Can Bioware be redeemed?

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Is it wrong that when I buy a game with DLC I tend to buy it all before ever playing it? I mean I've done enough research on the game to know I want to buy it, the DLC seems to be icing on the cake, and when I finally do buy something, it's been out for a long time and the total cost isn't even what the base game costs when it's first released.
 
I heard Arrival was bad, so I never got it.[DOUBLEPOST=1362384383][/DOUBLEPOST]
Is it wrong that when I buy a game with DLC I tend to buy it all before ever playing it? I mean I've done enough research on the game to know I want to buy it, the DLC seems to be icing on the cake, and when I finally do buy something, it's been out for a long time and the total cost isn't even what the base game costs when it's first released.
Lots of people wait for the GOTY edition before buying games because they will include all the DLC at a fraction of the cost of the original game.
 
I heard Arrival was bad, so I never got it.[DOUBLEPOST=1362384383][/DOUBLEPOST]

Lots of people wait for the GOTY edition before buying games because they will include all the DLC at a fraction of the cost of the original game.
Has ME even had GOTY editions though?
 
Arrival's not bad, it's just not awesome. It's "merely" decent. They tried to mix things up by having Shepard go it alone, and attempted what passes for stealth in a Mass Effect game. They weren't entirely successful, but the add-on still provided me with a few hours of fun.

The Object Rho achievement though... that was pretty bullshit.
 
To be fair to ME 2, absolutely none of the DLC is needed to make it feel like a complete game. As I said, the best DLC is Overlord and it's completely tangential to the main story.
 
To be fair to ME 2, absolutely none of the DLC is needed to make it feel like a complete game. As I said, the best DLC is Overlord and it's completely tangential to the main story.
True, but you need to buy at LEAST two pieces of DLC to get the full story for Mass Effect 3.
 
True, but you need to buy at LEAST two pieces of DLC to get the full story for Mass Effect 3.
Agreed from what I've read. I think that's shitty. I just feel like people are retroactively ragging on ME2 because of ME3, when ME2 is actually one of the best games I've ever played.
 
Arrival's not bad, it's just not awesome. It's "merely" decent. They tried to mix things up by having Shepard go it alone, and attempted what passes for stealth in a Mass Effect game. They weren't entirely successful, but the add-on still provided me with a few hours of fun.

The Object Rho achievement though... that was pretty bullshit.
IMO, what made arrival horrible was the cannon way of ending the mission.

YOU GOT OPTIONS TO STOP THIS WHAT DO YOU DO???

1. Stop it
2. Don't stop it.

YOUR CHOICE IS IRRELEVANT, THE SAME THING HAPPENS LOLZ
 
Yessir. The installation process is kind of a pain in the ass, but definitely worth it.

Also, if you haven't played ME2, you should probably get (at the very minimum) Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. Arrival is pretty good, too. Both add a lot to the overall story and are quite fun. Whether you should get the rest of the DLC depends on how big of a fan you are and how much money you have ;)
For those of us who don't give a shit about re-installing the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annota...&feature=iv&src_vid=KU7XJdaz08I&v=SQEofXDuxAQ
 
Aw, hell. At least a few of you guys need to buy DA3/ME4. I'll be anxiously waiting your feedback to see whether I should waste money on it. (If Bioware fucks with my husbando Alistair, shit's gonna get real.)

Also:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/368/index/14795358/1

This mod makes the Mass Effect series playable again. No more Starchild, no more RGB. If I close my eyes and pretend really hard, I can go to a happier place where Bioware didn't royally fuck up one of my favorite trilogies. But seriously, between that and the Extended Cut, the ending feels pretty OK -- good enough that I decided to do a second playthrough right away so I could tap some blue ass, anyway.

I'm definitely going to have to give this a try... thanks for sharing!
 
Brad Shoemaker from Giant Bomb held off playing ME3 until he could play it with all the DLC and his opinion of the game is WILDLY different from those who played it straight out of the box. So much so, he put it on his game of the year list. That being said, he realizes, as do I that for DLC to be required (some of which is paid DLC to boot) for a story to be good is just horrible. I still haven't played through ME3 yet, and will be doing so with all the DLC, so I'm interested to see if I will hate it as much as those who played through it at release.

And isn't that really the danger of DLC? Making games that are incomplete unless you buy additional content. Asura's Wrath apparently did the same thing. The actual finale of the game was paid DLC.
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Some games have done DLC perfectly, ME2 being one of them. Shadow Broker and Overlord are great, but just add to the universe, but don't have a major impact on the main story.
 
Some games have done DLC perfectly, ME2 being one of them. Shadow Broker and Overlord are great, but just add to the universe, but don't have a major impact on the main story.
The skyrim dlc has all been fantastic. Well, hearthfire is kinda pointless, but at least it was cheap (and I actually do like the houses it adds).
 
IMO, what made arrival horrible was the cannon way of ending the mission.

YOU GOT OPTIONS TO STOP THIS WHAT DO YOU DO???

1. Stop it
2. Don't stop it.

YOUR CHOICE IS IRRELEVANT, THE SAME THING HAPPENS LOLZ
A portent, perhaps? One we all ignored, I'm sad to say.

I haven't played ME3 without playing LOTSB/Arrival, so I'm not entirely sure how the game changes without them. I have a feeling that, unless BW added on a fair amount of dialog to the game or changed things pretty substantially, anyone who started ME3 without playing at least those two DLCs would get a "Previously on Mass Effect..." feeling. Overlord was fun too (as were Kasumi/Zaeed) but seemed less mission-critical in ME3. You get to see characters make cameos but that's about it.[DOUBLEPOST=1362420286][/DOUBLEPOST]Well, shit. If this is any good, I might end up buying some DLC after all.

 
If it's anything like that shitty Omega DLC, it'll be 2 hours long.

The ME3 DLC is either shitty, day-1 ripped from the main game content or shitty, shits all over the series even further lazy, bullshit, short DLC.

Both are terrible. Fuck that game.

I'll rate them like (sort of) Bhamv did ME2 DLC

Prothean - Insultingly ripped from main game content shitty
Extended Ending - Insultingly fuck you, our endings weren't shitty so we'll add nothing useful to the endings shitty
Reaper origin - We decided to lame-ass the Reapers even further shitty, also it's super expensive and short shitty.
Omega - Remember how we hinted at Omega in the vanilla game? It's 2 hours long and 15 dollars shitty, also we were too lazy to record any new dialog except for Shepard so you can't bring any crew members with you...not even Joker, he doesn't fly the Normandy in this.
Citadel - I don't know, but I do know if there's anything I've learned about Mass Effect 3 so far, it will be shitty and short. And holy shit I just watched the trailer. Fuck this fucking game. HEY, YOU NEED TO BE HELPING EARTH. NOW BUY SOME DLC WHERE YOU GO ON DATES ON THE CITADEL. FUCK.

I would have paid for DLC that removed Kai Leng from the game. He is the worst fucking character in all of Mass Effect.
 
I hated the Jersey Shore lookin' characters that they added in ME3. I haven't played much of it, but I know that much.
 
How many times I finished Bioware games :

Balder's Gate 1 - 4
Balder's Gate 2 - 8
Neverwinter Nights - 1 (I did put up hundreds of hours on RP persistent world however)
KOTOR - 5
Jade Empire - 2
Mass Effect - 3
Dragon Age Origins - 3 (currently playing my 4th and all playthroughs include Awakening)
Mass Effect 2 - 6
Dragon Age 2 - 0.6
SWTOR - A month
Mass Effect 3 - 1 (with some MP)
 
A portent, perhaps? One we all ignored, I'm sad to say.

I haven't played ME3 without playing LOTSB/Arrival, so I'm not entirely sure how the game changes without them. I have a feeling that, unless BW added on a fair amount of dialog to the game or changed things pretty substantially, anyone who started ME3 without playing at least those two DLCs would get a "Previously on Mass Effect..." feeling. Overlord was fun too (as were Kasumi/Zaeed) but seemed less mission-critical in ME3. You get to see characters make cameos but that's about it.
Well said.

As for the DLC, if you didn't do Shadow Broker/Arrival, ME3 acts like they happened anyway. Doesn't even fill you in. The Batarians were going "you blew it up!" and I was like "what the fuck are you talking about?" I had to go read about Arrival to catch up.
 
How many times I finished Bioware games :

Balder's Gate 1 - 4
Balder's Gate 2 - 8
Neverwinter Nights - 1 (I did put up hundreds of hours on RP persistent world however)
KOTOR - 5
Jade Empire - 2
Mass Effect - 3
Dragon Age Origins - 3 (currently playing my 4th and all playthroughs include Awakening)
Mass Effect 2 - 6
Dragon Age 2 - 0.6
SWTOR - A month
Mass Effect 3 - 1 (with some MP)
Like Jay, I've logged a LOT a time into Bioware games. I bet you can spot the bad trend at the end. Here's my number of playthroughs:

Baldur's Gate 1 - 3 (Includes Tales of the Sword Coast)
Baldur's Gate 2 - 4 (Includes Throne of Bhaal)
Neverwinter Nights - 2
KOTOR - (working on it now... I know I know)
Jade Empire - 1
Mass Effect - 5 (Working on another playthrough so I can try out the modded ending for ME3 that HowDroll recommended)
Dragon Age Origins - 2 (Like Jay my playthroughs include Awakening)
Mass Effect 2 - 8 (Soon to be 9)
Dragon Age 2 - 1 (I barely finished this. Almost quit)
SWTOR - (Never tried it)
Mass Effect 3 - 1 (Played some MP with fellow halforumites)
 
Watched the mod ending. It was good. I wouldn't have been all rage if that had been the ending. My preferred finale would always be along the lines of ME2's finale, where all your choices drastically changed the final hours of the game.

But the mod's is still a better ending than ME3.
 
SWTOR - (Never tried it)
SWTOR is probably worth at least two 1-50 runs through the game, one Republic and one Empire. I'd also recommend doing the Taral V/Maelstrom and Boarding Party/Foundry raids to get closure on the Darth Revan storyline.

Republic side, I'd probably do Jedi Knight to get the full story from that angle, as it deals with the Sith Emperor and his plans. This ties into the Revan stuff.

Empire side, I personally like the Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter stories.

I think it's kinda sad that TOR is a great single player game, but it fails as an MMO.
 
I think it's kinda sad that TOR is a great single player game, but it fails as an MMO.
The problem was that BioWare literally had the wrong company "DNA" to make an MMO. They've never worked quickly, and they thought they would need to do something like what WoW did 7 years previously, but the modern MMO market has changed so drastically since then.

The only reason why WoW gets away with their slow content delivery schedule is because they've got such a massive built-in audience that likes WoW the way it is. No other MMO on Earth gets that privilege.
 
It didn't help that EA all but demanded it become a run-away hit right out of the gate. It just didn't have the content for it. Once you hit 50, there was so little to do... it's ether PVP on the same 4 maps, rerun the same flashpoints on hard mode, or do TWO raids. Why would anyone stick around for that?
 
It didn't help that EA all but demanded it become a run-away hit right out of the gate. It just didn't have the content for it. Once you hit 50, there was so little to do... it's ether PVP on the same 4 maps, rerun the same flashpoints on hard mode, or do TWO raids. Why would anyone stick around for that?
EA of all companies should know an MMO can't be an instant-hit when it's released against WoW, considering their own failure with MMOs in the past.
 
SWTOR is probably worth at least two 1-50 runs through the game, one Republic and one Empire. I'd also recommend doing the Taral V/Maelstrom and Boarding Party/Foundry raids to get closure on the Darth Revan storyline.

Republic side, I'd probably do Jedi Knight to get the full story from that angle, as it deals with the Sith Emperor and his plans. This ties into the Revan stuff.

Empire side, I personally like the Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter stories.

I think it's kinda sad that TOR is a great single player game, but it fails as an MMO.

I may give it a try after I finish KOTOR. TOR is free to play now right?

You know, I look at the insane amount of time I've logged in Bioware's games and that just makes me so sad when I see the direction the company is taking now.
 
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