I was put off by what they did to Dragon Age. I won't let that deter me though, they have put out so some great games that I have loved.
I tend to like the first game in a series more than the second in their case. I liked Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins more than Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age II (only played the demo and felt repulsed) for example.
I agree that Dragon Age II was pretty abysmal, but Mass Effect 3 looks awesome and every moment of The Old Republic that I have played in the last few weeks of beta testing has been pretty fantastic. I am not at all ready to write them off, but if the time comes, then I guess they have had a great run. Baldur's Gate is still among my favorite role-playing experiences of all time.
after those early ME3 spoilers I really don't see ME3 ending the series in a great way, Bioware has gone, for me, to a second rate developer that I should only pick up when they're cheap. DA2 was great when I bought it for 13 bucks or whatever.
ME1 and ME2 are far from perfect but rank among my favorite games of all time. I heard DA2 had some serious issues and I have not tried the new MMO but otherwise I think people are crazy. People like to overreact and whine because every game doesn't revolutionize gaming. The more games you play, especially good ones, the more difficult it's going to be to have games surprise and amaze you. This is especially true when being compared to the memories you have of your favorite games through the rose colored glasses of time and nostalgia.
People complain if they change things, and complain if they don't. We've seen so little of ME3 in the grand scheme of things that its way to early to say bioware fell off.
Considering we all love Mass Effect, and it's completely different things we all love, Mass Effect 3 is basically guaranteed to start a cry fest. I'm sure many a GBer will supposedly swear off Bioware FOR LIFE! upon its release.
Dragon Age 2 sucked no matter how you look at it though haha Piece of shit.
First off, the two Ashleys have a *lot* of similarities in the bone structure, I think you all are fooling yourselves. There is a difference in the eyes, which have become rounder, and obviously her makeup isn't helping anyone out here.
After everyone posting about her appearance...it was finally about time someone said what i was thinking.
I draw people all of the time. I look back and forth between the faces rapidly to distinguish facial differences between the two images aaaand they're basically the exact same. I thought it was just me, but guess the hair really does throw everyone off.
Literally the only differences in the images is that there is about a 15 degree angle change in perspective, and on the right her bottom jaw is a little wider under the pterygoideus area and then her eyebrows are more vertical and less horizontal making her look a bit angry or something. She appears to be squinting in the left or they simply made the ellipse on her eye more rounded. Facially they're basically identical.
@Buzzkill said:
@Jimbo said:
@PlasmaBeam44 said:
Gross
To be fair they have only changed the entire structure of her face and all of the features on it.
Her jaw in the picture on the right looks more square than your Avatar, Jimbo.
How many years have passed since the intro of 2? And how much time has passed from 2-3? The little wider jawline could be attributed to...putting on a few pounds?
Seriously though, the facial structure and features are basically the exact same. Besides what i mentioned a moment ago.
ME 2 became a trudge to the finish after the 10 hour mark. No matter the story situation, every fucking mission turned into an hour long shooting fest in arenas with chest-high walls. FUCK THAT.
This. (Although I still enjoyed the game... and yeah, I'm just not very good at FPSses)
On another note, reading through this thread actually makes me want to take a stab at DA2. I absolutely loved DAO and was pretty stoked about DA2 until I caught wind of the critical shitstorm... then I kind of avoided all mention of it.
Mass Effect 2 wasn't an FPS. FPS stands for First Person Shooter.
I think he was using it in the laymans terms, such as Fucking Peace of Shit.
You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.
I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.
Dragon Age II.
C'mon! I've only played about fourteen-hours, but so far the characters are engaging and the writing is solid. I can only imagine that the game gets way worse for it to deserve the scorn it receives. Is it really that bad?
Even as someone who acknowledges his status as an apologist for DA2, most of the issues I had with it relate to the main story. Namely, the part were there really isn't one in act 1, and the part where it goes totally off the rails by act 3, concluding in what is easily only a step below Halo 2's "I'm going to finish the fight" in terms of non-conclusiveness. It's so bad, which is honestly a pity considering that DA2 also has some of the better characters Bioware has written and some fairly great combat.
That being said, I'm going to make the argument that Bioware has been catering to the mainstream for almost a decade at this point, with the EA buyout merely exposing and accelerating what already existed. If anyone tells me with a straight face that Neverwinter Nights, KotOR, Jade Empire, or the first Mass Effect were "hardcore" RPGs with deep mechanics or multi-layered plots, I'm going to have to disagree. Dragon Age Origins was the only one of their games resembling their earlier works, namely Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2
You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.
I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.
Dragon Age II.
C'mon! I've only played about fourteen-hours, but so far the characters are engaging and the writing is solid. I can only imagine that the game gets way worse for it to deserve the scorn it receives. Is it really that bad?
Even as someone who acknowledges his status as an apologist for DA2, most of the issues I had with it relate to the main story. Namely, the part were there really isn't one in act 1, and the part where it goes totally off the rails by act 3, concluding in what is easily only a step below Halo 2's "I'm going to finish the fight" in terms of non-conclusiveness. It's so bad, which is honestly a pity considering that DA2 also has some of the better characters Bioware has written and some fairly great combat.
That being said, I'm going to make the argument that Bioware has been catering to the mainstream for almost a decade at this point, with the EA buyout merely exposing and accelerating what already existed. If anyone tells me with a straight face that Neverwinter Nights, KotOR, Jade Empire, or the first Mass Effect were "hardcore" RPGs with deep mechanics or multi-layered plots, I'm going to have to disagree. Dragon Age Origins was the only one of their games resembling their earlier works, namely Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2
DA:O resembled Baldurs gate as much as Neverwinter Nights did.
While I enjoyed ME2 on my first playthrough, by my third playthrough, I was pretty burned out. I've played ME1 8 times through, with differentiating difficulties and character classes, and I still love that damn story to pieces, as its one of the best crafted games, script-wise, I've ever played. ME2 was just...it was a straight shot of pure adrenaline, you wanted to find out what happened next, you wanted to know if it'd be memorable, you wanted to see the impact of your choices. Instead, we got loyalty missions...what a load of crap, seeing as half of them were daddy-issue related, or lost-loved one related. Sometimes a combination thereof. And the sad thing was that these were anything but optional. You had to do them to get the upgrades you needed so as not to die later in the game.
DA2 wasn't the beginning of this trend, ME2 and its lack of replayability had screwed me over, with the 'optional' DLC for weapons being total and utter bullshit, seeing as the lack of weapons and armour permutations in that game screamed cut content. On top of that, ME2 was a minefield of contradictory plot points, with the final ME2 DLC Arrival, questioning the validity of the entire goddamn game's story. DA2 was terrible in my eyes, but the ME3 trailers and apparent lack of content were really the final nails in the coffin for Bioware. Alienating a large portion of your audience in order to bring in people who don't actually appreciate the RPG genre is just the ultimate form of 'fuck you' you could give.
There was an amazing story to tell in Mass Effect, but it was drowned out by lazy writing, lazy development and a sheer lack of consideration for fans, hell, a sheer lack of consideration for the genre they were supposed to be marketing to. They need to really work hard to build back up some credible status among fans, but I can't imagine ME3 or DA3 doing that. Sadly, these series need to end, because they've been damaged beyond repair.
DA2 had some problems, and some people won't like SWtOR, but BioWare is still the best developer around.
I have to disagree with them being the best developer around. I can instantly think of developers that produce better and richer games with less resources than BioWare. CD Projeckt RED, Bethesda, Radon Labs, and I would even consider Obsidian to sometimes surpass them.
Nintendo (only as a game developer) is far superior to them. Though i don't play too much of Nintendo's games anymore, as i am mostly fond of RPGs and they don't really make those anymore, they should still be respected. One thing you can count on with Nintendo is that their game will basically be flawless, never EVER buggy, and they always feel like they were complete and release when they thought the game was ready.
It's just too bad that owning a nintendo system is basically like saying "hey, buy this system because it is the only way to play this specific developer's games". Sadly, their third-party games are, more often than not, extremely sub-par, but that is a different conversation all together. But Nintendo on the other hand, is such a powerful force in game development from the past that they're one of the only game developers with the gusto to launch a system solely for their games. That is pretty impressive in and of itself.
The moment I encountered an NPC that sold DLC inside the confines of a fantasy game, Bioware was dead to me; or rather, all of EA was dead to me. I still get morbidly pissed off every time I think back to that "discovery" in Dragon Age. It's so vile, so horrible, so greedy. And then they did it a second time. I have refused to buy an EA product since.
Mass Effect is a great series, I felt it lived up to Baldur's Gate more than the Dragon Age series did (more attention to quality, writing and atmosphere overall). But in the end, they will never make a game as good as Baldur's Gate again. EA will never let them. Their marketers focus test their games to death and milk them for all their worth. They do this to every damn franchise they own and it's only going to get worse from here on until they turn into Maxis or all the rest.
I agree completely. Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins are two of my favorite games ever. I've played both of them on multiple platforms and for WAY more time than I probably should have. I adored both. When I played ME2, I had no idea what I was in for. I got it at midnight on launch, brought it home, put it in, and slowly over the next hour started to realize that they had COMPLETELY fucked the awesomeness of the original game instead of just fixing it's flaws. Dragon Age 2 I didn't even give much of a chance, the demo was enough to tell me I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much.
@big_jon said:
@CrimsonNoir said:
@Hailinel said:
@PlasmaBeam44 said:
To be fair, that Mass Effect 2 hair is atrocious.
It's not the hair, the ME3 version of Ashley looks like she used to be a man.
Funny how dorky looking nerds on the internet are always the most vocal about a woman appearance isn't it?
She doesn't even look human, I think this gets a pass. The same people probably comment on male Shepard's ridiculous facial structure.
They've released one game that wasn't universally acclaimed.
No.
Shattered Steel, MDK2, Jade Empire, Dragon Age 2 and Legends, and about 30+ DLCs got around 6 / 10 or lower that were additions for those "universally acclaimed" titles are just a few of their more well-known titles that did not receive "critical acclaim" and definitely not universally.
To be fair, Ashley was a bitch that I wanted to shoot in the face-hole after Horizon, so her being uglied up doesn't bug me. Also, she killed Wrex on my playthrough of ME1. Yet for some reason I didn't let her die on Virmire.
Anyways, on-topic. Mass Effect 2 had a great storyline.. but it shed roughly 60-70% of it's RPG origins in favor of catering to a wider audience. Dragon Age 2, from what little I've played of it, seems like they could of done better. Regardless, they're not quite there yet. As mentioned a couple pages ago, their good-to-bad ratio is pretty high in favor of good. I'll hold out hope that ME3 is a good game.
In the life of the studio they've released one game (DA2) that people found average compared to the original. I think it's extremely reasonable to claim that the end times are nigh.
EDIT: Also I know that people want to mention a bunch of other games in hindsight but before DA2 no one ever mentioned a bad game by Bioware, maybe people ignored jade empire and I just assumed it was ok cause I really enjoyed that game.
Wow what a thread. They make one average to meh game (Dragon Age 2) and suddenly they are a failing developer riding on name recognition alone? Get a grip. Last I checked they made the game many people called the game of the year when it was released (ME2), the original Dragon Age which was average as all hell but everyone loved for some reason, and forget about all the older games they made that were all well regarded. If Dragon Age 2 is their biggest failure well... lets just say most developers would sell their soul to suck that badly at making good games because for a game that sucked it sure sold a metric ton of copies.
@Dagbiker: Yeah I'm going to shut up now as this is all opinions anyway, I was going to mention the general views on ME2, but then I remembered that the general views on SWTOR atm are pretty negative while I am super excited so that doesn't really mean shit.
In the life of the studio they've released one game (DA2) that people found average compared to the original. I think it's extremely reasonable to claim that the end times are nigh.
EDIT: Also I know that people want to mention a bunch of other games in hindsight but before DA2 no one ever mentioned a bad game by Bioware, maybe people ignored jade empire and I just assumed it was ok cause I really enjoyed that game.
In the last few years Bioware have gone from developing pretty awesome (hybrid) RPGs to doing dating sims with some additional combat. It's become nothing but pandering to the "omg so kawaii! mai waifu!~" crowd with shoehorned-in relationships and shitty sex scenes. It made sense for ME1 to have these cheesy, terrible scenes since it was basically low-budget 90's sci-fi movie: the game, but this shit has gotten way out of hand.
It's not deep or mature, it's just fucking stupid.
If Dragon Age 2 is their biggest failure well... lets just say most developers would sell their soul to suck that badly at making good games because for a game that sucked it sure sold a metric ton of copies.
It's not the hair, the ME3 version of Ashley looks like she used to be a man.
Good thing I killed that bitch in ME1 so I won't have to see her again.
Also I don't really get why people are on the hate train for BioWare. I mean sure Dragon Age 2 wasn't the best game but it was still a good RPG. Now if ME3 comes out and is dogshit then we could be having these talks. I mean when Shyamalan made his first bad movie people didn't immediately throw him under a bus it wasn't until it became a trend that people realized he might not be so awesome.
Also as a side note when I saw the thread title I thought this was going to be about the twists in many BioWare games and Shymalan's increasingly insane twist just for the sake of a twist.
In the last few years Bioware have gone from developing pretty awesome (hybrid) RPGs to doing dating sims with some additional combat. It's become nothing but pandering to the "omg so kawaii! mai waifu!~" crowd with shoehorned-in relationships and shitty sex scenes. It made sense for ME1 to have these cheesy, terrible scenes since it was basically low-budget 90's sci-fi movie: the game, but this shit has gotten way out of hand. It's not deep or mature, it's just fucking stupid.
This is accurate, isn't their lead romance designer or whatever retarded job title it is some land whale of a woman?
In the last few years Bioware have gone from developing pretty awesome (hybrid) RPGs to doing dating sims with some additional combat. It's become nothing but pandering to the "omg so kawaii! mai waifu!~" crowd with shoehorned-in relationships and shitty sex scenes. It made sense for ME1 to have these cheesy, terrible scenes since it was basically low-budget 90's sci-fi movie: the game, but this shit has gotten way out of hand. It's not deep or mature, it's just fucking stupid.
This is accurate, isn't their lead romance designer or whatever retarded job title it is some land whale of a woman?
How does what the designer looks like or what sex she is have anything to do with the quality of their work?
In the last few years Bioware have gone from developing pretty awesome (hybrid) RPGs to doing dating sims with some additional combat. It's become nothing but pandering to the "omg so kawaii! mai waifu!~" crowd with shoehorned-in relationships and shitty sex scenes. It made sense for ME1 to have these cheesy, terrible scenes since it was basically low-budget 90's sci-fi movie: the game, but this shit has gotten way out of hand. It's not deep or mature, it's just fucking stupid.
This is accurate, isn't their lead romance designer or whatever retarded job title it is some land whale of a woman?
How does what the designer looks like or what sex she is have anything to do with the quality of their work?
She also admitted to hating videogames.
So yeah, regardless of anything else she's the last person who should be writing for a videogame.
In the last few years Bioware have gone from developing pretty awesome (hybrid) RPGs to doing dating sims with some additional combat. It's become nothing but pandering to the "omg so kawaii! mai waifu!~" crowd with shoehorned-in relationships and shitty sex scenes. It made sense for ME1 to have these cheesy, terrible scenes since it was basically low-budget 90's sci-fi movie: the game, but this shit has gotten way out of hand. It's not deep or mature, it's just fucking stupid.
This is accurate, isn't their lead romance designer or whatever retarded job title it is some land whale of a woman?
How does what the designer looks like or what sex she is have anything to do with the quality of their work?
I don't think it's the Shyamalan effect, mayhaps the Spielberg effect where you release game after game of supreme accolade, and then release War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, neither of which are quite "bad" but more "mediocre."
I don't think it's the Shyamalan effect, mayhaps the Spielberg effect where you release game after game of supreme accolade, and then release War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, neither of which are quite "bad" but more "mediocre."
Hahaha....i like that. Good alternate perspective.
Look at Spielberg, Scorsese, John Huston. Now they've made several good films. And each of them have made a few mediocre movies, too (Scorsese less so).
When Mass Effect 2 came out, everyone loved it. Now everyone hates it. Honestly, what happened?
Dragon Age 2 I guess.
I don't know really what happened. I've loved Bioware games since KotOR and not felt like I've been dissapointed even once. I'm not saying the games are perfect. While both DA2 and ME2 had things they did better than their preqels they also made some things worse, but the overall experience I've had with a Bioware game has always been great and they are games I can play non-stop and then as soon as I finish roll another character and play again, and again.
My theory is that the people who started with Baldur's Gate are the ones who are pissed off at Bioware since DA1 was that sort of game while DA2 was more "modern". I honestly think DA2 was a better game gameplay wise (not saying it's a better game overall). I like a more action oriented battle system insetad of the isometric tactical style. I feel like their recent games feels like the natural progression of that they started with KotOR. Making the games more like movies and less like pen and paper RPG's, but since I've never played Dungeons and Dragons and such that's just a good thing for me.
When Mass Effect 2 came out, everyone loved it. Now everyone hates it. Honestly, what happened?
There was always a vocal minority who hated ME2 because it was too much of a shooter. With DA2 being considered a miss by many if not most, they've just become louder, and others started echoing their opinion as is the case on the internet.
To be fair they have only changed the entire structure of her face and all of the features on it.
Obviously she left the Alliance to seek fame and fortune in the future porn industry and decided to have some work done. Also this is a future where Shepard could look completely different from game to game, why not the NPC's? Plastic surgery and insecurities don't exist in the future?
these guys honestly fail miserably at making attractive female characters. and its not like theyre not trying.. the females look like bulldogs.
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