Mac Walters leaves Bioware

[Louis_Cypher]

The lead writer had a plan, but...

Informative.

I like to think Karpyrshin was responsible for most of the good plot in KOTOR 1 and Mass Effect 1, but who knows. He also did novels for Star Wars (Darth Bane). A while back there was news that he and a bunch of other ex-BioWare people had joined a new studio under Wizards of the Coast, known as Archetype Entertainment, who are doing a brand new sci-fi IP. Concept art:

As for this Chris L'Etoile, mentioned above, who I hadn't heard of before, a Wiki says:

"Chris L'Etoile is Narrative Design Coordinator at Wizards of the Coast. He is part of Creative R&D since March 2016."

 

[Artyoan]

DA4 is going to end up being an mmo-lite gacha thing.

 

[Rhobar121]

DA4 is going to end up being an mmo-lite gacha thing.

I doubt it because that would mean a bunch of morons working there who spent the last 6 years under a rock.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

DA4 is going to end up being an mmo-lite gacha thing.

DAI is already that, the itemization is decidedly gacha like.

 

[Tyrr]

DA4 is going to end up being an mmo-lite gacha thing.

DAI is already that, the itemization is decidedly gacha like.

Don't forget the real-time missions. Like a mobile game.

 

[Zeriel]

BG1&2, KoToR, Jade Empire, DA and the original ME games had generally adequate and tolerable writing (with some exceptions, of course). It's when you get to DA2 and you get cringe dialog like "I want to be a dragon." that the wheels really fell off.

No. The writing was objectively shit.

So shitty that you managed to play them all though I guess?

Or are you saying that something you never played was shit?

You're showing the rhetorical trap yourself. "If you played it, you must have liked it! And if you didn't play it, then you can't dislike it!" Wow, what an amazing mastermind you are.

 

[Zeriel]

DAI came before TW3, so it got the GOTY award in 2014. However when they gave it to them, the collective reaction from the world was more of a groan than anything else.

DAI is better than TW3's base game

They both have a lot of bad optional content, but when it comes to gameplay, critical path, and narrative-heavy side content, Witcher 3 was better. Bloody Baron alone.

I won’t be surprised if L’Etoile is a conservative now.

Nah, he wrote that asexual lesbian for Outer Worlds and then a personal tragedy upended his life.

Karma is real!

 

[Rhobar121]

DA4 is going to end up being an mmo-lite gacha thing.

DAI is already that, the itemization is decidedly gacha like.

Don't forget the real-time missions. Like a mobile game.

That one feature wasn't that bad.
It is not too invasive and by definition it has exactly the same function as in the crusade system in WoTR.
You can completely ignore it and you won't lose much.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

If by timed missions you mean the war table where you send Leliana and etc then they give you items and such. It's not just free stuff, but it feels like filler since you don't do it yourself.

 

[Zeriel]

DA4 is going to end up being an mmo-lite gacha thing.

DAI is already that, the itemization is decidedly gacha like.

Don't forget the real-time missions. Like a mobile game.

That one feature wasn't that bad.
It is not too invasive and by definition it has exactly the same function as in the crusade system in WoTR.
You can completely ignore it and you won't lose much.

Other funny thing about that is you could just change your system clock to make the missions autocomplete. As I remember though they fixed that in patches.

 

[Kilus]

I'll let you guys into a secret of how EA killed Bioware.

EA has a tiered bonus system. You take a game's profit and divide by a game's budget and that's how good the bonus is. And the higher up(producers, leads) you are the better the bonus(potentially more than their salary).

That's why they were okay with DA2 development, smaller budget means bigger bonus and 18 month time frame means constant bonuses(2 every 3 years).
That's why went with Frostbite, saving on engine costs means smaller budget which means bigger bonus.
The endless filler fetch quests in Inquisition and Andromeda were because Skyrim sold millions upon millions of copies. More sales means more bonus so poorly copy what Bethesda did.
Anthem was because they thought they could make some action game for some reason that would sell millions of copies and get them bigger bonuses.

The leads saw potentially buying Ferrari if only they could game the bonus system and you saw leads exiting when they realised they couldn't.

 

[J1M]

Casey Hudson and him are responsible for the ME3 endings mess.

Now I haven't played the Mass Effect trilogy but the impression I got was that the series was dramatically pivoting the story from game to game and making up stuff as it went along, kind of like tv show that gets renewed on a per-season basis. So I'm a little bewildered that there's so much vitriol surrounding its ending as if the plot was going anywhere to begin with.

The lead writer had a plan, but...

There was no decline i character art, concept art or level art in the sequels. The issues were entirely with the writing.

Why they jettisoned the plot laid out by Drew for the incoherent mess they replaced it with i have no idea. The character writing could have stayed almost entirely the same.

Also, we dont have an industry standard to compare it with. Turnover of workers has most likely been high since mid 00s in the industry. Did Dark Souls 3 retain most of its artists from Demon Souls, for example?

There isn't much in the way of game development in Edmonton and a lot of winter. In addition to 15% standard attrition in that industry, you also have a situation where artists would have been incentivized to move to Texas and work on TOR while Mass Effect 3 was in preproduction.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

You'd also have to see how many of those people were contracted instead of properly hired. Software development works on a project to project basis after all, it's not a real 9-to-5 type of work and also lol at working for an entire year in the same place in the 21s century

 

[J1M]

I'll let you guys into a secret of how EA killed Bioware.

EA has a tiered bonus system. You take a game's profit and divide by a game's budget and that's how good the bonus is. And the higher up(producers, leads) you are the better the bonus(potentially more than their salary).

That's why they were okay with DA2 development, smaller budget means bigger bonus and 18 month time frame means constant bonuses(2 every 3 years).
That's why went with Frostbite, saving on engine costs means smaller budget which means bigger bonus.
The endless filler fetch quests in Inquisition and Andromeda were because Skyrim sold millions upon millions of copies. More sales means more bonus so poorly copy what Bethesda did.
Anthem was because they thought they could make some action game for some reason that would sell millions of copies and get them bigger bonuses.

The leads saw potentially buying Ferrari if only they could game the bonus system and you saw leads exiting when they realised they couldn't.

If that was the plan they wouldn't have redone the combat and character models for Dragon Age 2. Those were both wasteful changes with predictably bad results.

My guess, based on the marketing material, is that early in production BioWare thought they could create a God of War combat system to hit a wider audience. Halfway, and after the cinematic trailer was paid for, they realized that they weren't capable of combat feel.

 

[mediocrepoet]

My guess, based on the marketing material, is that early in production BioWare thought they could create a God of War combat system to hit a wider audience. Halfway, and after the cinematic trailer was paid for, they realized that they weren't capable of combat feel.

I think this is likely. Bioware made crap action games that also managed to be crap RPGs. The action didn't become decent until they had shooter devs from the rest of EA help them for ME3. Left to their own devices, post BG2, Bioware's only core strength was romance simulator for weirdos and then they gutted their writing staff.

 

[Roguey]

If that was the plan they wouldn't have redone the combat and character models for Dragon Age 2. Those were both wasteful changes with predictably bad results.

In his blog posts about his time at Bioware, Brent Knowles mentioned that even before it had shipped, there were higher-ups at Bioware seething that Origins looked so lackluster compared to Mass Effect, so that change was inevitable. As for the art style, when they ported Origins to consoles, the graphics downgrade made it look more wretched, so it was deemed a necessity to create a new one with platform parity.

 

[Camel]

In his blog posts about his time at Bioware, Brent Knowles mentioned that even before it had shipped, there were higher-ups at Bioware seething that Origins looked so lackluster compared to Mass Effect, so that change was inevitable. As for the art style, when they ported Origins to consoles, the graphics downgrade made it look more wretched, so it was deemed a necessity to create a new one with platform parity.

Jesus wept.

 

[Infinitron]

It may be hard to remember now, but in the early 2010s, Dragon Age was widely considered to be BioWare's uninteresting "B-game" by all the cool Internet people. Everybody only cared about Mass Effect, there was a huge obsession with those games. It's hard to overstate how crazy it is that BioWare tanked Mass Effect's brand value so badly that Dragon Age ended up becoming the stronger franchise. But I guess in the end it is a fantasy game, and you can always sell those. Hey kids, here's our Skyrim!

 

[Tyranicon]

It may be hard to remember now, but in the early 2010s, Dragon Age was widely considered to be BioWare's uninteresting "B-game" by all the cool Internet people. Everybody only cared about Mass Effect, there was a huge obsession with those games. It's hard to understate how crazy it is that BioWare tanked Mass Effect's brand value so badly that Dragon Age ended up becoming the stronger franchise. But I guess in the end it is a fantasy game, and you can always sell those. Hey kids, here's our Skyrim!

I remember Dragon Age getting much less marketing than ME. Not sure if it's actually the case or not, but it certainly seemed that way.

 

[lycanwarrior]

If the Bio Docs really sold out because Bioware was out of money they must have been the worst businessmen ever. Every game (with the probable exception of Jade Empire) they produced sold millions of units. Publishers would literally have been lining up to do business with them (remember the original ME was initially an Xbox exclusive) and they even had a sideline in licensing out their tools/engines (apart from the Interplay IE games the original Witcher was built on the NWN engine).

After EA waved a fat wad of cash under their noses they hung around for the minimum 5 years they were contractually obliged to after the sale went through and then happily retired to pursue their own interests leaving Bioware to its fate.

From what I've read, Jade Empire bombed so hard that it nearly killed Bioware.

 

[mediocrepoet]

If the Bio Docs really sold out because Bioware was out of money they must have been the worst businessmen ever. Every game (with the probable exception of Jade Empire) they produced sold millions of units. Publishers would literally have been lining up to do business with them (remember the original ME was initially an Xbox exclusive) and they even had a sideline in licensing out their tools/engines (apart from the Interplay IE games the original Witcher was built on the NWN engine).

After EA waved a fat wad of cash under their noses they hung around for the minimum 5 years they were contractually obliged to after the sale went through and then happily retired to pursue their own interests leaving Bioware to its fate.

From what I've read, Jade Empire bombed so hard that it nearly killed Bioware.

Good. That game sucks. Not that they learned their lesson from it (they make really bad action games and shouldn't try to do them), but whatever.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

It really seems it bombed hard... The top 10 best selling Bioware games sold multiple million copies, while Jade Empire only managed to sell half a million.

 

[J1M]

Jade Empire was like trying to sell condoms to lesbians. They put an Asian setting RPG that used RTwP combat on Xbox.

Doing literally the exact opposite of those things would have been correct.

 

[Vic]

Not saying Jade Empire is good, but it at least has a novel concept of being a martial arts based RPG.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Not saying Jade Empire is good, but it at least has a novel concept of being a martial arts based RPG.

Definitely. I wanted Jade Empire to be good. It just wasn't. Might've been had a different studio made it.