6 ms·
BioWare hasn't been BioWare since the founders left. It's just a name now, thoroughly digested by the EA sarlacc.
by bitwize 3y ago
BioWare hasn't been BioWare since the founders left. It's just a name now, thoroughly digested by the EA sarlacc.
- JakeAl 3y agoEA ruins everything.
- izzydata 3y agoDoes any company remain being the same company after ~20-40 years then?
- SSLy 3y agoNintendo is the same as ~ever.
- chaostheory 3y agoWell, in BioWare’s case it’s been reduced to a sticker that EA haphazardly slaps onto random games and random internal studios. The Bioware that most people think about was only based in Canada. Pretty sure that the DNA that made it great is mostly gone if not completely nonexistent at today’s EA. EA likely destroyed it during 2010-2011.
- nicce 3y agoI am still waiting for new Dragon Age… but can’t keep hopes too high
- purpleflame1257 3y agoDragon Age II was where I lost hope lol
- nicce 3y agoIt was so bad that I even did not buy it. But the Inquisiton was good one. Still not even close to the first.
- D13Fd 3y agoDragon Age 2 had some unfinished parts and cringey parts but fundamentally was still a decent game. I’ve tried Inquisition three times now and can’t get through it. It’s just a slog IMO.
- drw85 3y agoInquisition was like a single player MMO. Grindy, level restrictions everywhere. I was extremely bored by it and didn't finish it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cgh 3y agoFrom Software? The new Armored Core is coming soon.
- Barrin92 3y agoAlso Kojima. Death Stranding may have been the most Kojima game he's ever made. Noteworthy that the three examples mentioned here now are Japanese, might also throw in PlatinumGames. There is still a remarkable strong artistic vision in the games coming out of Japan. It seems weirdly immune to the ironically named gamification everywhere else.
- nmfisher 3y agoWhile I do agree with you to an extent, let's not forget where the word "gacha" came from..
- CoastalCoder 3y agoSeems like an instance of the Ship of Theseus [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- m0llusk 3y agoWhich, on the Internet, is quickly replaced by the Shit of Theseus.
- oneepic 3y agoIt's not the same, but the most recent games aren't total disasters IMO. I liked the character story quests in SW: The Old Republic, for example -- Jedi Knight's storyline was enjoyable. (Plus the game is f2p.)
- chpatrick 3y agoThat's already 13 years old though.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoThe Old Republic would be a fine game, if it wasn't an MMO. And I don't mean multiplayer, that is fine. But the hotbar mashing combat, the grindy areas filled with standing mooks, all the padding and instancing... Bioware Austin did a great job changing it to be more KOTOR-like over the years, but at its core its a hotbar MMO. On a seperate note, Andromeda was tragic, but I still liked it. Anthem was... Just tragic. I am literally the target demographic (a ME3 coop fan) but was not the least bit interested.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoAndromeda was very hard to like and deeply flawed on every level. Anthem, despite interesting art direction, was impossible to like. It's almost odd that Bioware still exists as a large studio (>300 employees) when it seems they've forgotten how to release a good game. Baldur's Gate -- which is 25 years old -- was released in 1998, and its sequel was released less than two years later, in 2000. All of the Mass Effect games were released in a 4.5 year period from late 2007 to early 2012. ...Now they're in a state where they haven't released a good game in over a decade. They're a zombie studio. If you ask me, EA, despite its reputation and the way they have botched the decision-making process at the studio (e.g. by forcing Bioware to use the Frostbite engine,) has shown admirable patience, tolerance, and forbearance.
- superchroma 3y agoIf you set your teams up to fail by getting them to work on bad ideas that are not in their skillset, forcing technical choices on them that hamper them, controlling their inputs (budget) and outputs (marketing) and setting the deadlines to please shareholders without taking reality into account you can hardly be said to be patient, tolerant or forbearent. Allowing teams to fail repeatedly is bad management. Someone at EA should be fired.
- ljm 3y agoThat is the entire history of gaming though, no? It's the same churn you are working with now but you're not making games or fun, you're making productivity tools or better graphics or whatever, and other people are using that for games.
- pauldenton 3y agoIt's just marking the end of an era. Maxis wasn't the same after Will Wright left, and the writing on the wall was how EA put him in a box with Spore. Rare wasn't the same after the brother founders left and sold it to Microsoft. Origin wasn't the same after Richard Garriot and Chris Roberts left.
- ljm 3y agoFunny how the era started with pay to win (coin-op arcades where the games depend on you spending money on them and are completely unforgiving) and ended a generation or two later with pay to win (micro transactions, subscriptions, etc etc)
- brucethemoose2 3y agoEnshittification seems to be the entire history of humanity. Good things deteriorate. If we are lucky, parts of them will dissolve and reincarnate.
- aidenn0 3y agoTIL there are two "C"s in "sarlacc"
- User23 3y agoEA hungers like Stormbringer for the souls of top tier RPG developers.
- Arrath 3y agoThis is Bullfrog, Origin, and Westwood erasure. (okay Westwood did the pretty great Nox, so maybe they are covered but still)
- User23 3y agoBullfrog’s big hits were very much RPG adjacent too. I think it’s fair to say Syndicate is something of a tactical RPG. Populous is more of a stretch, but if you squint… And Origin did Ultima, which is practically the PC RPG archetype.
- Arrath 3y agoYeah I guess I outed myself as a Wing Commander fan without saying I'm a Wing Commander fan, huh? To be brutally honest I've never played a single Ultima game in my life!
- tibbydudeza 3y agoThe doctors left the house literally - same as Origin once the key folks left. Ultima Wing Commander Strike Commander