Everything that can be said about BioWare has been. A lot of it on this forum. The studio we knew pre-EA is long gone, along with the talent that created their best, most memorable games. What's left is a totally different studio long since incapable of crafting the games we used to know them for.
I was a HC BW fanboy thru the Naughties. Baldur's Gate II is a life-altering game, a genre-defining title that was created by an exceptionally talented team. It was so successful, it went on to define BioWare forevermore. The most memorable and standout thing of course, was the NPC companions. Deep, likeable characters with their own personalities who'd join the player's party, and we cannot forget the romances. So popular was this hitherto unseen aspect to games it became a mainstay of BW games thereafter.
It also set the gold standard for storytelling and worldbuilding. The chief takeaway from BG2 that would influence BW thereafter was to craft a story that was both epic in scope (Resurrect Bhaal, Starforge, Water Dragon, Blight/Archdemon, Reaper Invasion) while simultaneously deeply personal (the Bhaalspawn/Sarevok/Irenicus, Revan/Malak, Last Spirit Monk, Last Grey Warden, First Human SPECTRE/Saren). They put the player in a very special ROLE and made us central to story.
While they made the defacto best PC RPGs of the day, I can understand (even if I resent) their move to becoming console developers. While niche PC RPGs are great, the money from a wider hit is undeniable, and KotOR in 2003 was still a great game. JE was their first foray into creating a title based on their own IP, and while it was a great story, the combat was only "okay". But none of that matters, all that matters now is ME and DA....and Anthem.
Mass Effect has already been discussed to death, I shan't belabour it. ME1 was magnificent. It captured the sense of wonder and grand, sci-fi adventure easily the equal of the best examples in the genre, whatever one might say about the combat (a hold over from the pseudo-real time KotOR and earlier). ME2 sat right in the centre of the EA buyout and it's clearly visible. A formerly dialogue-heavy RPG was now a stripped down, cover shooter. Infinite clips now needed reloading without any lore explanation, only that EA wanted a third-person shooter...EA did the same thing with Dead Space..."Oh, it's survival horror? Make it a shooter pls thx.". The characters in 2 were great and much beloved, but the main story in 2 was terrible, as it was in 3. This was the beginning of the end.
Over in DA land, Origins was a dark, violent, *very* mature fantasy that morphed into some open-world, social-justice filled travesty by Inquisition. All world building was replaced with boring fetch quests to score F**kabout Points to advance a plot so disposable I can't remember a thing about it.
Andromeda was so awful, I don't think it's worth the words to discuss. It feels like a 12 year old had been asked to make a copy of ME1, and took the superficial parts that they remembered and none of the parts that mattered. Even if you ignore the bugs, the utterly awful dialogue, the horrible characters, the outright disrespect to established lore/canon, the animations, the tedious open-world gameplay, f**kabout points and so on, you're left with a terrible, nonsense story, awful villains, one new alien species about whom we learn practically nothing, some ancient alien tech, about which we learn practically nothing, multiple plot points that lead nowhere, no role-playing of any kind, boring side-quests dictated by an awful AI and the list goes on. It's such a far cry from everything that made ME1 great, it shouldn't have borne the same name.
Anthem....by all accounts is a disaster of such proportions, of such bad decision making from leadership, poor, last minute design, rushed development, bugs and engine issues that to call it a flop is being polite. An EA "live service", it can only be considered an ill-conceived idea that was executed so badly and should never have been released as was. The BioWare that used to make the best RPGs in the business has been replaced by people who make awful shooters. It is a game designed for shareholders, not for gamers and its terrible metacritic and the numerous articles detailing its issues reflect just how far BioWare has fallen.
The talented folks are long gone. David Gaider, the genius who gave us masterpieces like Baldur's Gate II and KotOR (and DA:O), Drew Karpshyn (KotOR, ME), Mike Laidlaw (Jade Empire, Dragon Age), the visionary Doctors, all gone. Mac Walters is a talentless hack who is jointly responsible, along with Casey Hudson for the ME3 ending, and I hold largely responsible for the travesty of Andromeda (obligatory f**k Mac Walters).
BioWare 1999-2007 was a company reputed for exceptional RPGs, and I loved everything these magnificent creatives made. Their games are some of my favourite, most cherished experiences. The hours I put into them and the hours of joy they returned are beyond count. From 2007-2012, the change started taking hold and the last of the creative talent was used up. Everything thereafter was created by a different company with just the name in common with the old one. They don't make story-driven RPGs any more, they make mediocre action games with cutscenes in them. No more world-building, no epic storytelling, no great roleplaying, just the shooting.
I mourn what we lost, but we have other capable companies still out there. Obsidian still make great RPGs, Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be a must-buy for any RPG fan, and I'm sure there are others. Maybe this live-service/open-world craze will start to settle and CP2077's inevitable success will highlight the demand for deep, single-player RPGs that still exists. We won't get them from AAA studios, they're busy regurgitating annual bollocks, mass-market shooters and live-services, but from the AA devs, there's still hope. BioWare should be allowed to rest in peace, but EA won't allow that. They'll never again make the quality RPGs they used to, but EA needs studios to make shooters.
