Random video game news

[Malcador]

  On 12/4/2020 at 5:49 PM, Lexx said:

Who the hell retires in the middle of ongoing projects?

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Easy. Hate your job that much.

[Skarpen]

  On 12/4/2020 at 3:50 PM, ComradeMaster said:

Microsoft and Paradox own those games and they are on good terms with Epic Games.

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I knew this, but I didn't know that

  On 12/4/2020 at 5:49 PM, Lexx said:

Who the hell retires in the middle of ongoing projects?

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Literally everyone who can?

[Wormerine]

  On 12/4/2020 at 3:48 PM, kanisatha said:

Anyone have any thoughts?

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I stopped believing in Bioware with Dragon Age2 and Mass Effect3. I heard in only got worse from there, so I lean into doomsayering. 

Two significant faces “retiring” at the same time seems suspicious to me... especially, in time when Bioware should be desperately fighting for credibility. 

I am not terribly concerned with long time employees leaving. I am more concerned with how longs it’s been since Bioware’s name has been attatched to a great title.

Edited December 4, 2020 by Wormerine

[Zoraptor]

The fundamental problem with DAI and ME:A was far too much samey content, until you noticed that the games themselves were fine. Inquisition was at least better than DA2.

[majestic]

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here. With how contratian this board usually is I'd expect people defending it a bit more. It was fairly okay for an interactive cave simulator.

[ComradeYellow]

  On 12/4/2020 at 9:13 PM, majestic said:

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here. With how contratian this board usually is I'd expect people defending it a bit more. It was fairly okay for an interactive cave simulator.

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I never played the full game.  The hilarious over the top demo convinced me not to buy it.  Combat was way too silly, almost like a parody.

[Sarex]

I knew it was going to be bad when they were presenting their direction with the game combat as being "push a button and awesome things happen".

[Oner]

  On 12/4/2020 at 9:13 PM, majestic said:

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here. With how contratian this board usually is I'd expect people defending it a bit more. It was fairly okay for an interactive cave simulator.

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I liked it because Bioware was finally moving away from their stupid formula.

[Azdeus]

  On 12/4/2020 at 9:31 PM, Sarex said:

I knew it was going to be bad when they were presenting their direction with the game combat as being "push a button and awesome things happen".

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Button! Awesome! Connected!

[majestic]

There's this really nice video that can tell you why DA2 wasn't as bad as it was made out to be:

And yeah, I, *cough* borrowed *cough* the save simulation joke from MRBTongue.

[ShadySands]

  On 12/4/2020 at 9:13 PM, majestic said:

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here. With how contratian this board usually is I'd expect people defending it a bit more. It was fairly okay for an interactive cave simulator.

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IIRC a lot of people initially enjoyed it around here. I think it was a solid D+ console game that I love to hate.

Can probably dig up some of the old threads on it

[HoonDing]

Female Hawke was an awesome character.

[Wormerine]

  On 12/4/2020 at 9:13 PM, majestic said:

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here.

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Neither DA2 nor ME3 are terrible per say. But for me they were a big disappointment and a shift in what I expected from Biow. I can appreciate taking a swing and missing in some way, but those felt creatively bankrupt. That's been my main problem with BioWare... No games they released past that felt intriguing to me. 

[majestic]

  On 12/4/2020 at 10:55 PM, Wormerine said:

Neither DA2 nor ME3 are terrible per say. But for me they were a big disappointment and a shift in what I expected from Biow. I can appreciate taking a swing and missing in some way, but those felt creatively bankrupt. That's been my main problem with BioWare... No games they released past that felt intriguing to me. 

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I'm pretty sure once the people who came up with the Starchild in Mass Effect 3 shed this mortal coil they'll be replacing Judas Iscariot, Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Iunius Brutus as the people Lucifer gnaws on in the ninth circle of Hell.

[MrBrown]

  On 12/4/2020 at 9:13 PM, majestic said:

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here. With how contratian this board usually is I'd expect people defending it a bit more. It was fairly okay for an interactive cave simulator.

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I liked it. I kinda agree about most of the problems people had with it, they just weren't that big of a deal for me.

[MrBrown]

  On 12/4/2020 at 3:48 PM, kanisatha said:

If what they both are saying can be taken at face value, they are retiring and are not resigning or being fired. Anyone have any thoughts? I would be interested to know, because I am very much looking forward to DA4 but can't decide if this is a good or bad thing for that game.

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Frankly, I don't think you can read anything to it. People change jobs a lot in the game industry. If there was some other info then maybe, but just "this guy left, this guy was hired", not really.

[Oner]

  On 12/4/2020 at 11:38 PM, majestic said:

I'm pretty sure once the people who came up with the Starchild in Mass Effect 3 shed this mortal coil they'll be replacing Judas Iscariot, Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Iunius Brutus as the people Lucifer gnaws on in the ninth circle of Hell.

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Wasn't it Hudson and one other guy who came up with the Starchild and the controversial ending?

[majestic]

  On 12/5/2020 at 9:26 AM, Oner said:

Wasn't it Hudson and one other guy who came up with the Starchild and the controversial ending?

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That I don't know, but Casey Hudson vocally defended it as the artists' intended vision for the ending, so he can at least join in being frozen from the neck down in Cocytus.

[213374U]

  On 12/4/2020 at 9:13 PM, majestic said:

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here. With how contratian this board usually is I'd expect people defending it a bit more. It was fairly okay for an interactive cave simulator.

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It would have been fine if it had been a discount spin-off. The game was made in 18 months, and EA forced design changes to appeal to whatever the hell they thought console fans wanted at that time. They still asked full price and presented it as a full blown sequel, which it was not.

They switched from a tactical party-based RPG in the vein of the BGs to a sort of bastardized RTWP ARPG. Add bad production values, and the criticism was pretty justified I think. That being said, I did like the story, the presentation, and most characters. But outside of that it was disappointing.

 

  On 12/5/2020 at 9:26 AM, Oner said:

Wasn't it Hudson and one other guy who came up with the Starchild and the controversial ending?

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Mac Walters.

Edited December 5, 2020 by 213374U
le memes ecksdee

[ComradeYellow]

  On 12/5/2020 at 3:44 PM, 213374U said:

They switched from a tactical party-based RPG in the vein of the BGs to a sort of bastardized RTWP ARPG.

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This was my problem with the original, way too much emphasis on party-based combat which usually I get crushed by the tedium.  Other than that, it was a well made game.  I think I got like 3/4 through the Deep Roads before I gave up, which is far for me.  Not bad.

I think more games should be like Outer Worlds, you have the perfectly viable option of going Solo and on the extreme opposite end you have the option of making yourself a non-combat character whilst your companions do the dirty work, and everything in between.

More options = better.

[kanisatha]

  On 12/5/2020 at 6:37 AM, MrBrown said:

I liked it. I kinda agree about most of the problems people had with it, they just weren't that big of a deal for me.

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This was exactly my reaction to DA2 as well. All in all I thought it was worth the time I spent playing it. The repeat use of cookie-cutter levels was annoying to be sure, but I thought the overall story and characters were reasonably interesting and fun.

[Keyrock]

I had more issue with the combat than going through the same cave a dozen times in DA2. The biggest problem IMHO was that every single battle, boss battles included, was essentially the same. You meet an initial group of enemies, or a boss. You fight said enemies until a trigger point where another group of enemies spawns all around you literally from nowhere. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only variance was that sometimes there was also a second wave of enemies that would spawn all around you. This also made strategic group formation essentially meaningless. There was no way to set up a meat shield wall to protect your squishy members when enemies would just spawn behind you.

Those factors made combat in DA2 get REALLY old REALLY fast for me. When my reaction to a combat encounter is "*sigh* Let's just get this crap over with" then that is a failure of combat design IMHO. To make matters worse, there was a ton of combat.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Keyrock

[Wormerine]

  On 12/5/2020 at 3:44 PM, 213374U said:

It would have been fine if it had been a discount spin-off. The game was made in 18 months,

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And that's pretty much the main problem. Both DA:O and Mass Effect 1&2 were ambitious games with solid foundations. ME3 and DA2 were rushed cashgrabs. Bring continuations (or finale) to far superior titles only made a drop in quality that much more apparent. 

There are some companies, whose name act as a quality guarantee. With those two titles BioWare burned any good will they had with me. 

[Zoraptor]

ME3 wasn't significantly rushed though. The main complaints about it would not have been fixed by Bioware having more time- the ending/ Starchild was not due to not being given enough time (mostly it was a botched way of explaining important concepts to the player) and the shoehorning of MP into the war readiness (or whatever it was called) and initially not being able to reach the max level of it without playing MP (or microtransactions, presumably) wasn't a time constraint thing. K** L*** wasn't a time constraint thing, someone actually thought he'd be 'cool'.

I say it every time the subject comes up but ME2 was simply awful from a narrative perspective and the only thing which moved the story forward significantly was locked away in the last DLC. Apart from the companions 95% of ME2 might as well have not happened so far as overarching plot was concerned. That was the fundamental problem with ME3, it had to do everything plot wise and there was no practical foundation laid by the previous game. The things people complained about story wise would have been far better received if they hadn't come out of the blue but been set up previously. The 'traffic light' ending was almost identical to the end choices in Deus Ex, and they were well received there. And K** L*** was... well OK, irredeemable most likely, but at least if he'd been set up in ME2 he would not have been so jarringly awful.

A decent comparison would be Game of Thrones' last season, though it would have to be acknowledged that there was a big writing change for Bioware when Karpyshan left whereas Benioff&Weiss were constantly there. It wasn't bad because it was rushed, it was bad because the writers did a bad job setting expectations and executing what they had set up, while the more technical side and the actors were as good as ever, mostly, and delivered the best they could from the production direction given. They could have had another extra season or 4 more episodes and it would still have been rubbish, if left as written. Then again, ME3 was a pretty good game with deeply flawed aspects, mostly writing, while GoT's final season writing was a black hole of mediocrity which sucked every bit of enthusiasm for the franchise out of public consciousness.

[Mamoulian War]

What have you done? You just opened the deep wound, which I thought, I've already forgotten Another night with Season 8 story nightmare incoming tonight