full text of the interview is available here.
