Most of the article focuses on selling The Old Republic, with the RPG comment being a throw-away line that people seem to be reading more into than it actually means. As stated by many others, "RPG elements" have become increasingly pushed into other games, which has merely exacerbated the fight over "what makes an RPG?"
People have called BioShock an RPG because of the choice posed in that. I'd argue that it isn't because the choice is entirely moot. People praised The Witcher, but I found it a horrible game because I was handed a predefined character and personality and while I got to make choices, I was never roleplaying because I was always assigned Geralt's reasoning and rationale for any choice I might have made. People hated Dragon Age 2 and said it wasn't really an RPG because of an inability to affect the outcome of key events.
The story was the staple of the RPG for a long time, but now stories are common across many genres. Not all of them are great stories, but some RPGs have some pretty mediocre stories as well. Then you could argue it comes down to choices, but you occasionally get those in other games too. What about number based combat mechanics? Nope, they exist in other games as well.
At what point do the combinations of "RPG elements" make a game "an RPG" or "not an RPG"? As a blanket statement, I'd say that provided i can define the personality of my character and carry out actions and select dialogue that supports that character, the game is an RPG. However, under this definition, the Witcher isn't an RPG, and hence all its fans will burn me at the stake. And where does this leave games like the "action RPG"... or heck, even things like the old gold box games, or Eye of the Beholder, or Dungeon Master? RPGs ain't RPGs.
As for how Greg's statement reflects on BioWare's reputation, I think it's merely stating something that should have been fairly evident to people for a little while now.
BioWare have definitely been trending away from "classic" RPG mechanics for combat. There's a movement away from having a character's success determined primarily by the numbers of the character's stats and the players high level strategic direction, and a movement towards having a primarily reflex/controller-eye coordination based combat. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but without some level of control, it takes away the feeling of character progression that has effectively been a mainstay of the RPG genre since its inception.
If all the enemies you are fighting look exactly the same throughout your entire adventure, regardless of the deluge of new and deadly skills and powers you can unleash upon your enemies, there's still a feeling of a lack of progression. In an RPG, enemy variety matters - which is part of why enemy scaling as seen in Dragon Age and Mass Effect makes the game feel less of an epic than older games that would start by pitting you against rats and eventually have you working your way up to fighting golems, giants, dragons and demons. I'd suggest this may be one of the major contributors to people thinking that they "don't feel like an RPG" in these two series.
I think BioWare have some careful ground to tread in terms of managing the expectations of existing and new fans. I'm a huge fan of their work, but there are signs that give me pause for thought. The development of the Dragon Age franchise concerns me a little in that there seems to be a push to "tell the BioWare Dragon Age story" while at the same time telling players that "they get to create their own Dragon Age story."
This is a no-spoiler forum, so I can't go into detail, but the return of certain characters and the suggestion that other events have happened regardless of the player's choices suggest to me that the writers are failing in presenting the players with choices that they are willing to let them follow through with. In this age of player agency, that's a terrible crime, and makes me concerned for BioWare's storytelling in the future.
Is this "the death of BioWare"? Hardly. To me, it's just reinforcing BioWare's trend to push the RPG genre towards a more action-oriented market that's more accessible for people who don't have the patience to mull over hundreds of different character builds and don't want to read swathes of text while playing video games.
Personally, I'd still love to see games that have that multitude of character builds and gloriously dense narratives. But in the modern AAA game market, those aren't sellers, and BioWare's reputation is now such that it can't "go back" to those sorts of titles. If anyone knows of a developer that creates such games, I'll happily support them. I'd even throw up my hand to join their development team and assist. But equally, I've still really liked BioWare's recent offerings despite their movement away from that style of game, and would jump at the chance to work on one of their titles too.
It's horses for courses, people.
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I also like SW and had read the book too. If you played both games you notice ME had assets that looked just like it. Same engine maybe?
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