And that game kinda sucked compared to 1 and 2, especially 1 imo. Bioware has been on a long and steady decline. Mass effect and the two first DA games have kept them going but it has just been miss after miss for a long time now.
DA2's combat really isnt as bad as one thinks and there are some cool stuff you can do with it, and the story of Kirkwall was a fun one with a number of memorable characters. It did a good job highlighting the tension between the various races within the universe. (ofc, we should not forget about the reused dungeons where an obvious wall is added to doorways, the deadly assassins who are super tanky and 1 shots a character with backstab, and how another wave of enemies always spawn behind you).
DAI was fine as long as you get out of the hinterlands. it felt a bit MMO-ish, but i still find the game fun. It still stuck to the script, and progressed the overall plot.
Then we have Veilguard - a game that i think "is okay if it is not a Dragon Age game". So much of what has happened in the past just gets thrown away, and it gets really weird where they tried to blame all the bad stuff onto some splinter group ("oh that's just the BAD antiva crows, BAD quanaris"). Like, did any of the writers bother playing the older games?
The imperium is supposed to be some system of order within chaos. Yet we get dumb excuses like "oh, we really arent like that, it's just the stories you hear", the whole spirit of the universe gets thrown out the window. Where is my story about the hubris of man becoming god? The tensions? Uneasy alliances in the face of a greater threat?
They turned a dark fantasy game into a pocar game. Even that's insulting to Pixar since they at least have good writers.
And of course the discussions most around it were about transgender stuff they shoehorned in without a thought of how to integrate it interestingly into the world. Just awful, awful writing that stomped all over an amazing setting and world building that was handed to them on a silver platter. Truly a shame.
The worst thing that happened to Dragon Age was that Mass Effect was a huge success.
They clearly wanted Hawke to be the Fantasy-Sheppard. The series moved more and more away from it's roots in the BG-games, and more to just hack-and-slash with occasional ability activations and shallow dialog choices.
I liked 2, probably more then most, I think centering it around a family and a city was a refreshing take for a fantasy epic. But the cracks were already forming back then, it didn't look like there was the ever same 'plan' for the Franchise as for the ME-triology.
Lol, no Veilguard is the worst DA game, for me Inquisition is not as good as DA2 but at least that is debatable between the two. Veilguard stands alone as the worst thing to ever happen to DA.
Same same. I played it on release. It was massively disappointing, and yet the reviews said otherwise. They must have only played a few hours. Had a similar experience with Far Cry 2.
That's around when I gave up on reviews by sites, but slightly before youtube reviews became big.
I genuinely dont get why people consider DA2 to be better than DAI. That game feels so cheap, has such little scope, and the story is ultimately just weird and has little consequence. It is somewhat self-contained, but it has very little meaningful interactions, is laughably formulaic, and it is very corridor-like. Hawke just feels like a doofus the whole time.
DAI is better in virtually every possible aspect of an RPG game. Grandiose scope, much better graphics, lasting consequences, fun class design, meaningful romance, many possible interactions, you are building Skyhold which changes in front of your eyes. It is filled with quests, fun-ish sidequests, expands upon the lore CONSIDERABLY, every zone progresses differently, the Inquisitor is also at least competent and you can play him in different ways (yes, not on the level of DA:O), brings back a lot of characters from DA:O...
Sure, the tone in DA:I there shifted somewhat from the dark fantasy to a more neutral tone, but that alone shouldnt be enough to automatically dismiss it.
I get what you are saying and I agree with some of your points, but I do think tone is a larger aspect than you might initially think.
Just look at Avowed, everyone was hyped about that with that first trailer, but when it finally got closer to release and what they were showing had a notably different tone to that initial trailer interest dipped dramatically. That is for an, at the time, unreleased game with no comparable games in the same universe (yes POE and POE 2 but they are a different style of game), so imagine how much that is amplified when you do that to an existing franchise with comparable games. Yeah I think it does make quite a large difference.
The next thing for me is that personally it felt like I was playing a single player MMO half the time, which is a massive turn off for me.
Having said all of this, I'm not here saying DA2 was a great game like DA1, but I personally think it was a reasonably good game, and that was enough. DAI, again from me personally, while not a bad game like veilguard, stripped away a lot of what I liked about DA so I think 2 is better, but that is obviously debatable since a lot of people do like it.
I get what you are saying and I agree with some of your points, but I do think tone is a larger aspect that you might initially think.
I dont disagree with you on that, but many of the comments I am seeing are not placing much emphasis on the tone change in my opinion, so that's why I am not considering it as much of a genuine point if I were to accept 'tone change' being the main argument for the hate of DAI. But sure.
I also didnt particularly like it not being as dark as DA:O, but I accepted it, because that is what you ultimately have to end up doing, if you scope out this much into focus on different zones, races, and ultimately different story. Darkspawn are no longer the big main threat after all.
I just don't feel like the tone change can warrant this much dislike. That's all.
Oh for sure and I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying that it is a factor, which is then compounded by other things. But people often try to minimise the effect of changes like that, when it really does make a big difference.
Anecdotal example, but I have played multiple games in genres I don't usually like simply based on the premise and overall tone.
I dont think you have played either of them if that is what you think. DA2 is genuinely a terribly made game that is held up by above average writing. DA2 makes launch Cyberpunk look like a polished game
2 and Inquisition were enshittified by EA's pressure. Imagine DA2 with proper development time, and Inquisition without it's pointless open world and fetch quests.
2 is a great game with a lot of flaws. It still feels like part of the same universe in tone and writing as origins. Inquisition is just a bloated, boring piece of shit. 30 hour game stretched over 100 hours.
I played it last year and couldn't even finish it, janky, dated and just didnt hit the same and didn't enjoy it, skipped to DA2 and reminded myself why i love it despite its issues.
Yeah and that is fair enough, games age and times change so that can make going back feel more difficult, but honestly for me it is still a great game even today but you do have to go in knowing that it isn't going to control how you would like or look like a modern game and it's not going to have a lot of the QoL features that have became ubiquitous over time.
I'm personally not against a game having a bit of friction, in fact most of my favourite games of all time intentionally do so, but I can understand why some people would not like that and decide that they don't want to play games like that.
I just can't handle too much jank to em, age isn't always the issue, theres probably mods and stuff to make DAO run better on pc but i never looked into it, same year as og MW2, L4D2, AC2 and arkham asylum, most of which I've played in the last couple year and do think hold up well despite being 17 years old which definitely doesnt make me feel like an old man or anything...
I really like to Inquisition it is definitely an eight out of 10. Was very mmo-ish and there were a lot of fetch quests but I thought the set pieces and companions were 10 out of 10. But feeling when you lose Haven and then wander through the woods until you find Sky hold is amazing. The problem is that Dragon Age Inquisition is 10 out of 10 for the entire experience. I probably played a thousand hours of origins. Every race and class
Eh, I feel like a lot of the things that I didn't like about Veilguard started in DAI, and honestly found VG more replayable. I love DA2, but there was never a sequel that seemed to really understand what made DAO special.
I think a lot of people feel that way about the series. While it wasn’t perfect, DAO was a special game when it came out and in my opinion was BioWare’s pinnacle. DA2 and DA3 were fine games but they were so different from DAO that they could have been from a differed entirely. DA3 in particular, which I played a lot of, felt like they were trying to shoehorn in every AAA video game trend into one game and it was a mess.
If they did not support the views of the product they pushed out, they shouldve looked for another job, they did not, so its on them.
If my company starts to shove messages in one of our programs which go against my view, i would stop working for them and start working for another company, simple as that.
Actually happend already back a few years ago,
, i work in a highly competetiv environment as well and had no problem finding another job within MONTHS, those people had years and decided to stay.
Job hopping isnt anything new lol has been around for quite a while but how would you know huh? Working for Walmart and switching to Aldi probably isnt that big of an incentive or is it?
The job market for game devs is in an impossibly hard situation right now. But I don’t expect you to know that. I’m arguing with a guy who’s creating a fake scenario in his head where he is the good guy making all the right choices lol.
If a restaurant opens up with frequent health code violations, I'd say good riddance when they shut down, even if their waiters and chefs now have to find new employment.
That's just a simplistic and appalling thing to say. Your other comment "They should just find another employer then" also shows a total lack of thinking and empathy. People need jobs and its not always easy to speak up if you disagree with decisions. Do you think its always easy to find another employment? A lot of people working for BioWare for sure had families and/or other financial responsibilities and its 100% valid to stay in a company to be able to fullfill these. Are you like 12 or just completely irrational? Anyway, grow up, really.
Its not my problem they chose an employer which hasnt delivered a single good game in over 12 years, its not on me to support bad products, they are the ones that put out an alienated version of a game which did not clicked with the audience ... Multipe times in a row.
If i fuck up at my job, i will be fired after a certain time, same goes for them, shouldve listend to thekr fanbase instead of the modern audience.
And I am saying that not all of them were responsible for the development of poor games. Also, no one asked you to support anything, you're reaching. Just not to say they "deserved it" because not everyone is responsible for this and people value stability due to adult responsibilities.
Equating this with the though of "If I mess up my job I get fired" is completely stupid. Completely different scenarios of ONE employee vs a big studio where decisions and outcomes are totally different and significantly more complicated.
Those people supported it by working on it, if they didnt they wouldve choosen another job by then.
If not, its on themselves, nobody forced them to keep working for a studio whoms decision they did not support. Simpel as that, thats life nobody owns them anything, they worked for a company that has been known for over 10 years to not deliver anything worthwhile, they had more than enough time to find something else.
idc, what you think, mate in the end, ive had a job, switched jobs when coporates vision did not align with my own and will do so in the future.
Empathy really that's gonna change the way these companies are run now your nuts to think this whole thing runs on"empathy" and not business money which these fools don't have to support is crazy
In this particular case it is warranted. If they were doing a good job they wouldn't now be out of it. Let's not pretend like Bioware was putting out good games lately.
You can recognize the decline of the organization and still have empathy for the individuals within it. Many, many of the people working there go into work every day and do their absolute best, without being able to decide what they actually work on or what direction the product takes, because those decisions are made several levels above them. At most companies, there's no real mechanism for them to exert influence in the other direction.
Honestly, the overwhelming majority of people in this thread, if they had chosen to become a game dev, would be far closer to those people being fired today, than they would be to the people who produced all those classics of yesteryear.
No it is not. Not everyone was responsible for the release of poor games, so saying "they deserved it" when so many people have now lost their jobs (and many of them will have financial obligations to keep like kids and mortgages) is completely irrational and shows a total lack of empathy and thinking.
Yes, these are the people behind DA:I, Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, and the newest Dragon Age. Hard seeing a legendary company like Bioware go down but these are not the masterminds behind all their great games, they are long gone.
if they didnt want to lose their jobs maybe they shouldnt have used a beloved franchise to push their bullshit like they did with dragon age, dont worry tho, they will try to put the blame anywhere else like they tried to do with concord.
The employees of Bioware pushed their bullshit onto the IP of Dragon Age? They acted on their own, to force an agenda of hot garbaging a title? How many games have you developed in a studio that was owned or published by a major publisher like EA?
Call me callous, but this is just the way the real world is. Anyone with a brain left at Bioware should have seen the writing on the wall after the reception of the last few games and been dusting off their resumes/looking to jump ship.
People there largely fall into two categories:
1. An active part of the recent garbage they made.
2. Normal people just trying to do their jobs in an industry they love and dealing with unreasonable demands/creative restrictions from on high. (The majority, I suspect).
Even if 2 is the majority, the "writing on the wall" sentiment is still applicable. Game dev is tech sector-adjacent to actual tech sector depending on your position. Shitty decisions from on high resulting in business sectors/divisions/entire companies shuttering has been the norm for at least the two decades I've been in the space and likely much longer.
TL;DR: This should surprise very few people and if they weren't at least somewhat prepared for it it's kind of their fault.
Publishers making poor business decisions, or creative decisions that ruin what you are trying to make is part in parcel in every studio owned or published by them. Bioware has been existing for the last few years as most owned studios do...doing their very best, fighting most likely an uphill battle on getting games done...and hoping they have a job the next day. I wasn't at Bioware, but I made video games for 10 years for studios owned by huge publishers. and like I tried to say, the writing is on the wall from day 1. Everyone is looking to get to a place where they can make an impact, where they can participate in making something cool, everyone is kind of always looking or even casually looking...even if they are making something they love.
You are correct in one point, that is pretty callous. The gaming industry is tech industry adjacent, but it is much more cutthroat, thankless, and brutal...and if you are in it...believe me...the writing is on the wall from day 1 that your job and your studio is not safe from being on a list like today. Also, where you gonna go in the industry? You gotta remember it is also a super small industry, with a line out the door of people who will eat a river of shit just to sit at the table waiting to replace you.
This is the AAA gaming industry in a nutshell. Talent gets broken up, bean-counters take over, strip studios and scrap them for parts, let them bleed out in a void of creativity, move on to the next studio
ME5 was being lead by Mass Effect trilogy veterans. The executive producer, game director, and creative director were all trilogy veterans with the narrative designer has written some incredible games. Micheal Gamble was executive producer and was in the same role for ME2 and 3, Preston Watamaniuk was the Game Director and was a lead designer on Neverwinter Nights 2, KotoR, and the ME Trilogy, Parrish Lea was Creative Director and was Lead Cinematic Director on the Trilogy, Mary Demarle was Narritive Director and was Narritive Designer and Director on Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, aswell as Guardians of the Galaxy.
At the end of the day these were people who made some of your favorite games even if you want to say it wasn't just like Veilguard; who's writing team consistend majority of writers (7/9 of them) who had worked on previous Dragon Age games
I have empathy for the developers making games. I have zero empathy for this statement, which was drafted by cold upper management and released quickly only because a breakout story came out.
What a silly response. This thread is about BioWare and why their studio is shutting down. The person you're replying to isn't making statements on these unrelated examples from different companies.
The BioWare devs did a bad job over the course of over a decade, so they lost their jobs.
Who cares. They’re a game studio not my friends. The only thing I care about them doing is making good games and they don’t. It’s no different than a restaurant that serves bad food getting shut down
This sub is absolute garbage these days. Ever since all the low effort "Microslop bad" posts started. It's either filled with bots or the collective IQ has dropped significantly.
I lost my job when I worked at Tesco a few years back after I realised that nobody ever noticed if I was there or not, so I kept clocking in and then going home to play COD.
Losing the money sucked but maybe if I had been good at my job I wouldn't have lost it.
Maybe if the management had noticed that people they were employing weren't even there, the entire store wouldn't have been shut down shortly after.
My point is that companies go under and people lose their jobs all the time. Yeah it sucks but I'm not going to lose sleep over it because I was aware of the name of the company. If Bioware wanted to stay in business, they should have made good games.
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u/pirate135246 i9-10900kf | RTX 3080 ti 8h ago
It’s not the same people that made any of their great games. Good riddance to the slop they had become.