At least with the ship of theseus it's an inanimate object. You could replace any board or sail and still consider it the ship in question. Is it still in fact the ship of theseus? That's debatable but you could say that it still represents the ship.
In this case BioWare is made up of thinking human beings all that are motivated by different factors. You can't replace one person with another and expect the same of them even if you got someone who followed the initial person's logic as closely as possible, they'd still end up with different results to the first.
That is if EA even cares enough to replace the previous developers with like minded individuals which I highly doubt. BioWare of old, make great games while telling the best stories possible. After modern day EA's influence? Make as much money as you can while puppeteering as the BioWare of old.
You can’t replace one person with another and expect the same of them even if you got someone who followed the initial person’s logic as closely as possible, they’d still end up with different results to the first.
but this is... how businesses work. No business is the same people ALL the time. i don 't know why people expect any different here. and the quality of writing has suffered as of late, so why not get new blood in? i really don't understand what the issue is here.
What if you replace each piece of the original ship with an identical piece? What if you use all of the removed pieces to build an identical ship? Which one is then the "real" ship?
What if you had a time machine and sent a ship made out of original parts back in time then swapped half of the parts between the two ships?
Will the older pieces immediately rot to dust because the older ship already had those parts swapped out in its past, so the older pieces are actually trapped in a time loop, but since they keep getting older they just disappear, but it's ok because you have the new pieces from the past so you're left with a ship with new pieces and slightly older pieces?
.... If you have 33% of the original ship left. What makes you think there are 3 original ships. It's like you're trying to confuse yourself. If you took 33% of the original ship to make a new one, you did just that. Being vague isn't profound
What's vague? You can divide the ship into 3 and replace the missing pieces for each third. You now have 3 ships with 33% of the original, all of which fit your criteria
The original ship is where the pieces are coming from, the new ship are made from those pieces. This is sooooo dumb to be arguing. Just be more specific and no issues.
That's the story of almost all EA studios. Respawn afaik has kept their senior staff but also have expanded too much for me to believe there's a "Respawn identity" anymore.
What's funny that happened with Bioware and Criterion, too.
Respawn has only made like, five games? Two of which are licensed IP and not any good. They have one great game in TF2. There was never a "respawn identity". Hell the company was started by old Infinity Ward people.
Seems sadly on point. Their M.O. since at least as far back as Westwood (RIP Command & Conquer) has been to acquire a name brand, sap it for short term nostalgic profit, then dismantle usable assets. I love Dragon Age: Origins... and to some extent Inquisition, but damn if she ain't what she used to be.
Even playing through Mass Effect 1 > 2 > 3 back to back has been a challenge for me. The games just get simpler as you go along and it is so frustrating.
And I'm not talking about just the talent systems and looting etc, the fucking dialog gets to a point where sometimes 2-3 of the options will give the same result, and ugh. Ruins so much of it for me.
You make a good point. Is there a life-tree of devs that shows their companies and games? It'd love to see those art directors names we know across the different devs and publishers they worked for but also the lesser known names that really make great games what they are.