Poll: Bioware needs to grow up

[josephmatthew10]

SNIP

I'd disagree about KOTOR, very much so. It was really better than KOTOR II, because Lucasarts didn't meddle with the release date, and Bioware had time to make their game consistent in its quality (which was good; it was somewhat lighter than KOTOR II, but the dialogue was excellent, and it painted a grand portrait of good vs evil on the canvas of the Star Wars universe.)

 

[Slayer_2]

Nostalgia is a *****. Why just a few days ago, I was reminiscing about my first 3D game I owned, Quake 2. So I went and played it. Turns out it's still fun, but can't compete with modern games. If you want that game, go play it. And don't pretend that you'd like an updated version with new graphics and modern features, we all know how much spite that'd get from the community. Gamer's are a fickle bunch.

 

[NoNameMcgee]

Their storytelling? Fine, im satisfied with it. It's not perfect but they make it gripping enough.

Their gameplay? (you know the much more important bit?) sucks in everything except Mass Effect 2. But then I don't think RPG fans really care about gameplay.

 

[Blackout62]

Poll is dickish, actual post brings up some interesting points.

Frankly I think Bioware writes great characters and that Mass Effect 1 was the perfection of their patented story formula, Obsidian has way better writers but the buginess of their games has been overblown, and Bethesda just can't write a good main quest.

 

[josephmatthew10]

Whilst not perfect Bioware are still better than everyone else.

Simply untrue. Obsidian is head and shoulders above Bioware in terms of quality of narrative. They just can't put together a working, polished game to save their lives.

LOL Very funny, I guess that's why I can't help but trip over all these threads and comments about how amazing Obsidian Entertainment is at story telling...Or even mentioning them at all.

Alpha protocol? Terrible story, terribly executed.

Kotor 2? not bad, but Has nothing on Kotor 1.

New Vegas had an "Okay" story, certainly nothing to write home about.

Dungeon Siege 3? Christ I don't even need to explain anything there. Fucking terrible.

Haven't played neverwinter nights, but I sincerely doubt that they pulled anything fantastic out of nowhere.

Biowares story telling, however, is regarded as being one of the best in the industry, along with the likes of Rockstar. There's a reason why even heavily critical Zero Punctuation notes it's just a given a bioware game will have great writing.

You wanna believe that obsidian has bested bioware, a highly critically acclaimed-for-story-telling developer, in story telling? Fine, be my guest. I wanna believe there's a million pounds in my bank, But I guess just believing it against all evidence doesn't magically make either of those things true.

z
z
This actually sums up my feelings a bit better.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Poll is dickish, actual post brings up some interesting points.

In my defense, these forums eat 90% of the polls anyway. I seriously didn't expect it to survive.

 

[sheah1]

Hang on, so, if Bioware sucks so bad, then who's their superior narrative wise? Obsidian? I'll accept..... who else? And I mean in modern gaming. Yes planetscape may run rings around it (according to you, I've never played it, but I don't wanna spoil it just in case), but it also runs rings around everyone else.

Edit: In fact, forget Obsidian. It's been said that Bioware is great for characters, not overall conception..... Same for Obsidian. Exactly the same.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Their storytelling? Fine, im satisfied with it. It's not perfect but they make it gripping enough.

Their gameplay? (you know the much more important bit?) sucks in everything except Mass Effect 2. But then I don't think RPG fans really care about gameplay.

you know you don't have to like it fine, but i DO care about the gameplay, and i buy RPG's because i LIKE the gameplay, alot actually. (not to say i don't like ME2, because i do, it is awesome)

is it really that hard to understand? i don't need super action packed twitch killz every 5 seconds to find the gameplay enticing. i like the turn based set in real time action, which is why i've played kotor 1 + 2 for a combined total of over 100 playthroughs, while DA:O and neverwinter nights i've done probably at least 10 playthroughs on those too.

 

[josephmatthew10]

I feel that I have to throw my hat in with what bz316 said above. There is a lot of subtlety between the lines if you look for it.

Bioware is great for making sure every character gets a development arc, making sure the overall story doesn't get in the way of the smaller stories, and piecing it all together so that you can still answer the question "yeah, but what's the game about?" in less than 3 pages of text.

My favorite example of this is still Jade Empire. The "save the world" plot was masterfully written and realized from beginning to end.
(oh, crap. I don't know how to do spoiler tags. Apologies to anyone who hasn't played the game if this doesn't work)

The classic "your destiny is to save the world" plot is redeemed by proving to be an artificial construction of Master Li himself. He intentionally filled your head with these ideals and trained you to have a monster of a hero complex. In the end you save the kingdom in spite of this, not because you're the destined hero he said you were.

At the same time, every character has an individual development arc that is often directly influenced by you as the leader.

You can force Dawn Star, for example, to grow a spine and stop whining about her insecurities, but that doesn't mean you have to go "evil" for the entire story.

Speaking of evil, that was also the best handling of evil in games I've seen. I'm tired of the evil option answering the "why" question with "because I'm a dick and I hate kittens"
Jade Empire introduced the "closed fist" option which allowed you to have a valid philosophy behind why you weren't a doormat for every NPC who lost their shoe in the forest or has a mean landlord.

Last soapbox rant about Bioware games and good/evil RPGs in general. Please stop balancing the game assuming players will be 100% good or evil.

(ME2)When I can't get the "good" ending because I don't see the point in blowing up an alien weapons lab as opposed to turning it over to the Council or Alliance instead of Cerberus that shouldn't make me evil! that's just practical thinking. "It's tainted" isn't an excuse to burn a book, and isn't an excuse to potentially deny your species valuable insight into your attackers.

When you take away options for your player because they don't agree with your view of good or evil, the player is forced to make that choice once at character creation, and will be pure good or pure evil for the rest of the game so they can get the best bonuses. They no longer have a choice of whether they agree that the genophage is for the greater good, now they have to choose between gameplay and role playing.

Sorry for the wall of text, I just needed to get that out of my system.

TL;DR version:
1.Jade Empire did a great job of keeping the overall story nuanced while not neglecting individual character arcs.

2.If you're going to make being evil an option, at least give me a story-relevant reason to do so.

3.Don't punish your players for actually thinking about the decisions you place in front of them rather than looking for the one with the most "good points" so they won't get a bad ending.

[applause, flowers]

 

[Mookowicz]

The Star Wars and ME franchises are both space opera: larger than life characters having adventures in space.

The narrative problem (if you want to call it a problem) is really that space opera tends to deliver adventure, not drama. That's a genre artefact and not a problem of execution -- and arguably there's a huge market for SF adventure, but a very small one for SF drama, so I can't really blame a publishing house for targeting its SF titles that way.

To be honest, I'm not sure what the DA franchise is. It's not quite high adventure nor drama either. DA:O was well-executed adventure aiming to be drama. I never got DA:2 for reasons readily apparent in the comments here.

Bioware's doing (mostly) fine in execution. But its picking its genres based on commercial success, and that won't appeal to all tastes.

 

[Omnific One]

Bioware is the king of cliches and nobody realizes it. However, they do make it work as well as possible for a cliche.

 

[Robert Ewing]

The problem I'm having with Bioware is their cut and paste attiude to characters and plotlines. It's ok to have archtypes in their games but it's getting stupid.

Some Examples of characters/events COPIED between games:

The Special lead: Child of Bhaal/Jedi Knight/Spectres/Grey Wardens (although I have the least problems with these)
The stoic warrior: Canderous Ordo/Sten/Wrex
The naive yet plucky girl: Mission Vao/Tali/(ugh)Merilll

I could go on but I'm boring myself

yeah, this.

I think their whole philosophy is make a good game, copy paste it but in different time periods, wait 5 - 10 years, make another awesome game, repeat.

It's really silly, if you take mass effect, and Dragon age and showed it to a person who didn't know who made it, they'd instantly know it was the same freaking thing, only instead of space, it's medieval...

 

[BRex21]

Do you re-write the Geth Heretics for new allies, or do you destroy them in an acknowledgement of their right to self-determination (i.e. is submission perferrable to extinction, something your old nemesis argued with you?)? Yes, it is easy to denounce the decisions you're presented with as black and white, but I think in the larger picture, the subtext found in Bioware games points to a hidden sophistication not being recognized by this thread author.

My problem with this example is that while its a very complex question the game essentially forces it into black and white packaging. While i thought about this in the terms of: Would i rather live life brainwashed into "right thinking" or die with my own thoughts opinions and ideals. While its something of a moral dilemma that made me stop and consider the options and I decided I would let the Geth die with their minds intact thinking that this is the option I would choose for myself.
Of course playing as a "Paragon" the game told me "no that's wrong!" While I had 2 choices that each presented an interesting moral dilemma, Bioware has stamped a clear Right and Wrong on the choices stating that what I was doing was bad. Contrary to the OPs statements however I still agree with you that the writing presents a lot of depth but the technical aspects hold it back.
My best example of this is Fallout 3 (i'm not confusing obsidian with Bethesda here its just the best anecdote) is the quest "A Nice Day for a Right Wedding" Angela Stanley wants to marry Diego, and it is considered "good" to do it regardless of how you go about it, this includes drugging him and getting him to sign while under the influence. So you see drugging someone and forcing them into a marriage is clearly "good" because of the limitations of the program.
These things rarely can be as complex as decade old games because of the additional technical considerations, we need voice actors and lip syncing, people to make cut scenes people to do all sorts of things, particularly people to make this all fit in the necessary disk space. The level of complexity cannot mix with the industries graphical expectations and the current technical ability of our consoles

 

[Blind Sight]

Whilst not perfect Bioware are still better than everyone else.

I have to disagree with you.

Bethesda and obsidian are alot better to immerse the player using a good story.

Bioware is just faaar too cliche. Sure its great if you're 10-12 years old and just stopped watching Bambi on a daily basis.
But I think the bioware dialogue is horrid and unimmersive.

I'll have to disagree with you there. Bethesda can't write themselves out of a paper bag. Boring, overly linear plot lines, cliched dialogue, and cardboard, flat characters. The only real Bethesda story that's even passable for me is Morrowind's main story, and really that's only because it's decently structured. Obsidian's pretty good, however their ability to do everything else in a game is somewhat (i.e. hit and miss) lacking.

In terms of Bioware's storytelling and dialogue, it's pretty good: good, not great. I do like some of the philosophical elements present in their game's storylines, there's a lot of references to Hobbes and Plato in the structuring of some of their societies (see the Geth for Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and the Dwarf caste structure for Plato's Republic) so I don't really think its a case of '10-12 year olds'. There are some complicated references to traditionalist philosophy that a lot of people fail to see.

 

[NoNameMcgee]

Their storytelling? Fine, im satisfied with it. It's not perfect but they make it gripping enough.

Their gameplay? (you know the much more important bit?) sucks in everything except Mass Effect 2. But then I don't think RPG fans really care about gameplay.

you know you don't have to like it fine, but i DO care about the gameplay, and i buy RPG's because i LIKE the gameplay, alot actually. (not to say i don't like ME2, because i do, it is awesome)

is it really that hard to understand? i don't need super action packed twitch killz every 5 seconds to find the gameplay enticing. i like the turn based set in real time action, which is why i've played kotor 1 + 2 for a combined total of over 100 playthroughs, while DA:O and neverwinter nights i've done probably at least 10 playthroughs on those too.

I'll admit my post was pretty harsh, I should have been more personal about it rather than making a judgment of all RPG players. I'm sick and irritable today (got a bad cold, blocked up throat, can hardly breathe and hurts when I cough). So I apologize for taking it out that way

I don't necessarily need instant gratification either, but I just find the DnD and Turn Based style gameplay incredibly dull because they are nonsensicle in terms of a real fight and unimmersive. I do need my games to be immersive and make me feel like I'm really there in my characters shoes. And it annoys me somewhat their arent many great RPGs with gameplay that I can actually enjoy, because the actual concept of RPGs highly appeals to me.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

Bioware has this nasty habit of absolving all player responsibility by writing you above the law in all their recent games. Even good morality characters still kill hundreds of people per play-through, justified or not, but you never feel repercussions because of arbitrary and poorly written contrivances to keep them from having to design game-play that coincides with morality. In ME you are a spectre, making anything you do justified and untouchable by police. In DA you are the Grey Warden, putting you above the law. Even in sequels they contrive reasons to make you immune, like Cerberus expanding their invisible field of protection over you in ME2 or the city making you its champion in DA2.

I don't have high hopes for ME3 because they have written themselves so far into a corner that the gameplay and story have to be entirely segregated to have it make any sense. Why is it that one lone asshole that the Reapers have proven very capable of killing off easily such a big threat? Why is one guy with a plucky crew of multi-racial people (each with one single problem solvable by side quest) each even on their radar when the invasion is based on massive ship-to-ship combat (unless of course the genre shifts entirely to space combat or RTS)? The only way Shepard can even be relevant in ME3 is because of self-inflicted stupidity by the reapers (by performing all their invasions by sending waves of fragile ground troops into areas with chest high walls), retarded political contrivances (like making you go to each race and slap them into caring about intergalactic extinction) or the necessity for them to find some super weapon/IWIN button to solve the problem and render the plots of the last 2 games moot (probably the most likely).

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

I want MOAR Evil Robots, tyvm.

Mass Effect has some touching/thought provoking/involving characters and subplots, but Shepard herself is so infallible she's about as deep as Flash Gordon... and that's the way I like her.

Nothing against 'grown up' games, but sometimes I don't want to wallow in shades of grey and moral complexities for a full game. Shepard is a kick-ass galactic hero who saves the galaxy when she's not busy teaching aliens about 'this thing you humans call love'. It's not grown up or particularly deep, but it's a lot of fun.

Pretty much this.
Though to be fair, Shepard has some pretty difficult choices to make if you get yourself really immersed:
- Does he submit people to unending physical and mental torture in order to save the other billions who live in the galaxy?
- Is it better to allow free will, and allow that differing viewpoints will cause massive intergalactic conflict, or is it better to destroy those conflicting opinions forever in order to forge peace?
- Is he saving the galaxy because it is good, or is saving the galaxy good because it saves Humanity?
- Does having sex with Jack make him a bad person?
- Which store on the Citadel is his favorite?

 

[Krantos]

If you want a good, adult-themed story play The Witcher (1 and 2).

BioWare can take a lot of flak, but still comes down to the fact that the "Plucky heroes save the world" is a classic fantasy trope. While it can certainly be overdone, there's nothing saying it can't tell a good story.

I honestly thought Origins' storytelling was really good. Sure, the overall themes were a bit cliche, but the details of how they are presented was really good. The Big Bad Loghain was portrayed to be tangentially sympathetic. The factions rarely had a simple good/evil dichotomy.

In fact the morality in the game wasn't shallow at all. Take any of the Factions and there are very justifiable reasons to side with any of the participants. Take the Dwarves for example, do you weigh Bahlen's blood claim to the throne or Harrowmount's unconfirmed claim of being Eldrin's successor? Do you destroy the anvil, or do you allow it to survive so the dwarves can make golems and hopefully take back some of the deep roads?

KOTOR? Yeah, the sides were a bit cartoony, but it's Star Wars so it's a little expected.

Dragon Age 2 was just an excuse for them not to have a central plot. If they'd developed any of the plot lines so that it could carry the story from the beginning to the end, but it didn't even come close.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

Here's the thing about KOTOR: It's a Star Wars game. Star Wars is all about black and white morality, and any attempts at interesting grey areas are either given the axe by LucasArts or declared non-canon.

I agree that the story was weak and the villains were horrible, but then I pretty much hate Star Wars in general for that very reason.

Kotor 2 had the grey area, it was practically the main theme. Developed by obsidian.

KotOR 2 is also a game that focuses upon slowly deconstructing the Star Wars mythos it is based upon, through the interactions between Kreia and the Exile as the Exile is thrust upon her (canon) journey of self-discovery. It is not standard Star Wars save for the use of Star Wars lore in creating it's setting and conflicts.

OT: Hm, you have to have the mentality of a twelve year old in order to enjoy cliche, yet immersive plots and settings such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age? My, my, if that isn't a little arrogant and insulting. I'm sure the view is nice from that marble podium you have set your ass upon to survey the simpletons below, no less.

While I agree that games such as Planescape: Torment and Baldurs Gate are great, immersive games, I'm not always going to want games that are thick with moral ambiguity and complex characterization. Sometimes, you know, I just want to be the big, goddamned hero of the universe, and feel good about myself while kicking some ass. You know.. plain old fun. If I want a more mature, adult, morally ambiguously and complex narrative to pass my time and have some introspective into my own philosophies and ethics, then I have the Witcher 2 sitting right on my desktop.

Also, before you raise Obsidian up on that pedestal as well, just remember that Neverwinter Nights 2 focuses heavily upon a big baddy to defeat, and eventually defeating it using a band of inter-racially woven misfits as well. It's honestly no different from either Mass Effect or Dragon Age in this regard, the King of Shadows being the Archdemon or the Reapers, and the Shadow Reavers/Geth being the horde of spawns used by the big baddies to challenge the hero of the story and his band of woven misfits.