Has Bioware been falling in quality?

[theriddlen]

I never thought of Bioware as a solid, top-of-the-line hits-only developer, like Valve. They just sometimes hit all the right buttons and make something marvelous, like KOTOR or Mass Effect franchise. They've always had some worse games - like Jade Empire or Dragon Age.

I'm waiting for ME3 with great anticipation, I even preordered a CE, but I don't really feel like any other franchise that's currently in development there will be interesting for me at all.

 

[soulfire130]

If it is falling in quality then its better to have it happen now because the longer it takes to have a few bad games, the worst the bad games are going to be.

 

[XUnsafeNormalX]

You know what? I have yet to play a BioWare game I didn't love!

BioWare made my favorite game of all time (BG2) and have also made the best game of 2011 (SWTOR). I never played Mass Effect, but I loved DA:O and DA2.

Also, to answer your question, SWTOR has the dialogue wheel because of asthetic appeal. It looks a lot nicer than choosing from a list of options in the letterboxing. I just wish there wer more than three options for EVERY dialogue choice.

CAPTCHA: Love Republic

YES MASTER!

Eh I wouldn't really call ToR the GOTY just yet. All MMOs are frontloaded to garner as many subscriptions as possible, it's also probably not a coincidence that many reviewers only play the beginning of the game to get a feel for it. From what I've heard and seen ToR doesn't have much in the form of level 50 content so I feel that it's staying power on the MMO market may be brief.

It's been out a week. It's got SOME level 50 content, but what's the point of adding a lot of end-game content when more than 3/4 of your playerbase is still making it's way up there. In fact, anyone who is already at level 50 get's weird looks from my guild, like they've rushed their way there without seeing anything around them.

Like WoW, they will add more end-game content as the game goes on. They're working on leveling for the first month or so (I'm guessing). If you expect a new MMO to have hours of raiding and PVP content at launch, then you are in for a dissapointment.

And besides, what else am I going to call GOTY? There's nothing else released this year worthy of the title (aside from maybe Portal 2).

Skyrim, The Witcher 2, Battlefield 3 if you're into that kind of thing.

I realize they will be adding content in the next months but there are plenty of level 50 characters already that may be bored out of their skulls by the time it comes out. In today's market I wouldn't release a game without a few months of endgame content already on the discs.

 

[TheMagicLemur]

That's not what my issue was though. My issue was with the drop in writing quality (people throwing around cursewords out of the blue didn't give the writing any extra gravitas, it just sounded like kids who just learned swear words) and the focus on action at the expense of the story. I knew EXACTLY who they were trying to appeal to when the first trailer of Jack dropped "Who's the bad-ass biotic *****" nearly kept me from even RENTING that fucking game).

Emphasis for hilarity.

Fair enough, but I curse all the time. THe first game didn't really have any profanity that I recall, so the second game suddenly throwing it in felt less like "realism" and more awkward and stilted.

As far as Shepard killing a Reaper, they could have done it in a way that wasn't ridiculous. Shooting at a giant Iron Maiden stage prop was silly. Besides, I don't understand this notion that ever game needs a "boss fight" Then again, I'm more concerned with an interesting story than combat. *shrug*