BioWare Co-Founder: RPGs Are Becoming "Less Relevant"

[Condiments]

I'd like to comment. I don't give a shit if they streamline out some RPG elements if it makes a better game. I want a great game. I don't give a shit if it's more shooty or more talky or more micro-manage-y. I just want a great game. I was loved with ME1. I Loved ME2. I trust them to make an ME3 that I'll love too, RPG elements or not.

The point is not whether games are great or not, the industry itself is just seeing a lot less diversity. No amount of weapon customization/improved graphics is going to change the fact that the gameplay from the current game you're playing is eerily similar to the last.

With genre melding and experimentation you should be seeing MORE diversity, but instead we're seeing the same.

 

[Mookowicz]

No, plot is action-and-reaction, and exists in many games already. Most games have progressions (better guns, cars, power-ups) and consequences arising from external choices - that's not RP.

RP games have consequences arising from *internal* choices -- aka dilemmas -- which the player must resolve, and then bear the consequences. When you do that, you begin to add story that (hopefully) the player begins to identify with -- and that's what makes it RP.

My earlier point is that internal dilemma and the format for external challenge aren't really connected. You can add dilemmas to FPS and get FPS-RP. There's nothing that says RP games *must* follow an adventure format; that's simply the format inherited from popular pen-n-paper RPGs.

I don't think it's watering anything down; rather I think it's a natural development.

 

[Machocruz]

Whatever you say, Greggy boy.

Pointless statement. People who want traditional, PnP-esque RPGs don't bother with you, and the people who defend and buy their games don't care about traditional RPGs.

Trying to set the minds of your overlords at ease, that you won't some day request clearance for a game with a 6 man party and perma-death?

By the way, Temple of Elemental Evil's TURN-BASED combat is better realized than any system you or Bethesda ever implemented. Quality will always be relevant.

 

[Eggbert]

It's good for them to be critical and commercial mainstream successes, but it'd be nice to see a return to form for the classic RPGs of yore.
There's a reason Baldur's Gate is still such a fondly remembered series, because it still holds up to this day. So there's definitely a market for RPGs, just not quite as large.

YMMV on Baldur's Gate holding up if you haven't grown up with that style of RPG. I started a while back, and I'm still level three, wandering around, saving every time I enter a new area because I have a habit of running into dudes with flame arrows who one shot my wizard main character, forcing me to load a save (the main character can't be resurrected, I guess?). It's kind of hard to get into, is what I'm getting at. So the market for that style is bound to shrink as fewer people are willing to get into them.

But, then, the level up notice makes me giggle like a giddy schoolchild, so there's that.

 

[Thoric485]

Hopefully, after one more flop like DA2, EA will dissolve Bioware into EA Canada and i can stop associating this company with the people who made Baldur's Gate.

Also, another favorite quote:

"[World of Warcraft] is a touchstone. It has established standards. It's established how you play an MMO. Every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it. And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that's pretty dumb."

Funnily enough, the only MMO on the western market that has managed to sustain its fanbase and achieve growth for the last 8 years alongside WoW, is its antipode - an unintuitive, hard, unforgiving, FFA PvP, player-driven space sim named EVE Online.

But i guess making that is dumb compared to making a reskinned WoW copy that becomes F2P in a year or so.

 

[Babitz]

Bioware will never be as good as Black Isle was.

Oh, and Bioware how about before you claim that your games are defined by their "great stories", how about you make an above average narrative outside of videogame standards. Mass Effect may be lauded around here for its "EPIC STORY", but its bargain bin material in literature.

Bioware has been doing the same story over and over again if you look at it. Basically, KOTOR, DAO and ME had the same story, cliches, plot elements and character archetypes.

 

[Jake0fTrades]

Part of me is proud of Bioware for trying to move forward in a different direction.

The other part of me, of course, is saying WHAT THE F*CKING F*CK!?! But that's mostly because I love RPG's. But I have to admit. They have a point. We're not only going back to Mass Effect because it tells a good story, but because it tells it so well through it's gameplay.

When I think of RPG's with shooter elements, the only name besides Mass Effect that comes to mind is Fallout. Both of these games are wildly successful and popular. They're successful because their rich narrative compliments their entertaining gameplay. If Bioware is sacrificing some more stagnant elements of the modern RPG's to include successful elements of Shooters, then I am more excited than ever to play Mass Effect 3.

 

[tetron]

Was gonna say a lot more decided meh. Stop calling Bioware's crappy action adventure games RPGs.

 

[Dyp100]

You sure are right Bioware, that's why all your recent games have been SO GOOD!...Oh wait a minute...

I have one thing to say. Look at Witcher 2. A game much better than anything Bioware has produced in recent memory.

A great story, choices that actually matter, good combat.

What a rpg is at its core is a role playing game. You get to make the choices, you ge to decide how your character plays. Flashy numbers and charts on a screen isn't RPG, it's just game.

People are forgetting what RPG's really are and it's diluting the genre into this watery mess. It's like American beer. (If I can make that joke.)

 

[infohippie]

First they took away my text adventures. Then they took away my space sims. Now they wanna take away my RPGs. Is the game industry conspiring to ensure I never play anything worthwhile again?

 

[Faerillis]

Wow not a wise statement to release, surefire way to piss people off...

This does bring up one issue though, the difference between RPGs and 'Classical RPG Elements'. RPGs are just that Role-Playing Games, thus Mass Effect and Dragon Age are definitely RPGs. People forget that the mechanics of early RPGs were built around the limitations of the computer; computers weren't good at graphics, at conveying meaning or emotion or many of the other things we expect from games today. What they were good at, however, was Math and boolean data... Rather the same system Tabletop Games use. So how does one facilitate a game like that? Stats, lots of stats and plenty of pieces of equipment to modify those stats and allow players some level of choice.

Today those limitations don't hold the same weight, yet developers are forced to limit their game design around archaic limitations if they want to call their game an RPG or face the wrath of the fanboys. This needs to stop, we can't expect RPG development to progress if everybody keeps bitching about it moving forward. If you don't like the mechanics in a particular new RPG I wouldn't hold that against you, hell I found Fable 3 to be poorly designed overall, but don't try to force big developers to keep making old RPGs.

 

[KoalaKid]

I can't say if rpgs are becoming more are less relevant to the gaming culture as a whole even though dragon age, wow, elder scrolls, fallout, and other rpgs do seem to be raking in the money, but I can say this; if there were enough good rpgs out there I would play nothing else.

 

[Gather]

A "great" story doesn't just make an RPG; it's the concept of choice and consequences for your actions that lacks in a lot of games. Dragon Age 2 was an RPG, Mass Effect was an RPG but Gears of War, God of War, Diablo, Halo or CoD are not RPG's (Someone in this world would swear on their unborn children these games have a "great story" and RPG elements). Well... There is also the issue that Dragon Age sold well (For a game solely meaning to be an RPG) but Bioware's attempt at broadening the audience (Dragon Age 2) sold poorly. I just hope they aren't using Dragon Age 2 sales as their measuring stick (Or going "Emotion in a story makes an RPG!")

Then again, as typing this out RPG is damn vague to begin with. "Role Playing Game"; technically every game that isn't Tetris is some form of RPG; you are playing the role of (X being whatever you want to fill in).

 

[XUnsafeNormalX]

The worst part about Bioware and most of the gaming industry now is that when they don't sell their games they blame the fans.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Meh, if the changes that BioWare made when making Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 are the future, bring it on, because I liked those games better than the originals.

Having a dialogue wheel where I don't have to take five minutes to decipher between to choices that sound exactly the same, but are worded slightly different and then I end up having to reload a save because I picked the wrong choice of the two. Also, where I know that the choices that forward the conversation to and end are on right, and the important story question elements are on the left, that way I don't miss something important: The game is now better.

(That is what I didn't like about DA:Origins, I might want to now more and get more story, but the conversation ending choices and the story forwarding choices could be anywhere on the list of 5 answer choices.)

Having to spend less time messing around with hundreds of items and not having to mess around with every last detail of what everybody is wearing and deciding how long their nose hairs are: The game is now better.

(I loved that I didn't have to play dress up for my party members in DA2 and ME2. The characters in DA2 looked far better than anything they could have looked like with me putting miss matched armor that covers up what they look like when I'm actually wanting to look at them and not what they are wearing.)

(Referring to DA 2) Finally getting to play a character that has a voice and doesn't look like he is some kind of telepathic mute: The game is now better.

(We have the technology to make everybody in a game voiced, there is no reason not to use it. I want to hear my character talking, I want to hear how he feels through his voice combined with how he looks. With my character in DA:Origins, I couldn't tell at times whether he was angry or constipated.)

(Also DA 2) Now not having to sacrifice stat point to stats I'm not using so that I can get certain ability, all I have to do is half the last power in the ability tree purchased: Game is now better.

(With DA:Origins, if I thought several different mage powers were cool, I had to sacrifice several abilities because the stat points needed for those abilities were different compared to the main abilities I wanted to learn. And I didn't get ability points with every level, rationing of of ability points happened.

In DA2, I could learn whatever the heck I wanted as long as I had used ability points to buy certain abilities in the chain to get to the powers I wanted. I didn't have to worry about ability points because I always go one per level and sometimes more if I bought and used certain items or accomplished certain things. I was able to fill out the whole fire and ice elemental path, a majority of the force-mage specialization, and all of the spirit healer specialization. Instead of only having a few attack combinations like I had in DA:Origins, I had 20 or so.

Also with combat, I finally got control of my character's main attack. Instead of just stupidly having to watch my character slowly go through the main attack motions having now say in how fast they went or when they happened, I got to press the button and my character attacked as fast and as many times as I pressed the button and the animation of my character kept up and didn't look like he was attacking through air made of tar.)

So long story short: If the changes BioWare has been making are the wave of the future of their games....Go BioWare!!!!

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Now I know this can be dismissed by most as marketing spin, and trying to rationalize a move to action games, by why do it in such a way that will piss off a substantial amount of your fanbase? Is there some hidden agenda in this, or is he just really stupid? I mean, the source of your best-selling games, becomes irrelevant? What the hell? That's like saying because rock and metal and other fusions of the rock genre came out, Elvis and Jimi Hendrix are "irrelevant".

Actually it sounds like an empty statement, what the hell does "becoming irrlevant" even mean anyways. I think he's just hinting that he plans to phase out more of the RPG elements, while causing a hell of a stir, to keep them in the headlines or someshit.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Hopefully, after one more flop like DA2, EA will dissolve Bioware into EA Canada and i can stop associating this company with the people who made Baldur's Gate.

DA2 wasn't a flop.

It only got the ratings it got because of "fans" that over reacted things that didn't harm the game. The changes fixed the problems that DA:Origins had that made the game so non-engaging. I was only able to get about 30 hours of play on DA:Origins, I just couldn't get into it. Those thirty hours were on and off done over a couple months or so. When I got DA2, I picked it up, didn't play any other game until I finished it, and I finished it in a couple weeks, and each time I played, I was glued to the game and played for at least 5 each sitting. I did every quest in the game, and got 60 hours out of it on my first play through.

Yes DA:Origins' story might have been better, but the horrible combat, ability system, inventory tedium, and especially the hosed up dialogue system, were just so bad combined, I just didn't care to continue. The only thing that is going to get me to suffer that and actually beat the game is if they make carrying a save from it to DA2 and then finally to DA3 spectacularly amazing.

The only problem DA 2 had was that it only like 6 or so dungeons, but the rest of the game was so perfect, I barely noticed.

It was at least a solid 9.5 out of 10.

 

[infohippie]

I think the only AAA studios in whom I still have any faith at all are CD Projekt RED and Bethesda. The rest treat their customers as either thieves or idiots. Indie developers are where all the exciting stuff is going on these days.

 

[Thoric485]

Hopefully, after one more flop like DA2, EA will dissolve Bioware into EA Canada and i can stop associating this company with the people who made Baldur's Gate.

DA2 wasn't a flop.

It only got the ratings it got because of "fans" that over reacted things that didn't harm the game. The changes fixed the problems that DA:Origins had that made the game so non-engaging. I was only able to get about 30 hours of play on DA:Origins, I just couldn't get into it. Those thirty hours were on and off done over a couple months or so. When I got DA2, I picked it up, didn't play any other game until I finished it, and I finished it in a couple weeks, and each time I played, I was glued to the game and played for at least 5 each sitting. I did every quest in the game, and got 60 hours out of it on my first play through.

Yes DA:Origins' story might have been better, but the horrible combat, ability system, inventory tedium, and especially the hosed up dialogue system, were just so bad combined, I just didn't care to continue. The only thing that is going to get me to suffer that and actually beat the game is if they make carrying a save from it to DA2 and then finally to DA3 spectacularly amazing.

The only problem DA 2 had was that it only like 6 or so dungeons, but the rest of the game was so perfect, I barely noticed.

It was at least a solid 9.5 out of 10.

DA2 was a bigger marketing investment, but it ended up selling half what DA:O did, it had a worse critical reception and pushed away the core BioWare fanbase. From wherever you look, it was a flop and severely crippled a franchise that had started out stunningly.

Considering the short development cycle and obviously low development budget, i guess DA2 still turned profit. And i see they've drew some new people to their audience, maybe they'll build themselves a new fanbase around that - i wish them best of luck. But to their longtime fans and to the cRPG genre, BioWare is dead and DA2 was the final nail in the coffin.

Almost makes me thankful that Black Isle and Troika didn't stick around long enough to turn out like that.

 

[rossatdi]

Oh my god, someone in the industry is admitting change, burn him alive!

It seems pretty obvious that straight RPGs are a dying market, but by blending in a little more immediate gameplay you end up with something like Mass Effect 2 which was a commercial and critical success - its obviously the end of days.