oplinger said:
Because they were not Bioware quality games, they were EA quality games. They were mediocre, passable, painfully okay. And they had many issues, not just ME3's ending, or DA2's gays.
Well, it didn't take long for someone to bring up EA, huh? I suppose that's only fair, I tried to avoid going into EA-hate mode but I suppose that's probably a big part of the reason so many people are angry with Bioware in the first place.
I never said those games didn't have their own issues, I said that despite the issues they were still pretty decent games. This is getting into the realm of personal opinion, but objectively speaking
Dragon Age 2 looked nice, controlled fairly well, had good voice acting and decent writing, a working combat/skill system, and actually tried to push its way out of the rigid "Bioware" guillotine of "YOU are the ONLY ONE who can SAVE THE WORLD!" It had problems - Recycled assets, a bland story, some people didn't like the "simplified" armor system for companions or how the combat and skills were flip-flopped to be more like an MMO-style game than a "true RPG", and on release the DirectX 11 support was pretty buggy and terrible. I'm sure all of the weapon&armor bundle DLCs didn't help endear it to the public eye either.
Mass Effect 3 had a simplified dialogue system, it had less reason to interact with squad-mates between missions, it had multi-player, it shrunk down the number of side-missions a person could take, and it had a lot of plot-holes and Dei Ex Machina, but it also had much smoother and faster combat, a more in-depth skill system than had been in
Mass Effect 2, and while this is my own opinion I thought the writing was the strongest of the entire trilogy. Who didn't love that moment with Garrus on the top of the Citadel? Who didn't love Grunt's crowning moment of awesome? Who didn't feel heartbroken during Mordin's scenes? Who wasn't crestfallen when they discovered they had to choose between the Geth and the Quarians (though that brings up the issues with the final incarnation of the Paragon/Renegade system)?
Bioware did a terrible mistake in story telling. They do have a long history of releasing good games, quality games, games that are memorable, told well, presented in a way we all enjoy and are interested in seeing. Those 3 are...meh. Decent is not what Bioware is known for. And Bioware doesn't seem to really care. They're doing EA type things.
I believe I already covered
Mass Effect 3 above, but I'll agree that the actual storytelling aspect of
Dragon Age 2 fell heavily flat. Bioware didn't seem to get the change of pacing required when you switch to a story that is centrally focused on the life of one person, instead of one person's journey. As far as Bioware not caring anymore, well I'd like to believe that as a business, they never really cared to begin with but I wasn't exactly following video game news until about 2009 so I don't actually know. But I've heard that a lot of the people who used to work there before the EA acquisition have since left, and to me that sounds like it would explain a lot.
See, the problem is this, emotions aren't a resource to be spent up. You can't waste them. Please don't say something so silly.
I'm not so sure about that. Haven't you ever felt really drained and tired after a prolonged time of being really angry, sad, or happy?
Also, Cars was still a great movie, it was pixar quality, pixar style. It was what they were known for. People probably did swear off batman movies, but the difference with the movies is new directors, it would be like swearing off a game franchise, then the IP gets sold to a new developer, but you don't care. Makes no sense. Different people.
A lot of people complained about
Cars, actually. Because a lot of people didn't believe it was "Pixar quality" when it was released. And when it got a sequel they were even more perplexed. And if that's the case, why have so many people claimed that
Halo should just die off? Different developer, so people shouldn't care, right?
I can't think of a real example at the moment, so for purely hypothetical's sake take
Final Fantasy. A lot of people got burned by how
XII and
XIII were. If Square Enix were to outsource the next
Final Fantasy game to a completely different developer, do you think people would buy it just because it's not a
Final Fantasy game made by Square Enix?
They are going a direction we don't like. That's why we hate it. They're going a very bad direction. They've taken good stories with flat characters, and made boring stories with flat characters with more romance options. We don't like it. We don't want to see Bioware go away. We do want them to stay, but as what they were, not what they are becoming.
First of all, the quality of a story as you're presenting it here is entirely subjective. You may think
Mass Effect 3 was boring. I didn't.
And my entire point is that Bioware shouldn't be forced into staying as what they were just to appease their fans. They should be able to change, they should be able to do different things in their games. Maybe they're changing in awkward ways that don't really help themselves, and maybe it was forced on them by EA, but the point is that all of the "fan outrage" over every little change isn't doing any good.
