100% this! Dragon Age Origins (DAO) was the last classic Bioware game. It was all downward from there. Even though EA acquired Bioware before the release of DAO, the majority of DAO's production was done before the EA acquisition.
... it was a great game and I attribute that to almost the entire game was done before the EA buy out.
But stuff like an extra emphasis on Gears of War inspired shooting/combat and lack of unique and numerous types of equipment (armor & weapons) to pickup. Also that god awful final boss that most people forget about (rightfully so lol). All that stuff might not be EA's faults but I've always held EA responsible lol.
In my opinion the original Mass Effect will always my favorite. It was something of a rough game in terms of shooting mechanics but it was such an awesome action RPG in terms of storytelling and loot.
Agreed. Where the first game was a slow burner planting down a universe, the second game started with the idea of building a team for a suicide mission, finding a way to start the suicide mission, and pulling through the suicide mission. A pitiful final mission would have made the rest of the game look bad, but holy hell is it a full hour of pure badassness. And even if the boss itself was a bit lackluster, it served its purpose.
And that awesome music for the final cutscene while the Harbinger promises obliteration in the background was nothing but goosebumps inducing epicness.
One thing that niggled me was the fact that weapons didn't need reloading in the first ME. Fully explained why and then in two suddenly you had to have "ammo" like any other shooter.
lack of unique and numerous types of equipment (armor & weapons) to pickup.
While this made ME1 more of an RPG, it had too much inventory bloat that didn't really matter. The only thing that mattered was the manufacturer and tier of the weapon.
I think ME2 was an overall improvement, although it did dumb down the system too much, and ME3 was an improvement on this, keeping the simplified system but allowing for weapon customization.
ME1 weapons and armor was frustrating. I'm playing through the Legendary edition again and I forgot just how useless most of the weapons were - there was no reason to go with anything outside of the most damaging.
ME2, even for its lack of weapons and armors, at least made the ones that you picked up distinctive. Would've been nice to compare damage outputs, etc, but it's so nice not having to deal with 20 Generic Weapon Xs.
Mass effect 2 is exploration of what it be like to make an RPG, except without any choices, exploration, or any kind of meaningful story progression.
It’s a game that gets untold glaze purely based on its cast of characters, but even then 90% of the player base is just running fucking Garrus(an Me1 character).
Even then the interactions with them are pretty shallow and follow the same template of Recruit mission—>”help me with my daddy issues or else I’ll be to busy thinking about the to do my job” conversation —> loyalty mission—> “thanks shepherd, Now I’ll never have any new dialogue again unless we’re fucking” conversation.
The suicide mission was genuinely cool, but even that is soured by the fact it’s really a gimmick that should have been in the final game, not 2 out 3, so me3 had to work around trying to cohesively incorporate an entire roster that all could be dead or not.
Maybe instead you should take off your rose colored glasses.
Remember there's an EA logo right when you start the game - that alone is a bad sign.
Don't forget that Mass Effect 2 was not an action RPG (like ME1) but an action shooter - built as such for mass appeal in the wake of games like Gears of War. I won't bore you with all the details between what was changed from the original game to Mass Effect 2 to make it more marketable and sell to the "Halo crowd".
Also lets not forget things like that terrible final boss battle which was clearly thrown together to feel like an epic finale for a big budget game (similar situation happened to BioShock when in development by 2K).
Anyways, I never said it was bad in fact I said it was a great game but yeah EA did have some influence on it in a minor way and to me the game was always a bit tainted for that.
Dragon Age Origins was one of the few games out there where after the credits rolled, I just went "....damn..."
I dont want to spoil it, but all the shit I ended up doing with morrigan...the way my pc just, ruined allistair all the way to the end. One of my all time favorite stories in gaming.
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias RTX 5090 FE | R7 9800X3D | 2TB 9100 PRO G5 | 64GB DDR5 8h ago
Last golden Bioware game was original Dragon Age.
Even Mass Effect 2 had some EA taint.