In their relatively brief life as a developer, BioWare has done no wrong.  From Neverwinter Nights and KOTOR breathing new life into old franchises to Jade Empire and Mass Effect cementing new IP’s, BioWare has become a sort of golden child in the industry.  A North American firm that reinvented the RPG genre — if you’d have said that ten years ago, nobody would have ever believed you.  Maybe that’s why they felt like they needed a challenge.

Sega announced today that BioWare would be working on a Sonic RPG for the Nintendo DS.  Considering the beating that Sonic titles have been taking in the press for the last decade or so (and for the most part, rightly so), it’s definitely a smart move on Sega’s part to move outside of their in-house developers and call in the big guns.  BioWare has already proven it can take a gaming franchise that most people had completely abandoned (seriously — when was the last time a quality Star Wars game had hit before KOTOR?  Tie Fighter maybe?) and get the shop back on course.  But Sonic is a bit of a beast of a different nature — over the last decade they’ve taken a perfectly enjoyable 2D side-scroller, tried a dozen or so different ways of making it work in 3D, and created a convoluted yet completely uninteresting universe of characters and stories around the increasingly craptastic gameplay.  TV shows and comic books have built on this universe only making matters worse for people who miss the tried and true days of Sonic 2.  Nobody gives a shit about Amy Rose, end of story.

Wouldn’t a Sonic RPG just take all of this crap that nobody gives a rats ass about and make it the core focus of the game?  Would BioWare be forced to make a title all about Silver the Hedgehog and Blaze the Cat, or would Sega do the smart thing and let BW reboot the series? And how is the blinding speed the Sonic series going to jive with the slower methodical pacing of any RPG?

Too many questions to be answered by such a simple announcement.  I suppose we’re going to have to wait this one out.  In the meantime this remains as weird as peanut butter, egg, and dice.

Expect this to hit sometime in 2008.