Bethesda vs. Bioware

[Neeshka]

Bethesda: hiking simulators with a shit story, horrible UI, innumerable glitches and bugs,awful writing. Games feel untested and their developers look like amateurs. Godawful and dull combat in all their games. Mostly overrated and overhyped.

Bioware: linear heroes journey action rpg's or third person shooters with rp elements. High production values, good art design/voice acting/graphics. Decent to good combat. DLCs are annoying and their games sometimes feel a bit too formulaic.

Neither Bethesda or Bioware will ever make anything that resembles their own classic RPGs like BG2 or Morrowind. Writing standards and C&C have generally taken a backseat.

Dragon age 2 is a black spot from bioware; comparatively skyrim is at least better than oblivion.

Personally since character combat are really important to me, as are a lack of bugs and high production values I prefer Bioware.

My favorite RPGs this year are witcher 2, deus ex and dark souls - most people seem to have barely heard of them.

Blizzard, Obsidian, CD Projekt and Larian are far better developers for RPGs imo.

 

[Commissar Draco]

When it comes to art direction and voice acting Todler is tastefully raping Gayder ass.
DA2 is new Oblvion.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

After Alpha Protocol and DS3, I give Obsidian the shit crown.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Bthesda can atleast make GAMES. NOT RPGs but games. Biowhores are shite interactive movie makers.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Blizzard (or even, dare I say, Nintendo? Hmm...... naaaah... don't need any spikey-haired androgenous pre-teens in my games) builds the engine and does the play-testing.

:/

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

After Alpha Protocol and DS3, I give Obsidian the shit crown.

Bullshitz. Stop the lies, start the truths!

 

[Roguey]

My favorite RPGs this year are witcher 2, deus ex and dark souls - most people seem to have barely heard of them.

Not on the internet, horns. They are quite popular on the internet in fact.

After Alpha Protocol and DS3, I give Obsidian the shit crown.

Bullshitz. Stop the lies, start the truths!

Fixed. Have to go with the one that's actually fun to play.

 

[visions]

Bethesda is in dire need of someone that Bioware has and who seems reasonably competent: a voice director. Despite how shitty Gaider's writing is, they're at least able to coax a fairly decent performance out of their voice actors (aside from Male Shepherd, of course).

The voices in Dragon Age can be pretty terrible. In dialogue I often facepalm, then take a deep breath and realize that if I had just read that which made me facepalm without having to hear it, it probably wouldn't have stuck out as particularly offending.

Bioware

good art design/voice acting/graphics

The art design in Da:O. Don't even get me started, lest I turn into 1eyedking. But in short: bland world and cartoonish equipment and enemies. Gotta love how people responsible for it probably don't have a clue how actual medieval arms and armour looked. Or do have a clue but ignore it in favour of AWESOME. Take the two handed warhammers in Dragon Age. You'd have to be suicidial to use something as unwieldy and exhausting in combat. Not much less stupid than japanimu swords. Also, HURRRlocks look godawful. Good thing you'll be facing them fairly often.

One more thing. Areas corrupted by demons. FUCK YOU BIOWARE, FUCK YOU. Here is something that should give your artists the opportunity to let their imagination run wild. And what do we get, generic, vaguely demonic looking fleshy lumps on structures. YEAAAAAH. The desire demons look neat, but they copied the looks from warhammer daemonettes anyway.

Dragons/dragonlings/drakes and (generally) dwarfs look decent enough. And genlocks look like decent enough goblins. Dogs and some people look fine as well. But in general - good art design? No. Fuck no. Good should be a compliment, not another way of saying, well the better aspectss look okay and the many bad aspects don't quite make me want to claw my eyes out, not through a lack of trying though.

Voice acting. Generally as bad or worse. Graphics - I'm no graphics whore but when art design makes most thing look bland/stupid, why even bother.

edit: regarding equipment, I like the look of leather armour though.

 

[sigma1932]

Blizzard (or even, dare I say, Nintendo? Hmm...... naaaah... don't need any spikey-haired androgenous pre-teens in my games) builds the engine and does the play-testing.

:/

Hey, Blizzard takes 2-3 years to play-test their shit, including time to fix stuff in between, as opposed to the measly 6 months to a year other companies take and then still release stuff that's still buggy even with day-1 patches

That 2-3 year timeframe could be cut down if they focus soley on the testing, and just suggest solutions while someone else fixes the problems they find.

Additionally, as I said, I've never once had a Blizzard game crash on me unless I did something stupid in it that my machine couldn't handle. That's better than other companies can say.

EDIT: the Nintendo bit was obviously a poorly executed joke. My imaginary self-help instructor told me I should take chances, even if stuff sounds stupid in my head.

 

[Humanophage]

Personal perception:
Bioware
Baldur's Gate 1 = very good
Baldur's Gate 2 = very good
BG2: Throne of Bhaal = below average
Neverwinter Nights+add-ons = good
Jade Empire = below average
SW: KOTOR1 = good
Mass Effect = bad (haven't played too much)
(haven't played anything by Bioware after that.)

Bethesda
Daggerfall = good (haven't played too much)
Morrowind = average
Oblivion = average
(haven't played Arena and the newer games)

The Elder Scrolls, at least Morrowind and Oblivion, have always felt like single-player MMOGs. I do not get this impression from most sandbox RPGs.

Also, everybody will want to be a Jedi/Sith, and everybody knows Jedis/Siths are supposed to be the most badass guys in the SW universe. But, you still have Bounty Hunters, Soldiers and other non-jedi classes to be concerned about. This means Bioware will have to give those classes a fighting chance or nerf the others to balance things out, and for this very reason, SWTOR is doomed to fail.

Well, many of the iconic characters aren't Jedi/Sith. Rogues and ranged classes are generally popular. The current count is like this - seems more or less balanced:

 

[oscar]

Blizzard (or even, dare I say, Nintendo? Hmm...... naaaah... don't need any spikey-haired androgenous pre-teens in my games) builds the engine and does the play-testing.

:/

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Blizzard (or even, dare I say, Nintendo? Hmm...... naaaah... don't need any spikey-haired androgenous pre-teens in my games) builds the engine and does the play-testing.

:/

 

[Xor]

Blizzard (or even, dare I say, Nintendo? Hmm...... naaaah... don't need any spikey-haired androgenous pre-teens in my games) builds the engine and does the play-testing.

:/

Hey, Blizzard takes 2-3 years to play-test their shit, including time to fix stuff in between, as opposed to the measly 6 months to a year other companies take and then still release stuff that's still buggy even with day-1 patches

That 2-3 year timeframe could be cut down if they focus soley on the testing, and just suggest solutions while someone else fixes the problems they find.

Additionally, as I said, I've never once had a Blizzard game crash on me unless I did something stupid in it that my machine couldn't handle. That's better than other companies can say.

Blizzard doesn't take 2-3 years to playtest. They have very long development cycles because they will often throw out large chuncks of work and start over if it doesn't meet their standard of quality. They've done this numerous times. For example, Starcraft was nearly finished about a year before it came out, but people reacted negatively when they showed it off (the art style was nearly identical to Warcraft II) so they threw all that out and started over. Also there was the original Diablo III which had been in development since 2001, and I don't think any of that survived to today. Diablo III has probably only been in serious production for 2-3 years. They haven't had a finished, functional product that they've been playtesting all that time. The beta will be the bulk of their playtesting.

Also, I've had Blizzard games crash, although it's rare.

Blizzard (or even, dare I say, Nintendo? Hmm...... naaaah... don't need any spikey-haired androgenous pre-teens in my games) builds the engine and does the play-testing.

:/

This just has me scratching my head.

 

[sigma1932]

Blizzard doesn't take 2-3 years to playtest. They have very long development cycles because they will often throw out large chuncks of work and start over if it doesn't meet their standard of quality.

Well, might it be that they have very long development cycles BECAUSE they're testing stuff in between? I'd have a hard time believing they spend 2-3 years just coding the whole product before testing even one line.

...Starcraft was nearly finished about a year before it came out, but people reacted negatively when they showed it off (the art style was nearly identical to Warcraft II) so they threw all that out and started over.

K, but they didn't scrap the whole project to start over from scratch... they just changed the artwork and animations and then likely rebuilt the maps with new visuals and objects... a year sounds about right.

Also there was the original Diablo III which had been in development since 2001, and I don't think any of that survived to today. Diablo III has probably only been in serious production for 2-3 years. They haven't had a finished, functional product that they've been playtesting all that time. The beta will be the bulk of their playtesting.

Maybe I didn't make it clear... I'm talking about "running what was made to see if the correct result occurs"... I just called it "playtesting", because the product being worked on is a game, and it gets played.

To somewhat reiterate a point, my guess is they don't spend 2-3 years doing nothing but writing volumes upon volumes of code and build huge amounts of the game world without checking any of it as they go along.

As for the 2001 Diablo 3 being scrapped, my guess is they put the project on hold to focus on WoW, and then later scrapped the old project because they couldn't just move it all into a more modern engine and decided it would be more cost-effective to start from scratch.

Regardless, my main point was that they have longer development times because they actually take the time to look things over extensively, and then fix problems they find so they put out a quality product from day 1... Something that's clearly lacking in other companies with much shorter development times on their projects.

Also, I've had Blizzard games crash, although it's rare.

As I said, I have as well, but it's usually due to ridiculously long play sessions or me doing something stupid with an editor.

Blizzard (or even, dare I say, Nintendo? Hmm...... naaaah... don't need any spikey-haired androgenous pre-teens in my games) builds the engine and does the play-testing.

:/

This just has me scratching my head.

In what sense?

I mean, before remembering the spikey-haired androngenous pre-teens, the reason nintendo popped into my head is because, I don't recall there ever being been a time in a nintendo-designed product where people complained that they legitimately played themself into being unable to do part of a game that wasn't meant to be mutually exclusive from another part.

 

[Neeshka]

To be fair Blizzard is a god tier developer.
The amount of money they bring in with WoW and SC2 are ungodly; and this trend will continue with diablo 3 almost definitely.
They can very easily hire the very best in the industry and take their own time for releases with little or no external pressure.

They do indeed have long development cycles, but they have closed alphas and friends and family betas for an exceptionally long time, much of this time isn't always disclosed.

After playing Blizzard games almost everything else seems grossly inferior.


Bioware seems to have at least some of the things that makes Blizzard good; especially polish, production values and technical excellence. Although it's a very distant shadow.
Balance issues in DA are ridiculous and a lot of the stuff they do now feels rushed and amateurish - like how DA:O takes a nosedive after dwarf town; and the abomination that is DA2. ME1 had a decent story but unbalanced and bad spell/ability meshing. ME2 had better gameplay (better spell and skill balance) but a very lackluster story.
Like Blizzard bioware games are rarely buggy and unstable and things like physics are well done.
Similarly their UIs although not up to Blizzard levels; are generally well done.

Bethesda is a polar opposite. Production values, proper beta testing and polish are basically irrelevant to them to a level that is almost funny. Technical problems are rampant. Every other step you can't help but wondering how the flying F*uck this got past QA.
Physics issues are also abundant. Spaceman/spacedogs in Skyrim are hilariously appalling.
I'm yet to see a Bethesda game with a good UI. Anyone with a basic knowledge in UI design principles can see how Beth utterly fails at this; not sure wtf Toddy thinks when he releases games with joke UIs...

I'm of the opinion that the only people that like Bethesda games are looking for an mmorpg experience offline; so even if there is actually "no point" in doing anything in a game; if there is the option of roaming around aimlessly forever it suddenly becomes a great game.
Hence the huge nerd following for almost anything that is sandbox and the hatred towards linearity.

 

[Xor]

Blizzard only stands out now because everyone else has gone to shit.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

After playing Blizzard games almost everything else seems grossly inferior.


Bioware seems to have at least some of the things that makes Blizzard good; especially polish, production values and technical excellence. Although it's a very distant shadow.
Balance issues in DA are ridiculous and a lot of the stuff they do now feels rushed and amateurish - like how DA:O takes a nosedive after dwarf town; and the abomination that is DA2. ME1 had a decent story but unbalanced and bad spell/ability

If you are here somewhere implying that Blizzard writes remotly decent storys.....

 

[Infinitron]

I'm of the opinion that the only people that like Bethesda games are looking for an mmorpg experience offline; so even if there is actually "no point" in doing anything in a game; if there is the option of roaming around aimlessly forever it suddenly becomes a great game.
Hence the huge nerd following for almost anything that is sandbox and the hatred towards linearity.

Read up on some evolutionary psychology works. Bethesda games satisfy certain people's primordial hunter-gatherer instinct, as do MMOs.
Other people have evolved out of hunting and gathering, and are left scratching their heads wondering what the big deal is.

 

[Jordan]

Read up on some evolutionary psychology works. Bethesda games satisfy certain people's primordial hunter-gatherer instinct, as do MMOs.
Other people have evolved out of hunting and gathering, and are left scratching their heads wondering what the big deal is.

 

[Surf Solar]

Read up on some evolutionary psychology works. Bethesda games satisfy certain people's primordial hunter-gatherer instinct, as do MMOs.
Other people have evolved out of hunting and gathering, and are left scratching their heads wondering what the big deal is.

 

[Captain Shrek]

I'm of the opinion that the only people that like Bethesda games are looking for an mmorpg experience offline; so even if there is actually "no point" in doing anything in a game; if there is the option of roaming around aimlessly forever it suddenly becomes a great game.
Hence the huge nerd following for almost anything that is sandbox and the hatred towards linearity.

Read up on some evolutionary psychology works. Bethesda games satisfy certain people's primordial hunter-gatherer instinct, as do MMOs.
Other people have evolved out of hunting and gathering, and are left scratching their heads wondering what the big deal is.

Evolutionary Psychology is the Shittiest science out there. Just saying.

 

[fags suck]

Bioware used to be great at designing interesting quests. They were awesome in Baldurs Gate II, as the quests in it, especially the ones you got in that tavern in chapter II right after Imoen gets kidnapped, were unlike any other quests I had ever done in any other rpg before. They were AMAZING.

Then, Bioware declined hard. KOTOR was a fantastic game, but the quests in it did not really match Baldurs Gate II level, though they were still leagues ahead of other rpgs.

But then Biowaree went full retardo. Interparty romances, a cute and cool addition to Baldurs Gate II became the focal point for their games. Further games made them much more important, and then ofcourse they added homosexuality to it. Why, I really dunno, because fags are really a small market when it comes to rpgs. I think the main reason was that someone high up at Bioware was/is a fag, and thus he forces his perversions down upon the general gaming populace.

Oh and ofcourse, every fucking time it's like you have to save the world/universe. Only you can do it. Baldurs Gate was the only one in which you didn't have to do this, but in all future games you had to do this (haven't played Mass Erect or Faggot Age since I don't have the hardware or the time, so I can't comment on those)

And ofcourse, the crowing glory has been that Bioware went full derp and made their games action with light rpg elements. WTF Bioware? Way to spit in the face of your roots. One would think they would have learned their lesson from the apparent backlash regarding Faggot Age II, but honestly I don't think they will see it that way, especially as their Ass Erect series sells well and is full action shooter. They will probably add more tits and fags and dicks to Faggot Age, honeslty maybe they will add a tranny that you can romance.

Bethesda thankfully doesn't go for faggot loving, but their games are huge openworld sandboxes, with retarded main plot, and stupid boring sidequests. Thankfully, the exploration seems to make up for it. Oblivion was crap due to level scaling, but they seem to have learned their lesson and have done away with it in Skyrim, and Skyrim appears to be pretty good.

So, currently Bethesda is winning. Sales are hard proof of this, as people vote with their wallets.

If Bioware needs to have a chance of beating Bethesda, they need to go back to their fucking roots. At the very least, RTwP, if not full turn based, maybe powered by D&D4e, Pathfinder, or some other system.

 

[Volourn]

"Interparty romances, a cute and cool addition to Baldurs Gate II became the focal point for their games."

Romances are less than 5% of total content in BIO games and you can completely skip over every single one of them.


"Way to spit in the face of your roots."

They 'spi on their roots' when they amde their first game MDK2 which is NOT a RPG. Their roots, btw, was NOT rpgs but MEDEICAL FUKKIN' SOFTWARE. ffs

BIo will never beat Betehsda in terms of sales. They neve rhave and never will. If you go by sales, BIO's more recent games are ahell of a lot more successful than the BGs. Also, DA and ME series are vastly superior RPGs than the BG series.

And, that's the fukkin' truth!

P.S. Betehsda is the shittiest mosts uccessful company ever. FFS Not one good game. Not one. WTF WTF WTF

 

[DraQ]

I'm yet to see a Bethesda game with a good UI.

Morrowind? The way menus were handled in MW were pretty damn close to perfection.

You could make some improvements like having at least item names displayed at all times in the inventory (actually not much of a problem since items were sorted alphabetically and all, but potions and scrolls had individual icons, so finding anything was very fast unless you modded your strength to over 9000 and carried around half of the island worth of redundant stuff, in which case it could become unwieldy), more tabs, custom sorting in spellbook or better alchemy, enchanting and spellmaking interfaces, but for most part the GUI was very comfortable and highly customizable.

Bioware
Baldur's Gate 1 = very good

Stopped reading here.

Oblivion = average

Involuntarily read this line while skipping the remainder of the post - prior decision to stop reading confirmed as optimal.

Thinking about it for a bit, I might be convinced to let Blizzard do the engine and have a say on combat mechanics.

No, just no.

Blizzard has never made an RPG, and it never will. It makes mindless little games with narrow gamey mechanics fine-tuned for balance and competitive play.

Attempting to put it in a non abstract game, with meaningful world and broad interactivity outside of the combat (AKA an actual cRPG, rather than Diablo clone/MMO-lite) would result in a fucking train-wreck.


Or turd-wreck.

 

[NewFag]

I'm kind of unsure if Volourn is sarcastic or just trolling. Someone help me out here.

I have to agree that Bethesda edges out Bioware, especially after DA2 and Skyrim. If you were still in the 90s and time traveled to 2011, you'll find both have to a near unrecognizable state.