We should forgive Bioware.

[TrevHead]

EA was what happened to Bioware, nowadays they march the same goosestep, both are ignorant. It's same with Blizz-Activ.

I think what annoys most ppl is that Bioware was one of the best oldschool PC dev studios remaining and don't like that the fact they aren't as good as they once were.

Imo the disgruntled fans a better off looking elsewhere for what they want like CD project who make The Witcher games, or whatever other games are out there that fit their playstyle.

THe only vote that counts nowadays is wallets, It's no good buying all the overly hyped games at launch day then getting angry about it, buy it 6 months later when it's half price and intead buy that niche game that looks good at launch, instead of waiting 3-4 weeks because you know that niche game will be in the bargin bin by then.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

I didn't mind Dragon Age 2, don't care about Old Republic and never played Mass Effect 3.

They need to get back to decent stories. I don't care if the gameplay is like Resident Evil 1.

SWTOR has some excellent story telling. The gameplay is a wash, but the light/dark side is done really well.

I've heard it's good, but Star Wars has been done. Knights of the Old Republic was excellent, and didn't need expanding upon.

Bioware have never had a very firm grasp on what they want; their games are either over-blown fan-fiction (D&D and Star Wars) or very confused and directionless (Dragon Age, Mass Effect). Yes EA shares some of that blame, but Bioware needs someone with more vision leading their projects, someone with more confidence so that the team doesn't start second guessing itself, or get so afraid of stepping on someone's toes that they don't assert themselves enough.

 

[Something Amyss]

And I have to ask why? What's the purpose?

To avoid paying money for shitty games? A boycott to illustrate disgust?

Yeah yeah, they had great games in the past. And that's essentially what's keeping them afloat.

FFS, forgiveness is not something that should be issued to companies. This is a business transaction and if you don't like the way they do business, you don't buy "from" them. why these misplaced feelings like "loyalty" and "forgiveness" which do more damage to gaming than the "haters" do?

Because I think it's a waste of emotion to feel so strongly about something so insignificant. Are people swearing off Pixar forever because of Cars and its sequel? What would've happened to Batman Begins if people had sworn they would never watch another Batman film ever again after Batman Forever and Batman & Robin? What would've happened to Pink Floyd if people had sworn them off forever after Syd Barrett left the band?

You know, most of these DID happen. People have sworn off Pixar. People said they were done with Batman after the last two 90s movies. People said Pink Floyd without Barrett wasn't Pink Floyd.

And you know what? The world didn't end. the FRANCHISES didn't end.

Besides, complaining about emotion is pretty hypocritical, when your own argument plays off the great games they had in the past.

As for myself, there's a good chance I'm done with Bioware. They've taken a path I dislike, and I'm not going to bother with them. This isn't out of hate or out of "emotion" so much as a disinterest in spending money on games I think are bad. I can probably afford to buy bad games, but I'd enjoy my money far more with good ones. And honestly, I think the last Bioware game I liked was the FIRST Mass Effect.

But hey, I'm not holding a grudge, and therefore I do not need to forgive them. If they can put out a game I like, I will buy it (In other words, please don't try and make this about how I am stubborn or emotional or whatever). But the more bad games they put out, the less likely I am to bother even looking at their new ones. Why? Because I'm not nursing sentimentality over the good old days.

 

[Lunar Templar]

*shrugs*
Bioware just sucks at they're jobs, hell I'd written them off before the ME3 shit storm for making dull, uninteresting games, and yes, I'm talking about KoToR when i say that.

 

[shrekfan246]

Besides, complaining about emotion is pretty hypocritical, when your own argument plays off the great games they had in the past.

I believe I expressed more incredulity than complaint.

As for myself, there's a good chance I'm done with Bioware. They've taken a path I dislike, and I'm not going to bother with them. This isn't out of hate or out of "emotion" so much as a disinterest in spending money on games I think are bad. I can probably afford to buy bad games, but I'd enjoy my money far more with good ones. And honestly, I think the last Bioware game I liked was the FIRST Mass Effect.

But hey, I'm not holding a grudge, and therefore I do not need to forgive them. If they can put out a game I like, I will buy it (In other words, please don't try and make this about how I am stubborn or emotional or whatever). But the more bad games they put out, the less likely I am to bother even looking at their new ones. Why? Because I'm not nursing sentimentality over the good old days.

I like how you feel the need to keep throwing the word "emotion" into your post, as if I'm going to accuse you of being angry or hostile. I only used the word once, and I used it specifically because there are plenty of people who appear to be harboring grudges against Bioware. If you're not holding a grudge, then more power to you. If you're not holding a grudge, then you're not a person being addressed by the opening post.

 

[Blade_125]

I liked Dragon Age 2, and everything but the ending of Mas Effect 3 (although I hadn't beaten the game a second time before loning it to a friend who still has it). If it were only the issue sof the games then it wouldn't be as big a deal.

One issue is rushing games to deliver to a date and rushing out an unfinished product. Getting past the fact that the story of the ending made no sense, the game play didn't either. Why spend so much time working on the war assets if they don't mean anything to the game. That smells of rushed work.

Another issue, bigger in my mind, is the horrible business practices. DRM, day one DLC, their horrible treatment of their customers. This is all horrible ways to do business. I preordered DA2 so I got the exiled prince and the black market. Neither were bad, as in they ruined the game, but I sure wouldn't pay money for them. After using Sebastian on my second playthrough I never played him again unless it was his character quests. And I have beaten the game 6 times. The prothean DLC on ME3 wasn't even free. It was an extra $10. I was stupid enough to buy it to get less than a half hour of game play and add a very uninteresting character. Bioware should be ashamed for charging that.

So really I will let it boil down to how I do with most game. No free passes. No Pre orders, and no DLC until it is thuroughly reviewed, and most of the time I will wait several months until the price drops $20. A game will have to prove it is worth full price before I buy it. The funny thing is that if everyone would adopt this attitude you would see a very different games market.

 

[hazabaza1]

Their games don't reuse the same engine for 15 years, unlike Valve.

BioWare is the only game company that has a shot of making that hypothetical "Perfect Game" everyone likes to talk about.

Yeah because the source engine is terribly buggy, looks horrible, doesn't do what it's supposed to do, has no amazing fan made games/mods coming from it. Oh and because ME:3 looks so freaking amazing for a console port.

Console port? I don't follow.

Just because you didn't play it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

OT: I never really had any beef with Bioware. Sure, DA2 wasn't all that good, and the ME3 ending still kinda sucks, but generally they're pretty good at what they do.

 

[GAunderrated]

There is nothing to forgive, Bioware has been making mediocre games for several years now so I just rent them and let them be. It's a win win for me, I invest little to no money in mediocre games, and bioware sees none of my money for producing said mediocre games.

 

[Phaerim]

Really. I still think BioWare is doing a good job. Mass Effect 3 is probably the most epic gaming experience I've had for ages. The Extended Cut DLC saved it for me, and it is easily one of my favourite games of all time.

Dragon Age 2 dwarfs in comparison to its predecessor which were an epic game. God I have played DA:O many times, and I still play it this day today. Dragon Age 2 was rushed, and the story was pretty unintresting, unengaging and not very exciting.

ToR is just WoW in space. Sorry. I am not an undying fan of the Star Wars universe, and it doesn't draw me the same was as fantasy settings or Mass Effect did.

BioWare have always been praised ot the heavens. Now they stepped a bit off. Let them learn, and lets hope Dragon Age 3 will blow our minds. I for one, want that franchise to be saved.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Can you tell me what Mass Effect 3 did right? Like anything it did that was good, Because I've played it through 6 times now and have found maybe 3 minutes of "acceptable" or "good" things in this 50 hour game.

You played a 50 hour game six times over despite only liking 3 minutes of it.

Or, to put it another way, you knowingly spent roughly 249 hours and 45 minutes (not counting the first playthrough) playing a game that you do not consider to be of acceptable quality.

...

Seriously?

I was looking for good.
Does that count?

I was trying to see if there was any combination or permutation of ways to play the first 2 games that made the third one not suck.

So what did you like about ME3?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I never played DA2, found the first to be too boring.

As for ME3; It's is an incredibly fun game let down by a rather poor narrative. I never read the novels based off the series so I can't really speak to those, but the game's story started to fall apart pretty early on in ME2. I got the sense they tried to fix some of it in 3, but a half assed effort is worse than no effort at all. Maybe Drew just isn't that good a story writer.

Will I stop buying Bioware games? The Dragon Age games, most likely yes. But no in general.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

I will never forgive Bioware. They made me relive my post-traumatic stress disorder from the Rollercoaster Syndrome.

What's that, you ask? That's when someone makes a trilogy (movie or game) - first one introduces the idea and makes cash, the sequel uses that cash to improve everything, then the third one comes and shits on everything before running off.

Fuck Bioware for Mass Effect 3. I can't speak for those who suffered for Dragon Age, but double-fuck them for that one too. And whatever the business is with KOTOR too (again not played that).

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I never played DA2, found the first to be too boring.

As for ME3; It's is an incredibly fun game let down by a rather poor narrative. I never read the novels based off the series so I can't really speak to those, but the game's story started to fall apart pretty early on in ME2. I got the sense they tried to fix some of it in 3, but a half assed effort is worse than no effort at all. Maybe Drew just isn't that good a story writer.

Will I stop buying Bioware games? The Dragon Age games, most likely yes. But no in general.

Drew Karpyshyn had very little input in regards to ME3, his name isn't even included in the writers credits.

Bioware will earn my 'forgivness' (aka me buying one of their products again) when it produces a superb RPG that outweighs the use of Origin, or better yet ditch EA and the brand Bioware entirely and start anew.

 

[Mikeyfell]

snip.

Well, thanks, that helped.
A lot of the stuff you liked was stuff I was indifferent about (Except the controls, but if you got 'em to work more power to you)

All the things I complain about are usually met with "That didn't matter" but that gets harder and harder to take when I complain about everything

I played the first two game so much because I loved them, I have 8 Shepard profiles for fuck's sake, and for the thrilling conclusion I wanted to see how my choices mattered. To my mind a playthrough where I killed the council, picked Udina for the council seat, and gave Cerberus the Collector base should have absolutely nothing in common with a playthrough where I saved the Council, gave Anderson the seat and blue up the Collector base, but they were exactly the same (Except for what happened on Tuchanka but that's the only part of the game that calls back to a decision you made for more than 1 or 2 lines of dialog)
I feel like Bioware robbed me of a satisfying conclusion to a series that I spent near on 1000 hours shaping, and that's why I hate them so much. (The ending had nothing to do with it, I thought it was fitting because it had nothing to do with the rest of the game in the same way ME 3 had nothing to do with the series as a whole. It was poetic in a way, a bad way)

So I don't think Bioware deserves to be forgiven, If that's how they treat their branching story lines, by pulling a last minute Ret-con on every choice they gave the player say in (Ahem Leliana being alive at the end of Dragon age 2. Ahem) Then the stuff we enjoyed so much had no meaning. And it's sort of pointless to get invested in something that doesn't mean anything

 

[shrekfan246]

snip.

Well, thanks, that helped.
A lot of the stuff you liked was stuff I was indifferent about (Except the controls, but if you got 'em to work more power to you)

All the things I complain about are usually met with "That didn't matter" but that gets harder and harder to take when I complain about everything

I played the first two game so much because I loved them, I have 8 Shepard profiles for fuck's sake, and for the thrilling conclusion I wanted to see how my choices mattered. To my mind a playthrough where I killed the council, picked Udina for the council seat, and gave Cerberus the Collector base should have absolutely nothing in common with a playthrough where I saved the Council, gave Anderson the seat and blue up the Collector base, but they were exactly the same (Except for what happened on Tuchanka but that's the only part of the game that calls back to a decision you made for more than 1 or 2 lines of dialog)
I feel like Bioware robbed me of a satisfying conclusion to a series that I spent near on 1000 hours shaping, and that's why I hate them so much. (The ending had nothing to do with it, I thought it was fitting because it had nothing to do with the rest of the game in the same way ME 3 had nothing to do with the series as a whole. It was poetic in a way, a bad way)

I can understand where you're coming from, but for them to take account for everything that happened in the previous two games, Mass Effect 3 would've essentially needed to have five completely different storylines entirely. Or maybe three that occasionally intersected depending on actions taken... regardless, it's not entirely feasible to believe Bioware would be able to do something like that, especially given the strict deadlines EA implements on them and how utterly ridiculous Casey Hudson got during the development process.

I don't understand it as an argument for why you hate Bioware, though. Is it because it was the end of the trilogy? Because the story of Mass Effect 2 didn't really change much dependent on your actions in the first game, either. In fact, the Rachni Queen being saved or killed wasn't brought up even once, that I remember, and Kaidan/Ashley had the exact same lines.

So I don't think Bioware deserves to be forgiven, If that's how they treat their branching story lines, by pulling a last minute Ret-con on every choice they gave the player say in (Ahem Leliana being alive at the end of Dragon age 2. Ahem) Then the stuff we enjoyed so much had no meaning. And it's sort of pointless to get invested in something that doesn't mean anything

Now see, I don't really think it had much meaning to begin with. To me, it was just a way to be entertained. Sure, I got invested in the stories and characters, but when I finished Mass Effect 3, I was just done with it. I moved on.

And I don't think it's really supposed to be a branching story. To me, at least, a branching story is something like Shadow The Hedgehog or Final Fantasy XIII-2, where the actual story, levels you visit, people you encounter, ending you get, will change completely based on things you do. Mass Effect always felt more like... imagine a straight line that occasionally has other lines turning off of it, but all of those lines end up in a dead stop eventually, so you have to go back to the original line you turned off of. I never felt Mass Effect was intended to have a branching storyline, because the overarching plot for the first two games always ended up the same no matter what choices you made.

Mass Effect: Go to Noveria, Feros, Virmire, and Ilos, kill Saren.

Mass Effect 2: Recruit your team, chase the Collectors around, attack their base.

All of the extra stuff along the way was just... extra stuff. So I guess we just feel differently about the impact of the events that happened in the first two Mass Effect games.

I feel like a robot now...

 

[Vegosiux]

It's not the matter of "I won't forgive them." It's the matter of "They lost my trust as a customer, and I'm not giving them another second chance, I already gave them enough second chances."

If they put together something great, worth playing again, good on them, but brand loyalty is just not my thing, so I don't see why I should been rooting for someone I don't trust right now.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Drew Karpyshyn had very little input in regards to ME3, his name isn't even included in the writers credits.

Didn't he set down the central story and the framework for it (the three games) tho?

As for Origin, I use Sandboxie to castrate it's abilities to spy on my system.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Drew Karpyshyn had very little input in regards to ME3, his name isn't even included in the writers credits.

Didn't he set down the central story and the framework for it (the three games) tho?

As for Origin, I use Sandboxie to castrate it's abilities to spy on my system.

His idea for the ending got dummied out, the Starchild was the brainchild of Casey Hudson.

Yeah sandbox is the inevitable home of Origin if I ever use it, that or cracking it entirely.
(Which is of course illegal and something I will never do)

 

[JWAN]

I don't really believe in boycotting companies based on a shitty game. I have more important shit to worry about. If they turn out like EA however... Let me put it this way, they stopped caring about the games they released and they need to fix that.

 

[legendp]

I buy games I enjoy regardless of the developer. although up until Mass effect 1 I would not have given bioware a second glance. I have bought knight of the old rebublic and jade empire (steam sale). and maybe I need to give them more of a chance but I just don't like them, there boring, the gameplay is slow, and the lack of a voiced character in KOTOR really bugs me. On another note other than the story I thought mass effect 1 was a meh game, All the side misions were the same, the inventory was annoying (I would prefer to be playing the game than in the inventory menu), and the shooting felt uninspired.

In my opinion (and I know it will be unpopular), I didn't think bioware made a truly incredible game until mass effect 2 (and mass effect 3 had it's flaws, not just the ending. but it was still a great game, I can not see how other than some gameplay elements it is like gear of war, the story, setting, atmosphere, way you interact are just so different.)