I have tried to decide what, exactly, annoys me so much about recent Bioware efforts. Because the Mass Effects and DA II really do annoy me. They get under my skin. I should be happy that Bioware is producing something akin to RPGs, but instead I don't enjoy these games and find myself worrying that everyone will copy their formula. I lament their success.
I think I have figured out what it is, and I think at least a few people here feel the same way. A big part of it is that for the new Bioware, "role-playing" means something very close to what "role-playing" means to a psychologist: you take on a character or a set of viewpoints, and then it's all about your conversation choices. Bioware games have become about conversation, punctuated with increasingly less-tactical, less-engaging fighting.
Since Bioware's approach to combat, loot, skills, etc., is increasingly trivial, and often a dull grind, the game then becomes all about your conversation choices, and what sort of character you want to play.
In theory that's fine, and I can see that for some people this is perfect. In the classic sense of the term 'role-playing' -- the dictionary definition that predates D&D -- it is much more correct than the visions of stats, skill trees, damage modifiers, etc. that most of us see when the term 'role-playing' is used.
But the fact is, I just don't like it as much. It doesn't feel like a real game to me. Much of the time I feel like I am just making my character choose postures or attitudes, without really affecting the story arc in a genuinely meaningful way. (It doesn't help when most of the conversation options boil down to "be a good guy" or "be a jerk"; your conversation options tend to be set in stone the instant you decide what sort of character you'll be -- and that's before the game even starts.) But frankly, even if the storyline did branch like crazy, and even if they handled shades of gray much better, I still doubt I would like it as much as what we term an 'old-school' rpg. I want to make strategic and tactical decisions; I want to learn complex systems; I want the game to beat me up and make me fail a few times, so that I have to adjust my strategy in a meaningful and intelligent way, and so I can then enjoy the eventual satisfaction of winning. I do not just want to emote.
Tied in with all this, I genuinely believe that the people at the helm at Bioware -- probably not the level designers, or the artists, or even a lot of the writers, but certainly the lead designers /project leads -- I believe they really want to write movie scripts. I do. But as high as the bar to entry is when you want to design your own video game, the bar to entry to writing Hollywood blockbusters is 1,000 times higher. So they take their video game jobs and do their best to shoehorn movie scripts onto their games. But the reality is, this approach will never create great games. For that, the game has to be designed by someone who isn't trying to do something else entirely.
