Halaster

That's because someone was not very precise when saying "making a ton of money". It sounded like "making a ton of profit" whereas what was meant was that EA make a ton of cash in sales. It is of course, perfectly possible to have sales of eg $500 billion (thereby "making a ton of money") and still end up with a loss (eg if your costs are $501 billion).

And there's the innate bias you have in your own deductive reasoning. Of course you believe it's correct... because otherwise you would have deduced something else. Why on Earth would you conclude the wrong answer, after all. Thanks for that insightful wisdom Alan. So you're implying that Anubite is biased because ... he thinks he's right? That's beautifully circular logic, I must remember to use it myself in some other forums (unless you claim copyright?). I can see that this comes from the same source that gave the world a story along the lines of 'we created killbots to slaughter you in order to save you from the killbots that you would have developed yourselves'. Forgive me, but I personally don't think it's "bias" to work off an assumption that when someone invests the better part of $1 billion in a company (as EA did with BioWare), they might want to have a tiny little bit of say in what that company does, strategy- wise. At the very least you get influence from the "tone at the top" that comes with even a change of mid-manager, let alone majority shareholder. And that's before we even take on board the "bias" from reading stuff BioWare employees themselves say about EA influence on their employer from places like glassdoor.com. I must say Alan, I am puzzled by your eagerness to 'correct' people who are trying desperately hard to give BioWare a get out of jail free card. I hate to be captain obvious here, but those blaming EA are the naive remnants (of your formerly rabidly loyal fanbase) that would have bought DA:I on the slender hope that maybe - just maybe - it was all evil EA that led to the (at best) mediocre schlock that was DA2 and ME3, and that good old 'real' BioWare was fighting a silent rearguard action in the defence of the genre/quality/IP integrity. Extinguishing those notions closes an awful lot of doors...

Why do you lie? BioWare is a subsidiary of EA, in other words it is a separate legal entity, a company in its own right (how much practical autonomy it has is a separate matter). It will cease to be a company following one of two things A) A merger with another EA group entity B) a transfer of its trade and assets followed by a liquidation. Why don't you just google "BioWare ULC" and then stop spouting this rubbish again and again all over various forums? Just because in the eyes of Moore (or some other overpaid EA suit) Bio is treated as a "division" does not make it disappear as a distinct company, in much the same way as me thinking of you as a "moron" will not make you disappear as a human being.

Disappointment [ = ] expectation [-] reality. The BioWare brand and stellar releases like ME1 and DA:O had my expectations high for DA2 and ME3. So although I've played MUCH worse games than both those titles, they are for me, by far the most disappointing by a long shot. Now however I have adjusted my expectations. I expect a BioWare game to be hyped to infinity and beyond with enoguh hot air to fuel a small sun ... and deliver mediocrity. Then when relality comes and the game is actually *gasp* a touch better than mediocre, I can no longer be disappointed, nor feel the need to head here or gamebanshee to voice my despair. TLDR, I am immune to BioWare failure damage, though will still chug a Kickster Potion just to be sure.

Yay! Gameplay footage! That does look and sound pretty good. Hopefully they're able to fully realize all the things they talk about. Gameplay does indeed look solid. I do hope the damage was so low for showing purposes only(two handed vs shield battle). Maybe I'm seeing what I fear, but the gameplay looks distinctly actioney. There was no overhead view where the player as a commander would issue orders to party members and see it resolve based on those commands plus e-dice rolls. It was all "up close and personal", swing your sword and roll with the controller. There are millions of games like that, including Skyrim, Two Worlds II and WItcher 2. What made BioWare and Obsidian games special in the past was that they had an RPG combat system. Besides those two principally (not counting indies and kickstarters) every damn game ever is action based, especially in recent times.

I'm not sure I was making an 'argument'?? But I think we shouldn't count the extra year porting consoles not because it runs contrary to anything I'm trying to prove, but because it is - imho - the best way of comparing apples to apples. The reason we all say "oooooh DA:O took A WHOLE 6 YEARS to make" (and that's A BAD THING) is because we reference - for example - Fallout New Vegas which took only 2 years. However if one of those developers runs their key development tasks (platforms) concurrently (Obsidian) and the other in sequence (BioWare) then the comparison of 2:6 is not meaningful. If FO:NV had been developed with the same methodology as DA:O then it would have taken 3 years not 2. So if we want a valid comparison we should either assume Obsidian had adopted an 'in sequence' approach and add 1 year or assume that BioWare adopted an 'in parallel' approach and deduct 1 year. Ideally we should also add a few years to Obsidian for having an engine and assets already made by Bethesda, and measure it all in man hours, but that might be getting a little silly

I don't know where people are getting the six years development for DA:O from. According to Brent Knowles (DA:O lead) the timeline looked something like this: 2004 - concepts and ideas bouncing about, not much in the way of full scale development 2005 - work starts in earnest but is interrupted when a large chunk of the team are taken away to work on another project (presumably Jade Empire) 2006 - later in the year after Jade Empire (?) the team is back working on DA:O 2008 - work ends on DA:O around summer. Brent then quits. Then someone decides to HOLD the PC release and make console ports for an all platform release. Mike Laidlaw is put in charge of Project Console and completes his mission in 2009, upon which DA:O is released. So what we have is quite probably less than 4 full years of work on the PC version. We shouldn't count the extra year Laidlaw took to make the ports in the same way we shouldn't add a year to any other known development time. Also the DA team size in 2005 was about half that in 2009.

We've been asked to stay off the topic of other companies' communities, so I'll make this my last remark (please be merciful Gorth): The BSN has calmed down in the last year, imho, but on massively reduced volumes. The ones who are left there are those who liked DA2 and/or ME3 - and it is once again an echo chamber. People who did not like DA2 and ME3 have seen the direction BioWare is going, and know that that developer has now almost certainly (and irreversibly) switched their product forumula and is not making the same niche stuff they used to. Those people are gone from the BSN, so most of the 'bickering' is about whether Varric's hair is the right shade of blonde.

Sorry Alan, but this sounds like the EA 'party line' when criticized. A pure deflection. "We got voted worst company in America because of homophobes!". It took two awards in a row to get a whimper of an admission that maybe there was a little more to the 'awards' than just being pro-LGBT. I would not have reacted to your post if you had simply said "in part" rather than "in large part". Here's a bold and novel thought for you: the BSN forum is so divided because BioWare decided that the passionate fans they had were not numerous enough to feed their new artificially bloated budget and increasing shareholder appetite, so the best thing to do was to ditch those fans and start making the sort of games that those fans specifically came to BioWare in the first place to avoid (ie games like 95% of AAA releases these days). BW made a ton of other changes to the RPG and the BioWare trademark formula in ME3 and DA2 that I find it simply wonderous that you single out LGBT as the 'largest' issue you think your fans have. If you truly believe that homophobes have nothing better to do than A) playing a game they despise because it deals with gay themes and B) spending years on the developer's official forum trolling about it ... then I am truly at a loss for words. I spent years on the BSN before and after DA2. All I can say is - I thought the forums pre-DA2 tidbit leak were among the more civilized on the interweb. Up until 2011 people derided 'Biodrones' because whenever you said anything bad about the game on the BSN, you'd be set upon by a swarm of rabid, indoctrinated fanboys. Notice how hardly anyone is using that term any more, or if they are they're very occasional gamers that last played something in 2010. Feel free to think that your drones have mostly buzzed off "in large part" dut to LGBT support.

Hmm, did you play Origins a few times too? Because if you did, I cannot for the life of me understand how you could feel that DA2 was tactically superior. The whole DNA of the combat was less 'think like a general' and more 'fight like a spartan'. Gone was the tactical camera. Friendly fire was off by default, and generally off by choice (the enemy animations were too fast to place the target marker without frustration). The enemies used special attacks a lot less frequently. Terrain did not matter. There were no traps, or bombs. There were no ballistas, barricades, pits, mabari cages, ice patches, oil patches or other great props. That's before we get to enemies spawning in your face and behind your mage who previously was in a 'safe' spot in the back near a dead-end. DA2 did on the other hand introduce reflex based dodging of killer attacks (Rock Wraith) and looooong slug-fest boss fights (I think with only a couple of reloads I literally spent 2 hours on the Arishok - during which I would ordinarily have uninstalled, but instead took the difficulty down to normal because I believed the story would save it).

I think that's a question that's dangerously close to 'what is an RPG?' territory. BioWare know full well what the conventions of the genre are - they used to be masters of them until DA2 and ME3. In a nutshell it's all the stuff they've been cutting out ... sorry, I meant 'innovating', 'evolving' and 'streamlining' in their last 2 releases (compared to the previous game in the IP). Just in the way of an example, I personally am particularly keen on the 'player skill vs character skill' convention (skill checks vs player hand-eye co-ordination), but others are mad about dynamic factions, choices & consequences, free exploration, multiple ways to complete qusts, radically different playstyles for different starting classes etc. I realize it's early days to be talking about specifics, but it should be OK to talk about general design philosophy given the years DA:I has been in development. Though I suspect there will never be a 'right time' for BioWare to grab this particular bull by the proverbial balls. They'll just keep stalling and deflecting the 'RPG question' away with all the usual PR-double speak for as long as possible. Nothing I've seen from them since ME3 and DA2 makes me think they sincerely want their old fans back by giving what they want in terms of 'rpg-ness'. Hope I'm wrong.

I wonder when (if?) BioWare will actually start showcasing the RPG credentials of this game - or has that direction gone out of the window officially now? All I've seen so far are references to it being an 'action RPG' but then they called Origins that, when it really wasn't very 'action' at all. It would be nice to know if this game will even be trying to incorporate more RPG conventions and appeal to its 'traditional' customer base, or whether DA:I is another foray into general action gaming with a smattering of stats and inconsequenial side quests for consumption by a 'wider' customer base? I have this strange feeling that there'll be lip service only, sort of like 'added' RPG elements to ME3 which in reality boiled down to ... gun mods making a comeback.

That's shocking ... I spent a bit of time on the BSN and my impression was that until DA2 info 'leaked' it was fairly civilized. Entire threads like "you know you've been playing too much dragon age when..." (and posts like "your real dog dies, unfed for 3 weeks") went on for dozens of pages and weeks on end without a single troll or killjoy (and not because they were moderated out like now). The strategy section was chock full of people who had been rummaging around in the toolkit and were eager to share good builds, excited that a +1 modifier to X was better than a +2 modifier to Y etc. It really had the atmosphere of an indie forum. Seems I must have missed a lot of vile stuff. I do remember Jade getting some flack, although it seemed to stem largely from people who didn't play it on principle (console action - boycott), unlike DA2 'haters'.

I don't recall it being "always" like that to the same extent. I think it reached a new scale with DA2. Sure there was grumbling about ME2, but overall what the game lost in RPG elements it gained in shooter fluidity and character writing, so overall people were willing to let it go. RPG or not, it was undeniably fun. The fact that at the time, BioWare seemed to have a second, more 'core' RPG product line in the form of DA:O, probably also played a part in muting any widespread ME2 whining. Do you not agree that from DA2 on (specifically when the devs starting saying on the BSN what changes were coming relative to Origins), ie the point of a very noticeable swing away from RPG mechanics and into console action-adventure - was the point when the whining really changed in depth and reach?

Yes, if DA3 was crowdfunded it may actually be a truer RPG and more of the sort of niche product we might like. As it is, funded by EA (that are on the record as saying they now need 5m sales to breakeven), DA3 will need to be actioned-down and stripped of complexities/challenges to appeal to ever wider audiences. But at least it will be pretty, graphics -wise. Also EA funding means tons of inefficiencies, and to pay for this bloated dev team focusing on multiplayer and graphics, we'll be charged $90 for some 'deluxe' edition at launch and another $60++ for dlc and microtransactions. Crowdfuning = possibility of RPG niche, AAA publisher funding = mass market trite, press X to win appears to cost 'just' $60, end up spending $200.

But Divinity II has action combat mechanics, whereas Original sin is tactical and turn based. I also gave up on DKS after the first town because having rolled a mage I just remember spamming fireball and magic missile while jumping and rolling (Garalt-style). Got old real quick and mana regen time was absurd. But Sven have done lots of interviews where they pretty much said they had to make an action game with DKS and their fans liked the game "in spite of the combat". This time they're doing what think their fans want, rather than what the suits think will sell the most.

The Mako subconsciously made the ME universe that much deeper. Being able to select a system, then cluster, and then some random planet, and just land on it, possibly uncovering some prothean ruins or Cerberus base ... made the thing feel real, big and open. I spent hours just landing at places and enjoying the vistas. As a mini-game, Mako got dull real quick - almost as quick as planet scanning in ME2. Perhaps if the devs had put in an 'upgrade' that let the Mako scan for the stuff (never thought I'd be proposing a quest-compass mechanism...) But if ME1 had not had the Mako or Tali, I'm guessing ME would not have been in with a chance at becoming a huge part of pop culture, before ME3 even credibly aspiring to dethrone Star Wars.

Other Denerim merchants - there was also a dwarf near the market square (the one from the noble story), the tavernkeeper, and the guy from the Crows opens another one up when you complete all his quests (trying to avoid spoilers). And console limitations were not the reason Denerim felt dead - DA:O was designed as a PC centric title (dying breed) and (very) hastily ported to consoles throughout 2008 by (now lead) Laidlaw. One of the reasons the game plays very differently across platforms, btw. Denerim was thankfully dead, because the rest of the game - if you wanted to listen to NPCs, read the lore, and complete all the side quests you'd be looking at the wrong side of 70 hours, 100 with DLC. If Denerim had taken another 10, I doubt I'd have had time to pull through. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. As to OP's point - an RPG will always be outdone by action titles in terms of impressions, because action titles can script awesome stuff to happen all around you and then whisk you away to the next location. In an RPG you sacrifice some of that 'awesome' for depth and freedom.