BioWare - The Great Bioware Exodus

I see a significant lack of trust on new talent. The old guard left, but they were young, inexperienced writers once too. Perhaps it's even good that the old guard left and new talent comes in.

Time will tell, and I'll judge based on the quality of the products. Names don't mean that much.

EA has killed off everything good they've bought. I don't know why anyone would think BioWare will be the one exception. It's obviously already in steep decline. It's just a matter of time until it's completely irrelevant, and things seem to be accelerating pretty rapidly there in the last few years.

I don't think it's necessarily the writing that is Bioware's weakest aspect these days. It's actually quite ok, although it doesn't really match Baldur's Gate's, for example. Their problem is that, mechanically wise, their games are getting shallower every day. The story, even when it's kind of flawed like in Inquisition, it's still very enjoyable.

Stingray said:

EA has killed off everything good they've bought. I don't know why anyone would think BioWare will be the one exception. It's obviously already in steep decline. It's just a matter of time until it's completely irrelevant, and things seem to be accelerating pretty rapidly there in the last few years.

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I tend to disagree.
The $ is not only in phone whatnot they're heavily investing in, but also in RPGs and EA knows it. Bioware might not be bringing billions, but millions are still there. It's a case of not much risk but profit anyway and would be silly to kill it off especially now where everyone wants to advertise RPGs.

GabrielMP_19 said:

It's actually quite ok, although it doesn't really match Baldur's Gate's, for example.

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I think some people are in a good need to refresh their memories of Baldur's Gate writing. It was cheesy pseudo old English mixed with a lot of pop-culture references. Some examples:

Larry, Darryl & Darryl
The Nimbul

and my favorite "I have a blade with your name on it"

Crap. I didn't know that he was going to the BG3 company. I guess that means Gaider will be pushing his agenda there. That's a no sale for me then.

As for Patrick Weekes on these forums, I talked to him on PM a few times. The only time he had a problem was when one of the leads on the DLA team for NWN (many of them made Wyverns Crown of Cormyr), Steel_Wind, started talking on these boards like he actually worked at Bioware and was an insider. Patrick called him out on it and he left. To get an idea of what a great guy Steel_Wind was take a look at this article.

Patrick was here as a rep promoting Bioware products. They seemed to be drinking the kool-aid already believing they couldn't do anything wrong, and that people would buy new consoles and platforms just to play the latest Bioware game.

No, Patrick left here because company policy, based on industry trend, forbade him from frequenting other websites other than Bioware. This was a policy made infamous by Blizzard as they discovered websites were making money off their name just by association and none of it was going (directly) to the company.

Lucky Day said:

Patrick was here as a rep promoting Bioware products.

…

No, Patrick left here because company policy, based on industry trend, forbade him from frequenting other websites other than Bioware.

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Did he say specifically that he was here as a rep to promote products, and that he left because he was forbidden to continue here? Or is this your reading of it?

Looking at some of his posts, he didn't strike me as a shill, and I'm pretty sensitive to that sort of thing. That seemed to be one of the nice things - his studio was so big, and this site so small, that he really didn't need to bother. He was obviously prepared to be outspoken, and I didn't get that sense of a phony love-in that reps from small indies try to create, to help push their game.

Falksi said:

Just wondering, what are people's opinions on Mike Laidlaw?

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I honestly don't know much about him. Despite the fact that he's been heavily involved in a lot of past BioWare titles, including some all-time greats like ME and DAO, I don't really know what his contributions are. It's usually easier to single out the work of writers than programmers or designers.

In fact, I've spent the last decade or so trying to explain what I actually do for a living (I'm a programmer), and I just can't do it. I just try to describe it as "math in written form" and leave it at that.

Maylander said:

I honestly don't know much about him.

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Noone does.

So let's find some introduction to the character… Like this interview published 11/03/2011:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-laidlaw-a-defence-of-dragon-age-ii-interview

A quote, about DA2 scores:

Eurogamer: I've seen scores as low as a 6/10 - what do you think when you read those?

Mike Laidlaw: Well it's hard to know exactly what's going on with scores that are really, really negative. One possible culprit could just be a change backlash, i.e. this isn't Origins and I wanted Origins 2.

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It was a fresh interview back then when DA2 got 10/10 on Escapist and similar suckup to EA sites.
And seems that Ladilaw was aware what the audience wanted, but didn't (want to or was not at liberty to) say who decided not to give fans what they want nor why the audience got the turd instead of the epic sequel.

Also, Ladilaw seems not understanding back then that 6/10 by normal mathematics means slightly above mediocre/average and not negative. Or better to say, he looked at numbers through IGN eyes where 9.3/10 means broken piece of shit and lower than that is even worse.

Did his thoughts change over time, dunno. If someone finds a more recent interview, please share a link.

Maylander said:

I honestly don't know much about him. Despite the fact that he's been heavily involved in a lot of past BioWare titles, including some all-time greats like ME and DAO, I don't really know what his contributions are. It's usually easier to single out the work of writers than programmers or designers.

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Designers at BioWare design both the story/setting and the gameplay. Mike first game at BioWare was Jade Empire, he was co-lead writer on it.

He moved to design more than writing on ME and/or that Sonic game nobody talks about. He was put on DAO as lead designer to replace Brent Knowles who left in 2009 before the game was released. Brent left because had no interest in making DA2 more like ME and he was replaced by a ME designer… I think it's easy to know Mike's contribution to the DA franchise really.

And for the people wondering why I know all of that…I've been digging after ex and current BioWare peps to try to know who moved to Beamdog.

joxer said:

Noone does.





So let's find some introduction to the character… Like this interview published 11/03/2011:


http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-laidlaw-a-defence-of-dragon-age-ii-interview





A quote, about DA2 scores:





It was a fresh interview back then when DA2 got 10/10 on Escapist and similar suckup to EA sites.


And seems that Ladilaw was aware what the audience wanted, but didn't (want to or was not at liberty to) say who decided not to give fans what they want nor why the audience got the turd instead of the epic sequel.





Also, Ladilaw seems not understanding back then that 6/10 by normal mathematics means slightly above mediocre/average and not negative. Or better to say, he looked at numbers through IGN eyes where 9.3/10 means broken piece of shit and lower than that is even worse.





Did his thoughts change over time, dunno. If someone finds a more recent interview, please share a link.

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Top post.

This wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't got the line "we've taken on board you're concerns, and are gonna make DA:I more like DA: O"......to then go on and make DA:I even further away from DA: O than DA:2 was.

Sorry but I've very little time for Laidlaw. DA:2 was shocking as a stand alone game, abysmal as a sequel. DA:I proved how much BS Laidlaw spouts.

Exodus one of the best games ever made.

Anyways, who cares there is a ton of games out there.