Am I really the only person who can't stand the new (ie. post-KotOR) Bioware games?
Mass Effect and Dragon Age have clichéd (and, in Dragon Age's case, blatantly stolen) settings and plotlines (which have exactly the same plotline as KotOR, basically).
I don't know, I just found Mass Effect and Dragon Age to be hilariously dull, in terms of character development, plot development, combat (good at first, soon got repetitive), etc etc.
Giving credit where it's due: Voice acting is top notch, graphics allow the games to run on any system and the gameplay isn't TERRIBLE just a bit boring.
I don't see this changing with Star Wars: The Old Republic, either. The plotline is going to be something along the lines of a character suffering a tragedy or whatever, joining special order of bad arses and saving the galaxy. Hella dull, especially since they're still using the old, tired MMO combat systems.
None of these games even begin to compare with Baldur's Gate II, Planescape Torment, Fallout (I and II) or Icewind Dale. Sure, the gameplay and combat in those games was a bit esoteric, but the writing was top notch and the combat wasn't very much more dull than the newer games'.
What does everyone else think? Can you not stand the newer Bioware games either? Or do you love them? (Please tell why.)
P.S. If you're wondering where Bioware basically ripped the entire Dragon Age setting from, go have a gander at the Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Bakker. Mages who are persecuted by the temple and live in wizard towers, "dark fantasy" setting, "darkspawn" monster guys who are described almost exactly how the typical darkspawn look and who just go rampant until their God of Death rises again, etc etc. They're amazing books by the by.
I enjoy the new Bioware games mostly because I don't buy into their claim that the stories are written by award winning novelists. I had a similar argument with one of their fans over SWTOR. While I agree the stories are competent and tend to be a step above the rest of the gaming industry in general, they're not exactly... award winning material. Seriously, remember how the gaming industry pretty much bragged that the writers' strike wouldn't effect them becuase they don't use writers.... yeah most of us can tell writers aren't being used. Anyway, I told him I could see the traps and betrayals coming, and he pretty much called me paranoid and a liar. The thing is... I read books and watch movies so these plot tools they are using combined with visual representations of the characters (bad guys generally look bad), makes the stories predictable. I don't mind that too much. It's another reason I can enjoy mainstream movies, like Avatar. I did not go to see Avatar to see stellar acting and tight, well done scripts. I watched Avatar for the visuals, and as long as everything else was at least competent, I enjoyed it.
I didn't play Dragon Age to get original ideas but to see ideas weaved together in a way that is enjoyable to play. That worked for me. I also don't think you are going far enough back if you are trying to give credit to people who have similar ideas found in DA. Especially in the fantasy arena, authors have been borrowing from dead authors and trying to claim originality for years now. Don't even get me started in the amount of plots taken/stolen from anime and manga and potrayed in "the west" as original.
I have never subscribed to the idea that in order for something to be good, it has to be original. I just don't believe that. I think it's in the presentation and the style and a lot of things but it doesn't really matter to me if someone takes the concept of a vampire and makes it their own so long as they don't try and claim they invented the vampire (some of the authors do try this, drives me nuts Rowlings!).
To answer your questions I am 100% sure you are not the only one who can't stand Bioware, I am just not one of those individuals. And I am sure you can take any game, compnay, product, series, movie, novel, person and find people who hate or like them.
Totally agree. Great post.
As for the OP. If you play a lot of RPG, you are a good chance to feel the genre regurgitating its ideas, but the idea that bioware are ripping gear off is a long bow to draw. I agree that DA felt a bit stale and that the infinity engine games were far more immersive and enjoyable, but I think this is a symptom of improved business models in gaming more than anything. Bioware's formula is a bit of a golden goose these days, I doubt they're going to stray far from it.
The only thing that bothers me about bioware as a whole is they havent changed the formula at all, and I’d like to see something fresh from them. I’m not sure its fair to criticise their fantasy stories as derivative, since virtually all fantasy is. But I can certainly see your point. I still really enjoyed dragon age, because I thought the gameplay was fun. Story was meh. The opposite for ME2, where I thought the characters were fantastic and the story was fun (if not inspired) but the gameplay was horrid and the RP elements significantly dumbed down.
Imo the best RPGs these days are coming out of Europe- gothic series + risen, divinity 2, STALKER etc.
I feel the same about Mass Effect 2 (Mordin is freakin awesome, btw). Some of my favorite games come from Bioware, but I do worry that EA's going to turn them into a third rate developer as they did Maxis. In a way it feels like we've already started seeing that with ME2. Despite enjoying my play-through I'm finding it hard to go back for another round, after having played ME1 more than I'd like to admit.
Later,LAR
99.9% of all media created nowadays have cliched and blatantly stolen settings and plotline's. Storytelling has been that way probably since the dawn of civilization its the same stories told in different ways. If you look for biblical plotlines you can find them in almost anything, and the biblle itself is a collection of even older stories. Alot of people get hung up on this and I think its probably just age and experience. What you really need to look at in books, movies, games, and any other media really is not the story but the execution of how the story is delivered; the story doesn't matter the storyteller does Getting hung up on whether something is contrived is almost pointless because pretty much everything is contrived, truly original ideas are pretty much the realm of theoretical physicists. Its kinda crazy that ~200,000 years of walking around and 6,000 years of civilization could exhaust the majority of literary ideas, but it did.
Bioware is a pretty good storyteller.
The original mass effect was pretty cool, not as great as Kotor, and the rest have been starting to slide down hill. Funny how no one mentioned their sonic RPG though.
There have been some great games out since, but I'd argue the whole genre peaked with the Baldur's Gate trilogy, especially BG II and ToB.
Personally, I like Bioware's story telling.
That said, not much is new anymore. See "Reality TV", sex, violence, etc. to be "new" and "edgy". It is bum fighting and porn.
A tried and true formula can make a solid story. While there were some good ideas, George Lucas painted himself into many a corner. That said, he used this concept to make Star Wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
and Campbell (not Earl, sorry Oiler fans) wrote it to explain the concepts of myth/story telling. I prefer that to modern "reality" even if it is a bit naive (or Evian spelled backwards)
Hero With a Thousand Faces is a very good book indeed.
I'm not really into heavy RPG, but I played Dragon Age Origins all the way through and then started a second pass with some mods but about a third of the way through that was it. Could not stand hearing all those dialogues again. Played at the original Mass Effect, but it bored my socks off. I decided to lay off anything Bioware or anything else RPG. More of a mindless action oriented gamer I guess. No, I don't want to know about your wife who ran off with the local necromancer. No, I don't want to hear about your saintly grandmother. Just give me the quest and STFU.
Story? I don't need no stinkin' story! Just give me something to shoot!
I love Mass Effect 2 companions, some of the best cast of characters and stories I have ever seen. ME1 was nice in his own way, and ME2 is nice in a different way. But I think Bioware continue to do top-notch games.
I only hate their DLC. Overpriced and under-delivering, all of it. The core games are pretty good.
EA destroys games over time. The want to get maximum profits and the pressure on developers rise significant.
F.e. The addins: Some cost 7 dollars and i need just around 20 mins to go trought. Thats just a problem.
If the developers dont get the time to make games good, they will just recycle his old ones. f.e. BF2/bf2142, COD-Series.
Fifa....
I was pretty underwhelmed with the DLC myself, and that was just the stuff that was included with new purchases. They thought Stone Prisoner was 15 dollars worth of content... that's unreal.
Those 15$ was probably just to scare you away from second hand games. Or is there any new copy without stone prisoner?
Awakening was worth it, but that was more of an actual expansion. I think part of the reason for the DLC costs is the console - I imagine they have a hand in setting the prices, and then they'd have to match it on PC. But yeah, the DLCs for just about any game are underwhelming. It's not really unique to BioWare. I wish DLC didn't become so popular and instead they'd keep focus on making actual expansions, but with so many games now going cross-platform expansions are more difficult. Still, as Awakening demonstrated, it's perfectly possible to have a full blown expansion in a digital download only format.
The Overlord DLC for ME2 is pretty good
Pretty sure Stone Prisoner comes with every new copy. But the stuff they released afterward was pretty weak for the price (Awakening was an expansion and was better, yeah).
It's a common DLC thing. They seem to have some minimum price they don't want to go past, no matter how weak the content really is. I mostly blame the Xbox crowd for making all developers think that people will pay for a map pack (since the Xbox crowd WILL pay for a map pack).
Dragon Age, good epic story with nice dialogue, like rebooted NWN without multiplayer. Which was one of NWNs strong points btw.
ME1, good story and good characters, very poor gameplay. On harder difficulties I just walked past the non-vital enemies instead of fighting them.
ME2, odder story but better dialogue. Best dialogue I've seen in a game. Gameplay was arcade -ized (new word I think) so that it was actually more fun. The characters were worse than ME1 imo and the story so so.
And despite all their rambling of moral choices in all three of the games I still find it very lacking. I like how in Dragon Age you could select choices that gave you permanent abilities, even if they were few. Things that lasted, which most "choice based" games lack. Killing the character or sparing him gives you a few points and a little bag of gold at most, whereas in DA:O there were a few places where you could get money/stats/loyalty etc. The loyalty missions in ME2 had a good rp feel as well, even if they sometimes were redundant.
My favourite game of all time is actually for the GBA and it had a choice system that blew my mind and has maybe raised my standards above what Bioware can do. There were only A and B options and it never said what happened, not for the long run anyway, and could drastically alter the game. One choice results in your friends betraying you some 10 gaming hours after you made the choice.* KotOR has the best story in any game I have seen btw.
*Interesting thing to note is that in Tactics Ogre:TKoL, is that there is an "award" for completing the game in 25 hours. In Resident Evil 5 there is an award for doing it in 3 hours. TATKoL is for GBA, RE5 is for Ps3, I hope I won't have to explain the hardware differences. It makes me sad to see what is happening to games.
Wow, totally opposite reaction for me. I LOVED Dragon Age to the point that I played it thru to the end twice and I haven't done that with a game since Baulder's Gate 2. And after I take a break I plan to play thru it a 3rd time. It's also the first game in forever that I actually got on release day, I normally wait for the GOTY or Complete edition for cheap. To me Dragon Age is the best game I've played in many, many years right up there with Fallout 3.
I have yet to get Mass Effect 2, I'm not to sold on it. But I may pick up a "GOTY" edition for cheap in year or so.
Dragon Age 2 I'm probably gong to wait on it and go the GOTY edition again as I want all the DLC and expansions at once and save money.
I like Bioware (but I am a bit biased having met many of them and done work for them), but I do think that their games over time are becoming more generic. I personally blame that on the consoles because console gamers seem to favour a much faster/simpler format of game. Once a company goes for cross-platform games, they seem to favour more mainstream productions, which I personally find less involved. Baldur's Gate was a phenomenal game. Neverwinter Nights was also an amazing game, especially for modding, though the original game didn't actually make use of all it's potential, especially storywise. Dragon Age on the other hand was decent, but felt a bit bland, and I blame that on an uninteresting combat mechanic. The Witcher for me was a far better game of a similar style, just because the combat was so much more entertaining (though the translation and editing sucked big time on the original release).
So lets go over Mass Effect 2 for a minute.
Bioware is the first company in gaming's history to factor in choice in a trilogy. Decisions and characters, whether they live or die roll over to the next game. Man, that is such a stale formula that every game company does. I am sick of seeing companies roll over save games to make my decisions carry more weight. Come on, Mass Effect is the best planned trilogy in gaming's history. There's no argument here. Mass Effect is more than just pumping out 2 and 3 with little regard for the prior. Developers don't do this. Bioware successfully managed to merge the shooting mechanic with a Bioware game.
Dragon Age was made for the fans. They did their best to cater to their Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights fans. Whether it made you happy or not is up to you I guess. Dragon Age was a PC game first and still remain one of the most staunch PC devs out there. Read up what Bioware says about the PC platform. Its nothing but positive comments.
And for those who say Bioware has sucked more since EA its exactly the opposite. Look at the extreme differences between Mass 1 and Mass 2. The problems with Mass 1 technically speaking were pretty much gone. Bioware has EA's financial backing and marketing machine. EA wants Bioware games to 90+ on the Metacritic score every time. I'm not feeling Bioware is getting the short end of the stick with the EA deal. The Old Republic cannot exist without EA. Its one of the most expensive games ever.
Bioware is the only company that releases games I really look forward to. Saying Bioware is making the same games over and over has some value to that argument until you see how Bioware games have evolved since KOTOR (which is pretty much the beginning of modern Bioware games). Conversations changed drastically from Jade Empire to Mass Effect and especially towards Mass 2 from 1. Bioware has not been making the same game for a decade. The formula continues to evolve and there's a reason (besides Supre Mario Galaxy 2) Mass Effect 2 is the highest rated game this year. They continue to redefine what it takes to make a successful RPG. Okay, I guess you have an argument for the romances being mediocre, but that's about it.
Bioware have yet to let me down (apart from DRM, aand even there they've usually been able to persuade EA to pursue a slightly less draconian DRM system than would otherwise have been used). Every game of theirs that I've purchased has been brilliant and soaked up countless hours of my time. They're one of the few companies I could pre-order a game for and not be really worried whether it'd turn out to be a flop.
BG2, NWN, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Dragon age - all have been (IMO) at the 'top of their class'. Not perfect of course (e.g. NWN single player), but still very good. For dragon age I thought it had a good story with noticeably different 'paths' you could take through it, great voice acting, graphics+general immersion, good gameplay, plenty of customisation options, and enough content for it to soak up a good amount of time. The only criticisms I could make of it was the lack of multiplayer and the much more complex toolset (compared with NWN).
Haven't played mass effect yet but I've no doubt I'll continue to be impressed by them when I do.
I agree that they are definitely in a decline right now. BW isn't unbearable to me, but yes compared to their games of yore (and those of their peers at the time) the new stuff isn't very exciting. What I really can't stand is the formulaic construction of their games nowadays. Not in the plots (although those aren't very good), but in the quests. KOTOR I and II and MEII (maybe the first, never played it), all have the "you command your own ship and can go anywhere, but really you just get to choose the order in which you complete some of the quests" thing and Dragon Age had the awful, awful "board quests". Ugh those things were unbearable, they were like WOW-quality quests. I figured in the expansion that things would improve, since you're in charge of the entire Ferelden chapter of the Wardens and must have bigger concerns, but sure enough there was the Chanter's Board again, and they added the Merchant's Board for "variety", because it's so different.
I can only assume this is because of their desire to make everything console-friendly. I'm not saying that in a condescending or judgmental way, as I understand that consoles are a different market and also understand why they would want to tap into that market.
While their newer games aren't as good as Baldur's Gate and some of the others you mentioned they are still among the best in the genre. Mass Effect is a very light RPG and is really a different animal, especially #2. It is fine for what it is but isn't anything I would even try to compare to Baldur's Gate. Dragon Age on the other hand is much more in line with the older games. It's definitely a good game in my opinion. It was a little lack-luster in some areas but overall it was a very good product, definitely the best RPG in my opinion of the last few years (but I missed a few such as Risen and the Gothics). The setting and story were solid but not spectacular, great characters and nice party based combat (which is hard to find in modern games). My main problems with it were the underlying systems which were too restrictive and unbalanced. That and some really stupid decisions such as no storage and not being able to craft in your camp with other party members. That didn't ruin the game for me though. Not as good as the older games but closer than anything I've seen in a AAA product in a long time.
With that said though Mass Effect 2 and the teasers for Dragon Age 2 really scared me. They seem to be heading in a much more cinematic and casual direction which isn't for me at all. If they continue this path they will eventually lose me as a customer. Mass Effect 3 is already a buy when it is drastically on sale kind of product. Wasn't impressed by #2 at all. It wasn't bad necessarily, just not my cup of tea.
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