It's really sad just how hard Bioware dropped off. From Baldur's Gate and KoTOR to Andromeda and Anthem. Genuinely kinda depressing to see, they used to make such good shit and EA has thoroughly ruined them like they do with every studio they buy out
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Mass Effect
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Baldur’s Gate 3 this year really showed just how far BioWare has fallen.
Wonder how BioWare felt when they got out-“BioWare RPG”’d by Larian
I wonder if that’s why they so suddenly added another year to the development of Dreadwolf.
Especially in the game series that basically put BioWare on the map, that would be like Blizzard losing the Starcraft IP and another studio making Starcraft 3 and reinvigorating the entire RTS genre in the process, setting new standards for what an RTS is and should be.
It's downright embarrassing for BioWare.
I'm not sure they even noticed. These studio execs are far more obsessed with how to mint coin from Zoomers with the next freemium mobile game than they are with cultivating a quality franchise.
Hey there is worse: look at Bethesda and starfield!
I mean... the most negative thing I've heard about Starfield is that it's a bit empty, and doesn't meet the (insanely high) bar that Skyrim set. A lot of people I know bought Starfield at launch, played it through once or twice, and although they stopped after that they didn't have any really bad things to say.
Fallout 76 was a much worse game, with way more negative sentiment.
I don't think that's comparable. Starfield still mostly feels like their old games, it just hasn't changed so the game feels like it's 10+ years old versus any real innovation. Bethesda is just stubbornly frozen in time without any fresh ideas. Bioware now versus Bioware then is a much more noticeable difference, in my opinion.
If you see it like this yes. But then you can remember that for skyrim it was seen as the pinacle of its art at the time. As you say, Bethesda has been frozen in time since then, but it is a slow descent to nothingness. Because the world didn't wait for them and independent studios are doing as well or better than what Bethesda is doing.
Another way to see it is that Bethesda needed 12 years to do what it did with skyrim. Many others did simply better.
With bioware they're a shadow of their former self, but at least they tried to do new things. They failed, but even andromeda for example is not as empty of innovations as starfield feels.
IMO Bethesda survives only thanks to the devotion of its fans, but they're irrelevant now.
I dunno, Starfield still has a ton of greatly written quests. Not all of the quests are great, or even good, but there's still a lot of memorable moments in it. The main drawback of Starfield is its gameplay being fairly shallow by today's standards.
I wouldn't say Bethesda is irrelevant. I just think it's long overdue for Todd to step away from the helm. Starfield was a fairly big success, so I think the numbers speak for themselves in showing they're still a major player. That being said, I think if they don't truly strike gold with TES6, that will likely be the last chance that most gamers will give them.
Eli5? I thought everyone loved that game, I didn't wanna try it cause I don't like turn based
Baldur’s Gate 3, by Larian Studios, is amazing. It’s basically old-school BioWare but with current-day graphics. It’s so good that it shows how much of a mess BioWare games are now, especially because BioWare did BG1 and 2.
Didn't know it was a different studio, thanks.
It's because bioware made 1 and 2. And they did it pretty well. A competing studio made 3 and whupped them
I actually really liked Andromeda. It was very different than the original trilogy, but was super fun.
Combat is 10/10
Characters and writing were “My face is tired”/10
The writing is where the rushed final development really showed. Andromeda really frustrated me because there was a great story trying to break through the mediocrity of the writing of it.
I think the change was best illustrated by the ME trilogy already. You could practically observe the shift from exploring a deep and varied science fiction universe to "player character gets told by everyone how great player character is while being given stuff to do a pew-pew to". In all fairness though, they really delivered some good pew-pew by the end and could still salvage much of the character stuff. Andromeda just continued the previous trend ad extremum.
ME2 was actually my least favorite in the trilogy because of that shift (as well as how it completely failed to progress the Reaper plot line, leaving 3 to do the plot work of two games).
I've never understood this perspective, ME2 doesn't involve the Reapers because of how ME1 concluded the story. Unless you wanted ME 2/3 to both be about the reaper war, there isn't much for them to do during the years they're travelling to the milky way. There has to be some other bad guy to focus on since you can't advance a plot when the main antagonists aren't there. I'd also argue that without the character work of 2, ME3 would fall flat with conflicts that don't gut punch you. You'd never care about the Krogan arc as much if Mordin wasn't around, and Tali/Legion were crucial in making the Rannoch plot feel alive. All of that emotion exists purely because of the excellent character work of the second game.
ME2 fleshed out the galaxy and it's people, made it feel a little more cyberpunk, absolutely blew ME1's art direction and voice work out of the water, and gave the most content out of the three games once you include recruitment/loyalty/N7 side missions/main plot missions/DLC.
Sure the collectors are a bit of a weird side quest, but it's supposed to be Shepard's darkest hour. Not their finest. The enemy needed to be scaled down so that the narrative can focus more on personal relationships and world building. ME2 absolutely delivered on that.
Iirc, it’s only been 3 or so years between the end of ME1 and the start of ME3. For like 2 of those 3 years, Shep was literally being rebuilt - and then between the end of ME2 and the start of ME3, we go from “Collectors are abducting people” to “holy fuck the Reapers are here” in 6 months or so. To me, that’s the weird whiplash - during the 2 years, the Reapers were doing… something, but practically as soon as Shep comes back from the dead, they are now invading??
Granted, this is being incredibly and obnoxiously nitpicky, but I always disliked that timing. Would’ve made more sense that ME2 took maybe a year after ME1 at most, then have ME3’s story start like a year or 2 after ME2 to at least give a little breathing room.
I love ME2 to pieces, but Arrival dropping that bombshell really made it feel weird in hindsight.
They were "doing something" that whole time, though. The moment Sovereign died they began travelling via standard FTL to the galaxy. It just took them that entire two years to do it. Meanwhile they set their errand boys on a mission to take out the most wildcard race that had ever stood against them. Humans.
The point of not having the breathing room was to push Shepard to their limit, they thought they'd have the time to build up resources/armies and then they get killed. Wake up two years later to find out no one's done anything about the Reapers and it's probably too late.
Had they not killed Shepard and just placed the games chronologically equidistant there would be very little tension in the "Can Shepard pull this off?" Department.
Is was very forgettable compared to the trilogy. Story was bland, many characters were uninteresting, some where annoying, not much new in terms of mechanics and a bunch of bugs. It wasn't the worst game in recent years, but it was the worst Mass Effect.
It was better than ME3 for me. It was two short and too conservative with the scenario and characters, but there is a solid ground to it. ME3 just betrayed the saga IMO.
Don't forget Jade Empire, that game was tight
True! No word since 2021 and we get a 30 second spot of an unnamed N7 (which could just be liara in disguise or something) walking with fan service music to brighten it up.
I get that they don't want to shoot their load too early by confirming Shepard will/won't be back but we've had two trailers and some concept art since 2017, it's been almost seven years since Andromeda and there's so little to go on we don't even know what the next game will be about, when, or who will feature.
Personally I hope they just go the "we're fast forwarding to 2700'ish and only Liara and Grunt are still alive." Then have them mentor the next protagonist or something, idk. I think bringing Shepard back will be a colossal mistake, just let them rest. The story is over. You can only pull a Halo 4 from here and ruin the way it ended for them with a sub par follow up story.
I think bringing Shepard back will be a colossal mistake,
I 100% agree. Bringing back Shepard would completely undercut the whole main theme of the original trilogy. The theme being "This is war, people die in war. You can't save everyone."
This was stressed to us in the first game with Kaiden or Ashley, the suicide mission in the second one, and the third one with previous characters dying because of your decisions.
I am just assuming this is like 300 years later, and Liara is a mature adult if not a matriarch.
I'd prefer the plot to be centered around Liara sending a QEC linked to her Broker lair on a drone ship to Andromeda after the Reaper war. She has the knowledge of the Andromeda Initiative's existence and knows they were a last ditch effort to save the Milky Way species, so they probably want to reconnect. The Pathfinder like ten years post Andromeda finds it once it gets there and crashes, and Liara gives them a blueprint to retrofit the Nexus into a galactic relay. Meanwhile she spends the next few hundred years building her own with the Broker's resources to connect to it.
Once you drop that plot structure you could fit en entire trilogy between 3 and connecting the two galaxies. I think it would be cool to connect them in climax of the first game and then have a story about the politics of fighting a war against the kett Empire while the Angara/Initiative struggle with new colonists and/or people leaving due to the war. That's just me though.
Imagine you have 2 beloved series. Ruin the love for both with 1 game each. And then be all cryptic when you make another game in this series. People at this point are more sceptical than hyped about them. More scared than excited.
I honestly felt like the latest ME teaser was a clothing ad.
When I saw the thumbnail I thought they were using N7 day to hock their merch with zero trailers.
Well the trailer was almost nothing, damn close.
Right. It's been how many years? How about some gameplay? Nope, just a bunch of garbage so they can milk some community hype and sell garbage merch
After the shitshow that was Mass Effect Andromeda, and the shitshow that was Anthem, and the wishy washy kowtowing to the online gaming mob demanding a new Dragon Age, I have very little interest in ever playing anything new by Bioware ever again.
Andromeda was the first game I played and I actually really enjoyed it. In comparison to the originals it was obviously not nearly as well written but the exploratory side of it, open world, great combat was really cool.
I can see how coming from the OG series was a step down in terms of storytelling but I stand by the idea and really would like to play another game set in Andromeda and exploring the rebuilding of the Initiative.
I certainly hope they keep some ideas from Andromeda, especially the jetpack. But it was like playing a bad CW rejected Netflix show.
the whole concept of withholding information for "teasers" is arrogent. i thing they would create more hype and sell more copies if they gave detailed explanations of the games development from start to finish.(with the obvious exclusion of story spoilers)
nah, no thanks, they had their chance with Andromeda and blew it
Andromeda was an attempt at something a bit different. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn't. I enjoyed the game well enough, even if it didn't match the original. But then they just kinda abandoned the franchise. What is there to be excited about? Your setting has been dead since 2017.
I'm far more upset about Dragon Age, which had five years of steady content (hit or miss, but whatever) until it was shelved nearly a decade ago. Again, why am I supposed to be hyped about this? You clearly aren't.
I liked Andromeda, probably helps that I'm an patient gamer and got the games years after release. I liked that the fact that as a story they cut all ties to the original trilogy other than some references. I remember thinking to myself "Holy shit, this alien planet" on the first level.
We spent the original trilogy being told AI is bad. However the Andromeda tried to make the argument that you AI isn't dangerous, we just have to approach a different way. Ryder was a different character of Shepard and that was a good thing. Ryder was never meant to be a reskinned Shepard. Ryder had a lot more skin in the game compared to Shepard's "This is my duty" mindset. I really enjoyed that it felt like it was post-apocalyptic situation with the Andromeda Initiative.
The Kett were extremely interesting until it became clear that they were just a slightly different Reaper/Collector style of species. The true lack of interesting and bizarre aliens was also missed. The original trilogy had the hanar and elcor that looked different from everyone. I always that it was weird that Andromeda didn't have the volus or the drell or any of the minor species.
I wouldn't rate Andromeda terribly however it's not an all time great. It's a solid middle of the pack game.
We spent the original trilogy being told AI is bad. However the Andromeda tried to make the argument that you AI isn’t dangerous, we just have to approach a different way.
When in Andromeda, they were explaining why their approach to AI wouldn’t cause an uprising, I went, “Wait, but you’re doing the exact same thing Javik told us about, with the Zha and the Zha’til. They created AI to augment themselves, and the AI ended up basically completely taking them over physically.”
I totally forget about that from Mass Effect 3. I think that what would be a very interesting theme to explore. Everyone left for Andromeda for a "fresh start", only not to be able to escape the cycle of synthetics vs organics that was very pronounced in the original trilogy, can such a cycle be broken?
It would raise some interesting philosophical questions for the player to confront.
I found the lack of any first contact scenario really unforgivable. Meeting the second race should have been a series of missions straight out of TNG.
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