Kinect “the future of interactive storytelling” — BioWare

Following Mass Effect 3, BioWare can’t get enough of Kinect. To a point even where the sci-fi franchise’s executive producer Casey Hudson finds it to be “the future of interactive storytelling.” That’s some mighty high praise.

He’s explained to OXM: “It feels like the future of interactive storytelling. You’re just talking to a character, and you’re going deeper into their conversation, asking them questions and telling them things and after it’s over you pick up the controller, and it’s a cold piece of plastic, and you think ‘this is the old way, and what I was doing was the future’.”
It’s one thing to give squad commands by voice, but the real deal comes from the conversation system; “It’s very fortunate how it works with the existing system, which is that we have paraphrases. Speak those paraphrases, and they trigger that line.
“Once you start doing that, you realise you’re using different mental pathways to interact with the game. You’re not pressing buttons to talk, you’re talking to talk. And it makes conversation totally different, especially because the Kinect can isolate room noise really well.
“You don’t have to project out to your TV in any way. You can speak quietly in a conversational tone. And it hears you, and then you’re having this amazingly realistic conversation with a character.”
So, Hudson and co are quite fond of the Microsoft device. All eyes are on the company this week for quite a different reason though. Have your fingers crossed all nice and tight?