Escapist News Now: KOTOR Devs Working on New Bioware IP

[Sanunes]

If I was to never buy a game again from a specific developer because of a bad ending that means I would never buy another Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed 3) or Irrational Games (BioShock: Infinite). If you want to use bad development Bethesda to me is the worst offender with many of their games still containing the same bugs and requiring the community to fix them or making a game that doesn't work on console for months after release (Skyrim). Another game company that has put out a major bad game, I would consider GearBox to be a worse offender then BioWare with their recent offerings of Duke Nukem Forever and Alien: Colonial Marines.

For some reason I don't see the hate from bloggers and message boards because of these games, I wonder why people have decided that BioWare is the only publisher to ever mistreat them.

 

[A3sir]

Lets be honest, if you ask someone what their favourite Bioware game is and they don't say Shadows of Amn, whether they have played it or not, they are wrong.

 

[james.sponge]

KOTOR was a one time achievement that was reproduced in all subsequent BW games from Jade Empire through Mass Effect and Dragon Age showing they don't really know how to incorporate new mechanics into their games (oh sorry they did mimic Gears of War). As a studio BW is greatly overrated and still rides on the popularity of both BG series and KOTOR, their narratives are shallow and rely way too much on tropes and archetypes used thousands of times in their own games. Their narratives lack cohesion and are often full of contradictions (just look at the continuity issues in DA and ME).

I'm guessing the popularity of their recent games can be attributed to the film-like feeling and atmosphere that really adds to the experience but then again same feeling can't be reproduced during later playthroughs making those games boring and dull.

I think I will turn around and wait for Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity instead.

 

[daibakuha]

Honestly I think a new IP is probably the best thing they could be doing right now. It's something the industry need desperately, and people will have no pre-built conceptions on what type of game is should be. Which seems to be the problem with Bioware sequels lately.

 

[Aetrion]

I believe that Bioware can pull off incredibly amazing games. The main reason why I stopped really heavily playing their stuff is because of EA, not because of Bioware. I never bought Mass Effect 3 because I simply refuse to buy something off Origin when I have my other two Mass Effect games on Steam. I don't care if they have to take out the Multiplayer to put it on steam, I never asked for a multiplayer anyways. But between the fact that they weren't offering the conclusion to the trilogy on the same store that I owned the first two parts on plus the fact that the ending was reported to suck anyways I just lost interest in even buying it.

I actually really liked Dragon Age 2, I liked that my character was developing a real legacy and could actually stay alive for a sequel without killing his friends or spawning any demon babies. (I honestly thought the end of Dragon Age Origins was lame because it forced you to kill yourself to end the game without doing anything unethical, even though most people don't see it that way because Morrigan's tits distracted from from reading between the lines and realizing that there is something really fishy about someone who just got a brand new book on possessing powerful younger bodies begging you to let her create a baby with an archdemon's soul and then take it away to be "raised". I'm not killing one body-snatching witch only to enable another.) Granted, Dragon Age 2 had a ton of problems, and there were a lot of things about it that were just really lame, like the re-used levels, the fact that in every single fight 20 more enemies would jump off the roofs, the mages not being able to do any damage without having a set up by a fighter or rogue, or the simple fact that the story was miandering and lacked serious focus. All in all though those are qualities I could forgive in the game. I don't mind stories that tell us more about the characters we are playing with than they do about some great world destroying evil that needs to be stopped. The Witcher 2 is another of my favorite RPGs, and that game comes to no real conclusion of any kind, the bad guy you've been chasing the whole game explains his reasons at the end and you can simply say: "Ok, I guess there is no real reason for me to kill you" and walk away.

The biggest blunder that Bioware made IMO was SWTOR. It actually wasn't a bad game at all, but I just wish I could have skipped all the leveling shit and MMO baggage and just played the stories like I would have in KOTOR. It annoyed me that the game forced me to a whole bunch of grinding to get from one good part to another. Also the stories on the Republic side all seemed kind of lame. It's this typical thing that games with a good and evil faction do that the bad guys do stuff, and the good guys react to stuff that's being done to them that makes the good guys seem completely incompetent and robbed of agency.

What I want to see out of Bioware is an IP that doesn't need to have the whole universe torn assunder at the end to tell a good story. I want my character to go on from game to game and always have a possibility for a sequel. I enjoy games where my character is the thing that ties all the stories together, like Doctor Who or something, it's the chracter that is the one definitive fixture in the world.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Let me guess:

-The game will feature a totally customizable player avatar.
-Said avatar will be a newly minted agent of some galactic/world peacekeeping organization.
-You will be required to gather a party of unique individuals, featuring a broad range of species, genders, sexual orientation and classes.
-Party members will follow the templates of; Big Guy with a Heart of Gold, Jaded Cynic, Oversexed Fan-bait, Naive Magic Wielding Female, and The Straight Guy.
-There will be a romance subplot, featuring straight and gay options, irregardless of a character's previously established orientation, or if it even makes sense in the first place.
-You will not be able to take more than two others with you to annihilate armies.
-You will have a mentor character, possibly voiced by Keith David
-Keith Szarabijka will be in it.
-Combat and dialogue will revolve, pun intended, around use of wheel interface
-Combat will revolve around classes with specific powers
-Dialogue will be based on choosing between three or so choices that run the spectrum of nice, neutral, and dick.
-Despite marketing hype about choice and consequence, the ending will be the same for everyone.

 

[MoltenSilver]

Excited is certainly not the word I'd use. I won't crucify the game before we even know anything, but it'd have to prove a hell of a lot before I'd give it the time of day (plus have nothing to do with origin or have origin overhauled massively, which will almost certainly not happen).

Once upon a time I would have been unbelievably excited by this announcement, but the fact is as far as I'm concerned talking about the Bioware that made KOTOR and the Bioware that is today is like talking about 2 different companies. it's policies, philosophies, and approaches have been hollowed out and infested in place by mindless, machine-calculated minimal effort programming of EA, and anyone who was important to the soul of the old Bioware jumped ship long ago.

I loved mass effect 2. I loved Dragon Age 1. I never played another Bioware game after those two.

And then there's the whole question of competency that ME3 raised. While I hated it, if the writers had come out and said 'this is exactly how I imagined it, this is my artistic vision' I would have sided with 'don't change it, but im sure as hell going to think twice before I buy anything with your name on it if you think this is quality writing'. If they had come out and said 'this was a corporate-inflicted mistake due to deadlines and focus testing, we'll make a better one' That would have again left my skeptical for the future, but a fair bit more forgiving. Instead they offered up the mumbled corner-of-the-mouth placation with the 'extended cut', which did nothing to fix the core problems the ending had (namely, that it was an abrupt shift in tone of the work from 'Shepard can do anything she works hard enough for' to 'you were always screwed no matter what you did'. I've seen some argue that was deliberately the point but given there was zero telegraphing or commentary or any such thing to suggest it was a planned subversion, I'm not giving the benefit of that doubt.)

 

[RedmistSM]

I never playes a Bioware game until these last couple of years, when I got the opportunity to play the Dragon Age series, the Mass Effect series, and Jade Empire. Out of those three, the oldest were the most fun, starting with Jade Empire. And I played that most recently, after all the others! I'll support this new game if I hear they actually make easygoing and fun games again, or if they've hired Platinum to do their action bits or something, like it's Metal Gear Rising again. Or if they've had a massive reworking of the way they make games, because despite Jade Empire, Mass Effect and Dragon Age all having completely different combat systems, the feel of the world is exactly the same. It doesn't seem like they have ever changed how they make the basis of a game, and I can't imagine their oldest veterans are going to be the ones to change it up.

 

[Gatx]

Well if its not KOTOR 3 i shall be sending a very strongly worded letter to Bioware telling them of my feelings on this matter...or i'll just grumble to myself. It's not like they listen to us mere mortals now is it?

It's a new IP so it's pretty much 100% that it won't be KotOR 3.

 

[Ticklefist]

Let me guess:

-The game will feature a totally customizable player avatar.
-Said avatar will be a newly minted agent of some galactic/world peacekeeping organization.
-You will be required to gather a party of unique individuals, featuring a broad range of species, genders, sexual orientation and classes.
-Party members will follow the templates of; Big Guy with a Heart of Gold, Jaded Cynic, Oversexed Fan-bait, Naive Magic Wielding Female, and The Straight Guy.
-There will be a romance subplot, featuring straight and gay options, irregardless of a character's previously established orientation, or if it even makes sense in the first place.
-You will not be able to take more than two others with you to annihilate armies.
-You will have a mentor character, possibly voiced by Keith David
-Keith Szarabijka will be in it.
-Combat and dialogue will revolve, pun intended, around use of wheel interface
-Combat will revolve around classes with specific powers
-Dialogue will be based on choosing between three or so choices that run the spectrum of nice, neutral, and dick.
-Despite marketing hype about choice and consequence, the ending will be the same for everyone.

Yeah but some of us play really really hard and get to hear extraneous companion dialogue that others don't get to. Because choices. Totally worth the $80 day one full game purchase.

 

[Oroboros]

Honestly, too many of Bioware's more recent games do not appeal to me for me to be terribly interested in this. The First Mass Effect game was the last Bioware game I really enjoyed, because they really nailed the space opera genre with that one, before they turned the series into a mess of a sex, violence, and swearing drenched action shlock to make the game 'darker and grittier' or whatever. Dragon age to me was never terribly inspired, and compared unfavorably to its predecessors Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate. Making a new IP should be an excuse to strike out in new exciting directions, but Bioware used it as an excuse to rip off a half dozen pre-established fantasy settings in order to cobble together the most generic fantasy setting possible and avoid paying royalties. And the sequel hilariously couldn't even stay consistent with that, with Bioware suddenly deciding that Dragon Age really needed JRPG aesthetics all along and throwing in more sex and violence. (honestly don't know why they keep doing this, throwing that in doesn't automatically make a game more mature). And lastly of course, they took a dump on the legacy of the KoToR series by turning it into a MMO cash-in only tangentially related to the RPG series.

I'd love to see Bioware return to its roots that made me adore them in the past, but honestly I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Seracen]

I think BW needs to step back and take their time on the next few projects. I also think EA needs to take several leaps back and let them do their thing.

I have faith that the games will be fun, but I'm not able to invest myself in anything they do until I see results. I certainly won't buy DA3 unless PC versions ship with no Origin tie-in (not likely).

Also, demos and no-holds-barred reviews before buying. Gone are the days of buying any games on faith, $60 is too much to take a gamble with, esp when most games out there barely last 3 sittings.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I'm game.

I loved Dragon Age 2 and the Mass Effect 3.

The ending of ME 3 didn't effect me, though I didn't sit around sifting through all the points of series to come up with the absolute must make ending. I experienced it, it is what it is, and I'm fine with it.

So, whatever new thing they come up with it is pretty much guaranteed that I will love it.

 

[Ayay]

i would love a nice new game. But that company is sadly dead for me since they will be tied to Origin. And i am not touching that. As for whats coming i would think ME with a diffrent skin. The whole new thing really dont exist anymore.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Let me guess:

-The game will feature a totally customizable player avatar.
-Said avatar will be a newly minted agent of some galactic/world peacekeeping organization.
-You will be required to gather a party of unique individuals, featuring a broad range of species, genders, sexual orientation and classes.
-Party members will follow the templates of; Big Guy with a Heart of Gold, Jaded Cynic, Oversexed Fan-bait, Naive Magic Wielding Female, and The Straight Guy.
-There will be a romance subplot, featuring straight and gay options, irregardless of a character's previously established orientation, or if it even makes sense in the first place.
-You will not be able to take more than two others with you to annihilate armies.
-You will have a mentor character, possibly voiced by Keith David
-Keith Szarabijka will be in it.
-Combat and dialogue will revolve, pun intended, around use of wheel interface
-Combat will revolve around classes with specific powers
-Dialogue will be based on choosing between three or so choices that run the spectrum of nice, neutral, and dick.
-Despite marketing hype about choice and consequence, the ending will be the same for everyone.

If that is what some people like, that is what they like.

And frankly, I do.

And mostly the dialog wheel, I love it.

It saves me a ton of time. I don't have to constantly reread choices to see if I'm picking the one with the outcome I want. I don't have to do a bunch of reloading of my previous save because I chose the wrong dialogue choice for my character.

It is one of the reasons I finished Dragon Age 2 and loved it, but DA: Origins not having it is one of the reasons I only got through about 20 hours of it and stopped, because the dialogue choices were way too subtle most of the time that I had to reload on almost every conversation. I liked the story of DA:Origins, of what I experienced, but it just got tedious dealing with the mess that was the dialogue, though the hosed up combat and leveling system were also in play in my dislike of DA:O.

I know that KotOR had the same list dialogue as DA:Origins, but at least with KotOR it was worlds easier to pick out the light and dark choices.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Let me guess:

-The game will feature a totally customizable player avatar.
-Said avatar will be a newly minted agent of some galactic/world peacekeeping organization.
-You will be required to gather a party of unique individuals, featuring a broad range of species, genders, sexual orientation and classes.
-Party members will follow the templates of; Big Guy with a Heart of Gold, Jaded Cynic, Oversexed Fan-bait, Naive Magic Wielding Female, and The Straight Guy.
-There will be a romance subplot, featuring straight and gay options, irregardless of a character's previously established orientation, or if it even makes sense in the first place.
-You will not be able to take more than two others with you to annihilate armies.
-You will have a mentor character, possibly voiced by Keith David
-Keith Szarabijka will be in it.
-Combat and dialogue will revolve, pun intended, around use of wheel interface
-Combat will revolve around classes with specific powers
-Dialogue will be based on choosing between three or so choices that run the spectrum of nice, neutral, and dick.
-Despite marketing hype about choice and consequence, the ending will be the same for everyone.

If that is what some people like, that is what they like.

And frankly, I do.

And mostly the dialog wheel, I love it.

It saves me a ton of time. I don't have to constantly reread choices to see if I'm picking the one with the outcome I want. I don't have to do a bunch of reloading of my previous save because I chose the wrong dialogue choice for my character.

It is one of the reasons I finished Dragon Age 2 and loved it, but DA: Origins not having it is one of the reasons I only got through about 20 hours of it and stopped, because the dialogue choices were way too subtle most of the time that I had to reload on almost every conversation. I liked the story of DA:Origins, of what I experienced, but it just got tedious dealing with the mess that was the dialogue, though the hosed up combat and leveling system were also in play in my dislike of DA:O.

I know that KotOR had the same list dialogue as DA:Origins, but at least with KotOR it was worlds easier to pick out the light and dark choices.

A fair point. I was still burned by Mass Effect 3's autodialogue and two choice selection. Hopefully, the team working on this game have a clue on where the story's going beforehand.

 

[Alar]

I'm gonna take a whack at it, and this might be a long shot, but I'm going to say... science fiction. Yep, I know, I know! Not exactly in their purview, but I've got a feeling...

 

[Aetrion]

That's a sentiment that I see quite a lot, but you have to realize that BioWare only exists in name. It is no longer a company. You cannot buy stock in BioWare nor do they produce their own annual financial statements. BioWare is EA. You can't blame EA and not BioWare, because they are the same company.

I'm using the words BioWare and EA as meaning "The development team" and "The publishing company that owns them". The devs working under the name BioWare deliver good games, even their recent "misses" were still thoroughly enjoyable, they just didn't live up to expectations. The publisher that works under the name EA fucked up a lot of stuff for them, for example by implementing all kinds of dickish DLC money making schemes, store exclusivity and multiplayer where it didn't belong.

 

[Icehearted]

Anyone else remember how great Origin games were when they were bought by EA? How about Bullfrog? No? There's a reason for that, the same reason why there should be no question about why we haven't seen quality games from BioWare; they don't exist anymore!

You can keep using the name BioWare all you want, but as a company, as an organization, they are just one of many of EA's tentacles now. It is absurd to think that carving someone's face off and wearing it over you own make you that person... it is absurd for anyone ton think EA is BioWare because they're using BioWares's name. That company is long LONG dead.

EA Isn't BioWare. Why is that so difficult for people to comprehend?!