Game News EA has ruined BioWare

[Kaanyrvhok]

EA is to Bioware what the Spaniards were to the Mayans.
I didn't know Spaniards gave Mayans unbelievable riches while asking only low grade goods in return?

 

[Jigawatt]

Off topic (frankly I don't give a shit about either EA or Bioware)

Half of the Codex believes that you can't divide by zero... Are you just as retarded?

Do you realise your signature makes you look completely retarded (I mean more so than the posts that go with it)?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Besides, if one considers Baldur's Gate 2 as the best game Bioware has ever created (or NWN like Volly), then Bioware has been steadily declining for the best part of the last decade. EA had nothing to do with it.

Well EA did deliver coup de grace with its trademark Reverse Midas Touch, but Bioware's history was essentially BG1 (90s oblivious) -> steep incline -> BG2 -> long, steady declining slope of recycled plots and characters.

Except that BG2 was a steep decline after PST.

Except PST wasn't biowhore's game.

It wasn't. But it set new standards before BG2 just as Fallout set before BG1.

Except that BG2 was a steep decline after PST.

How so? BG2 is a better game. Has better combat. And is replayable.

Combat was as awful as in PST. It was the same messy IE combat. Banal Shit Boring. The only positive side was that there were some more spell defences.

It had no decent stat-based dialogue, no descriptions in dialogues, banal shit boring retarded Bioware cNPCs, shitty Bioware Choice dialogues, no ability to initiate dialogues with party members, no ability to do stuff to people in dialogues, banal shit boring plot with forced PC stupidity, decline all the way.

Jesus fucking christ, I already see you gobbling up JA2 Reloaded and talking about how it's much better than JA2 1.13.

 

[J1M]

^Yup. And here is one (of many) where he blames us

Stage 1: Denial You refuse to accept the presence of X in your beloved game, or any game for that matter, and begin a bitter campaign to convince everyone else that it is the travesty you think it is. If you play the game, you are determined to hate it—and voila! You do! You hang out on RPG Codex.

Another step forward for the prestigious magazine.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

"by the gamer for the gamer".

Isn't this Interplay's motto not BIO's?

I'm sorry dudes. I've been playing BG1 (or trying to at least), and every single one of BIO's games since then is better. BG just doens't hold up.

I am pretty Bio's is "We created worlds"

"We create worlds" was Origin.

At Origin's bonfire to celebrate their company closing it's doors, the shirts read "We Created Worlds." Just drawing parallels between Origin and Bioware, tis all.

But there aren't any parallels to be drawn between the two. Origin was an amazing company. BioWare is not and will never be at the same level.

 

[Jaesun]

But there aren't any parallels to be drawn between the two. Origin was an amazing company. BioWare is not and will never be at the same level.

 

[Excidium]

Blaming EA is so typical. Bioware decided to develop emotionally engaging experiences instead of RPGs much before being acquired by EA.

 

[Claw]

Blaming EA is so typical. Bioware decided to develop emotionally engaging experiences instead of RPGs much before being acquired by EA.

Really? I never heard of those before.

 

[poocolator]

Golden era of gaming now is indies getting popular on Steam. Get a larger variety of more interesting games.

God, they have indie as a genre

everything is ruined forever

someone code a steampunk zombie nerdcute version of scorched earth worms and put it on steam oh Christ tower defense metroidvania platformer yesssss

Don't they mean "hipster" instead of "indie" or did I miss a subsubsubculturual, larp-worthy gaming regression-revolution?

 

[Severian Silk]

In order to compete with Bethesda, BioWare needs to buy the rights to Arcanum.

 

[Xor]

In order to compete with Bethesda, BioWare needs to buy the rights to Arcanum.

I tried to rage at that idea, but I don't think I actually care.

 

[commie]

^Yup. And here is one (of many) where he blames us

Stage 1: Denial You refuse to accept the presence of X in your beloved game, or any game for that matter, and begin a bitter campaign to convince everyone else that it is the travesty you think it is. If you play the game, you are determined to hate it—and voila! You do! You hang out on RPG Codex.

Another step forward for the prestigious magazine.

he he..Good to see the Codex isn't as irrelevant as these fuckers like to pretend considering that Gaydar is still butthurt about it and probably lurks here everyday before crying off in indignation.

 

[villain of the story]

Heheheh, indeed. I wouldn't be surprised if he were still posting here with an alt.

 

[mysterious-stranger]

*Sees people complaining about EA*


Nothing out of the ordinary then

 

[Commissar Draco]

If only it was true; Biowhore was always cheap wench but now her clients are waking up and dicover she's 50 years old HIV infested tranny. Oh the joys of misantropy. thank you Codex.

 

[l3loodAngel]

lol...
I'm just providing the dumb hollywood analogy after watching Apocalypto. From that perspect I would agree that Bioware was already in a bad way.I thought Origins was their worse offering. You can pin much of this on EA. Again I'm no fan of Origins but the changes from Origins to DA 2 were that of the out of touch overanlyzations of greedy marketing 'experts'.

No not rly. They just reduced the time frame. Origins took how much to make? 5 years. Now DA2 took much less to make, because yeah EA was greedy, but still Bioware provided all the talent for production. I am not even talking about the system that encourages you to be consistent . The depth of quests, the story and etc...

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

Again I'm no fan of Origins but the changes from Origins to DA 2 were that of the out of touch overanlyzations of greedy marketing 'experts'.

No not rly. They just reduced the time frame. Origins took how much to make? 5 years. Now DA2 took much less to make, because yeah EA was greedy,

Yes, rly. DA1 took 4 years to build on the PC, and in that time, the DA team was 'borrowed' to help on another project (see Brent Knowles' blog).

If they just took Origins, built on it, then 1.5 years would be enough to produce a sequel of equal quality (whatever you judge that quality to be). What they did was use that 1.5 years to turn this into a general action adventure, with some vestiges of the Origins systems, but that would appeal to the Call of Duty buyers. More cinematics, fewer useful stats, fewer skills and spells, fewer diverging story lines, 100% voice acting, silly little emoticons in a limited dialog wheel etc. And the story went from being cliched trite Origins to insane juvenile emo shit that no-one over 19 could enjoy and no-one over 25 could bear to play (especially Act 3). These were all strategic decisions of the marketing 'experts', nothing to do with time pressure. I think most of us on the Codex (and especially the Bioboards) could live with the obvious 'rush job' signs (recycled maps, NPC's looking the same after 7 years etc), if that was all that was wrong with DA2.

 

[Jaesun]

These were all strategic decisions of the marketing 'experts', nothing to do with time pressure.

They were?

 

[Daemongar]

But there aren't any parallels to be drawn between the two. Origin was an amazing company. BioWare is not and will never be at the same level.

They both started out with a strong leader, produced some good stuff early on, were bought by EA, produced shit by their own choices or a stronger focus on marketing. There are more parallels than a lot of RPG developers contrasted.

Origin didn't go out and cease to exist on principle, deiciding to close their doors rather than compromise their corporate identity and integrity. While Origin produced some amazing stuff, they were releasing Ultima 9 the year after Bioware released Baldur's Gate. (ie: releasing buggy stuff to make money.)

U7SI was released early and incomplete (and also had optional expansion that makes the game easier (ring of reagents, belt of strenght, helm of... not needing torches)), U8 was released early and incomplete (but they also released an optional add on speech pack at game release (that was $20.).

I like Origin, I like Bioware and think they can turn it around. They just need to refocus and get rid of some of the shit leadership.

 

[Befuddled Halfling]

These were all strategic decisions of the marketing 'experts', nothing to do with time pressure.

They were?

I mean all the things I listed in the post:

More cinematics, fewer useful stats, fewer skills and spells, fewer diverging story lines, 100% voice acting, silly little emoticons in a limited dialog wheel etc. And the story went from being cliched trite Origins to insane juvenile

On common sense, all these are not things that are (time) budget sensitive. If anything, the opposite - a voiced Hawke is more costly than a mute Warden. So is reinventing the art style into Itchy and Scratchy meets Anime. So if these things were not done out of time pressure, then either a) it was a strategic decision or b) it was just random.

But aside from common sense, Knowles on one of his blogs talks more about why he quit BioWare - one reason was that he didn't want to make a cinematic action adventure for pre-pubescent retards, which was a slight problem, because it happened to be his brief for DA2 in 08. He also talks about a significant loss of autonomy as lead designer. In one tweet he told people to stop blaming Laidlaw, because the decisions about DA2 were simply not his "they came from studio direction". So either the Mad Doctors or EA.

 

[MetalCraze]

Off topic (frankly I don't give a shit about either EA or Bioware)

Half of the Codex believes that you can't divide by zero... Are you just as retarded?

Do you realise your signature makes you look completely retarded (I mean more so than the posts that go with it)?

Congratulations. You are a retard. Although I didn't expect you will pass the test positively before even finishing reading that sentence.

 

[MetalCraze]

Combat was as awful as in PST. It was the same messy IE combat. Banal Shit Boring. The only positive side was that there were some more spell defences.

Dude. Have you even played BG2? Or just went "oh it's Bioware suucks uscks hsit shit!"?

PS:T forced you to play as a fighter for, what, 7 or 8 levels (1/3 of a game)? All while your stats were set to be a mage (because how else will you read everything in this book?). And there was nothing but melee combat. Thus you were forced to play as a shitty fighter in melee for hours.

And the combat never left melee scale.

In BG2 it was pretty much normal DnD combat in terms of design, but hurt by RtwP.

It had no decent stat-based dialogue, no descriptions in dialogues, banal shit boring retarded Bioware cNPCs, shitty Bioware Choice dialogues, no ability to initiate dialogues with party members, no ability to do stuff to people in dialogues, banal shit boring plot with forced PC stupidity, decline all the way.

So what?
BG2 is still a better game

Jesus fucking christ, I already see you gobbling up JA2 Reloaded and talking about how it's much better than JA2 1.13.

Well JA2 is banal shit boring. Has banal shit boring plot, dialogues without description and even without text, no ability to initiate dialogues with party members, no ability to lick Ira's pussy in dialogues and do other stuff to her etc.

 

[Roguey]

PS:T forced you to play as a fighter for, what, 7 or 8 levels (1/3 of a game)? All while your stats were set to be a mage (because how else will you read everything in this book?). And there was nothing but melee combat. Thus you were forced to play as a shitty fighter in melee for hours.

And the combat never left melee scale.

Why do you lie? You're not forced to do anything. You could make a beeline for Mebbeth straight out of the mortuary without killing anything except that one zombie. The manual tells you you can change your class to thief or mage by talking to people, so if you decided to run a bunch of errands/clear out dungeons for people as a fighter while trying to find the mage-teacher, that's your fault.

I'm not even going to get into the "it has better combat so it's a better game" thing.

 

[Jigawatt]

Off topic (frankly I don't give a shit about either EA or Bioware)

Half of the Codex believes that you can't divide by zero... Are you just as retarded?

Do you realise your signature makes you look completely retarded (I mean more so than the posts that go with it)?

Congratulations. You are a retard. Although I didn't expect you will pass the test positively before even finishing reading that sentence.

So what are you saying then? You seem to be suggesting the non-retarded position to take is that you can divide by zero (retardedness, I hope, is self-explanatory). Otherwise the stupidity is packed in the form of massive failure in the use of the English language to convey your point. In either case, things don't bode too well for your claims of being one of the less derp posters here.

 

[SuicideBunny]

So what are you saying then? You seem to be suggesting the non-retarded position to take is that you can divide by zero (retardedness, I hope, is self-explanatory). Otherwise the stupidity is packed in the form of massive failure in the use of the English language to convey your point. In either case, things don't bode too well for your claims of being one of the less derp posters here.

his point is that 2/2*0 does not contain any division by zero and half the 'dex fails to see that, which his use of the english language conveys quite adequately.
now please shut up.