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Which game made you give up on Bioware?

The game that made me quit Bioware forever was...


  • Total voters
    596

rado907

Savant
Joined
Apr 23, 2015
Messages
249
NWN and DA:O did it for me. Both times I hoped for BG2 and got a shit sandwich instead.
Did enjoy Mass Effect 2&3 tho. ME1 not so much. Assdromeda skipped.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
They traded trust for trend

The root of the average bsntard was there right after bg1's release. The fact that some characters were bound by a certain type of union (marriage, loyalty, ritual, work) instantly made them think about romance and fanfiction. I don't deny it's an interesting mechanic that gives more "meat" to your gameplay and parties, but it enabled... this.

Yup.

I'll be honest, I enjoyed some of the romance options when they fit. Trouble is most didn't.

It could be a really interesting mechanic which could add real weight to an RPG if done right. Don't bend to tropey shit, devs could set up a romance which blossoms brilliantly for the first half of the game, but then mophs into real RPG C&C. Your partner shags a companion - kill them? Or they keep dipping into your gold reserves to buy themselves a new necklace - what to do? or they get pregnant so can no longer fight & becomes someone you have to protect in certain battles etc. If they made it affect the world it'd be bang on.

That's where I give DA:O some kudos regards Morrigan's baby. Romance had an affect on the story.

Most games are kinda missing the trick with it. How The Witcher 3 gave us Triss Vs Yen alongside a storline about The King/Novigrad burning witches, but yet no storyline where you may have been forced to choose between saving one & letting the other burn at the stake. Talk about a missed opportunity.
 

pippin

Guest
I'd like to see associated npcs which belong to a certain faction, so kicking one out, neglecting or just letting one of them die would put you in a negative light with said faction. Or the opposite, gaining favor due to reputation-based feats and quests with them as witnesses. But most of the times it ends up as just romance fodder.
 

Mark Richard

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2016
Messages
1,192
The year is 2011. the Indi renaissance has yet to take off, and crowdfunding RPGs is a distant dream. Not long ago Bioware shook the pillars of heaven with Dragon Age: Origins, a game declaring itself the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. The game had its flaws, but it restored the party-based RPG to the limelight, and for the first time in many years there was hope.

And then the Dragon Age II demo promptly dashed hope against a rock and feasted on the gooey innards. It was quite simply the most shocking betrayal of a party-based RPG franchise since... well, Ultima VIII actually (EA got to that one too). Companion customisation was gone, enemies would warp in via drop pod, the dialogue system was replaced because Mass Effect II had become very popular a year prior, the interface was clearly designed for consoles, and someone had given the characters the animations for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

It was so shocking that fans refused to believe it, coming up with the theory that the demo was from the perspective of an unreliable narrator and wasn't representative of the final game.
 

pippin

Guest
Yeah, that happened with u8, but when they did u7 they were already under ea.
Is DAO the u7 of the CURRENT GENERATION?
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
The year is 2011. the Indi renaissance has yet to take off, and crowdfunding RPGs is a distant dream. Not long ago Bioware shook the pillars of heaven with Dragon Age: Origins, a game declaring itself the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. The game had its flaws, but it restored the party-based RPG to the limelight, and for the first time in many years there was hope.

And then the Dragon Age II demo promptly dashed hope against a rock and feasted on the gooey innards. It was quite simply the most shocking betrayal of a party-based RPG franchise since... well, Ultima VIII actually (EA got to that one too). Companion customisation was gone, enemies would warp in via drop pod, the dialogue system was replaced because Mass Effect II had become very popular a year prior, the interface was clearly designed for consoles, and someone had given the characters the animations for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

It was so shocking that fans refused to believe it, coming up with the theory that the demo was from the perspective of an unreliable narrator and wasn't representative of the final game.

That's the thing ain't it, DA:O provided a good foundation for a genuine leap forward into a more mainstream setup, whilst still managing to keep enough of the old-school to be enjoyable and retain some soul.

Yes different folk are gonna prefer a varying amount of elements from both, but most folk seemed to be fairly happy with the transition, and it should have provided a soliid base for an even better RPG after.

But the direction DA:2 took....uggghhhh.......

I mean, who the fuck keeps dumbing down their games once they've broken the mainstream? When Steet Fighter 2 was a a massive hit they didn't think "fuckinghell, we really need to simplify the controls, make special moves easier & fewer, & strip back everything else too!".

I think that's gonna be the poetic element of DA:4 if it ever gets released. The casuals snagged by the dumbing down of the EA era RPGs will be growing and looking for more depth, or at least more "shiney shiney", and - after the success of TW3 - we're likely to just see Open World + Action Combat + voiced pre-created protag = DA:4.
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
NWN. Shit game in its own right (one companion?! yeah, fuck right off), and I was personally triggered by hijacking the name of my beloved, much missed dead MMO only to come up with this.
 

moon knight

Matt7895's alt
Joined
Apr 7, 2015
Messages
1,101
Location
Italy
I mean, who the fuck keeps dumbing down their games? When Steet Fighter 2 was a a massive hit they didn't think "fuckinghell, we really need to simplify the controls, make special moves easier & fewer, & strip back everything else too!". .

This of today is seen by the big corporation as an industry not really different from...I don't know, car industry.

An industry that is totally devoted to profit at all costs. If a product is a big hit, the sequel must be bigger. If a product sold well, the sequel must sell more. The point is to create a franchise of games like Ferrari, Nissan, Mercedes, releasing games under the same brand until people stop buying it.

The problem is...EA is a constant failure. They buy Software Houses with games currently under development, these games makes a lot of money, then they orded to dumb down the sequel to make even more money, and it always fail. Then EA close the SH that they have themself destroyed and look around to buy another. And the cycle goes on and on.
 
Last edited:

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
I mean, who the fuck keeps dumbing down their games? When Steet Fighter 2 was a a massive hit they didn't think "fuckinghell, we really need to simplify the controls, make special moves easier & fewer, & strip back everything else too!". .

This of today is seen by the big corporation as an industry not really different from...I don't know, car industry.

An industry that is totally devoted to profit at all costs. If a product is a big hit, the sequel must be bigger. If a product sold well, the sequel must sell more. The point is to create a franchise of games like Ferrari, Nissan, Mercedes, realising games under the same brand until people stop buying it.

The problem is...EA is a constant failure. They buy Software Houses with games currently under development, these games makes a lot of money, then they orded to dumb down the sequel to make even more money, and it always fail. Then EA close the SH that they have themself destroyed and look around to buy another. And the cycle goes on and on.

:bro: Exactly.

It's mind bogglingingly self-harming, yet they just fucking love doing it.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
7,407
NWN. Shit game in its own right (one companion?! yeah, fuck right off), and I was personally triggered by hijacking the name of my beloved, much missed dead MMO only to come up with this.

I can understand that with the original campaign, I don't think anyone played NWN 1 without their first reaction being "wtf is going on with the companions". Some people could put up with that one major flaw, others knee-jerked away, perfectly understandable (yeah yeah, plus the campaign was boring and don't these graphics look weird). However, resenting them because of the on-line compairson to an old MMO is a bit strange considering most of the people who liked (nay, loved) NWN 1 were the people who played it on-line in small groups where companions were irrelevant, other people played your companions. I tried at the time but had a shitty dial-up service so had to abandon that idea, but if you were already an experienced on-line player, how come you didn't get into that aspect?
 

M. AQVILA

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2016
Messages
3,717
Location
Galicia–North Portugal Euroregion
I enjoyed playing DAO but it had its flaws, then came ME2 and I saw a trend of decline but it was still enjoyable to some extent. Then DA2 came along and the change in quality from ME2 to DA2 was so extreme that I just gave up on EAware entirely. ME3 and DAI served as confirmation.
 
Joined
Apr 3, 2006
Messages
1,386
DA:O for me. And not because the game is particularly bad by the standards of its siblings. It's because DA:O confirmed to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that Bioware was committed to developing talking simulators.

An its not even good talking simulators, why settle for dull shit crappy bioware writers churn out when you can play Legacy of Kain games, an listen to some pretty fucking excellent prose? If you're gonna make a game cutscene heavy then at least make em good.
Yeah. Life's too short. I think it was the NWN OC that first ingrained in me a habit of clicking past dialogues without reading them. Getting through Bioware's dialogue trees as fast as possible is almost like a QTE mini-game for me. The challenge is to click on the text option that says "ok I accept this shitty quest" while avoiding actually reading/listening to anything or accidentally clicking on any "I reject this quest" options.
 

Frozen

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
Messages
8,303
DA2 was their first bad game (after their best game ME2) also SJW stuff and everyone is gay started there
ME3 ending was when i knew all i wanted to see is their family starve and EA shutting them down. They fucked up only good thing going for them and I knew they are finished.
DA:I was first game that had no redeeming qualities, total garbage, but I could at least create somewhat good looking female white female, put it up to see where the story goes (mistake should skip to DLCs)
Andromeda is better than DA:I because gameplay is not that broken, but Im not interested in playing as a nigger or Mexican and I don't care about pink Australians. Tried couple of times, never could pass tutorial.

Their games were never great to begin with, derpy and immature since BG (that didn't aged well, if I want that type of slog today there is always pillows) but there was effort put into them and you knew what to expect....until DA2.
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
However, resenting them because of the on-line compairson to an old MMO is a bit strange considering most of the people who liked (nay, loved) NWN 1 were the people who played it on-line in small groups where companions were irrelevant, other people played your companions. I tried at the time but had a shitty dial-up service so had to abandon that idea, but if you were already an experienced on-line player, how come you didn't get into that aspect?

The original NWN was a fucking Goldbox game through and through. Bioware NWN was Bioware rtwp junk.

If Fallout 3 gave you a raging butthurt as it did to most of the old Codex, you should know what I felt about NWN.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
7,407
However, resenting them because of the on-line compairson to an old MMO is a bit strange considering most of the people who liked (nay, loved) NWN 1 were the people who played it on-line in small groups where companions were irrelevant, other people played your companions. I tried at the time but had a shitty dial-up service so had to abandon that idea, but if you were already an experienced on-line player, how come you didn't get into that aspect?

The original NWN was a fucking Goldbox game through and through. Bioware NWN was Bioware rtwp junk.

That doesn't really address my point but rather ignores it and adds a new one. Yes, if you don't like rtwp then, sure, you wont like a lot of games. But since Bioware never made any turn-based games from BG onwards you would have known that when you bought it and rtwp issues would have had you bitching to quit well before NWN.
 

gestalt11

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
Messages
629
Technically it was ME3 when I decided Bioware was a shit developer. But I bought DA:I because I wanted to play knight enchanter and that was kind of like how a lot of people can't drink tequila anymore after a bad night of puking from drinking too much and now the smell of tequila makes you nauseous and the thought of drinking it again is just awful.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
7,407
Technically it was ME3 when I decided Bioware was a shit developer. But I bought DA:I because I wanted to play knight enchanter and that was kind of like how a lot of people can't drink tequila anymore after a bad night of puking from drinking too much and now the smell of tequila makes you nauseous and the thought of drinking it again is just awful.

Who are you people :D
 

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