Why did BioWare not do a good job with DA: Inquisition?
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Let me offer you some free advice: DO NOT READ THE WITCHER BOOKS. They are awful. You'll turn into Casual Cringey in the first couple of chapters of The Last Wish. The collectible sex cards from the first game? Really fucking tame compared to how puerile the books are. The author practically uses "bam" "biff" and "sock" for his fight scenes (ala Adam West's Batman). Do yourself a favor and play the game instead and forget that the books are even a thing. Seriously. I joke about a lot of things but not this time. They are that bad.Casual Shinji said:
While I don't doubt that the Witcher 3 has bugs (it's an open world game after all), but to say that it has more than Skyrim at launch seems to me like you haven't played vanilla Skyrim in a long time. To this day, if I try to do the Blood on the Ice on my 360 version of the game, I have to go through a set up process just to make sure that the quest doesn't break or not even start properly. This is especially unfortunate since it's one of the games more interesting and lengthy side quests. I love the game more than almost any other, but it has tons of bugs that I've simply gotten used to or that have been patched by the Unofficial Patches.Nimzabaat said:Also... less buggy than Skyrim? Skyrim on the console had one bug that I noticed, it was funny, but it was just one bug. TW3 has so many it's ridiculous. They are patching them which Bethesda didn't do with the one bug (because it was funny they said), but still... I get floating vendors all the time and that shit is usually a PC exclusive.Charcharo said:Uhm...Nimzabaat said:
I dont know about you, but Velen was packed full of content. And more importantly, QUALITY content. Not filler. The rest of the game is the exact same way.
Not a grind or some shitty little quests, but things that actually had me interested in doing them just because they were interesting and fun.
Also, budget seems to not do much about technology. Crysis 3 had a budget of 67 million. Metro Last Light had about 10 million... apart from animations (that simply cost money to do well) it was Crysis 3's equal and even surpassed it in some ways.
So did STALKER way back in 2007 and 2008.
Accolades mean nothing. Call of Propaganda 12: Something Warfare has them too.
The Escapist loves AAA games just as much as any other site... I guess... *spits in disgust*
Witcher is not AAA due to its budget. But it can deffinitely compare to every single RPG out there, no matter its own budget.
BTW, nudity is not a problem. Witcher handles it well.
It is a lot less buggy than Skyrim on release.
I dont get what the rape is supposed to mean.
And no RPG has a good inventory... at least from the ones I have played. All Bioware and Bethesda ones suck. Only STALKER had a good inventory...
Wait... the small print... what???
Did I fall for it
Admittedly, I haven't finished the Witcher 3 yet. I'm about 50 hours in so maybe Skellige is a more buggy area than Velen and Novigrad. That, or maybe you just had a particularly unlucky Witcher 3 experience while having a particularly lucky Skyrim experience.
I haven't played the game, but based on my history playing previous BioWare titles I'd guess there are two possibilities:
1) BioWare just isn't that great a developer, or;
2) Who the hell even knows which BioWare team made it?
I have little doubt there's some of the first one creeping in, but most people seem to forget that there are three BioWare teams and only the original Edmonton team is the one who's games even fans really think of fondly. And they've certainly had their share of missteps after the original Mass Effect even among their fans. So if they didn't make the game then it was one of the second string BioWare teams that no one really likes but they haven't noticed because EA likes to pretend it's all the same thing.
1) BioWare just isn't that great a developer, or;
2) Who the hell even knows which BioWare team made it?
I have little doubt there's some of the first one creeping in, but most people seem to forget that there are three BioWare teams and only the original Edmonton team is the one who's games even fans really think of fondly. And they've certainly had their share of missteps after the original Mass Effect even among their fans. So if they didn't make the game then it was one of the second string BioWare teams that no one really likes but they haven't noticed because EA likes to pretend it's all the same thing.
People can only really speculate, so my take on it is: broadly, I think BioWare focus grouped too many damn things. As an overall design ethos they seem to have wanted to create a kind of mid-ground between Origins and DAII's more immediate combat. And THEN go [semi] open-world using a completely new engine - they bit off more than they could chew.
'Pleasing' fans and trying to cohere design principles is all well and good, but the result was that DA:I doesn't really feel like it has an identity. Like or loathe DAII (I loved it), it at least had a quite distinct structure and concept. Before that, DA:O tried to distinguish itself as a relatively core focused and grounded multi-format RPG. But DA:I? It feels like a conscious effort to somehow address/solve what came before, not a great game to play or experience in and of itself.
My list of faults with DA:I is near endless, but 'it's an SP MMO overloaded with inane filler' would be my main criticism... Or its absolute lack of a decent central story [or villain]. Or its broken loot system. Or lack of access to all unlocked abilities. Or its puddle shallow combat. Or--- Honestly, BioWare just aren't very good core game designers. They're popular, they're uber-mainstream, and their IP's sell well - they're like Bethesda, and both companies need to look around at some solidly crafted works and learn. Both companies also patronise the fuck out of their audiences, too, treating players like absolute morons.
...and yet, the characters and the various classes are enjoyable enough to draw me in for a good few playthroughs, so go figure.
'Pleasing' fans and trying to cohere design principles is all well and good, but the result was that DA:I doesn't really feel like it has an identity. Like or loathe DAII (I loved it), it at least had a quite distinct structure and concept. Before that, DA:O tried to distinguish itself as a relatively core focused and grounded multi-format RPG. But DA:I? It feels like a conscious effort to somehow address/solve what came before, not a great game to play or experience in and of itself.
My list of faults with DA:I is near endless, but 'it's an SP MMO overloaded with inane filler' would be my main criticism... Or its absolute lack of a decent central story [or villain]. Or its broken loot system. Or lack of access to all unlocked abilities. Or its puddle shallow combat. Or--- Honestly, BioWare just aren't very good core game designers. They're popular, they're uber-mainstream, and their IP's sell well - they're like Bethesda, and both companies need to look around at some solidly crafted works and learn. Both companies also patronise the fuck out of their audiences, too, treating players like absolute morons.
...and yet, the characters and the various classes are enjoyable enough to draw me in for a good few playthroughs, so go figure.
Smooth Operator said:
Shanicus said:
I actually enjoyed the game as well, and maybe it's just confirmation bias that's making me think it wasn't well received, since I've been seeing a lot of criticism heaped on it lately. (Usually in an attempt to build up the Witcher 3)JohnZ117 said:
That being said, I didn't enjoy it as much as Origins, and while I did enjoy it more than 2, my biggest problem there is that 2, for all it's faults, still felt like a Dragon Age game. There were times during Inquisition were it felt like I grabbed a game from a completely different franchise. I can't even say why I felt that. Maybe it was the difference in quest design, maybe it was the less focus they gave to your companions, maybe it was the fact that they dropped the conflicts brought up in 2 like a hot potato and brought in a whole new mess of characters and locations for this ancient elves thing. I'm not sure. But the game constantly left me feeling disconnected.
I don't think the game was awful, it's just that, looking back on it now, I'm more than a little disappointed. It did feel extremely safe.
I'm pretty sure Hardline has clans and clan battles and whatnot on PS4/Xbone. It doesn't really matter to me because from what I've read, the game is unbalanced as fuck and so playing it competitively is kinda stupid.Charcharo said:
Skylines is basically a good SimCity. SimCity has a history of selling better than s Souls games. So, how is a "proper" SimCity outselling a Souls game anything special? The fact that Bloodborne, a niche game on a new & single console, is in the same bracket (sales-wise) as Skylines is impressive. All I found was that both have sold over a million. It's not impressive if Skylines outsells Bloodborne as that genre is more popular than a Souls game to begin with while being on a platform with a bigger user-base.
The fact is whatever the next big multiplayer title released has a very high probability that it will have a bigger player base on a single console vs PC. That is a fact.
The largest difference between them IMO is the combat. On high difficulties, Witcher 3 has a very intricate combat system that involves character positioning, clever cooldown management and most prominently, the need to watch enemy attack animations. DA3 on the other hand, gives you a choice: Either hold Auto-Attack forever, or pause every 0.5 seconds to watch a fight with poor AI play out in slow motion while you're told to strategise in a game dictated 100% by numbers.
For all of Witcher 3's faults, the meatiest part of the game plays well enough. Dragon Age, on the other hand, turned into a very slow-paced Dynasty Warriors with forgettable enemies. It spent too much time doing the stuff it doesn't do well.
For all of Witcher 3's faults, the meatiest part of the game plays well enough. Dragon Age, on the other hand, turned into a very slow-paced Dynasty Warriors with forgettable enemies. It spent too much time doing the stuff it doesn't do well.
SimCity on freaking SNES sold 2 million 20+ years ago vs a Souls game selling 2 million now with many more gamers. SimCity is not as niche as a Souls game. Souls is probably as popular as it'll ever get. I'm not even a big fan of the Souls series, calling it niche isn't something "special" or a compliment, it's just based on sales numbers, that's all. Souls games should be way more niche because they aren't even that good at what they do. The Souls games don't have a big budget either, much less than an AAA game. I don't really care if Skylines or Bloodborne had a bigger budget.Charcharo said:
The next big multiplayer game will get more players on a single console vs PC. All you do is bring up WoT and LoL. Most online communities are bigger on a single console vs PC. If say 75% of multiplatform games have a bigger online community on PS4 vs PC, then PS4 is going to have more online players for a majority of the games, which is better than having a few games on PC with just huge player numbers.
Attention to detail. I played Inquis. I had some fun with some parts of it. But the ratio of interesting quests to bullshit is laughable in Inquis. Just mention Hissing Wastes to anyone who tried getting 100% in DA:I and they will foam at the mouth. See, the reason why Inquis is just and above average game, that nevertheless is a FAILURE from the perspective of how it was hyped and what people expected of it, is because Bioware did not give a single fuck about making a cohesive world. Even the plot is a complete mess, with 90% of the game spent on a red herring with the last 1-2 hours of the game beeing the real plot.
MEANWHILE, despite what rabid bioware fanboys might say, the world in Witcher 3 is fucking alive and filled with ACTUAL content and attention to detail. Instead of "close x of y to get xp" you have quests about little slices of life in a war torn land that also suffers from a permanent monster infestation. Instead of running around the empty and sometimes linear (looking at you Emprise du Lion) map of an MMO filled with mobs at every pace, Velen feels like a land where actual people live in. Bandits prowl along path in no mans land and have camps hidden in hard to find places, monsters nest in the dark corners of the wilderness, the oposing armies maintain and patrol their areas of influence and in the no man's land you find the actual marks of a war: displaced refugees, bandits and scum preying on the weak, mobs searching for something and someone to vent their anger on. You find a million little stories that paint the picture of a living world. And the quests ... even the most basic cut and dry "find and kill this monster" are done in a way that makes you enjoy playing them. Instead of the clasic "monster is here, go kill", you are actually made to feel like a profesional monster hunter. Let me illustrate with an example: you are tasked with ridding a village of a ghost called Jenny of the woods. How would bioware do that quest? They would just put a copy of monster x in quest area, mark it and that's it. In witcher, you can talk to a survivor and discover the ghost only attacks at night, pointing to a specific type of monster. Inverstigating the attack site leads you to discover a trail to a shallow grave of a girl where you discover the origin of the ghost: a girl murdered by her husband because she loved another. Already this has far more work and personality put into it than half of the companions in inquisition. So how do you solve the quest? You find the meeting spot of the lovers and use the last letter of the girl and the knife that murdered her to draw out the ghost, after dark, as it would not appear in the daylight. This can be done in about 5 minutes, yet this is far more interesting than the 5 minutes I spent in Inquis going to area y and killing monster x I fought ten times before now only with more hp. Both quests are at the core the same thing. The difference is that bioware just went minimal effort and gave us a bland core, while CD-Projekt Red, with a far smaller budget and team, went through the effort to build all these stories and details around EVERY single quest. EVEN the collectible hunts (witcher gear scavanger hunts) tell a story of the world and fill in pieces of lore more organic than any piece of crap bioware codex even could.
TL;DR: Witcher succeds because it pays attention to detail, Dragon Age fails because it lacks that attention.
MEANWHILE, despite what rabid bioware fanboys might say, the world in Witcher 3 is fucking alive and filled with ACTUAL content and attention to detail. Instead of "close x of y to get xp" you have quests about little slices of life in a war torn land that also suffers from a permanent monster infestation. Instead of running around the empty and sometimes linear (looking at you Emprise du Lion) map of an MMO filled with mobs at every pace, Velen feels like a land where actual people live in. Bandits prowl along path in no mans land and have camps hidden in hard to find places, monsters nest in the dark corners of the wilderness, the oposing armies maintain and patrol their areas of influence and in the no man's land you find the actual marks of a war: displaced refugees, bandits and scum preying on the weak, mobs searching for something and someone to vent their anger on. You find a million little stories that paint the picture of a living world. And the quests ... even the most basic cut and dry "find and kill this monster" are done in a way that makes you enjoy playing them. Instead of the clasic "monster is here, go kill", you are actually made to feel like a profesional monster hunter. Let me illustrate with an example: you are tasked with ridding a village of a ghost called Jenny of the woods. How would bioware do that quest? They would just put a copy of monster x in quest area, mark it and that's it. In witcher, you can talk to a survivor and discover the ghost only attacks at night, pointing to a specific type of monster. Inverstigating the attack site leads you to discover a trail to a shallow grave of a girl where you discover the origin of the ghost: a girl murdered by her husband because she loved another. Already this has far more work and personality put into it than half of the companions in inquisition. So how do you solve the quest? You find the meeting spot of the lovers and use the last letter of the girl and the knife that murdered her to draw out the ghost, after dark, as it would not appear in the daylight. This can be done in about 5 minutes, yet this is far more interesting than the 5 minutes I spent in Inquis going to area y and killing monster x I fought ten times before now only with more hp. Both quests are at the core the same thing. The difference is that bioware just went minimal effort and gave us a bland core, while CD-Projekt Red, with a far smaller budget and team, went through the effort to build all these stories and details around EVERY single quest. EVEN the collectible hunts (witcher gear scavanger hunts) tell a story of the world and fill in pieces of lore more organic than any piece of crap bioware codex even could.
TL;DR: Witcher succeds because it pays attention to detail, Dragon Age fails because it lacks that attention.
DA:I had it wrong on several fronts, for me.
-Sidequests were insanely boring. Almost every sidequest was just a fetch quest. I'm 25 hours into Witcher 3, and even though quests are often just dressed up fetch quests, I've enjoyed every sidequest and Witcher contract so far. Sidequests are simply way more story and character driven, and often times go in very unexpected directions.
-Characters were meh. I know part of this is probably rose-colored nostalgia glasses, but I found most of the DA:I characters very boring compared to DA:O's characters (never played DA2), Iron Bull being the notable exception.
-Scale. Basically, DA:O did things well by making you an average Joe footsoldier to start, then you're completely on your own, and then you have to build up allies as the game goes along, and you're eventually in charge of an entire Army. In DA:I, you're quite literally in charge of this entire Army within about 90 minutes, and then you just make it bigger as the game goes. It also killed a lot of the immersion for me: if I have thousands of troops under my command, why the hell am I running around with 3 buddies looking for crystals and fighting wolves? Don't I have Soldiers to do that for me?
-Combat couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to be an action-packed slugfest or a tactical game. Compared to DA:O, where not pausing the game before combat and issuing orders was basically instant-death, combat in DA:I felt awkward and all over the place. I also had to turn off friendly-fire, because your Mages would seemingly roast your guys in an instant if you didn't.
-WAY too much micromanagement with equipment. Having to keep track of not just equipment for each of your individual characters, but each individual rune and all the little upgrades that they all had, was just f-ing annoying. Witcher 3 had this level of customization with equipment, but since you're only worried about 1 character it's not that tough.
-Someone mentioned it already, but the world of Witcher 3 actually feels alive. You feel like Geralt is just this guy existing in this vast world that is here for you to explore. In DA:I, I always felt like it was the other way around: this world exists just so I can run around in it.
Bottom line: I'm 25 hours into Witcher 3 and it's one of those games I think about constantly when I'm not playing it, and can't wait to play it again. I got 40 hours into DA:I and have basically no desire to go back to it.
-Sidequests were insanely boring. Almost every sidequest was just a fetch quest. I'm 25 hours into Witcher 3, and even though quests are often just dressed up fetch quests, I've enjoyed every sidequest and Witcher contract so far. Sidequests are simply way more story and character driven, and often times go in very unexpected directions.
-Characters were meh. I know part of this is probably rose-colored nostalgia glasses, but I found most of the DA:I characters very boring compared to DA:O's characters (never played DA2), Iron Bull being the notable exception.
-Scale. Basically, DA:O did things well by making you an average Joe footsoldier to start, then you're completely on your own, and then you have to build up allies as the game goes along, and you're eventually in charge of an entire Army. In DA:I, you're quite literally in charge of this entire Army within about 90 minutes, and then you just make it bigger as the game goes. It also killed a lot of the immersion for me: if I have thousands of troops under my command, why the hell am I running around with 3 buddies looking for crystals and fighting wolves? Don't I have Soldiers to do that for me?
-Combat couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to be an action-packed slugfest or a tactical game. Compared to DA:O, where not pausing the game before combat and issuing orders was basically instant-death, combat in DA:I felt awkward and all over the place. I also had to turn off friendly-fire, because your Mages would seemingly roast your guys in an instant if you didn't.
-WAY too much micromanagement with equipment. Having to keep track of not just equipment for each of your individual characters, but each individual rune and all the little upgrades that they all had, was just f-ing annoying. Witcher 3 had this level of customization with equipment, but since you're only worried about 1 character it's not that tough.
-Someone mentioned it already, but the world of Witcher 3 actually feels alive. You feel like Geralt is just this guy existing in this vast world that is here for you to explore. In DA:I, I always felt like it was the other way around: this world exists just so I can run around in it.
Bottom line: I'm 25 hours into Witcher 3 and it's one of those games I think about constantly when I'm not playing it, and can't wait to play it again. I got 40 hours into DA:I and have basically no desire to go back to it.
I'm going to say that probably the single biggest problem for DAI is that they tried to make the combat more like DAO whilst also preserving DA2's system and merging the whole lot into an open world MMO-type system. Which was never, ever going to work.
DAO had probably the single worst combat system of any game I have ever played. DA2's system was a huge step up (with some absolutely glaring flaws such as the "waves of enemies" thing) but a lot of people disliked it because, god knows why, they liked the system in DAO. But whatever, that's all opinions and isn't really the thrust of the point here. The thing to take away there is that they play very differently.
And the point is that rather than then trying to pick something and stick with it they tried to cherry pick bits and put it all together in a manner rather like the experiments of a certain Dr Frankenstein. Which resulted in this weird cobbled-together thing with a dodgy DAO-type tactical setup and a more poorly-done DA2-type action system. Making it the worst of both worlds and, frankly, rather incoherent to play.
DAO had probably the single worst combat system of any game I have ever played. DA2's system was a huge step up (with some absolutely glaring flaws such as the "waves of enemies" thing) but a lot of people disliked it because, god knows why, they liked the system in DAO. But whatever, that's all opinions and isn't really the thrust of the point here. The thing to take away there is that they play very differently.
And the point is that rather than then trying to pick something and stick with it they tried to cherry pick bits and put it all together in a manner rather like the experiments of a certain Dr Frankenstein. Which resulted in this weird cobbled-together thing with a dodgy DAO-type tactical setup and a more poorly-done DA2-type action system. Making it the worst of both worlds and, frankly, rather incoherent to play.
SimCity (2013) sold over 1 million (just retail I believe) even with all the backlash over that game, and I believe those totals don't even include digital. SimCity is basically what StarCraft is for strategy games, both genres are niche but those games sell very well.Charcharo said:
Sony probably just mainly helped with marketing for Bloodborne, the exact same graphical issues from other Souls games are in Bloodborne, the graphics aren't anything special. Plus, it's not like Bloodborne has top-notch voice actors or anything. I really don't see how Bloodborne would be that much more expensive to make vs a normal Souls game.
The FPS market is over-saturated on all platforms and the majority are all pretty shitty. The only online FPS that I actually have an interest in is the next Rainbow Six.
Let me know when the majority of multiplatform games have a higher player count on PC vs a single console. For every 1 PC game you list with more players, I can list like 5 PS games with higher player counts. Chances are if I buy a game with online MP, the PS4 community will be bigger than the PC community. Ghost Recon Future Soldier has a higher PS3 player count vs PC and it's 3 years old plus Ghost Recon was originally a PC game to start with. I wouldn't be surprised if PS4 Witcher 3 sells more copies than PC either.
I think I can answer why people love Origins combat. Each ability you used FELT impactful. You have flurry up and you run behind someone as a Rogue, and you're taking noticable chunks off their lifebar. You Shield Bash someone as S&B and you feel the crunch as you hit them and they're thrown on the ground. You're a mage and use Frost, and you watch the area you frosted turn into ice. Each ability did noticable amounts of damage, were on reasonably high cooldowns, and had the feeling that you were doing something important with all of them. Also, the kill animations that happened every once in a while appeared brutal as all hell in part because of the artstyle being quite dark in comparison to DA2.Lightspeaker said:
DA2, the animations were stepped up big time, they're fucking beautiful in comparison, anyone that says otherwise is either blind or lying to you, you looked like you were doing something amazing, and then you shave off a miniscule amount of hp, so you're constantly spamming through these amazingly detailed animations, but you aren't appearing to do much. Also the Benny Hill fight with the Arishok, I don't think I need to elaborate. You do the gravity mage specialization, and you sometimes push down a couple mooks that die instantly, and then a random guy that looks exactly like the others resists that area slow/pushdown thing, and takes barely any damage. You blow all of your abilities on this one guy,and then you have to do it again because it only took a quarter of his hp.
It's a question of what you like honestly, a limited amount of abilities(relatively) or a lot of them. The former appeals to me more because it feels more like a P&P RPG, you don't have alot of tools to get shit dead, so it's crucial that you save that once per day ability that steals half HP for a boss and not a mini-boss, so you have to weigh if it's worth using it here when you don't know what's ahead. The latter is more WoW-like, you get a smorgasbord of abilities, but you have to combo and constantly spam to get anything done, and even then, you don't progress through the game as fast you progress through levels at that point.
Heavens, no! This is the internet, and more importantly, this is a gaming site! Shame on you for thinking otherwise! ;-)Chester Rabbit said:
Anyway, on to the topic at hand. I just finished my platinum run on this game last night. I enjoyed it, but it doesn't feel the same as the first two games. And the same thing happened to me that I said on the first page.
I got to the end, or rather, about two and a half hours away from the end, and the game really does feel like it takes a sharp left turn story-wise. It's interesting, and it gets my brain working and I'm super excited about all of it, but it doesn't go anywhere. It's like the game flares brilliantly, and then just dies. It really does feel like the game, and Bioware, decided they wanted to make a different game, or at least a different story, at the end there but realized that they still had to wrap up the one they were telling.
As such, it hurts the overall experience of the game for me, but I still had fun playing it.
Look, I know that people love to rag on EA and Ubi and other publishers, but there's a substantial portion of the blame(at least half) that needs to be laid at Bioware's feet. There's a few of their staff that have said that they're completely proud of everything in Inquisition, and that's fine, but it's a poorly made game that feels generic and dull, and I so wanted this to be good after the clusterfuck that was DA2(and that I'll back up anyone saying that that was nearly all EA's fault, because it was, the game was rushed for a quick buck and it showed).008Zulu said:
But it went on the pile of like four games I've ever rented after five hours that I have no intention to go back to, the other three having discs scratched so bad I'm still not sure if I want to risk the bargain bin for them.
And Bioware lost their talent years ago for the record, before ME3 came out they basically kicked them out because a certain few had to have their way and constantly shut them out of discussions while being relatively new to the team.