Book Review: BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This huge 328-page hardcover is for the BioWare fans. Author Ben Gelinas has done a good job distilling 25 years of history into this beautiful book. This is the book to get if you want to learn more about game development from behind the scenes.

The list games and cancelled games covered are:

Shattered Steel
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of AMN
MDK2
Neverwinter Nights
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Jade Empire
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Revolver
Mass Effect
Agent
Mass Effect 2
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age II
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Mass Effect 3
Dragon Age: Inquistition
Shadow Realms
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Anthem

It's pretty impossible to give each game the proper amount of coverage since BioWare has created so many games. For example, the combined amount of text for Anthem is just four pages. You'll definitely get more dedicated art and stories from the individual game artbooks.

This book is a wonderful retrospect of BioWare games packed with stories and plenty of artworks. There are also many BioWare trivia scattered in the book, some related to the company, some to the games. For example, half the initial development team almost died in a car crash before BioWare could get going, several pieces of concept art drawn on paper were damaged by coffee spills, Dragon Age II was originally Dragon Age: Exodus

It's quite fun to see how far BioWare has come. Great book for the fans.

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.

BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | AU | JP | CN)

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