Now, I love Bioware, at least, the Bioware that had yet to make sequels to either Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins. Everything they put out, I pretty much adored. They were probably my favorite developer, even before that, though I hadn't come to realize it. I played everything they put out just about, and despite some flaws, generally considered their games to be the shining beacon of hope for RPG nuts like myself.
There has been a lot of talk about whoring their brands out, from the cross overs with other games to promotional items with Dr. Pepper to putting their names on titles they really have nothing to do with. They got a lot of flak over the lackluster Dragon Age II for being lazy and rushed in their development. Many long standing Bioware fans took issue with the stripping down and watering down of the RPG systems in the Mass Effect series, worrying about the studio's eventual march to dodge rolls and a melee button for a game with no need for melee and every need for all the extra buttons it could get.
And over all, I've been disappointed in their direction, critical of their recent games, and generally sad at the loss of one of the great RPG developers in the west. But at the same time, I sunk 60 hours into Mass Effect 2. The craft with which all of the character specific plots unfolded was generally (although not universally) pretty fantastic. Some of the things they did with the universe were genuinely cool. Legion, and Tali's loyalty mission both come to mind. WREX IS A FUCKIN' KING. A PLANET FUCKIN KING. And that's pretty awesome. I found the over arching plot in Mass Effect 2 to be total shit (admittedly it was pretty non-existent, so there's only so much crap I can give it), and hated the changes (I thought it played fine without being compared to ME, but ME had so much more to do) to the game part of the game, but over all I though it was a pretty good experience. It played well and again, I loved the characters a lot. I didn't play much of Dragon Age II, but I heard it wasn't a steaming pile of shit, just a steaming pile of non-matter.
I still had hope, and knew that they had the right to make their games what they would be. I thought that ME2's marketing was misleading, in that it didn't ever disclose just how different the game would play until very close to launch (I had no idea about the changes to the RPG mechanics until I picked it up giddily at the midnight launch), but they made a good game that they wanted to make, so good on them.
But then I saw this...
And I'm not so sure anymore.
Bioware is a really popular, successful, well liked developer. They make Mass Effect a huge thing, despite having started out as a fairly dense RPG. They made dialogue trees sexy. They made it really really big off of a shooter RPG. If you had told me someone would make a shooter RPG that everyone would fall in love with and would eventually go on to make a sensational hit of a franchise, I'd have laughed in your face.
So why do I keep seeing all of this cross over, marketing stunt, advertisement in an abstract form content? Why is there Mass Effect in your Final Fantasy, and why is there rip-off McRPG-face in my Mass Effect, not to mention all of the other marketing material either in or containing Mass Effect 2 content.
I already have issues with the way ME3 apparently handles gay characters: there are two bisexuals, one of each gender, and two gays, one of each gender, and they are about the least desirable and interesting characters possible. It feels formulaic, like it's just there to please the masses, not because they actually wanted to make a game that accepted players of every kind. Hell, the fully homosexual characters seem to exist entirely for the purpose of gay boning. And as a result, are boring, not at all fleshed out, and kind of cheap feeling. Really, you couldn't have had some big revelation that Garrus is bisexual? Or I dunno, anyone but Kaiden, who so far has only survived because he was boring and simple instead of racist and obnoxious? I don't really like being the guy to get pissy because my game doesn't cater to me, but I don't need my fan fiction fantasy (which I don't even have, to be clear) to come true. I just want to not be an afterthought or someone that had to be served and was given the bare minimum, instead of one of the highly developed characters I've grown attached to over the course of the game.
But hey, at least it wasn't a twink, right?
I'm not going to whine about Bioware needing to "fix" thing for me. I'm just not going to give two shits which way they go, and stop taking them seriously, because they just put their armor on a little girl with pink curly hair. What is this, Steelport? The kind of craziness this feels like seems like it should be a marketing ploy used by the the Saints to push their new game, not a real cross marketing tactic.
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