And I’m already seeing a lot of worry and screaming by gamers.
What do you think will happen?
My money’s on a whole lot of suck.
Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!
OK, that probably wasn’t my most coherent post ever, but it was my immediate reaction.
Bioware is (or was) one of the most respected companies in gaming. I mean, come on… Baldur’s Gate? Planescape: Torment? Knights of the Old Republic? Ask any PC gamer to list their top 10 games and I guarantee that a few Bioware titles will be on the list. Their reputation is their games.
EA, on the other hand, has a reputation of buying good companies and destroying their franchises. (Anyone remember Origin systems, for example? Used to produce a couple of series called Wing Commander and Ultima? Heard anything of them lately?) The only thing keeping EA in business is their lock on certain sports franchises.
This (IMHO) is a disaster. Based on their track record, EA can do nothing but destroy everything Bioware has ever done. I’m not sure who I’m the most upset with; EA for buying Bioware or Bioware for agreeing to the takeover. I can only hope that Bioware somehow signed a rock-solid contract allowing them to maintain control over everything they do. Otherwise it’s one of the few remaining companies to treat their customers with any kind of respect down the drain.
Oh, and here’s the cite, for those who want to see for themselves.
Bioware didn’t make Planescape, that was Black Isle (RIP). It just used the Baldur’s Gate engine.
And, although I haven’t played very many BioWare games, I concur. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Gotta go with Vader’s Word.
I’ve always thought BioWare was a bit overrated other than Neverwinter Nights.
But they can have my Neverwinter Nights over my smoldering corpse…!
(edit: Not that they made the damn sequel anyways… :()
EA has ruined far better gaming companies than Bioware. And that’s saying something.
EA will own everything one day, and that will be the end of PC gaming.
I knew that… :smack:
I was thinking Neverwinter Nights but was looking at my CD rack, saw Planescape and typed it instead. That’s what I get for PUI…
Ouch. This isn’t good for quality.
Well Mass Effect seems like it’s far enough along it won’t take a hit (I’d have to wait for a port anyway and if Jade Empire is any indication it’ll be awhile) but I’m worried about Dragon Age now.
Isn’t it possible that some of the dudes from Bioware will escape with their loot and start another company that you’ll love until EA eats it up as well? Kind of like the guys from RoboHelp starting Madcap Software after Adobe got its grubby hands on RH?
(I’m not a gamer at all, I’m just asking.)
Origin, Westwood and Bullfrog leap to my mind of great gaming companies that have fallen to the evil Borg of the gaming world. Face it…EA assimilates anything with a spark of originality in it and smashes it into their dreary collective.
I hate EA for that.
I like what another guy posted on a different forum though…about sums EA up.
EDIT: Forgot…I think EA went after Valve and Gabe Newell told them no thanks (hopefully he told them to shove it up their ass but I really do not know). So at least one holdout.
Y’know, I didn’t like Bioware that much. Their designs, while competant, are extremely derivative. Even Knights of the Old Republic was little more than a pretty simple rules package (pre-made) gussied up with a not-very innovative 3d engine. But it was quite nice overall and enjoyable. And their games are always fun, just not very innovative. They tend to have very similar gameplay and near-identical stories*
But this just plain SUCKS! I mean sure, they’re not the best ever. But I still loved playng their games and they always brought a good dose of polish to their presentations. It wasn’t totally bug-free, but their games were always MUCH better in stability and care than industry average.
*Summation of most Bioware games: You are the chosen hero, you have a secret power and can defeat the evil tyrant. Begin small pointless fetch quests, obnoxious and easily-bypassed-but-it-takes ten-hours-each obstacles to your progres, and slowly gaining the clues to the evil villain’ lair/identity/weakness which the player figured out in about 10 minutes. At the seeming climax, discover the twist they’ve been hinting the whole game. Go through some more stages, fight the end boss. Game over.
This doesn’t quite fit NWN, but Baldur’s Gate I (and II), KorOR, and Jade Empire. I like Bioware, but I think they need to work with other companies to really get the spark going. They’re better with an outsider’s touch. Which is not unusual really, more contact and information sharing = more ideas and more viewpoints on how to use them.
Blizzard has built its entire franchise around such ideas. I see certain game companies that innovate and always try something new and applaud them but at the end of the day I’d rather see an old idea done very very well then a new idea done half baked.
errr…so a role playing game? I’ve been playing basically the same story for about twenty years now in various forms though it’s good when a new idea comes along I don’t hold my breath I just hope it’s done well.
So your whole point is that their games are too alike but only sorta? Anyway I hope I’m not coming off as confrontational I’m just a little confused by people that like to complain about the things they like because they feel they’re not liking it enough. Bioware was founded on taking the old D&D rules, settings and ideas and almost singlehandedly revived RPGs as we know them. I’m willing to cut them a little slack in the stagnation department. Love of the old way of doing things was where they started.
First off, Black Isle was the real driver there, and you can see the difference in quality in Black Isle games as opposed to Troika or Bioware. Second, the fact that a Biowae game is nice does not mean it is “great.” And I really, really, REALLY got tired of the Bioware twist. By the time of Jade Empire I pretty much expected it and it lost any impact. Itw as too bloody predictable.
They also have bad habit fo never pushing their own envelope or even doing to expected. All quests are massacring things. You pretty much never have anything else to do (aside form the odd minigame). That’s tolerable but not always great. No stealth quests? Endurance runs? What about the rare but powerful enemies who don’t come in groups? (That’s pretty much reserved for the end-game boss and no one else). Or enemies who have debuffs or buffs, so every fight doesn’t come down to enemies standing there blastng away until I kill them? Their games have magic and psionics and force-users and everything. WHy do they almost always come to tossing “arcane bolts” or “fireballs” or “force lightning”?
In short, I can come up with a dozen ideas which would make every one of their games better - and I bet you can too. Heck, play Final Fantasy 12 for about 20 hours, or go raiding in World of Warcraft. It’s a different style, but there’s a lot in there to do, explore, and have fun with even with MORE limited game engines.
I have nothing wrong with traditions or even limited, focused games. But they ought to be less satisfied with the qtatus quo and push things as far as they can go. Excellence is its own reward in all things. I like what they do. But I see so much potential that hasn’t been realized.
Let me restate it this way: Imagine if Arnold Swarzanegger won, say the Mr. Austria bodybuilder competition. And every year he just did that. He never even tried to win Mr. Universe. He never went to Hollywood. He never became Governer of California. Wouldn’t that be kinda a shame (leave the jokes about his movies, please)? For someone with that much talent and that ability to use it and play it and build himself a place in the world, wouldn’t it be sad? I admire people who push themselves to acheive excellence, and I’ve been disappointed with Bioware in that regard.
Take Obsidian Entertainment. Their games have been a little rough so far. I see a lot of problems in them. But at the same time, I recognize that they are really trying to do things which are more and better. Your character in NWN2, for example, isn’t The Chosen One. You have an advantage in one regard, but that’s it. If you died, other people might carry on the fight. Or take The Exile in KotOR2. Sure, you’r character is powerful and has an advantage. At the same time, he’s not intrinsically critical. He’s making his own way in the world and the world isn’t built just around him. He learns some things, sometimes unpleasant ones, but there’s no real twist to it. Even the “twist” isn’t much of a twist, in that you were all but beaten over the head with it. And while the game’s ending got a little rough due to time constraints on the developer, they really put a lot of effort into making the action smoother and skills more useful.
Well that’s OK, because now you can forget about the ‘Bioware twist’ or any recogniseable, distinctive game feature other than tons of patches, new bugs with every patch, and endless retreads of the same game with marginally different character skins. I.e. Baldurs Gate IV would be Baldurs Gate III but the kobolds will be a slightly diffirent colour with their ears held at a different angle. Joy.
How can you love the games but think the company isn’t great is the question I’m wondering. And I loved the Black Isle games but they were NOT the driving force by any means. Fallout 2 did little to reinvigorate RPGs Planescape:Torment is the game that everyone talks about but nobody bought at the time (and came after Baldur’s Gate anyway). Icewind Dale took the ball started by Baldur’s Gate and ran with it. It would have never been made without the success of Baldur’s Gate.
As for plot twists how often have you been surprised by a plot twist in a game anyway? I can’t even think of any off the top of my head (I’m sure there’s been one or two) games have the same plot twists short stories and fantasy books have cliqued and old.
I remember quite a few speech craft checks to avoid fights but as for stealth runs the D&D rule set isn’t really designed for that (as far as I know) Who wants to click on a patch of ground and hope the other side doesn’t get a spot check on you? They’re pretty shackled by that license but they did have to milk it while they had it. I guess they could have done something like that with Jade Empire but that’s not really the game they were promising anyway. As for rare but powerful creature it’s the nature of the miniboss to become the common foe of the next level. Take the demons in Jade Empire for example first time you meet a Toad demon it’s pretty much the only thing in the room that’s a danger as the game goes on they get more common.
Final Fantasy? For innovation? What? Maybe because I stopped at 7 but that series just was the same battle type over and over only with a more bizarre and pointless spell system grafted onto each new version. But I’m willing to admit I have no idea past that point maybe it got much more interesting afterwards. As for World of Warcraft you’re talking about a different beast there. They know that they’ll have a monthly influx of cash and can endlessly fine tune areas/classes/encounters whereas a campaign with a start and end point with at most an Xpack or two has a defined shelf life and limited cash injection. Plus there’s no worries about specializing there the more focused you make your character usually the better you do in a group of specialists whereas you do that with a single player game you risk people being frustrated that they can only do a small percent of the game and have to rely on the rest of the group to pick up the slack.
but he is the ‘chosen one’ most of the other groups are well…useless Jerro was the only one that stood a chance in Hell of doing anything useful and he already had a ‘tie’ with the mere avatar of the big baddy. They may take on the fight but they’d have been destroyed which is the whole point of heroic fantasy. As for story-wise. Farmboy’s town gets destroyed so he discovers he’s special after all…ugh. The game is great but it was pretty miserable story-wise. Mask of the Betrayer though I’ll give you wins most of your points. 
Kotor 2 is the perfect example of someone trying to do more and ending up with much much less. I’ve beaten the first about 4 times and couldn’t get even halfway through the second without feeling irritated and deflated with bugs broken quests and a lackluster story to carry me through. I’m waiting for Team Gizka to finish with their project then I’ll go back and hopefully see the game as it was meant to be played. But what happened with Kotor 2 is exactly what I fear will happen with Bioware suddenly Bioware’s games will be half finished and half baked so people like Obsidian can’t come in and try to take things to the next level because the first level will be too unstable.