Yeah, it's F2P, but I don't know how gimped you'll be right now.
Can Bioware be redeemed?
- Thread starter Hailey Knight
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Play ToR for the class stories, don't expect anything else out of it. Endgame is a joke, PvP is completely imbalanced, and last I saw you have to pay extra for more hotbars and to remove your helm graphic (they might have changed that, though).
QFT man. I used to be a massive Bioware fanboy, they could do no wrong for me back in the days of ME1/2 and DA:O.
Yeah, they had me hooked with Baldur's Gate, was the first PC RPG I saw to completion. I ate up anything they put out until Jade Empire, which I didn't much care for, but overlooked as a fluke. Then DA2 happened. I bought it, I played it, I died a little inside.
I remember one Asian game reviewer back in the day referring to how Jade Empire is the kind of racist only Canadians who don't think they're racist could achieve.
Then he said something about how if it was a take on African culture it would have characters named Spear-Chucker Motumbo or something to that effect.
Then he said something about how if it was a take on African culture it would have characters named Spear-Chucker Motumbo or something to that effect.
I wish I could remember what it was about JE that I didn't like, because I wanted to love the game. Chinese kung-fu RPG by what was then one of my favorite companies, coming off the success of KotOR? It sounded like a perfect game.
I'm not terribly optimistic about Bioware's future, but the Extended Cut went a long way toward repairing a lot of the hard feelings I had after DA2/ME3. Yeah, the ending is still bullshit, and their handling of the initial outcry was just fucking awful, but they were willing to spend what was probably a fairly substantial amount of money to try to make it better. That tells me they still care about their fans on some level, so I'm at least willing to consider giving DA3/ME4 a chance. Not on release, and not until I hear that they're not complete shit, but I'm not writing them off entirely either.
RE: Citadel DLC, one of the biggest complaints about ME3 was that you really never got a chance to say a proper goodbye to your squadmates. I think the review here sums up my feelings on it pretty well (although I haven't played it yet): http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...t-3s-citadel-dlc-at-last-the-perfect-goodbye/ (Also, how weird is it that I now trust Forbes for gaming reviews more than IGN et al?) I realized the other day that I have a bunch of Bioware points on my account still from when I bought them in bulk a few years ago; I may end up picking "Citadel" up, since it's not technically costing me anything and I sort of want to throw a bender and get my squad drunk. (Cue "emergency induction port" joke.) I'll let y'all know what I think in a few weeks when I have the chance to get to it.
RE: Citadel DLC, one of the biggest complaints about ME3 was that you really never got a chance to say a proper goodbye to your squadmates. I think the review here sums up my feelings on it pretty well (although I haven't played it yet): http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...t-3s-citadel-dlc-at-last-the-perfect-goodbye/ (Also, how weird is it that I now trust Forbes for gaming reviews more than IGN et al?) I realized the other day that I have a bunch of Bioware points on my account still from when I bought them in bulk a few years ago; I may end up picking "Citadel" up, since it's not technically costing me anything and I sort of want to throw a bender and get my squad drunk. (Cue "emergency induction port" joke.) I'll let y'all know what I think in a few weeks when I have the chance to get to it.
Honestly, that just sounds like EA hate run amuck. Anyone who has ever met Casey Hudson could tell you that the original story that he railroaded the original ending in sounds pretty much exactly like him.
I wouldn't call a little extra VO and some still images a substantial amount of money, at least not compared to the development costs in whole.
Also, why you should never feel weird about not trusting IGN about anything.
ign.com/videos/2012/03/13/mass-effect-3-opinion-video
Fuck that fucking site.
I have never understood this. Did anyone here playing through Jade Empire think to themselves, “Holy shit, this is racist?"
Ugh fuck the PC police. On the one hand, "there are no parts for asians in hollywood and video games." On the other, "you had asian characters in your thing that were not 100% accurate with asian history. You racist mother fucker."
Not compared to the development costs as a whole, yeah, which probably ran between 50-100 million, but writers/voice actors/artists/developers/testers/bandwidth costs/etc. all had to be paid. I bet it still ran in the upper six figures, and with no real ROI aside from the possibility of slightly higher DLC sales. It was mostly a P.R. move.
And yeah, absolutely, fuck IGN -- but what I meant by that was I never thought Forbes would be a trusted gaming site for me. Just goes to show the pitiful state of the gaming journalism industry.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455965/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Shit's pretty yellow face.
It's as white coopting culture as things get.
They've already stated they'd love to do another Jade Empire game, they just haven't gotten a greenlight to do it yet, thanks mainly to TOR and Dragon Age.
Last I saw the ones who were most interested were the two running BioWare who left recently.
I have no idea what you posted. IMDB is blocked in china.
I think he's talking about most, if not all of the voice cast being white/not Asian. Not something that bothers me, really, but I guess it falls in the same camp as the Avatar: Last Airbender "whitewashing."
is it like how most of the time if there is a white guy speaking mandarin in a Chinese movie he is most likely being dubbed over by a Chinese guy even if their mandarin is great?
And the fact that most Asian voice actors in America will have to fake an Asian accent?
That seems like an odd choice of things to block.
Then again, there's the comments section.
God forbid someone's personal opinion be different from the hive mind.
The problem is that the reviewer's opinion is irrelevant. EA isn't going to pay ad money to a company whose reviewer is giving them a bad review. There was some scandal about this a couple years ago where some reviewer was fired because he wouldn't give some game a positive review, a game by people who paid ad money to his employer. Hence why Frank didn't say "fuck that reviewer" or even the more popular "fuck EA." It's dictated by the company that doesn't want to lose its advertising revenue.
GameInformer's the same story. You won't see an EA game with a bad score.
I think it was the Cane & Lynch review on Gamespot,where that dude got fired for giving a honest review of a terrible game.
The guy who was fired from Gamespot for the Kane and Lynch II review later went on to found Giant Bomb, one of the few good gaming sites out there.
Anyone going to the big review sites like IGN for games journalism needs to be rescued. 
I love GiantBomb and Rockpapershotgun for reviews. Forbes is a little hit and miss for me. Erik Kain is great, and while I like how Paul Tassi writes, the extent to which his articles are good is clearly defined by how passionate he is about liking or disliking an aspect of a game. This isn't a bad thing, but since he's not introspective about that presence or lack of passion (why is he excited or not excited about something), games that he's less interested in talking about get a bit of a short thrift in his reviews.
I think Ben Kuchera at PA Reports is pretty decent, but he suffers in the same way as Tassi and he's not quite as articulate. But when he's on, he's really on.
For larger industry analysis, I recommend gamesindustry.biz. They're a bit inside baseball, but have excellent independent analysis by actual experts and experienced indie developers. Nicholas Lovell and Rob Fahey in particular are spectacular.
Gamasutra.com is also decent, but it's a bit more indie dev hangout/blog site than journalism/analysis site. But Lovell also does pieces there, and Leigh Alexander is all kinds of awesome.
I love GiantBomb and Rockpapershotgun for reviews. Forbes is a little hit and miss for me. Erik Kain is great, and while I like how Paul Tassi writes, the extent to which his articles are good is clearly defined by how passionate he is about liking or disliking an aspect of a game. This isn't a bad thing, but since he's not introspective about that presence or lack of passion (why is he excited or not excited about something), games that he's less interested in talking about get a bit of a short thrift in his reviews.
I think Ben Kuchera at PA Reports is pretty decent, but he suffers in the same way as Tassi and he's not quite as articulate. But when he's on, he's really on.
For larger industry analysis, I recommend gamesindustry.biz. They're a bit inside baseball, but have excellent independent analysis by actual experts and experienced indie developers. Nicholas Lovell and Rob Fahey in particular are spectacular.
Gamasutra.com is also decent, but it's a bit more indie dev hangout/blog site than journalism/analysis site. But Lovell also does pieces there, and Leigh Alexander is all kinds of awesome.
China says it only blocks pornographic containing websites: Facebook, imdb, youtube, twitter, a whole bunch of other random shit (and a lot of not so random shit).
sites not blocked in China: pornhub, youporn, porn porn porn porn porn!
Well, I can understand why IMDB is blocked, Michael Bay is on there.
and Richard Gere
A friend of mine said, "My husband really likes singing at the ktv by himself."
You should do a "CRAZY STUFF from China" AMA somewhere on these forums.
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