Дрю Карпишин: от BioWare к новым проектам и возвращению в Wizards of the Coast.

Canadian novelist and video game designer

Drew Karpyshyn (born July 28, 1971) is a Canadian video game scenario writer, scriptwriter and novelist. He served as a senior writer for BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and lead writer for the first two Mass Effect video games. He left BioWare in 2012 to focus on his Chaos Born novels, and returned to it three years later in 2015. On March 9, 2018, he announced he was leaving BioWare once again to pursue his independent work.

Karpyshyn was at one point employed as a loan officer. He got his start as a game designer for Wizards of the Coast, and he also has written two novels for Wizards of the Coast, both published in 2001 and both set in the Forgotten Realms setting: Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal and Temple Hill. Karpyshyn joined the video game company BioWare in 2000. He wrote the scenario and much of the dialogue for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, for which he would share the award for "Excellence in Writing" at the 2003 Game Developers Choice Awards. He was later one of the lead writers and planners on Jade Empire, and worked on several games in the Baldur's Gate series. His next major project was the Mass Effect series of games. Karpyshyn moved to Austin, Texas to help with Star Wars: The Old Republic. He later started working on Anthem in 2017. In March 2018, he announced that he would once again leave BioWare to work on other things, including more original novels, co creating a sci fi graphic novel, and freelance gaming work. Karphyshyn announced in February 2020 that he had joined Archetype Entertainment, an internal studio of Wizards of the Coast with former BioWare staff James Ohlen and Chad Robertson as studio leads. Archetype had been revealed in January 2020 and that it was working on a new science fiction role playing game. Karphyshyn said that while his interest in video game development waned as BioWare had changed over the years, "my passion has been rekindled. The feel in the studio reminds me of my early days at BioWare; I can feel the magic in the air."