BioWare vet says Mass Effect and Dragon Age got "too homogenous," wishes Dragon Age had been more "Neverwinter-like"
BioWare vet says Mass Effect and Dragon Age got "too homogenous," wishes Dragon Age had been more "Neverwinter-like"
I absolutely loved Dragon Age: Inquisition, don't hate me.
Don’t feel bad, man. I’m one of the 6 folks who enjoyed DA2.
Great ideas, cool combat system, great art style and graphics, ruined by writing that was somehow chaotic and utterly predictable at the same time and stupid ass kill ten rats/fetch 10 letters filler quests.
The combat got pretty repetitive imo. Though that wasn't helped by just how many times you had to do the same fights against rifts/tears etc
Well I wasn't planning on hating you but due to my compulsive contrarianism we are now bitter enemies. See you in Hell and have a nice day!
Origins was amazing DAII was serviceable Varric did a lot of heavy lifting. DA:Inquisition I played 10 minutes of and dropped it.
I played all games in succession after buying on steam too.
Calling DA2 serviceable is probably some of the highest praise it's received. The game is steaming dookie. It took out every single thing that made Origins a masterpiece and gave us a dialogue wheel and an entire game made of 5 copy+pasted rooms. Also a nonsensical main plot with no real player agency and the most forgettable ending of all.
DAI is mid af but it looks like a God damn masterpiece next to DA2.
Didn't finish but liked it a lot more than most people.
I really really liked ME1 and 2. Sure, there are some nits to pick, especially with the act 2 gameplay (stupid mako, silly scanner), but they are great games.
ME2 is a good game in isolation, but I think it played a big part in getting Bioware where they are now.
ME2 saw them move far, far more into the action-RPG direction that was wildly popular at the time, with a narrative that was in retrospect just running in place (ME2 contributes effectively nothing towards the greater plot and zero major issues are introduced if it is excised from the trilogy). I feel the wild success ME2 saw after going in this direction caused Bioware to (a) double down on trend chasing, and (b) abandon one of their core strengths of strong, cohesive narratives. ME3 chased multiplayer shooter trends, DA:I and ME:A both chased open world RPG trends, Anthem chased the live service trend, and the first try at DA3 chased more live service stuff before Anthem launched to shit and they scrapped the whole thing to start over.
All while, of what I saw first hand (of those I played) or read about secondhand (of those I did not play) none of those games put any serious focus on Bioware's bread&butter of well written narratives. ME3 in particular is a narrative mess, with two solid payoffs (Krogans + Geth-Quarians) and the rest being some of the worst writing I've seen in a major video game.
ME2 was great. ME2 also set Bioware on a doomed path.
ME2 vastly expanded the universe of mass effect from the very bare bones level of the first game. It makes the reapers into more than vague robot threat that kills the universe every so often. It established other races as more than basic caricatures. You can keep the basic narrative intact without it, but you lose the sense of payoff in 3 without seeing krogan as a dying race, geth as a sentient race that deserves equality, and the truly desperate nature of the nomadic quarians.
3 was pretty good until the final ending that was clearly rushed in establishing the full reasoning behind each choice. Yes it had multi-player tacked on, but it was clearly a rushed effort and cutting it wouldn't have fixed the story. The multi-player is also the best coop gameplay I've ever played and nothing has came close to the feel. You're problems with 3 and other Bioware releases seem directly related to the broad direction EA was forcing everyone down.
I think you're putting an awful lot of blame on ME2. Visceral combat in no way precludes good storytelling.
This is very true. And it's ironic because when I saw BG3 I thought that bioware paved the way for it. They had everything to make a BG3 since kotor and nwn2, they successfully kick-started their own IP with ME and DAO, but they went on the path of ME3 and DAI instead.
They mistakenly thought the kotor and neverwinter nights ways were different. And then they failed at adapting to the openworld era.
I would pay good money for a stand-alone ME3 Multiplayer remake with all the bugs fixed, new maps, and less BS grind. I think I put almost 2000 hours into the multiplayer and still don’t have all the guns unlocked/upgraded