Discussion: Your thoughts and opinion on Bioware

G

Gunslinger

Member
So this week i went back and replayed Dragon age origins again. Haven't finished it yet but i forgot how good this game was. Both in writing, setting up the world, to combat.

I really love the story of how the threat of the blight is not the only focus in the game. There is also a really cool "game of thrones" battle going on between logheyn and King cailan. If you start with the human origin it already foreshadows what is to come. Your family gets killed for supporting Cailan, then Cailan himself gets ditched by Logheyn in the battle to be killed so he can seize the throne. And I know Cailan's on house couseland's side because he promised to bring the other house (forgot their name) to justice after the battle. Duncan and the grey wardens straight up reminded me of jedi's in that universe. And blights remind of Orcs from LOTR. It's a fantastic mix of Medieval Fantasy, LOTR, some star wars, some modern day social issues tackled in too such as how elves are treated by humans and how mages are treated. The gameplay is fantastic too. Really forces you to play tactical and use the top down camera with pausing the game very often to position your troops.

Then we had NW. I haven't played it years I mean years so I don't remember much about it.

I also did another run of Kotor recently. And wow what a game. I forgot how good it was. It felt like star wars. It didn't felt like a fan project trying to imitate star wars. IMO very few star wars games actually feel like its part of the universe JL created. Jedi knight games and kotor really feels like it fits in. The gameplay is amazing. I would discuss the story but everyone already knows how great it is.

I would discuss ME series too. But everyone will pretty much agree with me that ME 2 is the one of the best Bioware game ever made. ME 1 is a bit dated but story is still fantastic. It was tight and focused on the on main Antagonist while reapers are slightly introduced for sequels. Just enough to keep you interested. ME 3 is a great game IMO until the last 15 min...

Fast forward to today we have had DA:2, DA:Inquisition much better than DA:2 but nothing close to origins in terms of story or characters and the combat felt much more button mashing heavy even at hardest difficulty. Not much tactics involved past early game.

ME:A another super mediocre entry, and SWTOR the most confused MMO I have ever seen. It doesn't even know if it wasn't to be WoW or Kotor. And IMO it fails miserably at both. I am surprised because SWTOR had James Ohlen who made Baldur's Gate.

You think BW is capable going back to their glory days and release games like DA:O, NW, KOTOR or ME2 or BG? Or merging with EA was the beginning of the end for this once legendary studio?

My rating of the BW games I played and remember:

NW: 9/10
KoTOR : 10/10
DA O : 10/10
DA 2 : 4/10
DA I : 5/10
ME 1 : 8/10
ME 2: 10/10
ME 3: 7.5/10
ME A: 5/10
Jade empire: 8/10

SWTOR : 4.5/10 (1 decked out level 50 character with all the raids cleared on hardest difficulty, at the time of quitting is my experience with the game)

Throw in your ratings too for BW games. I would like to see what people think about DA 2 and DAI.
 
I like them. But I'm not so sure about the team that did Andromeda. I know alot of the issues are because of EA but alot of the issues come from them trying not to offend anyone.
 
Enjoyed all their games, including Inquisition.

But Andromeda is garbage. Terrible writing, dialogues straight from tumblr fanfics, boring characters. And bugs, glitches, bugs...
 
Bioware used to be my favorite developer of all time; Dragon Age: Origins is still one of my favorite games of all time. I've been pretty cold on them for a while now; Dragon Age II was a middling disappointment, TOR ended up righting the ship eventually but even now the F2P angle feels terrible, Mass Effect 3 was a dumpster fire across the board, and Inquisition was okay, but kinda boring.

I didn't even play Andromeda. The idea that a Bioware game would come out and not only would I not be pre-ordering that shit blindly, but that I wouldn't even care to play it at all, would have been beyond baffling to me just a few years ago.

If we're rating the games;

Baldurs Gate: 8/10
Baldurs Gate 2: 9/10
Neverwinter: 6/10
KOTOR: 7/10
Jade Empire: 9/10
Mass Effect: 9/10
Dragon Age Origins: 10/10
Mass Effect 2: 8/10
Dragon Age Awakening: 7/10
Dragon Age II: 6/10
TOR: 6/10
Mass Effect 3: 2/10
Inquisition: 5/10
 
I used to like them. Real shame what getting bought by EA eventually does to a studio. Now I'm kinda meh about them. I like the type of games they make, mind, just the executions been poor in almost every regard for quite some time now.

I will say, I preferred Andromeda to inquisition. Though that's not saying much....
 
I`m starting to wonder what Bioware is. They made great games in the past, and suddenly I find out that Andromeda was made by a completely new team without any huge projects on their CV.
 
The studio has ended up like every other studio acquired by EA.

Gamezone said:
I`m starting to wonder what Bioware is. They made great games in the past, and suddenly I find out that Andromeda was made by a completely new team without any huge projects on their CV.
Click to expand...

I bet if you looked at the CVs of the team from the original KOTOR before development started none of them would have been impressive. This is a management problem, not a talent problem.
 
Ah yes, NW. I remember that fondly, the roles, the playing. So much game.

...I had to look up Bioware's back catalogue to realise that meant Neverwinter Nights (NWN). Truly a memorable game.


I was super excited about it though, watched the trailer that came with Baldur's Gate 2 countless times. All I recall now is that while I enjoyed it, it was frustrating to control. That and a weirdly clear memory of a trapped chest. Oh, and I played a Rogue. Doing...things...in the Forgotten Realms. I think there were politics and magic.
 
Bioware has been pretty hit or miss for a very long time.

No idea how people can hold KOTOR to such a high standard. It's a decent RPG no doubt but nowhere near the greatness of BG1/2. To this day I refuse to replay it because the dialogue choices are awful all around. Completely fails as a role-playing game.

SW:TOR is definitely dragged down by the mmo aspects but it has much better character writing. Even when two options effectively do the same thing they at least give you an opportunity to shape your characters persona a bit better (this is in a game with voiced protagonist to).

Dragon Age series is all over the place in terms of quality.

No one gives a shit about Jade Empire.

Mass Effect had a strong start but we all know how that ended up.

My Rankings would go...

BG1 10/10 - Love the feeling of exploration.
BG2 09/10 - Great game, but I prefer the feeling of wandering through an expansive world the first game provided. This game had a "stronger" story but I just felt constantly pushed to finish it. This game also has the seeds of modern Bioware storytelling.
NWN 8/10 - Terrible campaign, amazing tool set.
KOTOR 6/10 - Once the novelty wore off I couldn't play this again.
JE 3/10 - I played this, don't remember anything about it.
DA:O 7/10 - Decent attempt at a modern day RTwP RPG.
DA2 - N/A
DA:I 6/10 - If this game had been designed as pure exploration driven RPG it could have been amazing.
ME 7/10 - Game is clunky as hell, but so much potential.
ME 2 5/10 - Lets not even try to fix what was wrong.

Haven't played any of the other Bioware efforts. They made good products I suppose. They certainly have a lot of fans. Just not my cup of tea. BG was a long time ago and I suppose accept it as a fluke.
 
Is Bioware's decline completely EA's fault? What level of management allowed the DA2/ME3/MEA writers to be hired and retained, for example? I would think that would be a decision made at the dev team level, not at EA HQ.
 
A great studio that deteriorated after ME3, and possesses the superhero ability of making some people so mad they need to go to a therapist.

The "2/10" scores here are just ridiculous.
 
I think Bioware has the biggest gap between "Best game" and "Next best game" of any developer. If Baldur's Gate II is a 10/10, their next best game is, like, a 5/10.
 
The "BioWare" you listed is 3 separate studios.

BioWare Montreal made ME:A and BioWare Austin made SWTOR.

BioWare (BioWare Edmonton) are the real team, and they are the ones that have made some of the best games of all time.

Dont lump them all together.
 
My thought and opinion of Bioware is that they're definitely in the running for most insane/toxic video game fandom.

Maybe it's because you can fuck the fictional characters in many of the games, I dunno.
 
Just a remnant name of a company that used to make good games in the 90's trying to retrofit modern tech (open worlds) to a story driven narrative where they excelled.... and failing spectacularly. Also becoming less of an RPG company with every iterative game they create which makes their content less appealing to me. But hey, you can fuck virtual polygons as a trade off....
 
I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say, hey..they tried to build a AAA franchise from the ground up on a new engine; trying to adhere to today's standards, competeting/matching Motion capture (Uncharted 2016) with their "pre-rendered facial algorithms and gestures", yet time got the best of them..

But no.. Before the first line of code was written the "new" engine should've been priority. It's obvious that EA had a window (60+ months)..bottom line - poor planning, poor planning, and more poor planning.

It's undeniable, especially if we're getting patches that fix animations/facial assets/VA-sync.. production work.

They're basically just now figuring out Frostbite...either more time, better planning, or a smarter team.
 
Baldurs Gate Saga (BG1+2+Throne of Bhaal) is far and away their best work. It's the best western rpg ever made. I also love the Mass Effect Trilogy. I tend to see those two franchises as one big game because they are all connected and form one big story with the same characters/world/gameplay. I didn't play Andromeda yet.

As for the rest: it's nowhere near Baldur's Gate or Mass Effect. Lot's of good games, but nothing amazing.

Dragon Age: Origins was the closest thing to Baldur's Gate but it lacked the great atmosphere and lore of Dungeons &Dragons and went downhill after the first game. Looking back at the trilogy I actually enjoyed DA2 more than 3. DA2 was a rather short game with alright story and characters. DA3 was simply a overblown bore-fest with MMORPG-like layouts and endless collectatons. Probably the worst Bioware game. I still don't get why they changed the core-gameplay so much from the first game. It doesn't even feel like a coherent trilogy/franchise like the Baldur's Gate or Mass Effect games.

I liked Neverwinter but the problems of the game were obvious. It was a unique single-player/multiplayer/creation-kit hybrid. I enjoyed my time with it in all three departments. Played it single-player, coop, even joined a MMORPG-like community back in the day and I played around with the level editor. It was all cool but nothing about it was really great.

Jade Empire was ok. The fighting system wasn't good and that's the main problem of the game because it was it's selling point. But the setting was rather unique.

KOTOR ist a good game. But it's also not great. I always thought it is overrated. The story is great and the Star Wars theme is great and the villain is great. But the gameplay-mechanics aren't great. I still wish this was a isometrical RPG with a party of six. Just like Baldur's Gate. The game would have been way better that way for me.

I played the Old Republic when it launched and also quite recently with a new character. It's a solid MMORPG with great production value. But I think the battles are rather boring and the maps are too extensive. There is a lot of running around and it always gets boring after a time for me.

MDK2 was a big letdown after the amazing first game. Still enjoyable but nowhere as cool, stylish and fun as the first one.

Sonic RPG: I actually never played it but I watched my wife playing it. I trembled in shame. It's such a bizarre game.

Shattered Steel: I think I played a demo of it back in the day, but I didn't like it. Can't say much about this game.


So:
MDK2: 6/10
Baldurs Gate Saga: 10/10
Neverwinter: 7/10
KOTOR: 8/10
Sonic RPG: O_o /10
Jade Empire: 7/10
Mass Effect Trilogy: 9/10
The Old Republic: 7/10
Dragon Age Origins: 8/10
Dragon Age II: 7/10
Dragon Age: Inquisition: 5/10
 
Baldurs Gate is forever the high point of Bioware
Went from that to Diablo 2, and just couldnt handle how repetitive and mindless that game was in comparison (then played it coop years later and liked it)
 
Two of their games are in my Top 10, KOTOR and Mass Effect 2.

I never really got into Dragon Age. They used to be a fantastic studio, but I guess the quality of their games started to diminish after Dragon Age 2. I think Mass Effect 3 was the last BioWare game I liked.
 
KOTOR and ME trilogy is probably some of the greatest games made. I used to love them.

Inquisition soured me, it was an abomination in game design and story, one of the worst games I've forced myself to play through.

I was already nervous for ME after Inquisition,ME Andromeda came along and my fears were realise, the taint from Dragon Age Inquisition creeped into the game. An insult in game design with a forgettable enemy and crew. Most painfukly of a botched story, yes, ME story was now considered junk. Didnt stop there, I remember being so impressed with BioWares art team with how they crafted the ME universe only to be in disbelief with the new aliens in Andromeda, it's a complete mess, none of the old brilliance showing through. From 90s to 70 metacritic, what happened to them?

BioWare are a shell of thier former selves and that's one of the most painful truths I've had to accept. Thier games don't carry the same form of quality i used to associate with them, C tier devs.
 
I used to love them, but their downfall started with Mass Effect 3. it was good but didn't deliver the ending i hoped for, but still really good.

Then they come with Dragon Age Inquisition, which quite frankly is one of the worst RPGs ever. Main story is decent, but everything else is a borefest. Forced side quests, bland areas, bland enemies, and bland characters just ruined it for me.

I was skeptical about Andromeda after Inquisition and i proved to be right. The game is indeed mediocre. I have not played it myself and don't really care about the facial animation issues either, but 4 of my friends have played it and they are huge fans of the franchise. all of them called it mediocre and have advised me to not waste my time with it
 
I fucking love Dragon Age. All 3 are good/great with Inquisition being the best one.

Unpopular opinion but outside of the intro and especially the ending, Mass Effect 3 is the best of that series.


arcticice said:
I used to love them, but their downfall started with Mass Effect 3. it was good but didn't deliver the ending i hoped for, but still really good.

Then they come with Dragon Age Inquisition, which quite frankly is one of the worst RPGs ever. Main story is decent, but everything else is a borefest. Forced side quests, bland areas, bland enemies, and bland characters just ruined it for me.

I was skeptical about Andromeda after Inquisition and i proved to be right. The game is indeed mediocre. I have not played it myself and don't really care about the facial animation issues either, but 4 of my friends have played it and they are huge fans of the franchise. all of them called it mediocre and have advised me to not waste my time with it
Click to expand...

So you'd put DA:I down there with games like Two Worlds?
 
I think it's the height of stupidity to anthropomorphize entire organisations. Organisations wherein staff come and go and whose roles and responsibilities change over time.This notion of universal account because something falls under the umbrella of a company has no relationship with reality, especially when different parties are involved.

Also, DA:Origins isn't all that. Being a no name protagonist made for some truly painful dialogue with everyone either referring to you as 'Grey warden' or just dodging talking to you like an actual human being altogether. I think the DA2 and ME routes of having a name and then you shaping how you play Hawke/Shepard/Ryder is a much better system by far, and more personable.

Couple that with BS level design like the Mages Tower, and poorly integrated DLC, and a lot of success through death combat encounters giving it a '10/10 best game evar!!' is a bit of a reach.

Dark souls supports the concept of success through death because it's integrated into the very lore, but when an RPG like DA:O will kill you because you had no way of knowing beforehand what you're going to be up against in certain situations, that's not so good. It's effectively putting you in the position of needing the foresight of the failure conditions. If you get killed in an RPG, it should always be as a resultant of bad luck or poor judgement, not because you needed to lose in order to know how to develop a success strategy.
 
On a steady decline since the Infinity Engine days. It started even before the EA acquisition so you can't put all the blame on them.
 
Drillary Clinton said:
But did you find it to be functionally bad or broken?
Click to expand...

What do u want me to say here? It is one of the worst RPGs ever. period. nothing to add to it. It doesnt have to be broken to be bad. it has to be bad to be bad, and DA:I excels in being bad. If you want me to say that it's better than Two Worlds, then sure, it's better than Two Worlds - I'm sure that's huge compliment for DA:I. now enjoy!
 
arcticice said:
What do u want me to say here? It is one of the worst RPGs ever. period. nothing to add to it. It doesnt have to be broken to be bad. If you want me to say that it's better than Two Worlds, then sure, it's better than Two Worlds - I'm sure that's how huge compliment for DA:I. now enjoy!
Click to expand...

It just seems extremely hyperbolic to call DA:I one of the worst RPGs when there are literal heaps of non-working shit out there.
 
Drillary Clinton said:
It just seems extremely hyperbolic to call DA:I one of the worst RPGs when there are literal heaps of non-working shit out there.
Click to expand...

Agreed. DA:I has problems, but it's not inherently broken. I mean Jez, everything Bethesda produces is jank central. The only reason people love the games is down to the sheer amount of content coupled with the mod- ability,
 
Drillary Clinton said:
It just seems extremely hyperbolic to call DA:I one of the worst RPGs when there are literal heaps of non-working shit out there.
Click to expand...

I can't speak for anyone else, but there were entire quests I couldn't complete because the flags were messed up. I think the "hunt a dude in the desert for Cassandra" mission is a known bug.
 
Salt levels in this thread are amazing.

I've been playing BioWare games from the first Baldur's Gate. I still love them to hell.

First, Mass Effect: Andromeda should've been better but that doesn't mean it's hot shit. So far despite glaring issues, I've been having a blast with it (70 hours in).

Their games are very different now but it doesn't mean they are crap.

The company changed. The RPG genre changed. I changed from the kid I was back in 98. I tried playing DAO couple of years ago, it's still good but goddamn, there are some annoying issues with it. I just couldn't push on (even with heavy modding). All it did was push me to play DA:I again.

In terms of ratings:
BG: 8.5/10
BG2: 10/10
NW: 8/10
KoTOR : 10/10
Jade Empire : 9/10
DA O : 9/10 (9.5 with Awakening)
DA 2 : 7/10
DA I : 9/10 (9.5 with Trespasser)
ME 1 : 9/10
ME 2: 10/10
ME 3: 8.5/10 (9 with DLCs)
ME A: 8/10 (didn't finish yet)
SWTOR : Never played (not into mmos)

Flame away
 
DocSeuss said:
I can't speak for anyone else, but there were entire quests I couldn't complete because the flags were messed up. I think the "hunt a dude in the desert for Cassandra" mission is a known bug.
Click to expand...

I mean is a few bugged quests a broken experience? Bethesda RPGs are straight up garbage, then.
 
They lost a lot of talent the past few years, with the rest being spread out among their different branches. The BioWare that crafted the Mass Effect trilogy is pretty much dead at this point.

That said, they still have the talent and they still have the potential. Inquisition was a great game in a lot of aspects, but suffering from some pretty grand issues as well. Unfortunately, the team developing Andromeda took those issues with them and made them even greater. That's not to say Andromeda is a bad game: there's a lot of good buried under the bad, and a lot of potential there. I hope they get the chance to realize it with a sequel.
 
Loved KOTOR, and ME1.

Male love interests for female characters are always horrible to the point that its almost a classic bioware staple.

Becoming Increasingly generic. They desperately need to move away from the echobro* culture that seemingly created Mass Effect Andromeda and back towards being the cultured studio that would reference a centuary old Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera in an emotional death scene.

* A portmanteau of Echo Chamber and Dude Bro

Rankings

KOTOR 10/10
ME1 9.5/10
ME2 7.5/10
ME3 8/10
ME:A 5/10
 
Spacecowboy77 said:
The RPG genre changed.
Click to expand...
It didn't. Still lots of classic western RPGs, especially on PC that are way better than the "modern" Bioware approaches. Pillars of Eternity is basically the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and it's fantastic.

Also Dragon Age 2+3 are proof that the old top-down-concept works better for some of Bioware's own games.
 
Characters, story and gameplay in their games gets worse and worse. (DA:I)

Haven't played the new Mass Effect, but all the characters looks uniteresting.

Their games were never that good (Mass Effect/Dragon Age), but instead of getting better they get worse.
 
Incredibly ambitious writting, design, art direction and story systems.

Incredibly poor everything else (gameplay, technical, game design...)
 
Baldur's Gate 2 and KOTOR are two of the greatest RPGs ever made, with good reason. Hell, Bioware even made MDK2. They were GODs when I was growing up, complete nobodies that came out of nowhere with Baldur's Gate 1 and set the PC RPG world on fire. They inspired countless classic RPG's: Arcanum, Divinity series, The Witcher series, etc etc.

And now we're here. Bioware is a shadow of their former glory and their games have gotten progressively worse throughout the years. Their cookie guttee, generic, and cliched bullshit has gotten stale. None of their current games hold a candle to Baldur's Gate.

The torch was passed a long time ago. Obsidian became the new Bioware and others like CDprojekt Red have carried the torch as well.

It's over. It's time to give up on Bioware. There are so many other RPG devs putting them to shame. That's who deserves your money. Not BiowarEA.
 
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