Has Bioware been falling in quality?

[Meight08]

The only excellent games Bioware has ever created were the baldur's gate games. From there on out, the games have been able to maintain a decent level of quality, up until DA2, which flopped. Kotor isn't the incredible game people say it is. It's an incredibly flawed, but good game, just like the ME series and DAO (and perhaps NWN as well). So no, they're just trying out new things, but the quality has been the same since KotoR.

Its one downfall was the mediocre story. And after DA2, mediocre main stories may become a trend for them.

Kotor's story is fairly mediocre as well, only the way they told it was well done. This has been a trend since 2002. Unfortunately, they're still one of the best developers to go to for this, seeing as Black Isle went bankrupt and Obsidian can't seem to get the hang of good gameplay.

Obsidian was founded by employees from black isle so there have only ever been two sources that create great wrpg stories

ot: Bioware is just adjusting to a changing market and the dying of the pureblood rpg genre.
And about the people saying that mass effect 2's story was mediocre i honestly have no idea what your talking about

 

[stefman]

DA2 was not a disaster, it was an above average game that is unfortunately being compared to its predecessor, which is probably the closest you can get to being in a tolkein world. While the setup in DAO may not have been the most original, the interactions and characters made up for it.

I'm not even comparing them. I didn't beat either one since I didn't feel liek restarting DA:O because that glitch and I got tired of DA2 crashing. However a year and a half of development time combined with the design philosophy of "rush the crap out of this" could never end in a good game. You know Anders's cat? He wasn't in DA2 because they didn't want to waste the time on making animations for it which were already present in Origins. I don't know about programming but I can't imagine it would have taken long to copy and paste that. No one reacting to you being a mage or blood mage is also because of this.

To be fair, that was entirely EA rushing the hell out of it. Hopefully they let Bioware just do it's thing with DA3. The real test is to see if the 3+ years of dev on ME3 pay off. If that comes out bad then there is no excuse.

 

[Joccaren]

The entire universe speaking English is explained as some translator thing. Its sorta like Star Trek where everyone speaks English, only they don't but what everyone hears English, I'll see if I can find that codex entry...
Also, Flemeth isn't a retcon. She gave Hawk some item that would allow her to respawn as she knew Morigan was coming for her.

Other than that I have to say that in DA:O I found the rogue OP. Mage I had problems with due to constantly downing mana potions, but my Rogue avoided agro like the plague (What with two tanks in the party using taunt and aggressive stance) and dealt out some fair damage with all his abilities. Plus, in Awakening there was that infinite flurry move that glitched and made the enemy unable to do anything whilst the rogue carried that out. Combine that with massive amonts of Stamina, boss fight over in 30 seconds. ANY boss fight.
Likewise, I didn't find the Biotic OP in ME2 (In 1 lift was just amazing, and when I unlocked it as a speciality I used it on every character), I had problems with it due to the shared cooldown thing. Vanguards I found to be not only the most fun, but the most OP class (Though maybe the soldier was). Just charge in, take cover and shoot like shit with a shotgun and SMG and, after halfway through the game, a sniper rifle (Damn those things were powerful).

But yeah, Bioware quality per se hasn't been going down, but they direct it more towards a casual shooter audience than their dedicated RPG fans. Kinda sad, but it happens.

 

[Joccaren]

DA2 was not a disaster, it was an above average game that is unfortunately being compared to its predecessor, which is probably the closest you can get to being in a tolkein world. While the setup in DAO may not have been the most original, the interactions and characters made up for it.

It was not a total disaster, but it was below average. It was the biggest rush job in RPGs since KotOR2, and it shows. The fact that there is 3... maybe 4 or five areas in the whole game wasn't good, and they weren't massive either. I'd daresay some FPS have more overall landmass than DA2.
They completely screwed over elves, giving them all a stupid accent, and they did terrible writing; turning some characters from 1 into massive clichés or retards, where they used to have some semblance of character in 1. That and they retconned the killing of Leliana. BAD move.
Combat is total shambles. As has been said - Too slow for action, too fast for tactics. Its in that awkward place in between where neither is entirely applicable. In addition, spawning waves of enemies are bad design and a rather poor standard in today's industry.
The story is utter crap, being the leadup to a sequel and ending in a sequel hook cliffhanger. The side stories were oft more interesting than the main story, but were given far less time and development.

Honestly, DA2 was anything but above average. Was it being judged and dragged down even further thanks to its tie in to Origins? Yes. Was it great to begin with? No. Was dragging it down thanks to Origins justified? IMO, yes. It is a sequel and as such has standards to live up to. If they wanted to do something different, they should have crafted a new IP to do that in.

 

[Sixcess]

Also if I can say one quick thing about SWTOR why did they keep the dialog wheel for that when it was designed for consoles?

Stick with what you know, regardless of whether or not it makes sense, is pretty much the entire design ethic of SWTOR.

 

[Something Amyss]

6: DLC
First off I have no problem with DLC personally but I don't like that day 1 DLC crap when it's already made and they withhold it because they can.

That's, in reality, a publisher issue. I mean, I can't say Bioware isn't behind it (They keep saying they WANT to do all the things they're doing it), but EA has kind of mandating it across the board. Day 1 DLC? Across the board. Online components? Across the board. Smaller game experience? Across the board.

Some of these problems are clearly Bioware, but things like DLC? It's pretty much the way the wind is blowing.

 

[Karathos]

Also if I can say one quick thing about SWTOR why did they keep the dialog wheel for that when it was designed for consoles?

Stick with what you know, regardless of whether or not it makes sense, is pretty much the entire design ethic of SWTOR.

Seems to be working for them tbh. Why change something that works just for the sake of change?

As for the OP itself - I've so far only lost interest in DA2. Every other Bioware games I've played so far have been thoroughly enjoyable, culminating in TOR. I honestly believe it'lll be their greatest game yet, as long as they stick with it.

 

[The Lunatic]

I liked Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age Origins was pretty good, but, hard to get into as the "LOL BUY MY DLC FUCKER" NPC is kinda a turn off when you first start a game.

Mass Effect 2? Felt like a watered down version of the first game.

Dragon Age 2? Really?

As for the DLC and what-not.

Simply too much of it. I think DA2 released with 20 items of Day-one DLC gained from different retailers, promotions and all sorts of crap like that. Simply way too much.

 

[SextusMaximus]

Well, DA2 is the only really terrible Bioware game. Certain elements of their games keep getting worse over time (they try too hard on the humor, they devote way too much attention to badly written romance subplots, etc) but ME2 was a solid game. Haven't played SWTOR, but people seem to be enjoying it. So my verdict is wait for ME3 to come out.

This all over. Mass Effect 2 was absolutely solid, DA2 was disappointing and average - the only reason it got so much bad press is because it was FROM BioWare, who usually produce excellent gams.

 

[Sixcess]

Also if I can say one quick thing about SWTOR why did they keep the dialog wheel for that when it was designed for consoles?

Stick with what you know, regardless of whether or not it makes sense, is pretty much the entire design ethic of SWTOR.

Seems to be working for them tbh. Why change something that works just for the sake of change?

It's not change for the sake of change. It's change to adapt to a different genre of game, which Bioware simply have not done. As a fan of MMOs as a genre it depresses me that the most high profile release in that genre in years has been made by Bioware more or less exactly as they would make a single player game.

 

[Boozak]

The only excellent games Bioware has ever created were the baldur's gate games. From there on out, the games have been able to maintain a decent level of quality, up until DA2, which flopped. Kotor isn't the incredible game people say it is. It's an incredibly flawed, but good game, just like the ME series and DAO (and perhaps NWN as well). So no, they're just trying out new things, but the quality has been the same since KotoR.

Its one downfall was the mediocre story. And after DA2, mediocre main stories may become a trend for them.

Kotor's story is fairly mediocre as well, only the way they told it was well done. This has been a trend since 2002. Unfortunately, they're still one of the best developers to go to for this, seeing as Black Isle went bankrupt and Obsidian can't seem to get the hang of good gameplay.

I'd say CD Projekt Red are just as capable as Bioware to make a decent RPG, and they dont have the hindrance of EA fucking with all their games. Obsidian seem to be just accepting jobs wherever they can find them,(DS3, Fallout NV, that new South Park RPG)with little care for quality.(I enjoy their games, they just seem abit rushed)

 

[Frostbite3789]

Oh, hey, one of these threads. Hello doom and gloom thread! How are you today? Me? Oh, I'm just fine, slightly tired of people declaring how things are always getting worse constantly.

It's pretty annoying. Especially when they only really use personal experience to back it up. Because they obviously don't understand how the world works. In fact I'm pretty sure it's been shown numerous times that both the DA2 and ME2 hate is just the vocal minority being at it again, and is in no way indicative of how good either game actually is.

 

[SpaceBat]

Obsidian was founded by employees from black isle so there have only ever been two sources that create great wrpg stories

Yeah, I know that. I meant to say with my previous post that Black Isle basically could do everything well (Story, gameplay, you name it). Obsidian, regardless of the fact that they're basically Black Isle 2.0, somehow keep messing up in the gameplay department, which causes people to ignore their games.

Kotor 2's story pretty much destroys Kotor 1 in every single way imaginable, but the gameplay is even worse than in the first Kotor (hard to imagine, I know), which is the reason why it's not exactly popular.

 

[irishda]

Bioware is a far cry from the Jade Empire/KOTOR/BG days. But let's be real here, people tend to put developers on pedestals (see Valve, Bethesda) and ignore the flaws. Bioware has never really been that great at making combat feel awesome, and they've kept the same combat system from KOTOR in all of their RPG's. Come to think of it, they've pretty much been making the same game since KOTOR but with a different skin. That's not to say these aren't good or even great games in some examples. But what's really happening is your view of Bioware is coming back to Earth. The quality's been the same for Bioware this past decade, you're just realizing that quality isn't that spectacular.

 

[LiquidGrape]

Welp, speaking as someone who thought Dragon Age II featured BioWare's most ambitious themes and best cast of characters to date...I'd say they're heading in the right direction in many ways.

The only real issue I had with the game was the focus on combat and the overall lack of polish. It's apparent they were given little over a year to finish the game, which makes what went so very right all the more impressive, I think.

In short, I have my reservations, but I'd still argue BioWare is more than capable of producing inclusive and engaging games.

 

[SpaceBat]

I'd say CD Projekt Red are just as capable as Bioware to make a decent RPG, and they dont have the hindrance of EA fucking with all their games.

Yes, which is why I said that Bioware is ONE of the best developers when it comes to story and character development. CD Projekt games have good writing and their plots and characters are at least of decent quality (Excluding Triss from the first game). Their games need some work in a couple of areas (especially voice acting), but what I like about them most is how they at least try to make choices less black-and-white and create consequences for your actions. They're not nearly as good as obsidian when it comes to that, but they are much better than Bioware and at least on the right track.

Obsidian seem to be just accepting jobs wherever they can find them,(DS3, Fallout NV, that new South Park RPG)with little care for quality.(I enjoy their games, they just seem abit rushed)

They're apparently better at continuing and improving existing work than they are at innovating, but refreshing content is hard to find these days anyway, so at least I'm glad their writing is good.
I am going to disagree with the last part a bit. Yes, their games are often rushed, but I believe that specific fact has less to do with them and more with the publishers (This seems to be the case with Alpha Protocol, for example). They care an incredible amount for their games, but only for the story department. Their writing is often miles above everyone else's, but the rest of their games just suck. That's why I want to love Obsidian so much, but can't bring myself to do it due to their ability to fuck everything else up beyond imagining. Don't get me started on how they keep cutting out story content from their games either.