why do people like bioware games so much?

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Since KotOR, they've been going down the "cinematic" route sure, with Jade Empire and Mass Effect as follow ups. KotOR was the last d20 style game they did with JE being a proprietary RP system that was a little too "lite" for my tastes.

BioWare always make well written and polished games. Unlike Troika, Obsidian and other studios renowned for their "flawed gems" of games BW deliver top titles each time. I'll admit that the light/dark, closed first/open palm, paragon/renegade thing is a little tired and uninspired now, but it does work. So what if it doesn't really make any difference in the game whether I play good or evil if I just end up playing the same game anyway? One could argue then that the only difference then is Role-play which is a large part of what RPGs are about.

To make BioWare games closer to perfect again they need to do what they do now, but take some things from their old games too.
- Party based games. Make the character interactions happen during the gameplay, not during the off-duty moments. Give us back 4-6 sized teams instead of 2-3. Have character disputes (remember if you tried having Kheldorn and Korgan in the same team?) and interactions.
- Levelling/Gear - STOP MAKING IT SIMPLE. I like to choose how each person on the team levels up and specialises, I like to choose their armour, weapons and upgrades. It is FUN to find new gear and swap it out for the old and decide who gets what.
- "Unique"/Personal quests - ME1 sorta had this in the way of one quest based on Shepard's origin, but not like BG2. A wizard got the dome, a bard got the theatre, a warrior got the keep and a bunch of related quests along with it. There is *nothing* wrong with having parts of game only available to certain characters and not for others. It encourages further playthrus and makes each character/playthru a little more personal and unique.
- Toolset/modding - DA:O had it but it should be a part of every BioWare game. The ability to tweak, mod, add new items and player made content is impossible to put a value on (even though with everything voiced-over now it's much, much harder).
- You can have too many cutscenes - In JE, it can seem that almost every single fight begins and ends with a conversation. It's frustrating and breaks the flow of gameplay.

 

[Dawning Age]

I particularly like Bioware games because they build their own history, culture and religion that you can freely read about.

In Neverwinter Nights, you could find and buy books which ranged from short stories of orks, to the documentation of demonic cults and to the recording of great battles.

In Mass Effect 2, you can delve into your codex which is filled with the information on weapons, ships and aliens that you discover on your missions.

It makes the game that bit more interesting and makes your world more substantial and that this world has already been living without you and will continue to when your gone.

 

[Double A]

I dont really agree with much you said.

so, i've been trying to figure htis out for a while about why people think the mass effect trilogy and dragon age 1 were such great games. whennever i think about them i think they have bad locations that don't feel as epic as they're trying to be made out, an impenetrable story with many, many plot holes, bad writing where alot of the background is in the pause menu rather than weaved into the story, akward conversation options and bland, boring gameplay.

This doesnt really sound anything like a Bioware game. I am not a big Bioware guy, but writting, epicness feelings, conversations, gameplay, writting and story is what bioware games are most known for. It is alright if you don't like Bioware, but I think much of what your saying is biast.

Its like saying Crysis 2 looks ugly. I may not like the game, but the game looks amazing, and it has very good and intense gameplay

Well, there have been a lot of plotholes. Example: In the Dwarf commoner beginning storyline, a Dwarf rogue who is level 1 beats up canonically great warriors in a straight fight. It was immersion breaking.

In BioWare's defense, they're just following the age-old theme of the PC getting a super huge advantage of being the PC. DAO isn't the first game where that's happened, nor will it be the last. Plus it makes you feel like a badass if you can keep your willing suspension of belief in check.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

Personally I love Bioware and I hated DA after about 5minutes of playing and I haven't played Mass Effect. The reason I love them is because they made the single greatest RPG in the universe, and that is Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn.

 

[VladG]

People love Bioware RPGs because pretty much everything you've said about them is exactly the opposite. The story is masterfully written (and nowhere near impenetrable). The background reading material is NOT necessary to understand the story whatsoever, it does add more depth to the universe for those that are interested in it (and as such it is not forced upon you).

The plot of ME2 makes perfect sense: He is forced to work with Cerberus because the Alliance refuses to acknowledge the problem, and as part of the Alliance he would not be able to do anything about the threat. Also you CAN enlist the aid of the Alliance if you so wish.

The terrorist organization build a better ship after years of improvement BASED on the original research of the ship. Also it's worth noting that in the universe all major research companies are Private and not state owned.

Characters are all by far superior to most other games (with very few exceptions popping up here and there) with superb writing, voice acting and design.

Conversation is well done, as well as any other I'd say, nothing overly exciting about it, but not bad either.

Gameplay is indeed average, well executed, but not groundbreaking. It is however a perfectly adequate driving force for the story to unfold, and that's good enough. Some games have very good gameplay, some games have very good settings, some games have very good stories. Bioware are masters of the latter.

As to Bioware being on of the greatest game makers of all time.... Yes, why not? They haven't made a single game I didn't enjoy playing yet, and that's way more than can be said for most developers out there. Blizzard and Valve would be the only exceptions here.

So far I can think of no other developers to make any game series more epic, interesting and well executed than Bioware.

As much as I respect other people's opinions, it's less about opinion here and more about being able to properly appreciate a masterfully done work of art. I wouldn't expect a burger-eating, Nascar-watching redneck to appreciate Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, and I wouldn't expect a twitching, attention-deficit BlackOps gamer to appreciate Bioware.

 

[Corax_1990]

Why do people like Bioware games so much? Well, because people have played them? To be fair, you have your right to your own opinion, but you really have to accept that you fall into the minority on this one, im not saying that bioware is perfect, I just find that they produce games that are in a much higher quality category than most. Not everyone has to like the same thing, but the majority opinion sets trends, current trends say that Bioware produces really great games that you should buy and play. Nuff said.

 

[ELD3RGoD]

I agree with you. I played Mass Effect 2 once, completed it, attempted to play it again and realised I was just doing the same shit on a different day. The areas are all blocked in. You can see a massive world of life around you, yet can't touch it. The graphics are good fo'sure, but I just find it boring after 1 play through. Don't even get me started on that mining planets bullshit. If ANYONE enjoyed that, I'd be surprised.

As for Mass Effect one, just as boring, again large worlds you can hardly delve into, graphics were again good, but The only Character I really like is Garrus, the rest could die for all I care, and the only reason I like him is because he looks cool.

I only played the first one twice because my first save messed up and I wanted the Krogan in my Mass Effect 2,expecting to get him on my team... no, he just sat there all on his throne and stuff.

Boring. Beautiful, but boring and not very big.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Apart from how well the stories are written and applied... I don't get what the big deal with Bioware is.
The only Bioware games I enjoyed where Kotor and Baldur's Gate.

ME managed to make SciFi boring
DA:O managed to make western fantasy mundane.

 

[ELD3RGoD]

The reason Bioware is heralded as being so good is because they are. Their writing is terrific, they have (mostly) very well fleshed out characters (Samara being there just for sex appeal? I guess the OP just happily glided over the parts where her entire back story is told through conversation and her actions) and they're one of the few companies that are managing to build RPG/Adventure games for an extremely wide audience.

He meant Miranda.

 

[tODDly]

It is also a tale of three owners as well.

Originally Bioware Corporation was owned and operated internally by the 2 Doctors who founded the company. At that time all great releases.

Then Bono from U2 went and bought the company, (Elevation Partners) and they quickly turned around and sold Bioware and Pandemic to the big bad EA.

So now EA owns it and that is that. (since about the DA1 and ME2 development cycles)


Also I would like to point out that not only is the quality above par, you sure as hell get your dollar value as well. 40+ hours easy if you are going to try both "good/bad" story lines, for almost every game. Sure beats the 5 hour garbage, single player stuff on the market.

 

[ELD3RGoD]

The reason Bioware is heralded as being so good is because they are. Their writing is terrific, they have (mostly) very well fleshed out characters (Samara being there just for sex appeal? I guess the OP just happily glided over the parts where her entire back story is told through conversation and her actions) and they're one of the few companies that are managing to build RPG/Adventure games for an extremely wide audience.

He meant Miranda.

Nope:

and hta characters aren't really that great, overlooking the fact that two of them (miranda and hte justicar) are shamelessly there for sex appeal

Although I'm not sure what a "hte justicar" is, but I'm guessing the OP means Samara in this case.

But even if he was just pointing out Miranda, my point still stands. Miranda has a great story behind her and her actions and character are fleshed out very well throughout the course of the game, going as far her admitting that she was engineered to look great - a fact that she's clearly not happy with.

He blatantly meant and said Miranda? *Edit* Oh, I see, the Justicar is Samara, I forgot, my bad.

Fair enough if that's what you felt, I thought the whole lot of 'em were impossible to feel anything for. That crazy ***** with the shaved head annoyed me more than anything.

 

[Wuggy]

see, i'm seeing alot of people claim interesting stories, but the mass effect games have rather flawed stories, since the entire of mass effect 2 is just being rail roaded, where you work with cerberus because you can't work with the alliance, you can't work with the alliance because you're working with cerberus.

Wait what? Are you seriously saying that that's the reason they give for Shepard working with Cerberus?

News flash: it wasn't.

The reason why Shepard is working with Cerberus is because Alliance is not willing to operate outside of Council space. The abductions happen outside Council space. Cerberus is willing to work outside Council space. And that's the reason. You seriously didn't get that?

and is filled with plot holes, the first is about 10 minutes into the game where a terrorist organization manages to make a better ship than the entire allience could.

That's not what is being said, it just has more technology in it than any Alliance ship. Alliance would be fully capable to do similar ships but they have to level their resources to, I don't know, maintaining the human race. Cerberus doesn't have that much responsibility so they can focus big chunks of resources to single projects.

Your view of a "plothole" is just plain wrong. This is all common sense, I recommend using it once in a while.

and hta characters aren't really that great, overlooking the fact that two of them (miranda and hte justicar) are shamelessly there for sex appeal, alot of them don't actually come in use in the big mission. why did you need 2 biotics experts if you only need one? why not bring more weapon experts?

I fail to see your lackluster point here. Sure, there's fan-service in the costumes and outlook of Miranda and Samara (well, assuming you mean Samara with "hte justicar"), but that's not the only reason why they're in the game. They both have personalities (although one's is a bit less bland than the others'), impact to the plot, their own storylines. It's not like they stood on the background bending over in the the whole game.

And so what if all of the characters don't come in handy? What does that have to do with "hta characters not being that great"? I see no back-up for this claim. I'm willing to admit that both Miranda and Jacob aren't really interesting, at least not compared to the rest of the crew, but you can't seem to come up with examples at all.

 

[Andaxay]

Stop lumping people into this "EVERYONE" category.

I'm not really a fan of Bioware games myself. Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins completely failed to capture me or my imagination, and I didn't feel much for the characters or stories. They don't make BAD games, though, and you can't argue with 30+ hours' gameplay compared with the standard 6-8 these days. The environments were rich and detailed and at least characters had back stories. I will agree that reading history through a menu is a bit bland, but that's not just a Bioware thing - Assassin's Creed does that too, and I'm a fan of the AC series.

In short, no, not EVERYONE likes Bioware games. I think you're more inclined to hate people who do like them rather than the games/company themselves, though.

 

[A Free Man]

Please people everywhere in the world stop making threads such as "why do people like/dislike ". There is no point to such threads really. Basically I will answer all of the above questions with one answer. Not everyone has the same taste as you. Some people may enjoy things for different reasons to you and therefore are able to like something you don't or dislike something you enjoy. So unless you are actually curious as to the negative or positive aspects to a certain entity, which in this case it doesn't appear that you are, the question itself is moot. There will always be some people who like certain games and some who don't.

 

[mrF00bar]

I'm not going to say Boiware games are perfect but they are a damn sight better than most at the moment. That is the games of theirs I've played anyway.

 

[Torrasque]

Been playing through Dragon Age for about 20 hours, and like Mass Effect (which I still have to beat as well, lawl), I find that I actually care a little bit about side characters, about Ms. "My husband was killed by evil things" and the like.
Besides that, I think the gameplay is fun and refreshing (I loved the segment where you are shapeshifting in the Fade) and the story is engaging. Yes, it is frustrating at times, but all games are; even my beloved Metroid Primes.

I think people like Bioware games because they are legitimately good.
Also, whenever I think about it, I like Bioware just a little bit more, because like myself, they are Canadian.
Made in Canada, baby!

 

[Richardplex]

Incredible immersion, character development, story, Mass Effect being compared to Star Trek, the ethical and enriching-our-lives decisions I constantly make in Mass Effect?

Oh, and because people find them fun. That too.