Is Bioware losing its magic?

[Tiamat666]

Well to me, Bioware has always been a "cinematic RPG" experience and I think they have stayed true to their formula, more or less. I enjoy their games, but prefer Oblivion-Style RPGs.

With Bioware the whole world is static and limited. You can't move stuff around, you may only open certain containers, you may not walk along that way, you may only talk to certain people, etc. The storyline sets the rules and the world is built around it to accomodate it. Whereas in Oblivion-style RPGs the world comes first and the storyline is set into that world. You can go everywhere, open everything, talk to everyone... it feels alot more alive and realistic.

I still enjoy Bioware games. But it hurts me every time I want to walk along a certain path only to have the game stop me with some invisible wall because the area is "off limits". I find RPGs where I can walk anywhere, look into everything and climb atop the roofs of houses, if I so wish, alot more enjoyable.

 

[Lenny Magic]

Is Bioware losing its magic?

or Is magic losing its Bioware?

 

[MrSnugglesworth]

Welcome to the escapist.



Good 1st to 3rd post.

 

[slackbheep]

I think ME and DA have both been excellent. I agree with some of the points you've made about how voice acting restricts the level of choice in dialogue trees and so on, however I feel that overall Bioware has been making better games, and not worse.

As someone who never bothered with Kotor when it came out (was on a bit of a gaming hiatus, and not a xbox fan at the time) and whom is playing it now, I have to say that the storyline is great, but the writing in the newer games feels "tighter".

 

[RanD00M]

I´m sorry for making a rather idiotic post here.But you just blew my mind!

 

[Decabo]

The problem I had with Mass Effect is that the game lacks life, like you said. Ither than the citadel, all the mission planets are just for combat and don't really feel like they have towns. They're all just bland little encampments between long mako driving sequences. KOTOR and Jade Empire both had multiple towns to explore, many of which had very involved sidequests. Many of ME's sidequests are just going from one person to another to solve problems, none of them have the depth of KOTOR, where you try to find out who the murderer on Dantooine is, or get the old lady her tea house back in Jade Empire. Now, I still consider Bioware to be the best game developer of the decade, I plan on getting DA:O soon, and look forward to ME 2 in a month, but I see what you're saying.



Oh, for the record, I've beaten ME on Insanity and gotten to lvl 60, so don't claim that I haven't dug deep enough into the side quests.

 

[Danpascooch]

I agree to an extent.

Nostalgia will always haunt future projects, and if Star Wars taught us anything it's that new technology can cheapen things (although there are many many other reasons the new trilogy sucked)

I still love Bioware, and I equate about 75% of its little decline to EA, but yeah, I hope the games have a little more charm in the future.

KotOR still has the best characters ever.

 

[Galad]

My problem with it is the poor difficulty settings. Easy is.. where as normal is batshit impossible.

You are kidding me. On normal difficulty my character is pretty much soloing his way through the hordes of enemies.

I found most of the game easy enough on Hard difficulty with Morrigan and Wynne in the party, so I tried to combine their roles in one char - the mage PC on my current playthrough and the game has been difficult aplenty(sp?). Then I go on the DA:O forums and read tactics I couldn't have imagined to beat some of the toughest foes, and in a way feel like a failure of a gamer lol. I'm saying this just to prove a point - to each their own gaming experience.

Now on topic, perhaps you were hoping for something new, or at least, the old thing, but with a new spin. It's been discussed in at least a couple of threads about how Bioware is excellent at exploring an already created world, and I'd say they're now at their peak of it, and I have no idea how they could get better at it(read: does not mean I believe DA:O to be original or unique). And the voice acting was truly top-notch. That being said I can't say whether they're losing their magic since I haven't played even half of their titles, I just hope they don't err run out of creative world re-building ideas, so to say..

On a side note, I'd much rather prefer a main character that is voiced over than a mute one. Yes, there is immersion in Half-Life with the silent G.Freeman, but there was immersion in the Witcher too..

 

[TheSupremeForce]

I vote nostalgia.
Frankly, Star Wars and the Forgotten Realms are no less "generic" than any of the settings BioWare has established for themselves. That doesn't make them "bad." It simply means that you're biased toward the familiar.

 

[Emenhil]

I vote nostalgia.
Frankly, Star Wars and the Forgotten Realms are no less "generic" than any of the settings BioWare has established for themselves. That doesn't make them "bad." It simply means that you're biased toward the familiar.

Hmmm. I beg to differ; I hardly knew the Forgotten Realms before playing Baldur's Gate. I just mean the writers had more content at hand; more content equals more inspiration, more creatures (a lot... LOT more than in Dragon Age, for instance), more... everything, really. World-building is tough! Starting from scratch is always much more difficult.

 

[Baby Tea]

As a massive Bioware fan (I'm trying to get my wife to name our first daughter Imoen...and she's almost on-board!), I'm going to respectfully disagree. You certainly make valid, and good points for your feelings, but Bioware has stayed top-tier for me in terms of RPGs and storytelling.

Baldur's Gate is my favourite RPG and game series ever. And I mean ever. Nothing else, of any genre or year, even comes close to being better the Baldur's Gate (For me), so to try and hold every new RPG that Bioware makes against the shining, perfect armor that is Baldur's Gate is, really, just unfair. It will always be lacking.

In regards to voice acting: I see what you mean, but I think it's all about immersion. Let's be honest here: As truly awesome as Baldur's Gate is, it's not entirely immersive. You never think you're watching a movie, or watching serious drama play out. Maybe it's the limitations of the engine, or maybe it's the piles of text you're reading. Games like Baldur's Gate certainly can be, and are, immersive in their own way, but compared to Mass Effect, or even Dragon Age (Which I thought was a great game, but a step back in 'immersiveness'), there is no contest. Especially Mass Effect, where you could choose your dialog selection before there were done talking, so that the conversation just flowed. I loved that. I freaking was commander Shepard.

As for the working within worlds, I disagree again.
Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Jade Empire all have a rich, interesting world, with interesting lore, characters, rulers, and villains. Certainly Baldur's Gate and KOTOR offer excellent, unique perspectives on an established world. They are both very memorable games (One, as I said, being my favourite game of all time). But Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Jade Empire are all quite good. Plenty of 'stuff' to learn about, explore, experience, and see play out. They may not be as fleshed out as the Star Wars universe or the D&D universe, but look at the age of both of those universes compared to the originals! These new worlds are mere infants by comparison! The level of detail for a relatively much smaller time of existence is excellent, and I, for one, love it.

 

[Emenhil]

Coming into this thread, going on the title, I was expecting something quite different. It's strange, but... I kinda agree... kind of. It's definitely nostalgia talking, but it's the same nostalgia that talks to me, so I wholly get what you're on about.

Haha yeah I admit that the thread title was a tad over-the-top. And you're right - I am nitpicking on one of my favourite developer. Just felt like discussion the pros and cons of their new IPs I'm certainly not hating on them; hell, I spent more than 120 hours on DA

 

[Amnestic]

(I'm trying to get my wife to name our first daughter Imoen...and she's almost on-board!)

So in this case, you play the part of the Lord of Murder? That's some odd bedroom roleplay you got going on there.

Just watch out that your daughter doesn't go starting a thieves guild. Those never end well.

 

[Sccye]

Astute. You're not high on nostalgia, but there are some points I'd add.

In general, I do agree with you. The glory days of yore (about 1998-2004, in my mind) for RPGs are long gone. BG, IWD, PST, NWN. Ugly, clunky, obtuse - but also beautiful and brilliant. But whereas you point to creative constraints, I'd allude to technological ones. In the infinity engine, creating atmosphere was a tool that had to be achieved through narrative. Through storytelling. The media with which they had to work was less dependent upon shiny-pretty things and more reliant on the skill of the writing.

PST is possibly the single most stylishy constructed piece of storytelling I've encountered in my 15 odd years as a gamer. The voice acting it does have is limited, but potent when encountered. But it isn't the focus. It's icing on a cake of gooey, moist, sweet and slightly orgasmic dialogue that strums the shimmering mandolin of existential angst +6. Yes. It's a sex-cake playing obscure enchanted instruments. Constructing metaphors isn't my strong point. But that aside, the focus was on creating a core of a story, on working with more technically limited resources, it forced the dev team to invest their creative capital in a more focused fashion. The artwork, sound and visual things that *did* exist were perfect for what they were doing. But they were little more than pretty pictures. The real meat of things was in the script. There was more room to interpret, read, breathe into the story itself. At least, that's what I think the beauty of text is.

The modern generation of games is often more focused on creating an interactive cinematic as opposed to text-driven narrative experience. To bastardise, it's style over substance. And for what it's worth, Bioware have done an amazing job in DA and ME. Both are amazing games that I have / am (not quite finished DE yet!) deriving (derived) a great amount of pleasure from. However, you're quite right that they lack something. That something, I would argue, is narrative depth sustained by continuity. Human beings love the familiar, the constant. A consistent universe offers that. Even games with relatively weak writing and characterisation offer a strange feeling of comfort to them. Gothic, for example. In the second game, when you meet old characters, it's strangely satisfying. Going back over old-but-new locations and seeing how things have changed is disproportionately awesome. A consistent cast of simple but effective characters made a significant difference. DA and ME have yet to have had a chance with this.

The strength of the IE / Aurora cluster of games is not that there's a pre-established universe viz. the P&P stuff (although that helps) but that they co-exist together as a beautiful Bioware / Black Isle constellation in the Forgotten Realms sky. There are overlapping fantasy narratives that inform eachother. I'd never encountered D&D prior to playing BG I as a confused pre-teen. By the time I'd completed BG I & II as a spotty teenager I knew the universe. Then I picked up IWD, NWN and PST and recognised the tropes of the series, some of the names of deities. Places I recognised were referenced. I knew Baldur's Gate. I'd *been* there, dammit! Neverwinter... that's to the south somewhere, isn't it? Corugnons! Galbrezus! Pit Fiends! Oh Gods, the Blood War... again! And so on.

The established universe was certainly a useful pretext, helping give depth and richness to the materials Bioware had to work with, but I'd argue that given some sequels and / or spin-offs, the DA / ME universes could be just as dynamic and effective. These things are build, bit by bit, like anything. Even the largest of cities once started out as tiny mud huts.

I look forward to seeing how ME 2 manages to build on the previous universe - and to what extent Bioware manage to build upon the previously constructed world.

Welcome to the escapist.

 

[randomrob]

Too much writing OP! Can't concentrate, remember your talking to gamers here who have had their attention spans artificially and prematurely shortened by the pretty flashing lights and sound effects that are today's video games.

 

[josetaco]

Dude we are fanboys nit picking and argueing with each other is what we do best.

 

[Emenhil]

Astute. You're not high on nostalgia, but there are some points I'd add.

[...]

Welcome to the escapist.

Thanks! You make an excellent point. That's exactly what I meant, actually: the technical limitations of the Infinity Engine put the emphasis on the narrative, and that's why these games are so close to my heart. I'm not sure I agree when you say that what DA and ME are lacking is "narrative depth sustained by continuity". Well, they do lack that, but there is something else. I think I would have liked DA much more had it been more... subtle. Let's go back to my villain comparison.

Spoiler

Loghain, Howe, the son of the iarl of denerim... Most of the villains, big and small, were too evil for me to care about. Bioware does try to redeem Loghain, at the end, but it feels kind of forced. I never felt the way I did when I discovered Jon Irenicus's clones, at the very start of the game, then understanding that the elf queen was his long-lost paramour. The "creepy-but-moving-but-awful-but..." moments that truly defines a tragic antagonist. Irenicus didn't slaughter your family and/or friends, he tortures Imoen, and he torments you: somehow, that's much worse.

Ok, stopping now before I type another wall o' text

Thanks again!