Veilguard that was also "in development" since the end of Inquisition in... 2014. Restarted several times, put on hold for Anthem and Andromeda, etc etc and then launched to a fairly mid response.
They have been absolute garbage at producing quality for over a decade.
Veilguard was way bellow mid, it was slop. Completely homgenized mechanics to be another shit 3d action game and took out all the love that origins and inquisition had. Then it sealed it with a terrible plot.
It makes sense if you imagine them all as being developed for a light hearted live service game where stakes would be an impediment to keeping a meandering story lumbering on for 5 years
And terrible companions, or at least, companion interactions. I swear if I had to babysit that group for another 2-3 scenes I would not have finished the game
It’s a trend I’ve been seeing with western RPGs and it happened with BG3 too. The characters get their edge removed after community feedback and we’re left with extremely dull cartoon characters better fit for fan fiction.
So wild to me to see how the narrative of games change over time. Inquisition has a couple compelling characters but to me it's a hella generic MMO-like mapiconslop-type game that was en vogue at the time.
Which is a fucking travesty considering that before this new generation they were responsible for some of the pillars of rpg games. Kotor, DA:O, and Mass Effect are all in mine and a lot of other peoples top 5 rpgs of all time, and BG/NWN are every bit as important, just to a different audience.
They did it to themselves. Based on the Anthem retrospective article years ago by Jason Schrier, they basically diddle around till the deadlines come up, then crunch 80 hours a week or more to get a game out, and call it "BioWare magic" and pat themselves on the back as everyone quits due to burnout. The new hires aren't the same level of talent, so it gets worse.
It's pretty clear there were serious issues behind the scenes. Andromeda was also in development for years and basically got rebuilt from the ground up in something like less than 2 years.
And Veilguard was shit. THAT was the level of quality the studio produces now a days. The old Bioware died a long time ago when all the old employees with talent left.
They actually had veterans left like Trick Weekes who wrote some of the best characters in Mass Effect 2 in a lead position for Veilguard. Veterans are not everything. On the other hand the Mass Effect writing team had the lead writer from the great Guardians of the Galaxy game and supposedly all the decently written parts in Veilguard is where the Mass Effect team helped out. I think Mass effect couldve been good.
They had two different teams. The Mass Effect/Anthem team and the Dragon Age Team. Andromeda was developed by a different Bioware studio then closed afterwards.
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u/PoliteDebaterPhenom II X4 975 BE, GTX 560ti, Gskill 8GB RAM, Sabertooth 990X 3h ago
Mass effect 4 went into full production last year IIRC
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u/KKilikk 7h ago
They worked on Veilguard? Mass Effect was only in pre-production while the majority was working on Veilguard.