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Re: I know a lot of people here don't like Bioware games anyway by Ice Cream Jonsey 05/16/2012, 12:09pm PDT
I have genuine nostalgia for playing those games, the way normal people have it for stuff like shitty 80s tv shows or whatever, but in retrospect they may have just been accidentally fun rather than good in any kind of repeatable way. BG2 and KOTOR weren't technically brilliant, they didn't have novel play control, the stories weren't awesome so much as they had 'something for everyone', so you'd see awesome things. Even if different people came away with different memories of what was great, everyone who liked them would talk about it until pretty much everyone who might like BG2 or KOTOR has played them. I'm pretty sure I haven't loved any of their games since then, maybe Mass Effect 2 excluded. The other games since, like Neverwinter Nights or Mass Effect 1 (the only game I finished on xbox), feel clumsy, rushed in parts, and overall aren't really compelling even as narrative.


Well, Baldur's Gate 2 was a classic because of the tactics. It was the game that AD&D players had truly been waiting for. A lot of D&D players use miniatures and graph paper to show where their dudes are -- BG2 put all of that in a video game.

(People moved too slowly in the original Baldur's Gate and it suffered from not having enough interesting classes and spells. So that's why BG2 gets the nod. I get that BG2 couldn't have been great without doing BG1 first.)

And the tactics work because it's essentially a powered-up version of chess. Chess is the greatest game there is, and I see BG2 as a fun game that goes beyond white versus black and lets you have white versus purple, green, blue and so forth. There's a bit where you fight dragons, then undead, then a group of cutthroats -- all stuff we like doing in d&D. The level design was also fantastic, giving you fun areas to have a battle in. (That's where Icewind Dale fell down: waaaay too much of it could be played by having a thief run ahead and scout for enemies and then being chased back to where the rest of the characters were.)


There's another change though. These new games they've released since Dragon Age 2 aren't just not compelling, they're simply not good. I mean they're really actively bad.


Everything I've learned about their games since had added to my resolve to never play them. I don't have any respect for the people they've hired to plot things out and the DA and ME series seem like corporate jerkoff wares. (They went out of their way to hire people in the field of fan fiction.) Like a Papa John's moving into a small town and then hordes of fucking retards and shitfaced slopfucks ignore the greasy immigrant who has been making good pies for 10 years the right way.

I don't get how anyone with a shred of taste plays DA or ME for a minute, but I also don't care enough to wonder why. If these people are having fun, great. Who cares, power to them. I do roll my eyes when people try to claim they are good games, or even more laughably, transcendental ones.


I don't think it's right to blame it on EA, because I think Bioware had been going in the wrong direction for a long time, but I'm confident now that they're going to make it worse.


The people working at Bioware LOVE what they are doing. They're trolling people over Twitter, they're infecting that shitty games aggregate site with rating their own games 10/10 five golden manbabies, etc. I don't think the consideration that maybe what they are making is slop enters any of their minds at any point. I think they're genuinely surprised that people with taste hate their games.


To see where EA is fucking up, first look at Syndicate on the basic platform, if you're going to make a fps out of this old franchise it's got to have new stuff in every aspect of the game. I don't think a plain old "Max Payne fights like he's in The Matrix" tweak is going to cut it now, each piece of a new game has to have something both novel and integrated at the same time, or it won't stand out, which is why no one bothered playing Syndicate.


Agreed. Only EA could manage to fuck up to the point where retro game enthusiasts couldn't give a shit about a new Syndicate. But they've done this so many times before nobody has any time for their new interpretation. When it's five bucks on Steam I'll check it out. Maybe -- I mean, there's no group-level tactics because they made it a FPS, and that was kinda the point of Syndicate and Syndicate Wars.


EA's plans to spend on cross-device play is going to put more pressure on the anchor game's budget, and this is going to fuck Bioware, who at this point is pretty much ripe to have their market taken away by any competent developer who comes along with a good space opera narrative.


I think the big thing in Bioware's favor is that people love garbage.


the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!
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I know a lot of people here don't like Bioware games anyway by jeep 05/15/2012, 2:10pm PDT NEW
    Re: I know a lot of people here don't like Bioware games anyway by Ice Cream Jonsey 05/16/2012, 12:09pm PDT NEW
    jeep was pretty prescient here. NT by John Gulp 12/16/2016, 11:03pm PST NEW
    I just want to say that EA's Starbreeze's Syndicate was shockingly good, by if you can tolerate 2012-era FPSes. 12/17/2016, 2:46am PST NEW
        It was a generic, shitty, two weapon, cover shooter clone with a shit story. NT by bullshit. 01/06/2017, 12:37pm PST NEW
            It's very high quality and not remotely a cover shooter, but the rest is spot on NT by Decoding '2012-era FPS' 01/06/2017, 1:45pm PST NEW
                I bought this on your recommendation but I haven't played it yet. by Worm 01/07/2017, 12:59am PST NEW
                    Play on hard. Don't give up on the first boss, nothing else is as bad as he is. by The train boss is actually fun! 01/07/2017, 2:09am PST NEW
                        I really like it so far, the missile boss sucked by Worm 05/21/2017, 8:13pm PDT NEW
                            They frame it as a moral conundrum. by Vaneza 05/23/2017, 6:12pm PDT NEW
 
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