Poll: When do you think Bioware started going downhill?
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Well none of there games seem to have had the ambition of Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 but I dont think they are going downhill as such they are just all over the place but I am fully expecting EA to ruin them utterly before long. I think I am one of the few who just quite likes a lot of their games but dosent fall over backwards to kiss their ass and proclaim them the gaming messiahs along with Valve.
I really like the Baldur's Gate series, and KotoR was great fun, but I haven't really been hooked by anything else they've done. I own Dragon Age Origins, and despite the attempt at "freedom", I felt like it was very linear and none of the dialogue options were really diverse enough for my taste. One good thing about no voice work is that it makes it easier to have tons of dialogue options for just about any character type.
I don't think they have at all. Yes, they may not be making the games "you" in particular like playing anymore, either because what they are doing has changed and/or because your own tastes have changed, but that doesn't instantly mean they are making worse games.
While I was a little late to the party (I got Neverwinter Nights a year or two before Mass Effect came out) it was Dragon Age 2 that Bioware jumped off the 'Must Buy Developers List.' ME3's combination of Origin release, The massive amount of DLC floating around before the game was even released and the ending just confirmed it for me. The first two issues are with EA but the third there is no excuse for it
ME2. I think that's when they lost the whole "RPG" part of the RPG and in an attempt to focus on the action just made it worse in general.
Going down hill? I don't feel that way, but I do think they tripped a little with Mass Effect 2's gameplay changes in order to appeal to more people. Still, it wasn't that big of a trip to me, and they were getting up nicely with Mass Effect 3 and then they had that ending. Fell back in the ditch and cracked their head. Very sad, but hopefully they'll recover. We'll see with Dragon Age 3. They listened to fans in Dragon Age 2 with the expansion packs, so there's hope.
I would have added that option but there are games that represent that option and I did not want it to be a "EA ruined bioware" thread rather a "what game made you fall out of love with bioware" thread mainly for bioware fans from the begining.TheMightyAtrox said:
I loved Baldurs gate and BG2 was a sequel plus those were the originals so I left those out as an option, SW:KotOR being a star wars game I felt had a dual fan base so I left that out because of it being a star wars genre game.Anthraxus said:
Neverwinter Nights would have been an intersting option mainly because of the change in style from baldurs gate.
Heretic! Burn him!Zhukov said:
And burn me, too, because I almost completely agree with him, but I'd put the point of the games starting to get really good instead of just pretty good at Jade Empire.
Dragon Age 2 was the first poop in the pool, so to speak.
I see people dropping the old Baldur's Gate games as the start of the fall. I'd call bullshit on that, myself. Jade Empire, KotOR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age - all of these were awesome games. Hell, I'd argue that Mass Effect 2 was overall the best ME game (ME1 had a stronger main plot, ME2 had better gameplay and stronger characters).
But Dragon Age 2 was the first time they truly dropped the ball. Too many cut corners, sloppy design and shoddy writing resulted in a "meh" game. It wasn't terrible, it was simply not up to the standard set by the first game and previous Bioware games in general.
TOR was a letdown considering the level of hype and, more importantly, the funds sunk into it. Heck, it's the likely cause of DA2's suckage (resources being shifted to TOR). While DA2 was a failure from a design standpoint, TOR is a failure from a financial one. And the game itself is, again, kinda "meh"...
Now, it's not all gloom and doom. Mass Effect 3 is a genuinely good game, solid on all fronts, right up until the ending. The other major complaints regarding ME3 have been about it's business model (the Day 1 DLC and all that).
All this indicates that Bioware still has talented people who want to make great games, but are being pushed around by EA to the extent that projects don't receive the attention they deserve, resulting in an inferior product (DA2) and good games get saddled with baggage that drags them down (TOR, ME3).
I wish Valve would start buying up major developers from shitty publishers...
I see people dropping the old Baldur's Gate games as the start of the fall. I'd call bullshit on that, myself. Jade Empire, KotOR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age - all of these were awesome games. Hell, I'd argue that Mass Effect 2 was overall the best ME game (ME1 had a stronger main plot, ME2 had better gameplay and stronger characters).
But Dragon Age 2 was the first time they truly dropped the ball. Too many cut corners, sloppy design and shoddy writing resulted in a "meh" game. It wasn't terrible, it was simply not up to the standard set by the first game and previous Bioware games in general.
TOR was a letdown considering the level of hype and, more importantly, the funds sunk into it. Heck, it's the likely cause of DA2's suckage (resources being shifted to TOR). While DA2 was a failure from a design standpoint, TOR is a failure from a financial one. And the game itself is, again, kinda "meh"...
Now, it's not all gloom and doom. Mass Effect 3 is a genuinely good game, solid on all fronts, right up until the ending. The other major complaints regarding ME3 have been about it's business model (the Day 1 DLC and all that).
All this indicates that Bioware still has talented people who want to make great games, but are being pushed around by EA to the extent that projects don't receive the attention they deserve, resulting in an inferior product (DA2) and good games get saddled with baggage that drags them down (TOR, ME3).
I wish Valve would start buying up major developers from shitty publishers...
I'd say DA:O was the begin of the downward spiral.
I mean really. Generic fantasy races set aside their differences and join together to defend themselves against generic faceless evil from the dark world lead by a dragon.
It's kind of like they went cherry picking for the most overused tropes they could find, and then combined them all together.
I mean really. Generic fantasy races set aside their differences and join together to defend themselves against generic faceless evil from the dark world lead by a dragon.
It's kind of like they went cherry picking for the most overused tropes they could find, and then combined them all together.
That is why I wanted a poll format to get the opinion of everyone, fans, haters, former fans and yes even fanboys.StriderShinryu said:
I liked playing their older games and don't really enjoy the newer ones which means they changed, I'm sure my taste haven't, weather its for better or worse is based purely on the taste of the individual.
If I could do a more in depth poll paralleling this poll's results against which games people thought were Bioware's peak I think I could get a more clear picture of people's thoughts on Bioware but this is but a simple forum post and the poll has limited options.
As a side note the void vacated by Bioware in my gaming has been filled with games like the Drakensang titles, The Witcher and The Witcher 2. Yes I am mainly a PC gamer, mainly because of early Bioware games but I hold nothing against people who play on console.
BG2 remains one of my favourite games, and I thought BG1 was pretty good, but not as good as 2, going from BG2 back to BG1.Jarek Mace said:I'm going to go right ahead and go further back and say Baldurs Gate II: Shadows of AmnMore Fun To Compute said:
BG II was a brilliant game, as were all their games right up until the games after Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age: Origins (Both of which are great in my eyes).
I can sort of see the start of the dumbing down in Baldurs Gate 2, since I just went straight to BG 2 from BG1 recently.
Less dialogue, significantly easier combat, what feels like a lot more rail roading, a really shit beginning (you just randomly woke up in a bald mages sex dungeon, oh, and all your stuff is gone), and at times it felt lazy (You need 20,000 gold, so go earn it!" Felt a lot like Bioware saying "Go play some side quests").
The dumbing down was incredibly obvious with Mass Effect 2, which was a good game but it still felt downhill in my eyes.
The start actually ends up making legitimate sense in both terms of the gameplay, and storyline. It introduces the enemy, by him kidnapping Imoen, and he brought you there to save himself and that other person from their curse, as you learn later in the story. It also reveals the strict control of magic in the city, establishing the world and things like that. In gameplay it gives you a nice overall objective, with a nice closed off tutorial-ish area where you can familiarise yourself with the game, as well as allowing the main character to be refreshed (by losing all his items and skills) which can be an arse for someone who clocked BG1, but allows them to rebuild their character.
Apart from the lack of multisexual characters and classes in Mass Effect, their biggest misstep was in DA2, especially with how wide and varied DA:O was. Though, a case could be made that Awakenings was the small rocks shifting around the big rocks before the avalanche. Don't get me wrong, I still love Bioware, they're on a whole a great developer, they just get caught up in nonsense from time to time. And David Gaider doesn't get that people actually like dwarves, want to play as them, and want to romance them. You go from DA:O, a great, stand up, high quality RPG, to DA2, where they removed most of the RPG elements for all but the main character, almost obliterated the class/race combo choices, destroyed all exploration and discovery that comes with RPGs, and intercut three different stories, each the prequel to something else we'd have to buy. So we end up with an RPG developer that isn't making RPGs, but action titles with some customization? How silly is that?