What do people think about Bioware right now?

[TheGreatAndPowerfulZOG]

Eh, I like 'em.

When it comes to characters and dialogue, they're the best in the business, bar none. Their quality fluctuates wildly in every other department, but I can forgive them that because they are one of the precious few game developers who are capable of making me give a shit about their characters, an ability usually reserved for other and better story-telling mediums.

I couldn't give a damn about the scrapping of "complex RPG elements and mechanics". I don't buy a game, any game, for the sheer uplifting joy of adding +2 to strength or swapping out a heat sink III for a heat sink IV. If I want to watch numbers get bigger I have a calculator on my desk.

Granted, DA2 was a bit of a mess. I enjoyed it, but I'm not about to defend the recycled dungeons or disjointed plot. That said, I'm not sufficiently fickle to condemn a developer for one sub-par game.

I guess I'm one of the few who doesn't really care for their writing team. I quit ME1 about 95% through because I couldn't bare hearing Shepherd speak anymore. The whole game comes off as Expanded Universe fan fiction. Say what you will about Obsidian, I prefer their characters and dialogue any day.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Eventually, rpg fans may have to go elsewhere for traditional rpg-style games, but I'll always consider Bioware as an awesome studio....

That's my concern, that there is no elsewhere. Bioware have been the only company making such games for a long time now, and now they seem to be giving it up in favour of action-RPGs (with which the market is flooded). I realise trends change and all that, but I really believe there is still a very big, very keen audience for RPGs in the BG/NWN/DA:O mould. Bioware seem intent on abandoning that audience.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Mass Effect isn't turning into Call of Duty. The story, the characters, everything we like about Mass Effect is still there, all they've done is incorporate one of the more successful facets of a very successful genre.

And the entire Call of Duty community won't suddenly abandon CoD for Mass Effect. You're overreacting.

But, again, I think for many of us the RPG elements are as important as the story. Yes, I'm talking about stats and skill trees. These aren't dirty words, they represent a type of gameplay that gives the player greater control over the character they create and how that character handles situations in the game. For me, that has always been the defining characteristic of an RPG.

What I'm saying is, they seem to have incorporated a successful facet from a successful genre, at the expense of a very successful facet of their OWN genre. And I don't like that.

 

[Zhukov]

Eh, I like 'em.

When it comes to characters and dialogue, they're the best in the business, bar none. Their quality fluctuates wildly in every other department, but I can forgive them that because they are one of the precious few game developers who are capable of making me give a shit about their characters, an ability usually reserved for other and better story-telling mediums.

I guess I'm one of the few who doesn't really care for their writing team. I quit ME1 about 95% through because I couldn't bare hearing Shepherd speak anymore. The whole game comes off as Expanded Universe fan fiction. Say what you will about Obsidian, I prefer their characters and dialogue any day.

Actually, as much as I like Bioware, I can sympathise with people who don't. They're stuck fast to their one bloody story formula and, to make matters worse, their fanbase throws a tantrum whenever they try to edge away from it. Also, their writing can get cringe-inducingly corny at times. Poor ol' Shepard falls victim to this frequently.

As for Obsidian, yeah... I hear that fairly frequently. It's made me rather curious. In fact, I would dearly like to check out the writing in some of their games, but apparently they don't want me to because every Obsidian game I have tried has been utterly horrendous. The last one was Alpha Protocol. Looked like crap, had broken controls and the worst dialogue system I have ever seen. Sure, maybe the dialogue and characters were works of utter brilliance that would put Tolstoy to shame. I never got the chance to find out because I deleted the game halfway through the tutorial. You can present me with a scoop the most delicious ice cream on the planet, but if it's being served on a bowl of human faeces then I'm probably not going to be in any hurry to eat it.

 

[ckriley]

It was inferior to Dragon Age 1 in visuals, writing, plot, characters, gameplay, pretty much every department.

Visuals? How so?

Writing, plot and characters is debatable. I liked the characters in DA:2 Varric and Anders in particular. I never understood why Isabella pissed people off (apart from the fan service redesign), she was just Zevran with tits. Everyone's inner feminist got all outraged about her though.

The only character I didn't like was Fenris.

Plot? I liked the plot. It was a nice change from the usual saving the world from certain destruction thing that's been done a million times. It could have been tied together better admittedly (None of this "and three years went by" crap. But I liked how it was more about politics and civil unrest than Armageddon.

Gameplay again debatable, I prefered Origins overall but there are a few things DA 2 improved upon.

Visuals - Backgrouds were ugly, character models stood out and didn't fit into the scene, texture work was inferior, the stylized cartoonish look came off as cheap.

Writing, plot and characters IMO isn't debatable. You're free to like them, but the game wastes its strongest characters (Arishok in particular), the final villain is pulled out of the arse, the whole thing is unpleasantly disjointed. The list goes on. It was poorly written. Not terrible, but definitely not up to usual Bioware standards, with a few exceptions (Varric, Arishok)

Gameplay was atrocious. Wave based combat that completely ruins any concept of tactics? Bosses that are nothing but bloated sacks of HP? The list goes on. One of the best things about DA1's combat was the tactical aspect of it, forcing you to think about what you're doing, plan things out, lay down ambushes, etc. DA2 basically spawns wave after wave of enemies on top of you. That's it. No planning, no formations, no clever use of abilities. Just spam your shit untill they stop coming.

DA2 was an OK game, but I don't look to Bioware for OK. It was their worst game to date. If some no-name studio had put it out as their first major title, I'd say "Not bad, keep it up", but when the best RPG developer backed by one of the largest publishers in the industry puts out something like that, it's disappointing.

I keep reading over and over again how the original Dragon Age force you to think and use tactics. I never had to do that in any of my playthroughs of that game - and I played it on nightmare mode on the PC.

Unless playing as a DW warrior and an archery rogue was just OP. When I finally got my dalish elf archer up to high levels EVERY SINGLE FIGHT IN THE GAME was incredibly trivial. She was literally two-shotting everything. Everything. And I am not exaggerating when I say that she practically solo'd the archdemon.

 

[roastbeefy]

"We want to appeal to the Call of Duty crowd" does not mean "We want to dumb our game down for petulant children to make more money", it means "We'd like to make our game more accessible and appealing to people unfamiliar with the genre and make a game more people can enjoy."

To me those sound like two different ways of saying exactly the same thing.

It does if you really think that the only way to make a game more accessible is to dumb it down, but that's not the case. One thing a many designers strive for are the "easy to learn, hard to master" games. Just because somebody has never played an RPG before doesn't mean they're an idiot for not understanding it at first. It took me a lot of experience in more accessible games before I was able to make a usable character in the original Baldur's Gate. Bioware just wants to make games more people can enjoy, including their current fans. Not to mention I seriously doubt a developer would choose to just drop a (rather large) fanbase they already have for the sake of more money.

I won't deny EA might try to push Bioware into that, but it's not like Bioware isn't already pretty popular (and therefore profitable).

 

[Hides His Eyes]

"We want to appeal to the Call of Duty crowd" does not mean "We want to dumb our game down for petulant children to make more money", it means "We'd like to make our game more accessible and appealing to people unfamiliar with the genre and make a game more people can enjoy."

To me those sound like two different ways of saying exactly the same thing.

It does if you really think that the only way to make a game more accessible is to dumb it down, but that's not the case. One thing a many designers strive for are the "easy to learn, hard to master" games. Just because somebody has never played an RPG before doesn't mean they're an idiot for not understanding it at first. It took me a lot of experience in more accessible games before I was able to make a usable character in the original Baldur's Gate. Bioware just wants to make games more people can enjoy, including their current fans. Not to mention I seriously doubt a developer would choose to just drop a (rather large) fanbase they already have for the sake of more money.

I won't deny EA might try to push Bioware into that, but it's not like Bioware isn't already pretty popular (and therefore profitable).

Well, perhaps. Maybe it is just about making the games more accessible, and I can sort of understand that even if I don't really agree with it (it took me ages to "learn" Neverwinter Nights, but once I did it became my favourite game of all time - I think that in a well-made game, players are rewarded for taking the time to get their heads around complex gameplay).

But anyway my original point was simply that what the Bioware guy said about appealing to CoD fans struck me as disgustingly cynical. I mean, why on earth SHOULD a fantasy RPG need to appeal to fans of a modern military shooter? The only possible reason is greed and market envy.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Bioware just wants to make games more people can enjoy, including their current fans.

Also, specifically in response to this, my concern is that their current fans are NOT enjoying this new kind of game. And I think that really sucks because the traditional RPG that Bioware, until recently, specialised in, can't really be found anywhere else. Whereas action games with RPG elements account for about 80% of all the mainstream games coming out at the moment. Again, the enormous success of DA:O (a very traditional RPG) should show that the genre has plenty of fans.

 

[raankh]

After my very poor experience with SW:TOR, I have no confidence in Bioware anymore. I'm not even looking to buy ME3; the first one is one of my favourite games, second I found to be a bland action RPG and the third looks to be a cheap shooter with bioware's now-standard limited branching, choice dialogue system.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Oh also, in response to "especially when we dont know a thing about that game", yes we do. That game was DA2, that's what Bioware said about it when it came out.

In that case I misunderstood you. I had never heard bioware say anything like that but to be fair I dont follow development of their games all that much. I just play the hell out of them after release. I thought we were talking about an upcoming game, not one that had been released yet. Although I have to wonder how exactly DA2 is supposed to appeal to MMS fans...the logic of that comparison just escapes me but just because I dont understand the logic doesnt mean I can jump to "money grubbing" as the answer

Still it goes back to creative expression and trying new things which companies should be able to do. Going way back in time Super mario bros 2 was vastly different from the original. Then they went back to the original style with Super mario bros 3 because fans enjoyed that more. Come to think of it the original 3 Castlevania's were like that too. Its not like we havnt seen this kind of thing in video game history before.

But I don't think it does come down to creative expression, that's what I'm saying. I have to say I am more concerned with things Bioware have said than with the games themselves (I actually haven't played DA2 or any of the ME games). The fact that they have said, in as many words, that they want to make their games appeal to the CoD crowd (even if it does seem a strange comparison) and that by all accounts each ME game is more like Gears of War than the one before, to me, stinks of change for the sake of profits, not for the sake of creative exploration (which I'm all for).

And this may not be the first time such things have happened in gaming history, in fact I'm sure it's not. What worries me is that this could be the end of a genre - the traditional, complex RPG. This is not a dead genre that no one is interested in anymore; the enormous sales figures of DA:O demonstrated that. If this trend continues, that kind of game simply won't get made anymore, and some people won't miss them, but I and many others will.