Dragon Age: Inquistion - Can Bioware Survive Another Misstep?

[Simple Bluff]

I can confidently say that 90% of the ill will against Bioware is the perfidious work of the Papist Church.

Every Bioware game has been an ode against the devils of Popery. See Mass Effect, with its masterly depiction of the Illusive Man, a good man who's made even better by the fact he murdered a Pope. Or Neverwinter Nights, with its depiction of priests, Popish priests, who turn out to be evil.

This DA game is subtitled Inquistion. I'd wager my legs that the Papist internet brigade's already set eyes on it.

Man, if there was any justice in the world you'd be announced a hero among men. I'm dead serious.

Anyhoo, Bioware has suffered a bit lately but I think Inquisition will be fairly good. They slipped up badly with DA2 (but they were given barely any time to make it, in fairness), but ME3 (if you disregard the ending) was a massive improvement on ME2, so I honestly think they're getting back on track. They've only made one terrible game in my opinion (DA2), so I never lost much confidence in them to begin with.

Come on Bioware, don't let me down.

 

[CloudAtlas]

The good thing about Dragon Age is that the latest installment comes out after so much outrage that they can't afford to screw up.

Eh, people are going to complain regardless of the overall quality of the game. Depending on what you like/dislike about their past games it certainly makes sense to check out reviews and see what elements they include in this one, but fan outrage is meaningless without context and I expect to see it whether the game is awesome, mediocre or terrible.

Oh, it will happen, that's for certain. People just expect too different things from DA:I. Some want fast-paced gameplay, some want oldschool tactical gameplay. Some want original stories, some want conventional stories. Some want a to a certain extent pre-defined, fully voiced protagonist, others an empty template. Some want tits, some want class. And the list goes on.
No matter how objectively well-made DA:I will end up being, plenty of people will call it the worst game ever because it doesn't cater to their own personal interests, and we all know that those are the only ones that could ever count.

 

[Silverbeard]

Whatever else Bioware has done, they do tend to produce decently written games while giving players a very good illusion of controlling the plot. The only other games in recent memory that manages this are the Witcher titles. That tends to go a long way with the player base, who can very likely forgive and forget if it means that they will get more of what they expect from Bioware.
It is worth pointing out that so far, none of the chaps who worked on the Mass Effect series have been established to be a part of the Dragon Age team, who have mostly maintained their roster from Origins until now- a few resignees notwithstanding. Does that mean that they will learn from the successes and failures of their in-house brethren? Maybe.
What will not change are the marketing tactics of Inquisition, and it is here that I will find the most reason to stay away from the title. Cut content being offered as pre-order bonuses and/or day one DLC, mandatory Origin installation and other such tomfoolery will very likely mire Inquisition's production.
That we need to watch out for.

 

[-Dragmire-]

No.

While Bioware has made decisions that I didn't like with their franchises, they are not awful. Each game we complain about has many redeeming factors that, while not up to par with the legacy they've made, are still far better than we get from much of the AAA industry.

 

[Karoshi]

Of course can Bioware survive another flop, and another, and another. There are only few AAA companies that deliver high quality RPGs and despite some storytelling failings, Bioware stills delivers polished products.

For example, I can tell that I will rage about most things wrong in Inquisition, but buy it regardless.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Despite what people here say Bioware has made major PR flops and their recent games have been mediocre.Sale numbers don't mean squat because of people buying DA2/ME3 based on the success of the previous games and misleading marketing.If DA:I flops then Bioware will still have the apologists defending everything they do but even that won't help them this time.

If sale numbers don't mean squat to you, what about a metascore of 89 and countless GOTY & other awards?

 

[-Dragmire-]

No.

While Bioware has made decisions that I didn't like with their franchises, they are not awful. Each game we complain about has many redeeming factors that, while not up to par with the legacy they've made, are still far better than we get from much of the AAA industry.

If you're talking about story then I agree,however there are tons of game that are far better than the recent ones Bioware has put out.

I still feel they're on the higher end of the average. That being said, I'll be pissed if the next game I get from them is as poorly polished as Mass Effect 3. Unfinished art assets, floating geometry, unfinished textures, floor plains not lining up vertically meaning the rocks that are supposed to sit on the ground float a half foot above it, bad animation, limited animations(Shep takes out a shotgun as if it were an assault rifle because the proper animation either doesn't exist or has been improperly coded) etc...

Even with the amount that I rip apart the game for stuff unrelated to the story, I still enjoyed the experience playing it. Not very many games can do that for me which is why I feel they're on the better side of the AAA spectrum.

 

[Therumancer]

So after reading the info about the new Dragon Age, I was wondering; if Bioware manages to mess up DA:I after everything they learned from DAII, ME3 and SW:TOR online - can they survive? Or will the good will finally run out for them?

Maybe the three near-ruinous outings they've had will have taught them something and they'll hit DA:I completely out of the park. But if we're to err on the side of caution and say they do fail again - you think Bioware will still be around this time next year? Or will EA finally jettison them after sending they finances and shareholders into a panic for the 3rd time while making EA look like the devil (again)?

Well, Bioware might already be dead in the water here. Speaking for myself I will not be pre-ordering DA:I or running out to buy it. Instead I'm going to wait until it's released, read the reviews, and then see what the game is like when other people play it and what their reception is. As sad as it sounds I am also unwilling to be surprised by game endings anymore, Bioware and a few other companies have pretty much made it so that I cannot enjoy endings the way they were intended after so many games that have ended on a self-ruining note (Mass Effect 3) or with what amounts to an advert for the next game in the franchise with no real resolution. I absolutely refuse to wind up putting myself into another position where I'm going to rage like I did over the whole "Star Child" thing or deal with the horrible, horrible, writing that was involved in DA2 all through it's climax and non-resolution.

In short, Bioware's "success" with some of their games like "Dragon Age 2" and "Mass Effect 3" seemed to largely come from people who ran out to buy the game on day #1 trusting the company. The whole "shut up and take my money" schtick. When the games turned out to be garbage it was too late, Bioware had the money, and the games were being touted as successes because of the number of sales they garnered.

I am encouraging everyone I can to take the same approach I am, not to boycott Bioware, but to approach cautiously. Let them smell failure when it comes to early sales (which is how most games are computed) but slowly achieve success through later sales if they actually produce a great product.... and honestly this has to be great at this point, if it's just mediocre I'm not buying, no matter whether they tease resolving the storyline with Morrigan or whatever. At this point for all I know it will turn out Morrigan's unborn child IS the star child from Mass Effect 3 (what a clever twist!) and it's a giant lead in to the brain-cell destroying Dragon Age/Mass Effect crossover where Bioware will resurrect an old D&D license and turn the advent of magic and collapse of the jump gate system into an a backstory for the new Spelljammer... the Krogan will rename themselves Giff, the Rachni will rename themselves Neogi... and uh... Sten's people will grow 8 eyes and become Umber Hulks...... Tali will finally remove her mask and reveal that the pic we saw of her was an illusion and under that mask are actually Beholders (surprise!) the new threat to the galaxy...

 

[CloudAtlas]

Despite what people here say Bioware has made major PR flops and their recent games have been mediocre.Sale numbers don't mean squat because of people buying DA2/ME3 based on the success of the previous games and misleading marketing.If DA:I flops then Bioware will still have the apologists defending everything they do but even that won't help them this time.

If sale numbers don't mean squat to you, what about a metascore of 89 and countless GOTY & other awards?

Again those are meaningless as well because even mediocre games can get good scores and I don't put much stock in GOTY or other awards.By your logic that means games like Aliens:Colonial Marines,COD,and other mediocre games that had marketing behind them are good because of good review scores and awards.

So if both sales and critic's opinions are "meaningless", are you saying that there's no correlation between quality and sales resp. review scores at all? Are you claiming that all the critics got it all wrong? What should we rely on then to judge the quality of a game? Your personal opinion?

By the way, Aliens: CM has a metascore of 45, which doesn't exactly qualify as "good review scores", and CoD is usually criticized because it's always the same, but not because what there is is bad. So if those two examples are the best you can come up with, consider me not impressed.

You know, there are games which I enjoyed less than others did, and where I wondered where all that praise came from. Since we're talking about BioWare here, DA:O is such an example, a game you love by your own account. But I'm not so arrogant to assume that I'm the only one who got it all figured out, that the game is objectively bad, that all the critics got it wrong, and that all the fans are stupid for cherishing an obviously bad game, that my personal set of preferences is the correct one, the only one that matters. That's just an attitude gamers frequently display, and its annoying and immature.

 

[Saltyk]

To be fair, one flawed game, one average MMO, and one great game with a dodgy ending that they at least made an effort to fix does not make a company on the edge of failure. The hardcore RPG purists have been crying foul on these guys since Mass Effect 2, but to people who judge on more than blind principle, Bioware are still a pretty good game company. The recent DLC for DA2 and ME3 has actually shown a lot of improvement.

I liked SW:TOR. Average or not, I enjoyed having a MMO that had story and made me actually care about the characters and what I was doing in the game. I cared to make my decisions and even cared about the characters.

The problem came up when I was doing the same quests for the third or fourth time. That's when it became WoW with lightsabers and laser blasts.
Still enjoyed the PvP more than WoWs.

 

[Thyunda]

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Only someone with their head in the sand, or up their butt, will trust BioWare again. Despite all the apologists on here lying and saying their last three games didn't suck, they sucked, and the next game will probably suck too. I do not buy EA or BioWare games new anymore and I won't again.

I liked Dragon Age II more than Origins. Am I an apologist, or do we just have different tastes?

 

[CloudAtlas]

Moreover, we know that DA:I is going to be shit because once again they are taking the really interesting plot points and tossing them out the airlock to make for a simpler story.

How do you know? Did the crystal ball tell you?

 

[Raikas]

At this point, all the people that really made Bioware Bioware have left. Moreover, we know that DA:I is going to be shit because once again they are taking the really interesting plot points and tossing them out the airlock to make for a simpler story.

Plenty of people are still looking forward to DA:I, so while you may think that it's going to be shit, we certainly don't know anything of the sort. In fact, recently I've heard more positive comments (the return of race choice, the longer development time) than anything else.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Only someone with their head in the sand, or up their butt, will trust BioWare again. Despite all the apologists on here lying and saying their last three games didn't suck, they sucked, and the next game will probably suck too. I do not buy EA or BioWare games new anymore and I won't again.

I liked Dragon Age II more than Origins. Am I an apologist, or do we just have different tastes?

What? Different preferences? My friend, there's no such thing as preferences here. Here, personal opinions are absolute truths, and everyone who disagrees is simply blind to the this truth.

 

[Legion]

That depends on what you mean by a misstep.

The games may have had a lot of criticisms, but they didn't sell badly, and EA cares more about the profits than peoples opinions. As long as Bioware keep making games that are a commercial success, they will survive.

As for the fans, I suspect that depends. A lot of people have been put off of Bioware, but at the same time they have also gained a lot of new fans. I suspect the "older" fans would probably swear off of Bioware if this game turns out badly, but I doubt that the company will run out any time soon. They will most likely just get new ones again.

Bioware are shifting the types of games they are making, while pretending to still be making "proper" role playing games to try and keep the "core" crowd interested. That is the kind of thing that will kill the "older" fans more than anything else, but those that don't care about that sort of thing most likely won't be affected very much.

I think fan expectations are what have caused so many issues with their games. A lot of people want or expect one thing, and when Bioware delivers something else they are upset regardless of the quality of it. I have noticed that the people who enjoy Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 are more often than not people who didn't play the previous games before their release. As such they didn't have the hype building up to unrealistic proportions by the time they played them.

After all, if you had never played Mass Effect before the outcry over the third games ending, if you then picked it up you'd probably wonder what all of the fuss is about. Regardless of how much people disliked it, it's not that the game was bad, it's that the game did not fit in with what a lot of people wanted from the series.

This is not entirely the fans fault though as I vaguely mentioned earlier. Bioware are very vocal with the fan base, and they keep trying to please the fans, often by exaggerating or promoting certain aspects of their games. Quite often this kind of thing leads to speculation or people seeing what they want to see and in many cases building up unrealistic expectations. If Bioware were like most other developers and simply kept quiet then I suspect this kind of thing would be less common.

The problem is that Bioware wishes to have close ties with the fans, but cannot seem to keep their revelations in check. They keep promising things that don't make the cut, or are not as good as they make them sound (choices for example) and when you get a company constantly in dialogue with it's customers, it makes them take it a lot more personally if those promises turn out not to be true.

Really this whole situation is both the fans and Bioware's fault. Bioware needs to stop hyping up their features to sound like they are much better than they are, and the fans often need a reality check and to remember that they are only games.

 

[votemarvel]

Bioware lost my "buy without question" mentality with the double whammy of Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age II.

Now the studio is firmly in the wait and see catagory.

I don't think Bioware are doomed though. As the Citadel DLC showed, they still know where their strengths lie.

 

[littlewisp]

The amount of drama from people is kinda surprising to me. Whenever I buy something I don't like, I'm disappointed, sure, but I'm not going to go around spewing bile all over the creator and using every opportunity I get to decry their values and abilities. I've read books from favorites authors I didn't like. If the books keep going in a direction I don't like or that bore me, I just stop buying and if someone asks me what I think I say "I didn't like them for this reason, but if you like this sort of thing you would!" And that's okay. I certainly don't take my dislike and some random number of people as a sign that doomsday has arrived and the author is no longer successful. Now if the publisher of the author drops them or (if self published) the author randomly disappears and doesn't publish anything else -- that's my cue to start saying 'oh wow, this author might have finally bit it with sales'. Even so, I won't say the author betrayed me because I don't actually know the author and the author doesn't actually know me. The author would likely have many fans, and his or her own ideas. I won't ask that the author remains a slave to some random idea of what good means. The author either succeeds or doesn't depending on what he or she likes to write; people are allowed to change and it's not personal if his or her stuff drastically changes from what it used to be. The same goes for any other individual or group selling stuff.

Too often in forums like this it becomes a necessity to parade the dislike around without giving a nod to the fact that different people like different things. Instead it's a pass/fail, and if you think it failed then it's going to fail for everyone. Don't take it so personally!

That said, for the question in the OP you're going to have to define what counts as a failure in the industry. When x sales are made? When x number of previous buyers don't buy the next time around? When the average rating of the game is x? When the developer is forced to cancel a franchise? When their earnings are less than x?

If you're talking like what happened in Rhode Island (88 something or whatever, I forget the name of the dev), then no -- I don't think Bioware is going to be there any time soon. If you're talking like what's happening to WoW (and by extension Blizzard), I don't think that's failure just yet. It's certainly some tricky and potentially dangerous territory, but there's a lot more ground to lose before the company folds.

 

[shatnuh]

Okay, I have to say this before people continue to praise the "risks" BioWare took with DA2 and ME3.

Dragon Age 2 was a rushed release, choked full of unoriginal plot ideas, reused environments, little-to-no significant contextual fighting, flat NPC's, rote side quests, and everyone's horribly out of place foul mouth. Now, that last point is a little weak, I know. But it felt so forced and unnatural, like someone on the dev team said, "Hey, we're going for a new, edgy design for DA2? Lets make them say naughty words!" I actually like when a franchise makes its own curses, and DA:O certainly started in that territory. But DA2 decided to drop the allegory and just thrust our clumsy vernacular into the game, making Varric and Isabela sound rather ignorant.

If I could think of a good analogy for DA2, it'd go something like, "DA2 is like shooting a sequel in a studio lot, where the first movie was shot on location." Vastly inferior. I've never disliked the usual fantasy tropes appearing throughout DA:O because ALL Fantasy games possess them. Nearly all Fantasy ANYTHING is "Tolkien-stylized", anyway. DA2 occupies this awful medium-ground, where it has one foot in classic Fantasy writing, and the other is planted firmly in the "I'm ashamed that I like Fantasy" camp, and that second foot is cannibalizing the rich (albeit not very original) structure presented in DA:O.

As for Mass Effect... Ugh. The best thing about sci-fi is that you can supersede tropes by being truly original. I know I just got through saying that I enjoyed the simplistic Fantasy approach for DA:O, but sci-fi doesn't lend itself well to copycats. And Mass Effect is a repackaged Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I've said it before on this website, but the backbone of Mass Effect's story relies around the ME Relays, which are just the Farcasters that existed in Simmons' novel. Is that an oversimplification of the plot? Absolutely. But when the conclusion to the series boils down to destroying the ME Relays (the same way The Fall of Hyperion ended) all the ideas that set ME apart from the novel get swept away. That is unbelievably lazy, especially for a game release of that magnitude.

As for SWTOR, I can say that it's not terrible. But I cancelled my subscription after 2 months, and did so in favor of playing Neverwinter, which was once a BioWare property. When I'm quitting new BioWare games to play games that remind me of old BioWare, things aren't all great.

Dragon Age: Inquisition will have a massive hype train going into it, as have all DA games to date. It's going to be facing so much scrutiny that it possibly can't succeed. And that will not matter. BioWare will continue to exist, at the very least, as a money-sucking shell of it's former glorious self. It's just so sad that things have come to this.

 

[kasperbbs]

I doubt that they can make it any worse than DA 2 was. The game will do well in sales like most of Bioware's games and they will continue making games, because companies don't close over people whining on the internet.

 

[Zeldias]

As long as it's not as shitty as Jade Empire was, I'm happy.

I'm hoping it's closer to a kind of hybrid of DA2 and ME3, frankly. I enjoyed both of those games a lot. Action felt kinetic and fun in DA2 (a huge step up from the laughable animations and fire-and-forget tripe of DA:O) and my protagonist felt like a somebody in ME3 (talking to people about their problems and using his fame and influence to get stuff done for people). The only thing that I can say I really want from DA:I is more interesting specializations (I want shit that shifts the playstyle more dramatically for the base classes, because so far I've only found that Arcane Warrior and Blood Mage really do that), more interesting decisions to make, and a narrative that feels more together (I really enjoyed DA2's story, but there wasn't really a sense of time passing).

Otherwise, just let me romance everyone regardless of my gender, keep that personality system, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KEEP THE RIVALRY SYSTEM, and don't screw me by making only one character other than the protagonist able to be a healer. I hate Anders, and don't want to bring him around to do stuff. That's the minimum needed to make me feel OK, although I do hope we get some kind of castle/headquarters to maintain and make decisions on a la NWN2.