@TaliciaDragonsong: If EA buys you, it's the kiss of death. I think the same applies to Bioware really. Give them a few more years, and EA has merged them with a bunch of other developers to make Need for Speed or a clone of something popular at the moment.
@zlimness I think that may have been true at some point, and with their new seeming interest in "assembly line" game production following the luke-warm success of Medal of Honor, that might become a bit of a serious concern, but I also can't help but believe that EA understands that when they purchase a developer like BioWare, part of the package is you have one of the best RPG houses in the businesses., and you want them to ultimately focus on RPG-centric titles. This possible multiplayer product (and any future MP featured in mainline Mass Effect games) may be a value add from a marketing perspective, but I think ME2 is an excellent example of melding shooter-style gameplay with RPG elements, and is a vast improvement on the first games ambitious but flawed design. To put it more bluntly, ME2 was an evolutionary product for RPGs that I think we've yet to see the full influence of, and while some long-time Bio-fans might feel left behind or are upset because they're opening the door to a wider range of people, it is the nature of how BioWare, not EA, has matured.
I even understand how some people feel burned that BioWare has gone more and more mainstream in the years since being purchased by EA, but I would argue that may have less to do with their parent company, and more to do with just the desire to make their games more accessible and more enjoyable by a wider range of audiences. To suggest that EA would actively force BioWare to churn out productions in genres they themselves had no interest in making is, to put it bluntly, insulting to the business sense of the people running both EA and BioWare; Mass Effect 2 was one of the biggest successes for EA in 2010, both financially and commercially, and for them to try to force the studio to do something they themselves didn't want to do would almost certainly create a product that isn't to EA's expectations for that studio and would threaten to drive away the majority of the talent that makes BioWare what it is.
To whit: you don't buy BioWare and then force them to become a production house for whatever you need to fill holes on, because at that point, you've wasted your money because that developer is going to be a skeleton of what it formerly was. In contrast, since EA purchased BioWare, that company has become bigger, to the point where they can have so many high-profile games going at once and still keep their quality at an admirable level.
Watching the VGA's....probably not. But in my eyes anything BioWare makes is gold in my book. I'm definitely looking forward to the end of the the Mass Effect Trilogy and what they have in store for Dragon Age 2.
@zlimness: I really hope you're wrong but I know you're probably right. The direction ME2 went especially with some of the throw away DLC junk and the EA secondary login nonsense are pretty clear signals. Hey, maybe they can charge per story ending path. Want to see the renegade option? $10 suckas!
@Draugen: Don't agree in the slightest, AC:Brotherhood is in no means of the word a "half-asses sequel". Plus it would be difficult to make a ME spin off and incorporate the choices made in previous games. For example a prequel would be out of the question, if following the ME formula where the choices you make have a concequence...
@HubrisRanger: It makes sense that publishers don't want to ruin a developer they just paid a lot of money for, I agree. But they also want maximal returns on those investments and EA is handling every studio they have with pretty much the same policies, regardless of what they produce: DLC is a thing. In some cases, Its not really that bad. Paying for more cars in Shift or new maps in Bad Company 2 is not entirely out of place in this day and age. But when it comes to stuff like the Mass Effect 2 DLC, I get extremely bummed out that they held back one of the major sub-plots from Mass Effect 1 in order to get some extra cash for it as DLC. Its not because I'm cheap and don't want to pay for it, but I wanted to play it when Mass Effect 2 mattered to me. I wanted it to be a part of the game when I played it. Not a half year after its release. I can't help to shake the feeling that I didn't get a complete experience with Mass Effect 2 since all the DLC either have important story stuff to it or extra NPCs that take part in the final mission. Its like moving into a house with no roof, and the construction workers show up a few months after charge extra for putting it up. Might be a good roof, but you still expect a house to come with one. That's not regular Bioware business to do that sort of thing.
In the end, I can see a clear line before and after EA bought Bioware. Mass Effect 1 was just released and Dragon Age was almost done. They released some extremely bad DLC for Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age felt really oldschool but with some nasty DLC business shoehorned into the game, with quest givers stalking your camp screaming about DLC. Incidentally, I have played some Dragon Age 2 and its nothing like Dragon Age 1. Its all Destiny Warriors and console-oriented now, the little I played of it. I don't even want to fathom what kind of DLC that game will push on you. Experience points as DLC anyone? Dante's Inferno did it, so I wouldn't be surprised. Anyway, maybe EA didn't ruin Bioware. Maybe it was Muzyka who lost touch with the company's soul. But Bioware is just a shadow of its former self in my mind regardless of who ruined it. I bet my money on EA though.
@zlimness I think its pretty clear we're going to have to agree to disagree on this. Between those two examples you gave, I find the kind of DLC that ME2 has done far more interesting: mission packs that extend the life of the game beyond the initial purchase, giving me an opportunity to have ongoing Mass Effect adventures and support a developer I adore. With the exception of the Firewalker stuff (which was free), all of the ME2 mission packs all felt like a fully developed package that was completed since the game was finished, not material taken out of the game for additional product. Out of curiousity, did you have similar concerns or disappointments with how games like Bathesda or Rockstar did very similar DLC packages? Instead of coming out after my interest in the game has died down, it rekindles my interest in my favorite game of the past year and reminds me of all the reasons I loved it in the first place.
By comparison, ala carte pieces of DLC always feel like quick and easy money grabs. Map-packs and the like are often overpriced for my taste, and to use a Mass Effect example, I haven't bought any of the weapons or armor they have sold separately from a mission pack. They don't add anything to the reasons I love that game (story, universe, a sense of discovery and exploration) and do nothing to generate any interest for me to return.
Is the emphasis on DLC an EA-led initiative? Most likely, but like I said, I have been almost universally pleased with the way that the DLC has extended my time with ME2 and think that they are fairly priced. If it extends the time that I have with the game, gives me an excuse to return to it and provides more of what made the original experience so great, then I see that form of DLC as a positive.
@HubrisRanger: I don't really mind expanding games per se, especially not RPGs. Bioware has done this in the past with Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale in form of expansion packs with another 15-20 hours added, and recently with Dragon Age. All great expansions. So I'm not a stranger to this concept. But I prefer the way Rockstar and Bethesda handled the DLC. They didn't build the core game around DLC content in the same way as Bioware did with Mass Effect 2. It was basically; here's some more weird shit! That's what DLC should be in the end, just more stuff.
But I mean, some of the ME2 DLC was story stuff. Had I known they would release DLC that was integral to the main game, I wouldn't have bought it on release. I would've bought the GOTY edition or The Director's Cut if you will, how the game was intended to be played. I already had a great time with ME2, but I honestly expected the Shadow Broker DLC to be a part of the main game. It was a really important sub-plot in the first game, just like Cerberus. A great way of doing DLC for ME2 would have been to add new star systems with some cool new environments to explore. But they went and fiddled with the story and that's such a huge bummer to me. Maybe this content wasn't taken out, but it was most certainly planned in advance. I rarely go back to games several months after finishing them. Haven't played ME2 since March actually. So when Bioware eventually release Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3, I'll wait until the games have been finished up in a neat and tidy "complete" package with all DLC included so I don't miss out on the full experience.
" @Draugen: Don't agree in the slightest, AC:Brotherhood is in no means of the word a "half-asses sequel". Plus it would be difficult to make a ME spin off and incorporate the choices made in previous games. For example a prequel would be out of the question, if following the ME formula where the choices you make have a concequence... "
Whoa, whoa whoa....
Let no man say that I called AC:Brotherhood a half-assed sequel. I merely called it a "half-sequel." I love Brotherhood.
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