Can Bioware be redeemed?

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Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Dragon Age 3 is coming eventually. Mass Effect 4 after that.

The last entries in each of these series have been either lame and shitty, or disappointing and pathetic. The key Bioware people have left. EA is still pressing the people left to squirt out DLC for Mass Effect 3. Supposedly Bioware is listening to its fans for the next games. I'm not getting my hopes up. In fact, a lot of people seem done with Bioware. I don't think I could buy either new game in good faith.

I'm curious--is there any way you'd be convinced to buy one of these games? What would Bioware have to do to convince you? Disregard whether that's something possible under the EA idiots. I'm just curious if anything could get the jaded players back on Bioware's side, or would it not matter if these games ever came out at all?
 
Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

I didn't even buy DA2 or ME3 after demoing them and reading into some of the more indepth reviews.

Would I buy DA3 or ME4? No. Would I give a new IP they made a try? Sure, depending on what they created. The company as a whole hasn't been turned off for me, just the two franchises.
 
Gared

Gared

I would happily buy the next games in these series, if they were released by a new studio founded by the now-departed key Bioware people, under new game names that 'just happened' to revolve around eerily similar backgrounds/lore. Otherwise, there's no chance in hell that I'd buy anything more in either of these series.
 
Frank

Frank

I doubt it. Unless some major gears change, it's going to be the same super mass produced rushed garbage they've spent the last 3 years doing.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Ravenpoe said:
It used to be any bioware game was an instant preorder from me.

Now, I spit at the name, like a jilted lover.
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My sentiments were/are similar. The final straw that put them over the event horizon for me was when EA fired everybody at Mythic and put Bioware in charge of the floundering Warhammer Online, who then proceeded to finish driving the final nails into the coffin. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it so very, very did. It was like watching Wile E. Coyote, in midst-plummet, get fired out of the cannon into the Arizona desert floor, and then have the cannon land on him, fire again, the recoil causing it to shoot up to remount on its original trolley, the impact of which dislodges the rock outcropping the trolley was sitting on, and then the cannon, trolley and rock all fall on the coyote again.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

After getting kicked in the balls by Old Republic, I've pretty much given up hope. DA3 as of now is a no thanks. They'd have to do something really amazing to get me anywhere near that hype train again after DA2.[DOUBLEPOST=1361573731][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, I think what was so criminal about DA2 was, at the very start of the game, you already see that everything in DA:O is a fucking side-story to what you're doing now. DA:O builds the Blight as this huge menace, but DA2 tries so hard to make a bunch of whiny mages and templars seem like the real threat. I didn't sign up for politics, if I wanted that I'd play a sim game. On top of that the stupid truncated dialogue choices ("No thanks" turning into "OI FUK U M8 HOOK U IN THE GABBER WOT") annoyed the hell out of me.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I couldn't really expect them to continue the Darkspawn as the main enemy since Blights are only supposed to happen every few hundred years, but the way time passed in the game made it seem like nothing mattered. There are other aspects of Thedas worth exploring, but the game needed to focus on one, and instead it just dithered around in some tiny nothing town with half-realized concepts, and then at the end said "And now the church is in peril and so is the world!"

It's like Varric's story was just a prologue, and they could have truncated that shit of a game into a prologue cutscene so you could get on with playing something else. Preferably a game where you're not exploring the same five maps over and over.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Yeah, I've actually played through as every class, just to see if anything improves the experience. Warrior is stupid OP most of the game, Mage is OP the whole game, and Rogue is boring. You barely need your party because you're such a Goddamned powerhouse. The streamlining of party equipment was pretty bad, too. Having those certain items for each character that you just had to buy/find upgrades for instead of just getting them new equipment. I had that Guard Captain woman decked out within the first couple hours and she was an indestructible wall.

I miss DA:O's customization. Hell, on PC you could get a mod to allow the re-spec of any party member, meaning Morrigan could be something useful instead of a Shapeshifter.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

I neither purchased nor played DA2 and ME3. This means there's probably nothing that'll compel me to buy the next installments, given how Bioware loves to ass-ream players who haven't loaded a previous save.

I mean, sure I could just download a save, but still.
 
Tress

Tress

If DA3 is good, I'll buy it. If not, I'll pretend it doesn't exist the same way I pretend DA2 doesn't exist. It's that simple. There's no way in hell I'm going to preorder the game. Then again, I don't preorder anything for just this reason.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

You know the sad thing is this thread makes me want to play DA:O and Awakening, and then DA:2, just to remind myself how no dev is truly untouchable forever. Also, I still love DA:O.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

DA:O is awesome, no question about it. Though if you get all the DLC, you end up with so many sets of heavy gear, you run out of warriors and arcane warrior mages to put them on.

I need to reinstall it sometime.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

bhamv3 said:
DA:O is awesome, no question about it. Though if you get all the DLC, you end up with so many sets of heavy gear, you run out of warriors and arcane warrior mages to put them on.

I need to reinstall it sometime.
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Yeah I tried not to do too much of the DLC stuff early, because you get all sorts of powerhouse items that really make the game easy, especially going back for Duncan and the King's stuff.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

I use Skip the Fade too, but I've always been a bit torn about it. I mean, there are other parts of the game that drag too, so where do I draw the line? Skip the Deep Roads? Skip the Brescilian Ruins? Skip Fort Drakon at the end and head straight to the Archdemon?
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

bhamv3 said:
I use Skip the Fade too, but I've always been a bit torn about it. I mean, there are other parts of the game that drag too, so where do I draw the line? Skip the Deep Roads? Skip the Brescilian Ruins? Skip Fort Drakon at the end and head straight to the Archdemon?
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The main reason I hate the Fade moreso than Deep Roads or other areas is it's just boring. At least I get some enjoyment in the atmosphere of the Deep Roads and the ruins. I think the biggest strike-out is in the various shapechanging and backtracking, along with the weird teleport maze at the end. It just takes too long, especially if you want to collect all the stat/skill bonuses.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

I still find it so weird that everybody went ga-ga over Old Republic at launch and after about 3-4 months, everyone turned on it. Is it the late game that sucks so bad?
 
phil

phil

I dunno. I mean dragon age origins was solid, mass effects 1 and 2 are solid. I don't actually know anything about dragon age 2, but have yet to hear a truly positive review of it and mass effect 3 I've heard is great except for the ending.

Honestly I'm excited at the prospect of new games. With each series the worlds are so big there's a lot you could do with them. I'm not ready to write them off, yet.
 
Vrii

Vrii

Bowielee said:
I still find it so weird that everybody went ga-ga over Old Republic at launch and after about 3-4 months, everyone turned on it. Is it the late game that sucks so bad?
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At least at the time I quit, yes. After playing through the class quest up to the level cap and legitimately feeling like everything you do matters, you walk into a raid and get nothing. 5-6 lines from an NPC vaguely setting up the idea, then no interactions at all between your characters, the NPCs, or the events and actions taking place. Add to that the fact that the raids were almost embarrassingly easy, pvp was limited to a handful of poorly-balanced warzones, and the class quests were finite, and there was no justification to keep playing.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Bowielee said:
I still find it so weird that everybody went ga-ga over Old Republic at launch and after about 3-4 months, everyone turned on it. Is it the late game that sucks so bad?
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All the early stuff is fantastic. Dungeons (called flash points) are all unique and have story and branching paths and dialog depending on what your group decides to do, the individual class stories are fantastic, everything feels epic. And then all that stuff ends and becomes super generic and unpolished.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

phil said:
mass effect 3 I've heard is great except for the ending.
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Eh, sort of? For being the most linear of the Mass Effect games, the story direction felt the most haphazard. Or maybe the two are related; in the other games, we can choose what order to do the middle parts of the story, so we don't expect it all to gel together exactly. In ME3, there is no choice, so the parts feel disjointed, but likely they're not any more disjointed than in the other ME games.

That said, I feel the game left a lot to be desired. It never feels like the galaxy is at your disposal like in the last two games. It was bullshit that if a character was dead before the game began, some other character would take up the same role. I'd rather there have been consequences to a character's absence. Same goes for the Rachni situation. Plot elements from the previous games are dropped or disposed of poorly, and new ones suck (that ninja guy). Then there's the climax, where little of what you did matters--compare that to the climax of Mass Effect 2, where EVERYTHING matters.

Had the ending been at all satisfying, I don't think anyone would care about those other shortcomings, because it's still a good game even if it's not as great as its predecessors. But the ending is such bullshit that it starts a chain reaction and you can't help noticing the flaws throughout the game.

DA2 essentially tricks you. You think that what you're doing is just the beginning of the game and all the buildup to the Deep Roads expedition leads you to think something big is going to happen. Then ... it doesn't. And the game cuts ahead three years and says "So this OTHER problem was happening". It's like the writers couldn't figure out what to do next, so they just did the same shit in three segments throughout the game.
 
Espy

Espy

If DA3 truly gets itself in shape like they seem to imply it will I'll buy it, but I won't pre-order it and I won't buy it right away. I will wait till it's half price. If the reviews are terrible and it suffers from what DA2 did then I will probably not.
 
Frank

Frank

Espy said:
If DA3 truly gets itself in shape like they seem to imply it will I'll buy it, but I won't pre-order it and I won't buy it right away. I will wait till it's half price. If the reviews are terrible and it suffers from what DA2 did then I will probably not.
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That's the shitty thing. Dragon Age 2 was definitely money-hatted into it's reviews, they were universally glowing.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Vrii said:
At least at the time I quit, yes. After playing through the class quest up to the level cap and legitimately feeling like everything you do matters, you walk into a raid and get nothing. 5-6 lines from an NPC vaguely setting up the idea, then no interactions at all between your characters, the NPCs, or the events and actions taking place. Add to that the fact that the raids were almost embarrassingly easy, pvp was limited to a handful of poorly-balanced warzones, and the class quests were finite, and there was no justification to keep playing.
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Exactly this. It was a great one-player game.[DOUBLEPOST=1361655310][/DOUBLEPOST]To expand a bit: the storylines were, for the most part, fun and engaging. I loved my Jedi stories and even the Sith ones were good. Sadly, once you hit the level cap anything like that was over and done. You had the same thing as every other MMO out there, but done in a much less enjoyable way. Raids were too easy, even on higher difficulties, warzones were fun on paper but there was zero class balance (Sith Sorcerers were insanely OP and Soldiers were pretty useless), and dailies were spread out over one of the most boring-looking planets in the game.
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Quotemander Prime said:
DA2 essentially tricks you. You think that what you're doing is just the beginning of the game and all the buildup to the Deep Roads expedition leads you to think something big is going to happen. Then ... it doesn't. And the game cuts ahead three years and says "So this OTHER problem was happening". It's like the writers couldn't figure out what to do next, so they just did the same shit in three segments throughout the game.
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Then you have the problems of massive recycling. In the first game you basically traveled around a whole kingdom, from the wall the Darkspawn overtake, to the forests with the elves and the werewolves, to the main capitol city, the mage tower, and all the little places between it, which is not even counting the Fade, or how expansive the Deep Roads was. DA2 was basically the same city zone, with like four "outside" cells that were used over and over again whenever they wanted to have stuff take place outside.

I am also still angry that they turned the Darkspawn, who looked badass and threatening, into something more befitting a Power Ranger enemy fodder, because they didn't want to give them customizable armor a second time.
 
Azurephoenix

Azurephoenix

I will never pre-order another Bioware game.

I might... "might" buy a ME4 or DA3 if certain sources (like Jay and Frank) give them glowing reviews.

Otherwise. Fuck that shit.
 
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