BioWare's Dangerous Predicament

BioWare is responsible for a multitude of games that hold a special place in our hearts: Mass Effect, Knights Of The Old Republic, Dragon Age, and Jade Empire among many others. Recently, a BioWare developer spoke out against the company and its practices which let to me going down the rabbit hole. I dug up current resources on what is occurring in BioWare and how history could be set to repeat itself. Will it? Well, it's time to talk about just that.


#BioWare #MassEffect #DragonAge

[CatastrophicDisease]

Human beings are generally terrible at separating correlation from causation. Fact is, it seems like BioWare back in the day put out great games in spite of "BioWare magic", not because of it.

[jcpuga]

I liked how Dragon Age Origins feels, characters where more interesting, your decisions have implications to the ending. The story hooked me from the beginning, and the fighting and spells where just right. I mean you could upgrade all your fire spells till you created a literal Firestorm. The ice spell actually froze some enemies in place. And spells froze time, unlike DA:Inquisition where there’s a different button for that. I tried DA2 and DAI, but there was something missing from the originals. Especially the writing! OMG the writers on DA:Origins was so good.

[Nerbit]

Considering it's been nearly 8 years since Inquisition, and how well the mass effect trilogy remaster sold, it's crazy that a dragon age trilogy remaster hasn't been announced imo

[UberNoodle]

Bioware is like when your favourite band has replaced all of its original members, and instead of playing thrash metal like it used to, it now plays exclusively Creed and Good Charlotte covers.

[Scarecrwn]

It.. kinda hurts to realize that next Mass Effect won´t exist for at least 4-5 years. It´s weird to know it will be THAT long. The short trailer they made was really sweet, but I´d probably prefer not to even know about it until like 2 years before release. Love that world so fucking much.

[UberNoodle]

The hockey stick thing basically shows that their games truly come together in the last year of development or worse. And that reflects comments from employees in interviews for previous games. It's a way of approaching project development and production that may have "worked" in the past when games were smaller and less involved (although it still meant a lot of uncertainty and required serious crunch), but now it's just poor project management.

[Rockyrodents]

Dragon age origins is one of the best games ever made! please bioware dont fuck this up

[jubei]

The thing for me that always set Bioware apart was the writing. The writing in those early Dragon Age games, KOTOR & Mass Effect was excellent. I'm a grown man but even I got teary eyed at times playing those games. Even ME3, where they definitely cut a lot of corners to hit their deadline, had some fantastic scenes but herein lies the rub. Their last 2 offerings have been awful. Both Andromeda & Anthem were huge letdowns, to the point where I'd say if they don't hit their next title out the park, Bioware will be finished. You can't bleed talent & lose all those writers who made those wonderful games, without replacing them with at least equal talent & get away with it. EA have ruined Bioware.

[julilla]

Mark Darrah has said that he believes that Anthem and Andromeda taught EA a lesson about BW. The decision to let the next DA be a single player game and not a "live service" game seems to show that. I hope EA knows what it has in BW fully, but even if they don't, they seem to at least have come to the understanding that BW games can't be shoved into the mold that they were trying to force them into.

[justyouraveragenerd]

It brings it into perspective when you think of those of us who played games like Skyrim in our early teens and now, over 10 years later, we're in our early 20's and still waiting for the next installment. When we hear that games are at least 4 years off then that means we'll be 4 years older when it releases. It's the same with any product sure, but it's worrying to think that we'll likely be playing ES6 when we're closer to 30 when we played Skyrim at around 10.

[SirDenzington]

I’m almost 33 BioWare, I don’t want to be waiting till I’m 43 to play the new Mass Effect.

[thebrewingsailor]

EA Completely has no idea what they have in BioWare and it all stems from their belief of the last 5 or so years that everything should be a live service game they can monetize into infinity. I absolutely blame them for Anthem because BioWare should've never been tasked with making such a game. That's not what they do. It does not surprise me in the least that they underestimated sales for Mass Effect's remaster. They didn't believe in the sales power of single player games anymore until Respawn's success with JFO and at some level, I still don't think they are 100% sold because they see the possible constant money streams for live service games and say to themselves "Yeah JFO and ME sold well, but look at what we COULD get."

[wezacker]

I agree with you about the length of time it is taking for BioWare to 'complete the 4s' (Dragon Age 4 and Mass Effect 4), and the reason is because game tech is a moving target for new releases.

What I mean is this: say you plan on a 3 years development cycle for a project, but realize that you are not going to finish it in time. During those 3 years game tech has advanced, as has gamers expectations for what a new game should look like. Nobody wants to put out a game on tech that 'feels' obsolete before you even ship it, so you push the release date out, and update the tech used in the game, which means that you have to go back and redo a significant portion of what you've been doing for the last 3 years.

So you add another 2 years in order to update and complete the game, and guess what? As the new release date approaches you realize that you aren't going to make it. Tech marches on. Now you are obsolete again. Redo years of work again. Miss the target again. Rinse, repeat.

That's how you get decade (or longer) development cycles that still end up shipping a 'rushed' game at the end.

[HogantheLogan]

I recently started playing Dragon Age Origins again, and man. I became addicted like how I was when I first played DAO. The game is a timeless classic, but I think it desperately needs a remaster/remake like they did with Mass Effect.

[PixPunxel]

I think these companies are like "Ship of Theseus" paradox. In other words they bear the same name but most of their teams changed and than changed again. Nothing of what old Bioware was remains, except the name, and copyright on some IPs.

[professorbaxtercarelessdre]

i grew up with Bioware, and i would like to see them succeeed, the kind of games they used to make are in my top 3 favorites, but i've been so disappointed by their last few attempts. Mass Effect Legendary Edition was great, it wasn't perfect, looking at you Conrad Verner glitch still being there, but yeah, want more of those games, but i'm worried, that's all

[agtl]

To be fair, Bioware was always on the more niche side of things especially in the days of baldur's gate. They got a little attention with the OG dragon age but they got their first big "mainstream" hit with the ME trilogy. That was the game that became their "elder scrolls". That was the game whose last game was so hyped they had viral marketing with The Walking Dead during the height of that shows hype. When Mass Effect was killed with 3's ending, and then again with Andromeda marked the end.

[_ElisDTrailz]

Honestly, I wish they would learn from a studio like Fromsoft. Fromsoft games will not blow you away graphically, but they are excellent games that come out at a much faster pace than any other major RPG studio. That is because they KNOW the engine extremely well, and even though they reuse many assets, they have the mentality of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". For me, graphics are not everything - I value story, gameplay and characters much more. It seems many western studios forsake these values to give us shallow graphical showcases - that are released at a much slower pace.

[emodante]

If "Bioware magic" is real, I think the last of it went into DA: Inquisition.

[anthonytitone]

They need another easy win like a Dragon Age Legendary Edition