Game News BioWare Are Not EA's Bitch

[deus101]

Fucking crackers!

 

[DragoFireheart]

The Codex blames everything for the decline, including itself.

- To be fair, only 53% of the codex is shit.

 

[eugene2k]

BioWare is making art.

It's an acronym for absolutely retarded turd.

 

[Jaesun]

Thanks for clearing that up eugene2k.

 

[commie]

Jade Empire is hardly even a bloody game at all! There's only ridiculously tiny areas/corridors to walk in, with almost nothing to do. Seriously, it makes KOTOR's deserted emptiness seem like New Reno by comparison. The only time you ever do anything is in one of the retarded fight scenes where most of the fighting is with the terrible controls, trying to make the character do what you want.

So how is it different to the Codex GOTY Divinity II? Why so many piss themselves in delight over the magic missile/exploding arrow spam of Div2 and their corridors and boring as fuck dragon and flying fortress sections and at the same time slag off everything Bioware?

After Div2 I started on DA:O, another 'Bioturd' and in comparison it's fucking great. So what that there's a basic formula to use in combat, it's the same in most games, at least there's a bit of working out who to take, the need for complimentary skills. Armor and weapons make a real difference compared to finding somethin every 2 minutes in Div2 which is pointless anyway as your skills change weapon parameters far more than the weapons which are useless for the most part. Money is also scarce in DA:O even towards the end you'll be blowing it all on a piece of armor and take a bit of time to get it back. The combat could of course be much better, but it's certainly better than in Div2. Instead we get hypocritical rage at the cooldown 'WoW' combat of DA:O while the very same style of combat is in Div2 and there it's praised despite being the ultimate one button/one skill retardation! Fade supposedly sucked but it was a good puzzle but little mention is made of the awful flying fortresses in comparison.

I'd like to apologise to Volly and say that I've seen the light. DA:O is in comparison to most major RPG games released these days actually pretty good.

Oh and Alistair is ok.

Even the Derp Roads are hardly the banal slogfests they've been labeled. The metro tunnels of FO3 and the Flying Fortresses of Div2 were far worse.

A caveat is that I've played FO3, Two Worlds, Divinity II and now DA:O in a row, so of course I know that DA:O looks better than if I played better games, but then again, so what? If playing some shitty games makes this one seem better and enjoyable then what's the problem?

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

So how is it different to the Codex GOTY Divinity II? Why so many piss themselves in delight over the magic missile/exploding arrow spam of Div2 and their corridors and boring as fuck dragon and flying fortress sections and at the same time slag off everything Bioware?

After Div2 I started on DA:O, another 'Bioturd' and in comparison it's fucking great.

U mad? You do not come on to the Dex criticizing the "damn, 94% RPG of the decade Divinity 2 DKS". Nor do say you found DA:O anything other than "good for what it is" (at best). You realize you have just killed any chance you had of making it onto the bro list?

But just between us, I agree entirely. Shhh! DKS is just spam magic missile and do a consoletard spastic roll. Make some coffee while mana regenerates, rinse repeat. Yet DA:O with enemies that use beserker, reaver, templar, assassin, ranger, archer, rogue etc et fucking cetera, special powers against you, plus 40 spells including fireball, misdirection hex, blood wound, plus fire, ice, spirit, electric damage, plus special attacks like charge, grab, pin down, etc, has pause and play, semi turn based combat .... is despised. The first deep roads area was not up to standard, but as you move on with the brood mother and Caradin Thaigs, it's back to its usual form.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Jade Empire is hardly even a bloody game at all! There's only ridiculously tiny areas/corridors to walk in, with almost nothing to do. Seriously, it makes KOTOR's deserted emptiness seem like New Reno by comparison. The only time you ever do anything is in one of the retarded fight scenes where most of the fighting is with the terrible controls, trying to make the character do what you want.

So how is it different to the Codex GOTY Divinity II? Why so many piss themselves in delight over the magic missile/exploding arrow spam of Div2 and their corridors and boring as fuck dragon and flying fortress sections and at the same time slag off everything Bioware?

After Div2 I started on DA:O, another 'Bioturd' and in comparison it's fucking great. So what that there's a basic formula to use in combat, it's the same in most games, at least there's a bit of working out who to take, the need for complimentary skills. Armor and weapons make a real difference compared to finding somethin every 2 minutes in Div2 which is pointless anyway as your skills change weapon parameters far more than the weapons which are useless for the most part. Money is also scarce in DA:O even towards the end you'll be blowing it all on a piece of armor and take a bit of time to get it back. The combat could of course be much better, but it's certainly better than in Div2. Instead we get hypocritical rage at the cooldown 'WoW' combat of DA:O while the very same style of combat is in Div2 and there it's praised despite being the ultimate one button/one skill retardation! Fade supposedly sucked but it was a good puzzle but little mention is made of the awful flying fortresses in comparison.

I'd like to apologise to Volly and say that I've seen the light. DA:O is in comparison to most major RPG games released these days actually pretty good.

Oh and Alistair is ok.

Even the Derp Roads are hardly the banal slogfests they've been labeled. The metro tunnels of FO3 and the Flying Fortresses of Div2 were far worse.

A caveat is that I've played FO3, Two Worlds, Divinity II and now DA:O in a row, so of course I know that DA:O looks better than if I played better games, but then again, so what? If playing some shitty games makes this one seem better and enjoyable then what's the problem?

commie ? is that you ? what has happened ? did you run into Cleve's mindbending ray's Down Under ? have you been..... damaged?.... has a part of your brain been swapped with konjad's in a mad potatoe experiment ?

 

[deuxhero]

The article is right. My dog gets scraps when it looks at me cute enough, don't think Bioware gets that advantage.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Jade Empire is hardly even a bloody game at all! There's only ridiculously tiny areas/corridors to walk in, with almost nothing to do. Seriously, it makes KOTOR's deserted emptiness seem like New Reno by comparison. The only time you ever do anything is in one of the retarded fight scenes where most of the fighting is with the terrible controls, trying to make the character do what you want.

Take Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, take out the story and the nice graphics, and add in a Chinese setting. Voila. Jade Empire.

Thanks for reminding me, yet again, that one of my favourite adventure game series finished on a middle-arc-of-the-trilogy cliff-hanger, and we aren't ever going to see it completed.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

You know I actually own SOU and still to this day, I can not bring myself to ever play it.

Why not? Because Volourn says it's shit?

 

[Volourn]

I didn't say it was actually shit. Please read again.

 

[Roguey]

@commie - Here are my guesses: a) doesn't have Bioware on the box and made by a small group of Belgians (of course) b) bigger areas c) no optional hand-holding features d) funny, doesn't take itself seriously e) more and better puzzles and f) graphics and music. Different tastes and priorities. A lot of times when someone complains about x feature, that isn't the issue really bothering them.

 

[commie]

U mad? You do not come on to the Dex criticizing the "damn, 94% RPG of the decade Divinity 2 DKS". Nor do say you found DA:O anything other than "good for what it is" (at best). You realize you have just killed any chance you had of making it onto the bro list?

But just between us, I agree entirely. Shhh! DKS is just spam magic missile and do a consoletard spastic roll. Make some coffee while mana regenerates, rinse repeat. Yet DA:O with enemies that use beserker, reaver, templar, assassin, ranger, archer, rogue etc et fucking cetera, special powers against you, plus 40 spells including fireball, misdirection hex, blood wound, plus fire, ice, spirit, electric damage, plus special attacks like charge, grab, pin down, etc, has pause and play, semi turn based combat .... is despised. The first deep roads area was not up to standard, but as you move on with the brood mother and Caradin Thaigs, it's back to its usual form.

He he he, not exactly mad as somewhat annoyed. I really enjoyed the humour of DKS and it's semi Gothic style of exploration, but after I reached Orobas it started to go downhill. Shit, I forgot to respec befor the last fight with Ygerna and that Mage(who I released for added challenge), and had 30 points in Wisdom and Mindread that I could have spent somewhere else, and still it was a no brainer, running around with magic missile, flame wall, summons and pet, then chugging potions and doing it again. Took a few goes as the bitch would sometimes close and give me a hammerblow, but it was as simple as it comes. I didn't even have a perfect build for mage as I changed my character from melee for the first third of the game then archer and finally a mage for FOV yet it was enough. Maybe pure melee would have been harder, but with the hordes of respawning crap in FOV, it would just be tedious. You get a million enchanting gems and charms that are mostly a waste, and the armors are of moderate value as are the weapons. Why so many when all I needed was the bow I got half way through? With a few gems there was bugger all that could better it. In DA:O, until later on you get few really good weapons and armors that are more than cosmetic difference. I also LOVE the fact that using a light armor instead of automatically putting on the heaviest actually has a real benefit. I'm using a dual wield Dwarf Commoner and have been using light armor all the way through. In most other games, bigger is better and so you just discard any light shit for the heaviest at earliest opportunity.

The brood mother was a cool fight as are most set piece fights in DA:O, offering a variety of tactical challenges. Early on an ambush with archers on the high ground were a real bitch as I had little protection and a non-ranged party for example. I still haven't figured out how to beat that fucking High Dragon. I just never game much import to ranged attack and so am suffering somewhat in some battles as getting in close to the fucker is suicide.

DA:O for me is a game that I will eventually play again with a different spec and that's something I never thought I'd hear myself saying about it after the 'raeg' is got here.

commie ? is that you ? what has happened ? did you run into Cleve's mindbending ray's Down Under ? have you been..... damaged?.... has a part of your brain been swapped with konjad's in a mad potatoe experiment ?

Heh, I actually took a sabbatical from the newfag derp that infected this place a couple of month ago and decided to try out the 'Codex bane' games. Some I found deserved the rage, others to my surprise less so. I think I like DA:O because I miss slower leveling, actually using more than one talent/skill/spell, having a party, all in spite of the clusterfuck combat becomes at times(which really is the same as BG/BG2 at heart), an epic feel despite the tried and true hub and 4 areas shtick being used again, and a genuine sense that Bioware actually TRIED and CARED with this game that I didn't get with the Mass Effect series and I guess DA2(though I've not really tried that). Perhaps it's due to the time spent on it, before EA and the full realisation of the 'formula'?

At any rate, I've become somewhat confused regarding what the Codex says is good and shit.

Could it be that the Codex doesn't hold all the answers?

@commie - Here are my guesses: a) doesn't have Bioware on the box and made by a small group of Belgians (of course) b) bigger areas c) no optional hand-holding features d) funny, doesn't take itself seriously e) more and better puzzles and f) graphics and music. Different tastes and priorities. A lot of times when someone complains about x feature, that isn't the issue really bothering them.

Yes, I liked it of course up to a point. But as a game it had every flaw and then some that could be leveled at Bioware. Just because it's made by some 'wacky Belgians' that try to go all 'cool and laddish' in their blogs and shit shouldn't excuse the game that much. The outside areas may be a bit bigger between loading but that's a false difference, as DA:O has more areas and if you stuck them all together in a seamless transition, you'd get a larger mass of land. Open space just for a Dragon form don't really count either. The interior areas for the most part are small as shit though.

Not all the puzzles are all that much better, the one with the statues at the FF was neat as were a couple of others, such as the optional platformers, but that's more Fade quality. A lot of the puzzles are basically find the lock that fits the key.

DA:O actually surprised me that it had some puzzles that were similar in quality to DKS, something after playing Mass Effect 1 and 2 I had forgotten that Bioware could do. I also didn't discover the 'highlight everything' key until almost finished the game so actual exploring and trying to work out puzzles was more challenging in many ways than it would have been otherwise.

Graphics also aren't all that good in DKS, not much better than DA:O at any rate. Music is superior. That fight music from DA:O gave me the shits after half an hour.

It doesn't take itself that seriously which is a plus in a way but also an attempt to shrug off crap plot and inconsistencies just with a 'hey it's just a fun game' type of defense. The power rangers rip off was great though. On the other hand there's a lot of genuinely funny banter in DA:O as well, the ones between Oghren and Wynne about Alistair twirling his pike were good for example.

I really liked DKS despite it's flaws BUT at the same time after playing DA:O I honestly don't see why it's loathed so much when on balance it does things as well or as badly as DKS. Sure there are face palm moments, but even the Deep Roads were over in a couple of hours and had quite a few interesting encounters and even the darkspawn hordes were intelligently placed and not dumped like in DKS in a corridor. I had heard all the stories about the horrors of the neverending 'Derpspawn' hordes and had steeled myself for a tedious grindfest, but it was over as soon as it started. There were more repetitive fodder encounters in the Flying Fortresses and the caverns to the Mages tomb, though they died in seconds thanks to magic missile.

I also really liked the ending to the original DivII. If it ended right there without FoV I still would have been happy. Why shouldn't you have a game where it actually charts the rise to power of the 'big bad'? Surely in all these fantasy settings there must have been a way whereby the bad ass actually succeeded well enough to become a threat if not conquer most of the world in the first place, right? I actually found FoV as a bit of a cop out. Would have preferred a Divinity 3 where you are a different adventurer trying to clear up the mess that the Div 2 guy made, with maybe freeing him as an ally during the game.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Anyone who reads developer quotes from the bioboards will have noticed a change since the acquisition, they no longer talk about wanting to please the mainstream audience at the cost of the "selfish" hardcore audience as they used to, now it's all about pleasing the shareholders.

They are now in the business of making money directly off hype(instead of indirectly). Sales are no longer the bottom line.

 

[RPGMaster]

Current Bioware fans

That is the worst fucking crossbow ever. Looks like a giant douchebag. Guy should be ashamed.

 

[Morkar Left]

Funny, I thought it's a gunchainsaw...

 

[Angelo85]

A new interview with the doctors from October 5th:
http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/index.php/ ... oware.html

The vision for us is a broadening of the genre. We see a lot of other genres incorporating features of RPGs and in turn RPGs are incorporating features of other genres. There are more action elements, there’s different ways to tell a story, there’s different ways to have characters interact for adventure games, action games, shooters, and that’s exciting to us.

It’s actually making a lot of other games more engaging in the same way we could make RPGs more engaging and successful … by incorporating features that are popular in different genres. But we want to bring our core fans along with us on that journey too, so it’s not always easy to get a balance that does both, but we’re striving to do that.

[...]

[Narrative is] conveyed in a more subtle way now so there’s less need to have weighty dialogue lines that are just pure text and there’s more ability to convey things more subtly

[...]

It was more just directional: make each game better than the last, always try to innovate. Quality was a core value for our employees, for our fans, for our investors … make each thing better than the prior ones.

“We innovate sometimes in new directions that work really well and other times maybe not as well but we’re always open to the feedback and I think that’s the key: be humble and open and truthful with yourself in what things are working. [You have to] recognise that you’re only as good as your next game.”

 

[RPGMaster]

[You have to] recognise that you’re only as good as your next game.”

Retard should learn proper expressions.

Although when your last game was Dragon Age 2 it's probably best not to say "You're only as good as your last game."

 

[Volourn]

DA2 > BG

 

[RPGMaster]

DA2 > BG

That still means it's utter shit.

 

[Satan]

DA2 > BG

While I do consider DA2 a good game, I must say BG gave me a lot more fun and it's quality was a lot higher.

 

[Serious_Business]

DA2 > BG

While I do consider DA2 a good game, I must say BG gave me a lot more fun and it's quality was a lot higher.

yeeeeAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

quality, huh

 

[SCO]

Yeah, BG 1 & 2 is pretty shit.

Been re-playing it now with the BWP, minus some derp mods (didn't got them all unfortunately), and the only mildly amusing part was Durlag's Tower due to the backstory (the ulgoth's beard connection could be much better though), and even there, the fucking combat...

There are quality mods for it though, like the PnP Fiends and some others - they can't fix retarded combat system though, and if you're not interested in spell rock-paper-scissors, it's not actually worth it.

And the fucking NPC mods, dear god.
I installed some to flesh out some characters, and what a terrible mistake - just to see some of the derp dialog options your protagonist can utter to initiate the optional romances is enough to get a sanity hit.

Mostly there are a shitton of fetch quests.


But there are some mildly sly riffs on some fetch quests - very few, amusingly allow you to talk to a charmed quest giver and make him give the reward as if you had already finished it, one even allows you to blackmail the quest giver (if you do it enough, you get a assassin too).

This all went away with BG2, as part of the global decline.

 

[Wise Emperor]

Edginess levels sky rockets.

Give me today, anything of comparable shitness level of BG.

Give me

So?

Please give me

Yeah I thought so. There isn't anything remotely good today.

But Codex probably thinks that Frayed Knights & Divinity is 5x better than oldBioware shit.

 

[Shannow]

Edginess levels sky rockets.

Give me today, anything of comparable shitness level of BG.

Give me

Well, DAO wasn't too bad. Not quite as good as BG due to even more Bioware "quality" story and dialogue and some more bad design decisions, though. Otherwise you're right, the majority of the new shit is far worse than Bio's old shit and parts of the codex probably think that FK and DKS are better than BG