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Drew Karpyshyn back at Bioware...and now he's gone again

Will this change anything of significance at Bioware?


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Tytus

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http://drewkarpyshyn.com/c/?p=1022


Speaking of full circle, here’s the second piece of big news: as of this past week, I am back working at BioWare again! For those who don’t know, I spent over a decade with BioWare working on many award winning and fan-beloved games like Mass Effect 1&2, Knights of the Old Republic and the Star Wars: The Old Republic Online MMO. A few years ago I left BioWare to focus on my Chaos Born novels, but now that the trilogy is finished, I’ve decided to come back into the fold. But for those of you who love my novels, don’t worry – I’ll still be writing more of those, too!

Working at BioWare was a challenging but very rewarding job, and it’s good to be back as part of the team. The thing I missed most about BioWare was the amazing people I got to work with, and luckily for me many of them are still there! I suspect a lot of folks are going to wonder if this means BioWare is about to announce a new project tied to my return. The short answer: no. I originally came to the Austin studiomany years ago to work on SWTOR and – at least for now – that’s what I’m focusing on again.
 

Jaesun

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abnaxus

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He's seriously a NY Times best selling author (not that it is a particularly high bar)?

GUhvsoS.jpg


:incloosive:
 

pippin

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It's too late now. The damage is done.

He's seriously a NY Times best selling author (not that it is a particularly high bar)?

Half of these Generic Fantasy Novels are bought by this "booktuber crowd" (kids who review books on youtube, they are pretty bad) and the other half is bought by kids who want to be like them.
 

Roguey

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Karpyshyn was always awful.

What boggles my mind is that they're still making new content for TOR. I guess going f2p worked.
 
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But apparantly the mmo part doesn't. No wonder they take him back now that they want to make TOR more like ME. And lots of other stupid changes... like doing away different stats, all MAINstat baby! I guess it's only logical first all armor looked the same now all stats will be the same, all the time saved to make more Cartel Market blingbling, it's brilliant really.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Who cares, he was always a cheap hack.

I've made a mistake of attempting to read his Star Wars novels once, and...lets just say if the Apocalypse comes and there's no electricity, they will be first books I'll burn.
 

Nomad_Blizz

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His best work is probably the Darth Bane Trilogy and it isn't really that good.

The tl;dr is: Darth Bane finds a sith holocron left behind by Revan and starts the Rule of Two. He is later killed by his apprentice in a duel who continues his legacy.

Among his worst is the book Revan that bridges KotoR and the mmo TOR...Meetra Surik (Jedi Exile) didn't deserve such an ending.
 
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I haven't read his Bane trilogy but in Revan Karpyshyn came off as one of the worst Revan fanboys I've ever seen. Didn't finish the book though, threw it at the wall at the double whammy of the Sith Emperor being the lovechild of Palpatine and Nihilus and the Exile marveling at the idea there could be a place in the galaxy where the Force is wounded.
 

Necroscope

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Good or bad, at the very least Kapryshyn's writing is coherent, which can't be said about Casey "Video Gamey" Hudson or McWalters.

Anyway, it's obviously too late for his return to change anything. ME lore is already a clusterfuck beyond redemption.
 

Lacrymas

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They can always say "It's a completely different galaxy this time, you guuuuuyyyyys, very far from the space squids!"... oh, wait. Does it even matter anymore? ME was ruined a long time ago and taking it seriously is just schizophrenic.
 

Tytus

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ME was ruined when ME2 came out. The ridiculous amount of retcons (Cerberus and ammo system being the main offenders) and change of the tone of the story - from pretty cool military space opera into Dirty Justice League in Space was just awful. Every character turned into a superhero. Perfect Human, Perfect Krogan, Super Biotic, Master Thief, Cyber Jesus etc. Not to mention they entirely dropped the importance of the Specters and the main plot was a contrived mess. Also most loyalty missions were just like watching those family episodes on Star Trek TNG/DS9. Daddy issues, Mommy issues, Sister Issues, Daughter issues, Son issues. I know that Mac Walters basically took over during this game. But I will always wonder how much of this was Karpyshyn's fault. Especially that his ME books remained consistent with style of ME1.
 
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pippin

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And yet you have tons of people saying they like Bioware games for the lore and the stories.
 

Jick Magger

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The whole Revan book just comes off as Karpshyn's desperate attempt to reverse absolutely everything introduced by KOTOR 2, to the point where it just feels like he's doing it out of personal spite. The Exile's apparently now connected to the force again, and is now completely unfamiliar with the concept of force wounds or the idea of feeding off of force powers, despite the fact that she directly confronted and killed a Sith lord who was capable of it, absolutely no mention of any of the companions from the second game, and best of all; the entire conflict of the second game is just summed up as "The Exile defeated the evil Sith Lord Darth Traya and her evil followers. Oh, all that stupid stuff she told you about moral ambiguity? That's just crazy Sith talk, don't worry about it." The fact that she does nothing the entire book but wet herself over Revan and get taken out like a bitch is just icing on the cake.

Oh, and the villain's a mary sue hodge-podge of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Nihulus BUT STRONGER AND EVILER AND WITH NO WEAKNESSES!
 

Atlantico

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Mass Effect is a real piece of work. Just look at the universe they built; it's incredibly generic and open ended and yet these master bards at Bioware wrote themselves into a corner in just 3 games. That takes skill.
 

Fairfax

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"Incredibly generic" is a bit too much, I'd say. Visually speaking the species and locations were pretty good in ME1. The core characteristics are basically Star Trek meets Stargate, but I thought the universe as a whole was alright until ME2 came out.
 

Atlantico

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"Incredibly generic" is a bit too much, I'd say. Visually speaking the species and locations were pretty good in ME1. The core characteristics are basically Star Trek meets Stargate, but I thought the universe as a whole was alright until ME2 came out.
Oh sure there's Stargate and Star Trek, then there's Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica, then there's Dune and some Star Wars, then there's some Aasimov and HG Wells, then there's some Lovecraft and some Starflight 2 and Kotor, then ... jeez the list goes on. The Mass Effect universe is precisely incredibly generic. That was the point. Quick to make, easy to maintain. Exact same idea with the incredibly generic Dragon Age universe.
 

Fairfax

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You're not wrong, just saying that not everything about it was generic. It's inherently subjective, but I thought the aesthetic was pretty good in general. I really liked the species, locations and ships in the first game.
 

Atlantico

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You're not wrong, just saying that not everything about it was generic. It's inherently subjective, but I thought the aesthetic was pretty good in general. I really liked the species, locations and ships in the first game.

Agreed, aesthetic of ME1 is fantastic and quite unique. It is what originally drew me into playing the game.

Top notch.
 
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