What’s With the Recent Bioware Hate?
By Lo-Ping - Mon Sep 12, 9:00 am
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Alright, so they fucked up on Dragon Age 2. But now people are starting to blow this failure way out of proportion, going as far as to insult games like Mass Effect, KotOR and Baldur’s Gate.
Dragon Age 2 is bad. We get it. But that doesn’t mean that Mass Effect 2 is bad. Sure, the game had romance in it, and people threw their love for Tali all around, but the game was focused so little on the romance portion that it barely makes up 5 minutes of a 20+ hour experience. And that’s only if you wanted to pursue it. It’s starting to become frustrating seeing a company that actually gives two shits about their games being demolished by morons who keep spewing misinformation and hating any Bioware game just because of one big flop made by a shitty team of devs (The Dragon Age team, which was mostly composed of new guys, anyway).
Case in point...
Just because the Dragon Age team fucked up, it doesn’t mean the Mass Effect team or the Star Wars team will make games that are just as bad. TOR is starting to seem like a pretty good game, and Mass Effect 3 already has more combat mechanics, RPG elements, and negative consequences to both good AND bad decisions from previous choices than ME2.
Why hate an entire company on one fuck-up?
After the “linearization” of Mass Effect 2 following Mass Effect 1, and the reiterated cries from Bioware essentially saying “we are trying to get the Call of Duty audience” Bioware has a LOT of ground to make up with their fans. ESPECIALLY after the debacle that was Dragon Age 2. And with recent internet rumors saying an on-line multiplayer mode is being included in Mass Effect 3, it’s possible that fans (like myself) are feeling marginalized, especially after supporting the series for so long. Hopefully Dragon Age 2 scared Bioware into putting more effort into ME3, hence the delay.
Don’t forget that the EA rot runs deep, deeper than anyone had imagined. To an impartial observer, the observation may be drawn that Bioware has abandoned its core fan-base in favor of attracting Call of Duty “kids”, as they’ve said themselves they’re interested in pandering to that demographic. What gets on my nerves was when EA says “We are disappointed with our fans response to Dragon Age 2”. Like it’s the fault of the fans for wanting a decent game. It’s just weird to me, how they had a devoted RPG fanbase and they aren’t content with that. They want the “Call of Duty fan-base”. Well guess what, CoD fans are playing CoD. They’re willing to throw away their fans so they may or may not get new ones?
Pictured: Bioware's new "target" audience
So why do people hate Bioware? Let’s compare other companies:
Bethesda
- Morrowind’s combat was bad and needs voice acting
- Oblivion addresses these issues for the most part
CDPR
- Witcher’s combat mechanics were bad. Just plain bad.
- Witcher 2 has way different combat that improved significantly from its predecessor
Obsidian
- Learn to fucking program please for the love of GOD!
- “We’re doing our best and promise DS3 won’t have many bugs”
BioWare
- Mass Effect was okay but improve the inventory and the side quests
- NOPE, they get removed altogether, you get a cover shooter
- Funny thing about this is that fans mostly complained about how BAD the inventory or the exploration of the first game. So much so that Bioware thought the fans did not like them. So, in a sense, Bioware DID listen to the fans. Problem was that the fans didn’t say “improve” but bitched and moaned about the features.
- Dragon Age: Origins was good but make the customization deeper, the atmosphere less generic and give it a better story
- NOPE we dumb it the fuck down and produce utter diarrhea
- Dragon Age 2 was bad, okay? There’s no overlooking it. Every company can make mistake
They’re a company that seems to shit on player feedback. But hey, you get some cool bisexual romances so it’s all good.
"But the priiiiiiiiize..."
Bioware can be pretty insipid sometimes, but no way in hell are they stupid enough to think that “This inventory is clunky shit!” = “GET THIS FUCKING INVENTORY OUT OF MY GAME” or “These planets are generic copy pastes and the Mako handles like an upside down peanut butter cow” = “EXPLORATION IS TERRIBLE NEVER TRY AGAIN BIOWARE”. They’re just greedy lazy fucks who wanted to make a shooter with a shitty shallow dialogue system to appease to CoD “kiddies” like they wanted to in the first place.
In my most humble of opinions, Bioware has never had a truly great game. Rather, it used to be a company which made competent games for a rather niche audience. Quality of their production has been steadily going down in the past years, while at the same time they tried to shift from this niche market which supported them to the mass market. Worse, said transformation seem to have been voluntary: overall mediocrity seems to be their aim, if we are to believe interviews, PR, and other forum posts from people working there.
"We're just...so sorry."
Was ME2 a bad game ? I think not. It was a rather mediocre JRPG+shooting game hybrid that had a couple of golden moments, but overall watered down design and writing. Was Dragon Age: Origins a good game ? No, it was a rather mediocre attempt at WRPG, which succeeded in no small measure because it garnered goodwill from a community starved for that type of game.
Was Dragon Age 2 a bad game ? Yes, but it’s more complex than simply that. It was obviously a bad product which happened to be trying to be a JRPG. That combination of generated a lot of resentment from both the die hard WRPG fans who had supported Dragon Age: Origins and contributed to its success, and the new blood, for whom production values happens to be tantamount. Like people at the end of their wits in an abusive relationship, the old timers are know unwilling to ignore all they’ve been overlooking over the years while hoping things would get better.The new one just went and got what they wanted elsewhere, leaving the tribune wide open to the haters.
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I hate Bioware because I’m a girl. It didn’t use to be the case but when I have a bunch of tits thrust into my face – alien tits, robot tits, tits that have no right to even be there – and then they talk about it when they’re advertising like I give a huge big shit about titties and nothing else, it makes me feel a little excluded as a woman with any modicum of dignity.
I don’t think they’re sexist, really. I mean, Randy Pitchford isn’t there. The female characters are well developed personality-wise and there isn’t a single one I completely hate (at least, not because she has no personality). But yeah they aren’t really advertising to me and the female Shepard vote pretty much told me that they don’t give a shit if I’m on board with their games or not.
Ten bux says you all buy it anyways.
What he Said ^^^
I would say that Mass effect is a decent game but I cant help but feel that they are pushing the whole sex appeal on us as a reason to buy the game. Most camera angles point upwards so that Im constantly looked at Miranda’s ass.
But what really annoys me is that Miranda wears clothes so tight, you can see her belly button and camel toe. While Jack wears a strip of leather on her breasts. To summarise. I remember when Bioware made good games and didnt rely on gamers being perverts to sell their games.
I don't think anyone is insulting KoToR or Balder's Gate, those are classics that innovated and inspired change in a genre. Mass Effect and Dragon Age 1 & 2 for both were terrible.
A company like BioWare has to do one of two things, either take an overused genre and completely revolutionize it with gameplay changes or new mechanics. Or take a successful overused genre and maximize it's potential quality.
If they can't make a new game that is different, then they need to be able to take a game like Oblivion and add incredible polish and story.
Mass Effect is a clean Gears of War. It's a cover shooter that doesn't have exciting enemies or cool environments. The RPG aspect of it is either completely dull (mass effect 1) or non-existent (mass effect 2)
It seems that this also applies to Dragon Age, the react to heavily to criticisms. Dragon Age 1 doesn't really have any flair or interest behind it's world, story, or gameplay. So for Dragon Age 2 they just make it a complex action slasher game.
It's important for me that I mention that I was once enamored with both Mass Effect and Dragon Age and thought they would be good. Even upon playing each of them I thought they were, but in time I realized that there is something fundamentally wrong with these two franchises and frankly what they bring as video games.