Bioware - Are Their Games Actually That Good?

[Humodour]

I admit I haven't played Mass Effect or Jade Empire. I look forward to them though.

 

And NWN1 OC might have sucked but I thoroughly enjoyed SoU and HotU, especially SoU.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I've often been extremely critical of bioware, I loved Baldurs Gate, but I have never been too keen on Baldurs Gate 2, a game which is often held up as some kind of golden classic of PC gaming history, sure it had some great things, but the art direction, and flow of the game often to me feels somewhat gut wrenchingly horrid... That's not to say its a bad game, but I sure as hell don't think its as good as the average fan makes out.

 

Then along came NWN's, which was seriously dire, a step backwards you may even say, as a single player game it just never worked for me. I could never get on with the interface, it looked so tacky and weak, like it was bolted on by a bunch of n00bs, that's said NWN's isn't that bad I'd say "Don't ever play this pile of poo", its just not of an extremely high standard, as a single player game its the worst game Bioware have ever released. I can never help but think perhaps the issues surrounding the game, with the demise of interplay, switch publishers, and the five year or so dev cycle had a negative impact on the game and hence why it is not of the same kind of high standard.

 

I'd certainly lost faith in ever experiencing anything like the original Baldurs Gate had achieved for me, though obviously in retrospect it's heavily flawed, but when I first played it it truely grabbed me.

 

KoToR I merely picked up one day, I was never overly impressed with it... It certainly had this gimped NWN's feel in regards to its interface and general interaction. Jade Empire is another game that has actually totally and untterly failed to pull me in, probably due to my time constraints when I actually procured a copy.

 

So if you'd have spoken to me about Bioware about a month ago I would have probably said something along the lines of "A once great company that somehow managed to loose its formula, and now produces average to above average games".

 

Then I played Mass Effect... And then I played it again, and again, and again... And it felt the same as when I played the orginal Baldurs Gate, its like gears of war with a purpose, and much better level design. Now I don't expect that everyone will feel the same about the game as I do, but if anything its restored my faith in Bioware that they're still able to produce games which enthrall me. Mass Effect is probably the best game I have played since Baldurs Gate, there's just something about it that makes me tingle.

[~Di]

I wasn't interested in Jade Empire... I mean, what RPG lover cares about a martial arts game set in feudal China???... so at the time I didn't care that it was an X-Box exclusive. I shrugged it off and went on about my business. However, it came out for PC at a time when I was totally desperate for something, anything new to play. So I bought it.

 

And guess what? I truly had fun with it. It was bright, colorful with some interesting characters and a story that held my interest. The combat, once I got the hang of it, was really some of the most fun combat I've seen in a game. Now it's not RPG Of The Year material, true, but it was really a fresh, fun game that was more than worth the money, in my opinion, and has good replayability.

 

Mass Effect is, of course, on my must-buy list! It'll be out the end of next month, and I'm snapping that baby right up!

[Kelverin]

I will most likely pick up Mass Effect when I finish the games I have that are not finished yet,

 

As for Jade Empire, I do not know much about it. But I have as much interest as I did in the old Oriental Adventures DnD game = None at all

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I didn't even care about Mass Effect till I played it, I'd kept myself so ignorant... It has flaws, but it is the first game EVER that the moment I finished it I literally started again, that's never happend to me before. I look Forwards to Mass Effect 2, they've crafted an awesome world, that's nice and freeform just like Baldurs Gate.

 

The only thing that bothers me really are, that the Inventory is a bit naff, you tend to end up a bit overloaded, and the mako sucks.

[~Di]

I've often been extremely critical of bioware, I loved Baldurs Gate, but I have never been too keen on Baldurs Gate 2, a game which is often held up as some kind of golden classic of PC gaming history, sure it had some great things, but the art direction, and flow of the game often to me feels somewhat gut wrenchingly horrid... That's not to say its a bad game, but I sure as hell don't think its as good as the average fan makes out.

 

Then along came NWN's, which was seriously dire, a step backwards you may even say, as a single player game it just never worked for me. I could never get on with the interface, it looked so tacky and weak, like it was bolted on by a bunch of n00bs, that's said NWN's isn't that bad I'd say "Don't ever play this pile of poo", its just not of an extremely high standard, as a single player game its the worst game Bioware have ever released. I can never help but think perhaps the issues surrounding the game, with the demise of interplay, switch publishers, and the five year or so dev cycle had a negative impact on the game and hence why it is not of the same kind of high standard.

 

I'd certainly lost faith in ever experiencing anything like the original Baldurs Gate had achieved for me, though obviously in retrospect it's heavily flawed, but when I first played it it truely grabbed me.

 

KoToR I merely picked up one day, I was never overly impressed with it... It certainly had this gimped NWN's feel in regards to its interface and general interaction. Jade Empire is another game that has actually totally and untterly failed to pull me in, probably due to my time constraints when I actually procured a copy.

 

So if you'd have spoken to me about Bioware about a month ago I would have probably said something along the lines of "A once great company that somehow managed to loose its formula, and now produces average to above average games".

 

Then I played Mass Effect... And then I played it again, and again, and again... And it felt the same as when I played the orginal Baldurs Gate, its like gears of war with a purpose, and much better level design. Now I don't expect that everyone will feel the same about the game as I do, but if anything its restored my faith in Bioware that they're still able to produce games which enthrall me. Mass Effect is probably the best game I have played since Baldurs Gate, there's just something about it that makes me tingle.

 

Ahhhh, BG 1 was the love of my life too. I must have played that game 20+ times... no exaggeration. I liked BG2/Throne of Bhaal probably better than you did, but I was missing that "thrill" that I had every time I fired of BG 1 and heard that BG theme music. Sent chills down my spine. I also liked KoToR better than you did, more for the story than the game play. I thought it a good game. Frankly, I liked much about Obsidian's KoToR 2 better... better story, more interesting characters, but a more flawed presentation in many ways.

 

NWN1 was my biggest BioWare disappointment. Even the much-better expansion packs couldn't totally take the sour taste away. It wasn't really a bad game. It was a dull game, and so far beneath what I expected from BioWare.

 

You've really got me excited about Mass Effect now! Can't wait!

[random n00b]

I admit I haven't played Mass Effect or Jade Empire. I look forward to them though.

What do you mean you look forward to them? JE has been out for PC for some time now... But yeah, I'm getting ME ASAP. From what I've seen and read here, looks like my kind of game.

 

As for BIO... I don't think there's any other company that has produced nearly so many games I have liked. I don't know if their games are *that* good, but I sure have spent more hours than I can count playing them...

[Humodour]

I mean once I upgrade my computer.

 

The list:

STALKER

Bioshock

NWN2

MotB

Mass Effect

Jade Empire

The Witcher

Oblivion

NOLF2 (doesn't really work on this machine for some reason)

 

I think that's it.

[Istima Loke]

What I find interesting is that a lot of people say that they loved BG1 and not BG2. I'm not going to argue on this, though it seems that most people that say so have played the original title first. I, on the other hand, had my first Bioware experience with BG2. I loved that game. It had a far better story than anything I had played at that time (I was fairly young back then) and the whole way the game was played was totally captivating. As I see it now, it's not a jewel of gaming; it doesn't do anything exceptional but still it does everything right and that's why I enjoy it still. BG1 I played years later (when I found some sort of special edition with it). It was still fun but I had to force myself through a lot of occasions mostly because of the game design.

 

I think I agree with the general notion here. It's not that Bioware's games are bad, they are fairly good titles (with the exception of NWN1 - that was atrocious, almost unplayable) but still they always seem overrated as games. They are not jewels of gaming and I think that's mostly because they lack originality.

 

Also differentiating "artistic value" from fun is a rather arbitrary act. Fun can be "manifested" in a lot of ways. Can games be sheer "artistic" objects? Probably not, they need mechanics for the player to use (for example) but so do movies need good direction, books need a writer that knows how to write and so on.

[Tigranes]

It does seem that there are many cases of people enjoying BG1 more than BG2, Fallout 1 more than 2, IWD1 more than 2, NWN-(uh, oh wait) when they have played the original first. I actually ended up playing all three of those backwards, and like the sequel more. I guess its' about the first one you get into. To be fair, though, BG1 and BG2 had a number of crucial differences, so you can see how one can enjoy one and not the other. I still play both games, of course, but it seems that every game has a little 'peeve' for me that I end up finding an expedient loophole to bypass, like a cheat. Having seen all the scenery there is I Ctrl+J (insta-teleport) or use area code teleport in IE games to avoid backtracking and going back and forth in quests; I godmode the Warehouse Of the Thieves of the Black Silhouette Guild in NWN2; so forth.

[Humodour]

I played Fallout 2 before Fallout 1. I enjoy them both equally, but I'd say in terms of story and atmosphere, and innovativeness Fallout 1 has an edge.

 

I used to be a massive cheater. I didn't play a single game without it as a kid. As I grew up a bit (maybe 14 or 15) I cheated less and less, and went back and played old games (Fallout, BG, Deus Ex) without cheats. It was great fun. It was great fun with cheats and great fun without cheats. *shrug*. I don't cheat at all anymore unless I get stuck or something. I'm like an anti-cheater. I still powergame a fair bit though - the mathematician in me?

[Xard]

Fallout 1 has better story and atmosphere

 

Fallout 2 is funner game however

[Moatilliatta]

To be fair, though, BG1 and BG2 had a number of crucial differences, so you can see how one can enjoy one and not the other.

They are nearly as different games as you can get while still keeping the ruleset and the setting i.e. BG2 is epic in scope and in levels whereas BG1 is the xact opposite. BG2 is much more limited exploration wise and BG1 actually has Areas with nearly nothing in it. You guys probably already know all this, my point is just that I think we should only have been surprised if people didn't prefer one to the other.

 

Also I prefer BG1 because of the somewhat rural beginnings, interesting world exploration wise AND THE MUSIC!. BG2 has huge upsides (The partymembers actually talks regularly ) but is also quite boring in many ways.

[Slowtrain]

I mean once I upgrade my computer.

 

The list:

STALKER

Bioshock

NWN2

MotB

Mass Effect

Jade Empire

The Witcher

Oblivion

NOLF2 (doesn't really work on this machine for some reason)

 

I think that's it.

 

 

That's a pretty sweet list of games to be looking forward to. For the most part.

[Pidesco]

I played BG1 first, and thought BG2 was a big improvement over BG1. To me, it was basically the same game but with a fuller, more fleshed out world, and also, deeper characters. BG2 felt much more alive.

[Moatilliatta]

There are no awesome gnome villages in BG2 and as such BG1>BG2.

Edited April 20, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Wistrik]

I remember tentatively buying a copy of BG1 after reading reviews. I didn't do any pnp D&D but I had played SSI's Gold Box series for years (had every game mapped out in detail on graph paper). The result is that BG1's "personal initiative rounds" and hokey pause system was jarring and ruined all sense of tactics and strategy that I'd come to know. Thus I started rolling maximized characters. People repeatedly suggested using auto-pause to play "turn-based", but this was hideous due to every character having their own round, rather than there being one round for the entire combat zone. At any rate, I finally adjusted, albeit grudgingly, though I still don't play any modern CRPGs without maximizing stats and whatever else I can do. I used to love playing a mage in SSI's games, but now I play fighters mostly, because they function and survive better in real-time combat.

 

Black Isle started with Bioware's game engine, so they could focus more on game content, and this they did. Scripts for example are much tighter and less prone to glitches. Bioware was effectively able to build BG2 on their existing engine, but they still didn't manage Black Isle's attention to detail when it came to internal data. Thus we have a fan-made BG2 Fixpack addressing thousands of data-based glitches, but fixpacks for Black Isle's games are degrees of magnitude smaller because those games have fewer bugs. However, Black Isle faltered somewhat in level design, as many of their maps are mazes designed to fill every inch of the available map space, rather than resembling anything practical. This hasn't been much of a problem for Obsidian, thankfully.

 

With NWN, Bioware initially designed a campaign that seems to cater more to multiplayer than to singleplayer. Playing in singleplayer one is faced with having to explore in three or four directions to collect as many quest items, repeatedly for the length of the campaign, whereas in multiplayer you can group with three other players and each only has to find one quest item, thus suffering far less from the FedEx effect. Ignoring the multiplayer bias, the game's OC suffered from Bioware's typical inattention to detail, with sloppy dialogs and buggy scripts, which after all this time they still haven't fixed, despite their much-hyped ongoing support for the game. To their credit, they did introduce two expansions, which have proved to be of higher quality than the OC.

 

That's the extent of my experience with Bioware games. I have KotOR but haven't played beyond the very beginning (getting off the ship). Sci-fi CRPGs aren't my cup of tea (but I love sci-fi FPS), and the camera system drove me nuts after playing NWN. I have no desire to play Jade Empire, and even less desire to bother with the PC version of Mass Effect. I'm really looking forward to Dragon Age, I just hope Bioware has cleaned up their act when it comes to bugs - every developer produces bugs, but Bioware always seems to create enough for several developers. (Actually nowadays some developers have become extremely lazy in this regard, relying on unpaid fans to produce the bugfixes which the developers then incorporate into future patches. I should get into game development because then I could be paid to produce a beta-quality public release which is then fixed by willing volunteers who'll come up with every excuse to explain away my ineptitude and laziness. )

 

Despite bugs and whatnot, I've enjoyed both Bioware's and Black Isle's (and now Obsidian's) games. They appeal to different moods; some days I enjoy playing a chatty game (PST, BG2, NWN2), and other days I'd rather just plunder and destroy alone or with silent companions (IWD, NWN, BG1). They certainly aren't the only games I play though, as sometimes I feel like playing an adventure game or an FPS game.

[karka]

If you really want to label a company overhyped, just look at Blizzard or Valve.

[tripleRRR]

In my ever so humble opinion Bioware's quality in their games, with the notable exception of Neverwinter Nights 1, have always been in the solid B range for a grade. They tend to be higher than average in quality, both in terms in gameplay and stability, but nothing ground breaking or risky in their formuliac design. Even Bioware's worse game, Neverwinter Nights 1, is better than some other companies' best games. Bioware has a predictable and consistant level of sustainable quality that others tend to lack but are rarely innovative.

 

 

What Sand said. I have always enjoyed playing Bioware's games. They aren't anything to rave about, but they are fun.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I used to be a massive cheater. I didn't play a single game without it as a kid. As I grew up a bit (maybe 14 or 15) I cheated less and less, and went back and played old games (Fallout, BG, Deus Ex) without cheats. It was great fun. It was great fun with cheats and great fun without cheats. *shrug*. I don't cheat at all anymore unless I get stuck or something. I'm like an anti-cheater. I still powergame a fair bit though - the mathematician in me?

 

I used to cheat as well -in fact I still occasionally do when a game frustrates me enough, or I need to get X but do not feel like running across the entire world for the hundredth time to retrieve it or in other, similar situations- but I have now found that playing without them, cheats, is equally rewarding experience - although sometimes the games are more infuriating. as for power-gaming and using map and/or things such as map and AI exploits, well they're generally fine with me.

[aries101]

To be fair, NWN, the first one, was not really planned as a singleplayer game at all - before way into the development of the game. The game is not really a game. It is an editor with a game (said by a Bioware dev somewhere on the web). Bioware's goal with NWN1 and the DMclient? was to bring someone of that old school pnp rpg experience onto the computer. NWN1 was the first (rpg) that shipped with an editor (that I know of) that allowed people to make their own ehm- worlds, characters, buildings and stuff for the game to mod the game. And NWN1 has been modded a lot - even by the Premium modules whose prices have helped pay for the continuing support of the game. I rarely visit the ignvault for NWN but when I do, I do think it is amazing how much creativity there is out there and how creative and, yes, innovative, some of these people are that mod games like NWN1.

 

I agree with Sand that Bioware games probably are B+ games (or 8/10 games in rating terms). There's just something there; you just know that if they had done this or that a bit differently, the game would definitely be as a good as say Planescape: Torment. However, B movies tend to sell more games than A movies do - even very good A movies. The B movies then bring in the cash to pay for the (smalller) A movies being made. Maybe that's about to happen in the game industry as well? At this point we can only hope, I think.

 

I also agree to a point that dialogue in most of Bioware's games certainly could have been better. However, if you look at the dialogue found in the last part of Throne of Bhaal (Amkrethran and) where a certain David Gaider was the leadwriter? you will get treated to some very funny dialogue -and sometimes memorable conversations with your party members as well.

 

As for combat options, I actually prefer Bioware's realtime with pause system that I think they sort of invented for the Infinity Engine used in both BG1+BG2+PS:Torment+IWD games. Also, Bioware's games have always been about the story, to deliver and make the best story they possibly

can. And then sometimes the dialogue is a bit -ehm- lacking, although it certainly is higher than in some other games...I could mention...

 

As said in my first post, I like Bioware's games. You know what you're gonna get if you play a Bioware game - just like you what you're gonna get when you watch a (good) B-movie like an old John Wayne Western or you go see a OK, but not great romantic comedy. I like both John Wayne movies and romantic comedies as well as very weird stuff in both games and movies. I like to play adventure games and some FPS games, too. In fact, the clerk at my local Gamestop/EB Games got so surprised that I bought the adventure game *Agon - the last sword of toledo* that he completely forgot to pull the price tag off the game. He must have thought it was a kid's game or something like that. I like unusual plots with a twist or two and then maybe again a twist or two near the end. I like STALKER for this; it is an unsual and brave idea, I find to make an FPS game in the Chernobyl Zone. The underwater city of Rapture in Bioshock also appeals to me, simply because this is so brilliant an idea - to have an idyllic society go under - and I do mean - litterally - go under. And the idea with the Big Daddies and the Little Sisters --- brilliant as well.

 

I don't think Bioware will ever come close to anyhing like the story etc. in both Bioshock or STALKER.

 

Maybe Obsidian still has a shot at it. The story in the Mask of the Betrayer Expansion for NWN2 should be very well written, I'm told.

Edited April 20, 2008 by aries101

[Xard]

tl;dr (yet) but that weaker Vampire game (uhh, Redemption?) was released with similar editor year or so before NWN1

 

edit: For me MotB was best title released in long years. Absolutely brilliant stuff all around, above all writing wise (best since KotOR 2 and Bloodlines).

 

My problem with Bioware is that they seem to lack any sort of artistic ambition

 

edit: Lately I've become very intrigued about S.T.A.L.K.E.R, I've been watching videos and it looks like absolutely awesome title atmosphere wise. So that may earn the title for best game of last years

Edited April 20, 2008 by Xard

[mr insomniac]

Baldur's Gate 2 was pretty ambitious.

[Xard]

Artistically?

 

I'm not saying they're not ambitious people, all their titles are in some way (for their honor) but I was being very specific

Edited April 20, 2008 by Xard

[mr insomniac]

It had style, and atmospherically was very different from BG.