Bioware vs. their Fans

[SajuukKhar]

Valve has the common sense and human decency to actually work on their games until they're done and done right. Unlike pretty much everyone else that big, save maybe bethesda and cd projekt (irrational is good too, who seem to be content with shitting out whatever buggy mess is on hand at deadline, taking everyone's money and wiping their hands of it. In short, valve actually cares about their reputation and community.

Actually looking back at Half-Life 2, Portal 2, and L4D2's histories one will find Valve actually spent tons of time working on something else, then threw it all out at the 10th hour and just made something up relatively fast.

Valve can be described as good on accident a lot of the time.

 

[The Bum]

EA did much the same thing with the Battlefield franchise. Still Brilliant games, but in some cases...lacking. (Or, in ME3's case, a roll coaster ride that ends in a crash into a brick wall.)

 

[thememan]

Alot of the people who hate the ending (and im willing to admit i do) forget that 95% if not more of that game was freaking amazing..

I honestly don't get this sentiment. The remaining 95% was a grab bag of really quite good gameplay/story mixed with rather uninspired missions, broken gameplay elements, pointless time-wasting, and rather poor story elements.

My initial reaction was that everything after legion's last scene was downhill from there. Truth of the matter is though that much of the elements before this point were a mixed bag. Couple this with only the facade of any actual decision making (I found out very quickly that one's choice in the ability side of things really changed nothing at all, and the weapon upgrades were almost unnoticeable in terms of actual effect), and a good chunk of the game was rather boring, predictable, and uninspired. The game really has more wrong with it than the last 10 minutes (Which I'm of the opinion is just the cap on a massive mound of "meh"). The entire endeavor seems rushed with very little actual foresight put into it, and very little attention paid to anything even remotely akin to depth.

Edit: I also don't understand how anyone could have put more than 30 hours into the game itself. I finished it in just over 20 hours, and was relatively completionist in the endeavor. I scanned every system to the fullest, fulfilled almost every side-mission, and in the end was missing only about 100 or so war assets. Hell, half this time was pretty much spent doing the rather pointless fetch-quests, returning to the citadel, searching the entire bloody thing to find out if I found anything that somebody wanted, returning back out, scanning bloody well again, etc. & so forth. Really, a massive chunk of the game is spent doing absolutely nothing of value. Actually gameplay is logged somewhere between 10-13 hours worth of time, with very little actual replay value added. And really, a good portion of this time is cutscenes/dialogue. The game is bloody well short, with only a facade of length added to it in a cheap and pointless fetch-quest system with a broken journal entry system.

Which makes me wonder. The journal system is so obviously broken, I have to wonder if it is intentional. Adds length to the gameplay, as you continuously have to return to the citadel and go back out again. In essence hiding the fact that the game is ridiculously short by modern standards.

 

[Gemore]

Alot of the people who hate the ending (and im willing to admit i do) forget that 95% if not more of that game was freaking amazing..

I honestly don't get this sentiment. The remaining 95% was a grab bag of really quite good gameplay/story mixed with rather uninspired missions, broken gameplay elements, pointless time-wasting, and rather poor story elements.

My initial reaction was that everything after legion's last scene was downhill from there. Truth of the matter is though that much of the elements before this point were a mixed bag. Couple this with only the facade of any actual decision making (I found out very quickly that one's choice in the ability side of things really changed nothing at all, and the weapon upgrades were almost unnoticeable in terms of actual effect), and a good chunk of the game was rather boring, predictable, and uninspired. The game really has more wrong with it than the last 10 minutes (Which I'm of the opinion is just the cap on a massive mound of "meh"). The entire endeavor seems rushed with very little actual foresight put into it, and very little attention paid to anything even remotely akin to depth.

Your completely welcome to your point of view, but i personally enjoyed 95% of the game immensely, felt that it was a fitting end to the trilogy and it retains its number 1 spot in my personal favorite games

 

[thememan]

Alot of the people who hate the ending (and im willing to admit i do) forget that 95% if not more of that game was freaking amazing..

I honestly don't get this sentiment. The remaining 95% was a grab bag of really quite good gameplay/story mixed with rather uninspired missions, broken gameplay elements, pointless time-wasting, and rather poor story elements.

My initial reaction was that everything after legion's last scene was downhill from there. Truth of the matter is though that much of the elements before this point were a mixed bag. Couple this with only the facade of any actual decision making (I found out very quickly that one's choice in the ability side of things really changed nothing at all, and the weapon upgrades were almost unnoticeable in terms of actual effect), and a good chunk of the game was rather boring, predictable, and uninspired. The game really has more wrong with it than the last 10 minutes (Which I'm of the opinion is just the cap on a massive mound of "meh"). The entire endeavor seems rushed with very little actual foresight put into it, and very little attention paid to anything even remotely akin to depth.

Your completely welcome to your point of view, but i personally enjoyed 95% of the game immensely, felt that it was a fitting end to the trilogy and it retains its number 1 spot in my personal favorite games

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think the game was *bad* in the strictest sense of the word. Much of the game was quite good. But I can't seem to find a single element that was necessarily "stellar". Further, I found myself getting quite bored during certain parts due to some rather uninspired missions (Biggest offender in my book is Cerberus base: How many bloody times do I have to clear out a nearly identical room filled with nearly identical baddies? Ronnach was another example... wave of geth, disable gun, wave of geth, disable gun, wave of geth, I'M DONE!).

That said there were some missions I had quite a bit of fun with. I just don't really get how any reviewer that is being completely honest could give any game, ME3 included, a perfect score. Or give ME3 a near perfect score at that. It's a solid game, and I mostly enjoyed myself, but I found quite a bit to fault it with to say it was any better than "A good bit above average". To many elements were either rushed or not given a large degree of consideration. I don't understand the 9's and the 10's, really. After reading a few I really do wonder if they actually played the game at all.

An 8 is reasonable in my mind, but anything more and I really am quite cynical towards. As far as "professional" reviewers are concerned, anyway. If you absolutely loved the game in it's entirety, I'm not one to tell you wrong. Every game has it's fans who view the game differently than others(And some are quite awful that have fans that love them). I personally though just don't see it. It simply isn't the "Bee's Knees" or whatever you crazy kids use these days.

 

[shadowyoasis]

The main issue and its been stated by other posters is publishers.

Publishers have too much power in the gaming industry, lets take for example Novels.

When you write a book, the publisher provides a great deal of financial support and usually editors to help pick up grammar mistakes. But the publisher never gets a say in how the story ends. This is left up to the Author.

Publishers, like EA, are in it solely for the money as they should be. Their job is to provide financial assistance and impose deadlines. Thats it. However, publishers in games have direct influence on development and use the threat of "pulling funding" to add in or alter features. This job should be the job of the development team not the publisher.

When multiplayer suddenly became a big thing many games were published with shoddy multiplayer because the game was originally meant to be singleplayer but publishers felt they needed to branch into the MP market and forced development teams to add multiplayer aspects. This ruined both the singleplayer and the multiplayer experience.

This shouldn't have happened, yet they do this and worse.

Publishers are needed and they are a necessary evil in the long run, but they've grown to0 powerful.

 

[Smithburg]

I dislike EA more than Bioware, Im just irritated at Bioware recently for all the shitty interviews talking about artistic integrity when they used their artistic integrity to use stock images for talis face and ripped a picture of deviantart for the stargazer scene. Thats real integrity there...

As for EA, they Killed Westwood, so I can never like them DX

 

[XUnsafeNormalX]

Another company bought by EA and gutted of it's good staff that runs on brand name alone.

It's like taking Ford Sedans and putting Lamborghini stickers on them, eventually people WILL catch on. Aside from the few people driving their sedans around screaming "IT'S NOT THAT BAD YOU JUST DON'T APPRECIATE GOOD CARS!"

 

[veloper]

I dislike EA more than Bioware, Im just irritated at Bioware recently for all the shitty interviews talking about artistic integrity when they used their artistic integrity to use stock images for talis face and ripped a picture of deviantart for the stargazer scene. Thats real integrity there...

That's a very good point. So much for integrity.
We already established that there is no artistic vision either, since the original lead-writer was divorced from his creation.

So ME3 is art, without artistic integrity and without artistic vision.

 

[SoMuchSpace]

Yep, this is EA at work.I'm guessing 2-3 more rushed games from BioWare before they decide to shut it down."Oh well." says John Riccitiello while drinking wine and keeping his foot on BioWare's dead, burned out corpse.

After Deus Ex : Human revolution lackluster ending, i honestly thought that endings couldn't get any worse.But after seeing ME3 endings i realise that atleast Eidos Montreal had the bloody decency to atleast justify each ending with a monologue.The whole clipping of stock footage for Tali and ripping of the FIRST result when you type "space winter" in Google images is also not BioWare.

 

[likalaruku]

Who's more hated these days? EA or Ubisoft? Both companies I loved no 10 years ago.

Bioware's my number 2 favorite, just keep cranking out bisexual fantasy RPGs.

 

[shadowyoasis]

I'd say ubisoft is the more evil of the two. EA Drm comes in the somewhat-friendly form of Origins which is steam-lite.

Ubisoft DRM casually abuses puppies on your keyboard then sends you the pics, along with illicit pictures of him and your mom.

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

I love DA2, it's much more fun than the first one. Mass effect 3 was great, until the ending. I agree that EA is ruining and will continue to ruin Bioware, for as long as they own them. It's a sad truth

 

[Vegosiux]

I'd say ubisoft is the more evil of the two. EA Drm comes in the somewhat-friendly form of Origins which is steam-lite.

Ubisoft DRM casually abuses puppies on your keyboard then sends you the pics, along with illicit pictures of him and your mom.

I'll invoke Hanlon here, and say that no sufficiently advanced incompetence is distinghishable from malice. That goes for Ubisoft - their DRM is atrocious because they simply have no clue how to not make it atrocious.

EA however, actually keep showing that they have a purpose with their DRM, which is milking people for more than their products are worth.

 

[Something Amyss]

That's a very good point. So much for integrity.

Sock footage does not itself compromise artistic integrity.

I'd say ubisoft is the more evil of the two. EA Drm comes in the somewhat-friendly form of Origins which is steam-lite.

Ubisoft DRM casually abuses puppies on your keyboard then sends you the pics, along with illicit pictures of him and your mom.

In terms who's more hated, I'm pretty sure it's EA. "evil" and "hated" are not the same. Plus, while Origin is "Steam Lite," it's being treated as though it's the holocaust for gamers. The outcry for Origin has largely been more sever than the outcry for Ubi's stupid DRM tactics.

EA's policies are also more insidious. They're the trailblazer for online passes/project 10 dollar. Sure, everyone's doing it, but they pretty much made it. And now they're shutting down online pass games, including a single player one.

I'm not sure Ubisoft can compete.

 

[Kinokohatake]

A GAME I LIKE HAD AN ENDING I DIDN'T! WAAAAAH BIOWARE IS AWFUL. TBH I just finished ME3 and the ending wasn't that bad. Not the greatest but seriously people need to stop bitching.

 

[Something Amyss]

A GAME I LIKE HAD AN ENDING I DIDN'T! WAAAAAH BIOWARE IS AWFUL. TBH I just finished ME3 and the ending wasn't that bad. Not the greatest but seriously people need to stop bitching.

That's right, whale on that strawman! I'm pretty sure he's getting back up, better take another swing!

 

[dyre]

Eh, not that Mass Effect wasn't an amazing game, but Baldur's Gate 2 was Bioware's magnum opus, not ME.

Sure, ME3 and DA2 have been disappointing, but that's why brand loyalty has its limits. Companies come and go, and I think Bioware is at the beginning of its end (being bought by EA didn't help). Still, I'm happy with what they provided to the gaming world, and in terms of net performance they've done a lot more good than bad.

 

[greenlinkboy]

How did it happen?

I thought that they said that it was SPESS MAJIK!!!1!!

 

[Bat Vader]

Yep, this is EA at work.I'm guessing 2-3 more rushed games from BioWare before they decide to shut it down."Oh well." says John Riccitiello while drinking wine and keeping his foot on BioWare's dead, burned out corpse.

After Deus Ex : Human revolution lackluster ending, i honestly thought that endings couldn't get any worse.But after seeing ME3 endings i realise that atleast Eidos Montreal had the bloody decency to atleast justify each ending with a monologue.The whole clipping of stock footage for Tali and ripping of the FIRST result when you type "space winter" in Google images is also not BioWare.

If EA shuts down Bioware that would allow the former Bioware developers to open a new company. Unless EA just sends them to different departments.