The two-decades-old RuneScape is looking to improve its narrative building by taking a few pages out of Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare.
Speaking with VG247 in a recent interview, product director Matt Casey and senior game designer Tim Fletcher admitted that RuneScape has mostly featured a “scattered” storytelling process since its release, something developer-publisher Jagex has begun addressing.
“We would release a boss, then a quest would come out that had nothing to do with that boss,” said Fletcher. “Then two years later another quest would follow up on that quest. It was scattered.”
Jagex “changed the way we deliver story quite a lot last year,” explained Fletcher before adding that RuneScape now receives “a much more tightly paced narrative” that connects existing or previously released content.
RuneScape recently concluded its Elder God Wars storyline which began in February 2021 through a range of content. The saga was a step forward by Jagex to “get RuneScape up there with the big fantasy IPs” like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, which the developer intends to pursue further.
“We want to get more involved in the politics of the humans and we have been looking at a sort of Bioware style of storytelling where companions and characters play a larger part,” stated Fletcher about the future of the fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
RuneScape has had multiple iterations during its lifetime. RuneScape 3, the latest one, was released in July 2013 and exists alongside Old School RuneScape for players looking to try out the game in its original, classic format.
RuneScape was released on Steam in October 2020 where it has maintained around 5,000 daily players on average.
