So when did most people give up on BioWare?

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

The people who are remarking on NWN without having played the expansions (especially HOTU) are Doing It Wrong.

Yes, because the first thing you do when you have bought a shitty game? Buy expansions for it.

 

[Infinitron]

The people who are remarking on NWN without having played the expansions (especially HOTU) are Doing It Wrong.

Yes, because the first thing you do when you have bought a shitty game? Buy expansions for it.

True but irrelevant

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Really only gave KotOR a full look. Is BG/BG2 OK, or should I expect the same shit?

If you played Icewind Dale or Planescape, the combat is basically that (though it's less refined in Planescape and more refined in Icewind Dale). Story-wise, Baldur's Gate is really simple, but the game is more or less a huge open world D&D adventure, while the second game is much more directed and somewhat more linear, but also generally is a better game overall despite being smaller. They're worth a look if you're not the type who hates the Infinity Engine, just be sure to install all the latest mods.

Baldur's Gate didn't have an open world. The player is arbitrarily locked you out from any part of the world that would break the linear story progression, including the big city that the game is named after.

 

[Shagnak]

Given up? I don't think I really ever had faith in them. It's more a case of cherry picking random ones that I liked; there has never been any consistent "Bioware = good" for me at any time in their existence.

The last game I enjoyed playing of theirs, was NWN:HOTU, though I disliked NWN itself. Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age can all suck a dick.
Oh, and BG is as dull as fuck.

Edit: forgot something.
KOTOR can suck a dick too.

 

[Zomg]

During BG1

 

[Cynic]

I'm a bit of a drifter when it comes to Bioware. I honesty really liked the whole Baldurs Gate series. After that I moved to consoles almost exclusively for a while. No PC game really caught my interest during that period, I'm not an RTS or FPS fan (only FPS I played properly was the metroid prime series) and I cannot into MMOs.

Dragon Age brought me back to PC gaming. I first got it on PS3 and when I saw footage of how much better it played/looked on PC, I thought ok, good party based RPGs are making a come back it's time to get a gaming rig. So I haven't played anything Bio released in between ToB and DA:O. My brother played and loved ME, but he likes FPS games a little bit. He did like ME1 more though. To me it just all looked like a shooting game.

DA2 was a huge shock, although maybe it shouldnt have been. I thought ok, here's DA:O, a pretty good game, sold enough, had a good core to build on and then they totally fucked it up. After that game, I will never buy a Bioware product again.

edit: I didn't actually buy DA2, I had a preorder cancelled after I torrented that shit and insta quit it after getting to Kirkwall.

 

[PorkaMorka]

NWN OC was utterly terrible. Going from BG2 to NWN OC is one of the biggest disappointments ever... but that very terribleness masks the decline. It's hard to tell what is a symptom of the company's design philosophy moving in a bad direction and what is a symptom of a terrible game that they didn't put a lot of effort into. Plus everyone said the game was more of a toolset and the OC was designed to suck.

So I didn't give up on Bioware until KOTOR when it became apparent that yes, they really were going in a direction I didn't want to be apart of.

However, I had my suspicions... BG2 was the last Bioware game I paid for.

 

[DraQ]

Really only gave KotOR a full look. Is BG/BG2 OK, or should I expect the same shit?

If you played Icewind Dale or Planescape, the combat is basically that (though it's less refined in Planescape and more refined in Icewind Dale). Story-wise, Baldur's Gate is really simple, but the game is more or less a huge open world D&D adventure, while the second game is much more directed and somewhat more linear, but also generally is a better game overall despite being smaller. They're worth a look if you're not the type who hates the Infinity Engine, just be sure to install all the latest mods.

Baldur's Gate didn't have an open world. The player is arbitrarily locked you out from any part of the world that would break the linear story progression, including the big city that the game is named after.

At least with the city there is an in-game excuse of sort, but say after me:
Cloakwood.

 

[Wyrmlord]

The people who are remarking on NWN without having played the expansions (especially HOTU) are Doing It Wrong.

Well, I only played NWN as a full boxed set that included expansions. So I have played HotU.

But SoU and HotU are basically salvaging something half decent from a not-so-good product, and don't really go that far in distinguishing NWN.

HotU had a basic style that was based on the exact same format and exact same dialogues from KotOR. I don't mean superficial similarities. I mean word-for-word same characters, including a version of Carth Onasi. So it was just a lazy effort to take the ongoing work on KotOR and put it into NWN.

 

[octavius]

HotU had a basic style that was based on the exact same format and exact same dialogues from KotOR. I don't mean superficial similarities. I mean word-for-word same characters, including a version of Carth Onasi. So it was just a lazy effort to take the ongoing work on KotOR and put it into NWN.

Is the word "formulaity" what best describes BioWare?

 

[Shagnak]

HotU had a basic style that was based on the exact same format and exact same dialogues from KotOR

KOTOR was a dungeon-crawl?

 

[deuxhero]

Well the dialog didn't have any effect and I spent almost the entire game waiting for my character to just kill the next set of pathetic Sith mooks, so it likely was.


How much filler combat did BG/BG2 have?

 

[MMXI]

I bet half the people voting for Throne of Bhaal have interpreted the question as "when did the signs of decline appear?" Interestingly, that would be the romances in Shadows of Amn.

 

[laclongquan]

HotU had a basic style that was based on the exact same format and exact same dialogues from KotOR

KOTOR was a dungeon-crawl?

What else? Each location is a dungeon, with friendly ones are combatless. The NPCs standing around spouting tirelessly their oneliners. The items are onetime loots. The quests are laughable.

The atmosphere is good: the huge trees, the deserts, the oceanic spaceport/tourist trap, the wild wild west Sith town. But then, atmostphere is the best thing Bioware know how to do.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Hmm. Poll doesn't really work for me since my first introduction and subsequent games were all out of order with what was produced. First game was NWN + all expansions. All of it shit of course except HOTU + some player made stuff, but back then it was my first experience with any kind of online interaction in RPGs so I was OK with it even though had I bought the OC alone on day 1 I'm sure I would have gone to Edmonton and shat on their front lawn. Then I played BG2 + ToB, it was pretty decent. ToB didn't feel like it was a real point of decline in Bioware's ability, just a rush job where things weren't fully developed.

Kotor and then Jade Empire was definitely were Bioware took an obviously downward swing. Without the NWN excuse of "hey, its really just a modding kit", yet the games themselves being only about halfway in between OC/SOU and HOTU, the plunge had occurred. I have to wonder if some old reviews of the NWN OC with 10/10 scores are what gave Bioware the idea to just churn out the exact same plotline for every game they have made since.

 

[DemonKing]

I didn't really like NWN but I got that they were trying to do something different that some people probably really enjoyed, so I gave it a pass.

I actually really enjoyed the original ME and I thought the second was ok but not in the same league. DAO was also a slight incline from the trends that we had been seeing up to that point.

DA2 was an abomination though - the repeated use of identical maps, zoomed in hyper-fast combat and the fact that they didn't even do a good job masking the fact it was just a bunch of random quests designed by different teams crudely hammered together made it an epic failure. I will probably buy ME3 to see how that turns out but if it's anything similar to DA2 I think we can honestly forget about ever seeing anything worthwhile out of Bio again (at least as long as they remain part of EA).

 

[Sacculina]

How much filler combat did BG/BG2 have?

A lot.

I bought Baldur's Gate during a GOG sale, but it was a complete waste of money. After many, many hours of forced playing, I still wasn't remotely interested in the characters or the events of the game (Oh, something's going on in the Nashkel mines? Make me care. No? Bugger you then.), and I was looking for trash mobs so I could level up enough to take on the next area. I don't know, maybe there were a lot of good bits just over the horizon, but I'd have to grind a lot to get there and ... ugh.

I played Baldur's Gate 2 after I bored-quitted. Maybe that's what made me more favourably disposed, but I was immediately impressed by the tighter narrative focus. And though there are trash mobs here as well, the combat is fun. It's the most fun I've had in a BioWare game.

This is pretty much my reaction to BioWare; as I haven't played their games in chronological order, it's been peaks and valleys of interest rather than it tumbling into a bottomless crevasse. It's gone something like NWN (WTF is this?), SOU (slight incline), HOTU (incline), Jade Empire (all right), DA:O (massive incline to decline), ME (banal boring rubbish), ME2 (massive incline), MDK2 (meh), BG (banal, boring), BG2 (massive incline), DA2 (as stupid as expected), KotOR (massive decline).

 

[waywardOne]

ToB had me worried they were done. NWN confirmed it.

 

[Sceptic]

But SoU and HotU are basically salvaging something half decent from a not-so-good product, and don't really go that far in distinguishing NWN.

This. The expansions may be an improvement over the OC, but it's only a marginal improvement from something that was complete shit. In other words, they're really not good.

Darkness Over Daggerford is probably the best thing to come out of NWN (SP at least), and even this one has its problems, mainly that the underlying engine still sucks ass and has not a single redeeming value.

 

[RK47]

DA 2 was too much backwards into it. The constant denial of flaws and self-praising of devs got to me. I would've expected this sort of nonsense from Todd or Hines.

 

[Shagnak]

HotU had a basic style that was based on the exact same format and exact same dialogues from KotOR

KOTOR was a dungeon-crawl?

What else? Each location is a dungeon, with friendly ones are combatless. The NPCs standing around spouting tirelessly their oneliners. The items are onetime loots. The quests are laughable.

I didn't really think of it like that. Yet, I liked HOTU (the dungeoning bits anyway) and not KOTOR.

 

[Relay]

Really only gave KotOR a full look. Is BG/BG2 OK, or should I expect the same shit?

If you played Icewind Dale or Planescape, the combat is basically that (though it's less refined in Planescape and more refined in Icewind Dale). Story-wise, Baldur's Gate is really simple, but the game is more or less a huge open world D&D adventure, while the second game is much more directed and somewhat more linear, but also generally is a better game overall despite being smaller. They're worth a look if you're not the type who hates the Infinity Engine, just be sure to install all the latest mods.

BG2, smaller ? come on, it is much, much bigger in both scope and content (quests etc.). Yes, there was less of the go through empty land bullshit, instead you had cities like Athkatla, Trademeet, the sahuagin, the underdark (with a city full of dark elves, quests and even choices to be made), spellhold...

BG2 is not more "linear" than BG1. Yes, there were chapters where you lost your freedom but that is logical and goes well with the story, but you're free to go almost everywhere from the start (unlike BG1 where you couldn't reach the major city hubs until much later) and you gain your freedom back when you get out of the underdark. I'm glad they removed the trekking, I hate walking simulators, that's the worst thing about games like Morrowind. BG2, unlike BG1, is a game full of actual CONTENT, and not empty spaces.

BG2 is the game BG1 should have been in the first place. I have replayed BG2 countless times, both in solo and in multiplayer. But I will never do a new run of BG1 again.

HotU had a basic style that was based on the exact same format and exact same dialogues from KotOR. I don't mean superficial similarities. I mean word-for-word same characters, including a version of Carth Onasi. So it was just a lazy effort to take the ongoing work on KotOR and put it into NWN.

Is the word "formulaity" what best describes BioWare?

Well KOTOR is the fucking game that introduced the bioware formula as we know it, including the emphasis on cinematics and full voice acting. NWN is pure shit but the game that truly inspired Bioware to make interactive movies is KOTOR. It's also their first console-centric project. KOTOR is objectively THE turning point of Bioware, the game that made Bio throw the towel on RPGs and focus on retardation.

 

[Jaesun]

Well KOTOR is the fucking game that introduced the bioware formula as we know it, including the emphasis on cinematics and full voice acting. NWN is pure shit but the game that truly inspired Bioware to make interactive movies is KOTOR. It's also their first console-centric project. KOTOR is objectively THE turning point of Bioware, the game that made Bio throw the towel on RPGs and focus on retardation.

Agreed. I voted KotOR. I only played KotOR (on the XBox r00fles!, because my roommate at the time had one and he bought that game). I played it and was like what in the fuck? And then I played Dragon gay elf sex, and jebus Christmas. Good bye BioWare.

Mass Effect 2 is awesome though.

 

[sea]

Baldur's Gate didn't have an open world. The player is arbitrarily locked you out from any part of the world that would break the linear story progression, including the big city that the game is named after.

Close enough. Yeah, Cloakwood is bullshit, but I can handle the big city being locked off due to the story progression - as was said, at least they gave a reasonable excuse (though sneaking through the sewers or something would be cool). The rest of it, though, is pretty good as far as open-ended exploration goes. I spent probably close to 40 hours before ever touching the Nashkel Mines exploring the outlying wilderness... it wasn't what I'd call "great fun" but it's definitely more open than most RPGs, and deciding to ignore the main plot doesn't mean you''ll exhaust the rest of the game's content (since there's as much in the city as in the rest of the game).

 

[Zarniwoop]

Mass Effect 2. Don't get me wrong, Jade Empire was an ungodly piece of shit in every way, but I still kind of liked KOTOR. As an RPG it was VERY simplistic but I'm a Starwarsfag and it was the first Bioware game I played since NWN so meh. Mass Effect was an action game pretending to be an RPG but with a good story/setting so also pretty fun. NWN2 I kind of liked, but I noticed something weird, it was eerily similar to KOTOR in style for some reason.

Then came that walking piece of that was Mass (Gears of) Effect 2. Any trace of RPG-ness was removed, it had shit planet scanning and shit ammo, and broken as shit continuity from the first game. Not to mention it followed the exact same pattern as the previous Bioware games which is now a trademark:

0. (Intro) Evil Boss (or his sidekick, Minor Boss) bombs, invades or inflicts a horrible plague upon some crappy backwater village/planet in the middle of nowhere. The hero awakens from cryosleep/sleep/coma, finds some stuff in a chest by the bed, and gets going.

1. Visit 4 places

2. Pick up some friends (can be combined with 1.)

3. Do personal missions for them as a sidequest

4. Make sexytime with one of them (who may be of the same sex (Innovashun!)), make another one sad, who may or may not leave the party at this point (Variashun!)

5. Go to some epic final confrontation with the most evilest boss evar, that everyone has been talking about since the beginning of the game.

6. Right before the final battle, one or more of your companions has some moral dilemma/change of heart depending on your reputation with them, possibly resulting in one or more of them joining the evil boss. Thought this was pretty neat in KOTOR, since it was the first time I saw it. It gets old though.

7. Kill the evil boss, everything is good with the world again and live appily ever after. Or the roof falls on your head for no reason and kills everyone. As the situation dictates.

Edit: Added intro step