Dragon Age 2 - The End of BioWare as a Traditional RPG Creator?

Greywardens sent in their editorial titled Is Dragon Age 2 the End of BioWare as a Traditional RPG Creator?

So I must admit to some irritation with the future of the Dragon Age games series. Don’t get me wrong, I am fairly open minded as a gamer, and the story of Dragon Age 2 seems epic in scale — but the fact that the true role playing element of choice has been removed is a bit of a slap in the face to those of us who played and enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins as an RPG. As a sequel to a game that is considered by the creators as the spiritual successor to one of the most popular roleplaying games of all time, I am left wondering this: what crushed that spirit?

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More information.

Everything you need to know about today's Bioware in one pithy quote (in reference to the new, 90% choice-free direction of DA2):

It’s all about branding here, and appealing to the largest part of the target market.

That is all.

screeg said:

Everything you need to know about today's Bioware in one pithy quote (in reference to the new, 90% choice-free direction of DA2):

It’s all about branding here, and appealing to the largest part of the target market.

That is all.

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That is all you need to know to make what decision? Is the question "Will I enjoy future Bioware games" and your answer is "no because that one quote is all you need to know"?

To each his own but I have greatly enjoyed each of the 10-or-so Bioware game I have played so for me that one sentence observation from someone with a specific subjective point of view does absolutely nothing for me either way.

That quote simply spells out what their future games are likely to be like. If you love Mass Effect style RPGs, great you'll get what you want.

I don't, therefore I'm not going to get what I want.

Someone posted a summary of the recent Game Informer article. It's basically one long apology from Bioware for making a CRPG, and that it wasn't more like Mass Effect.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/3054393/10

I just hope that everyone else working on the game doesn't feel that way.

Yep, they've been officially EAed apparently... I give them another 2-3y of "life"...

Since i hate all their games i hope this is the end of the "traditional" and the start of something new , maybe something free form without cinematics and annoying combat tactics, maybe something with more barrels !!!!
Players always bitch when something changes , we are all following communities here and there and we know that this is the case .

*Bio's forums are lacking some serious trolling , i think i 'll register .

Bioware fanboys are so hardcore they'd buy their product and rate it 10/10 even if it was just a pile of monkey poo wrapped in plastic.

bemushroomed said:

Bioware fanboys are so hardcore they'd buy their product and rate it 10/10 even if it was just a pile of monkey poo wrapped in plastic.

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But if it was wrapped in plastic it is good. It would even smell good.

I am a bioware fanboi. I have preordered every title they made since Baldur's Gate. I also own every Black Isle, Troika and Obsidian game out there.

That said, I guess I am not even in the target market. Neither were the 90.53% average reviews.

This Just In!

Bioware, A Canadian game developer based out of Edmonton, who enjoyed some considerable critical and commercial success in the latter-half of the 1990s with such titles as Baldur's Gate, and Baldur's Gate 2, have in reality been making increasingly-less-interactive CG movies since late 2003.

With little narrative flexibility, and nearly non-existent emergent gameplay, Bioware continued to market their products as "Role-Playing" games throughout the first decade of this new century.

People who have played these newer titles are said to have expressed a gamut of emotions; this reporter heard of gamers experiencing a sense of loss, a vaguely uncomfortable feeling that they were being had, a slightly sleepy state one gamer described as 'boredom', as well as what several other gamers described as a feeling that they were experiencing a very well-written and visually impressive DVD menu.

When asked for an opinion on the matter, parent company Electronic Arts, colloquially known as 'EA', said, "THIS IS THE NEW SHIT!1!!1elevn!!" (emph. EA)

(Electronic Arts marketing dept. could not be reached for comment at the time of this printing.)

Ah. The decline of deep roleplaying experiences and the rise of 'interactive movies' coincides with a significant drop in the desire to play games and enjoy other stuff. Can't tell you how happy I am about my timing.

Mmm, silly article.

This :

In Dragon Age 2, Much Like Mass Effect, You Will Only Be Allowed to Play As a Human Refugee

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does not equal this (emphasis mine) :

I am fairly open minded as a gamer, and the story of Dragon Age 2 seems epic in scale — but the fact that the true role playing element of choice has been removed

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I liked the backgrounds in DA, really. But it's not an intrinsically superior approach. By having a set character, you tend to be able to create more depth for that character's background and suchlike. Basically, you can cater for a number of backgrounds in a fairly shallow manner (what difference did those origin stories make after the initial sequence? Not much. ) or create a richer background around a set character (Nameless One in PST). It would be ideal to be able to have both, but development resources aren't infinite.

Will Bioware take enough advantage of that set character to counteract the loss of the origin stories? I don't know. But it's not an intrinsically inferior approach and people are jumping the gun a bit by claiming it's the end of Bioware as an RPG developer.

Naked Ninja said:

people are jumping the gun a bit by claiming it's the end of Bioware as an RPG developer.

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That's missing the key word "Traditional".
And it seems to me pretty obvious that Bioware doesn't want to be a traditional RPG creator.

Not that I care what Bioware wants to do anyway. If DA2 seems to interest me I'll play it. The one thing that annoys me a bit is that we wont be able to use Bioware as living proof that traditional RPGs can be popular and profitable against the people who argue that shooters are the future of everything.

What if - against all odds collected here in this thread and elsewhere - DA2 turns out to be like BG2 in terms of success ?

Traditional? PST wasn't traditional?

Again, you can't leap to that conclusion simply because you have to play Hawke and not a generated char.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

What if - against all odds collected here in this thread and elsewhere - DA2 turns out to be like BG2 in terms of success ?

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Then this would be a step backwards, because BioWare/EA recently announced that Dragon Age: Origins has been their most successful title ever ...

Naked Ninja said:

Traditional? PST wasn't traditional?

Again, you can't leap to that conclusion simply because you have to play Hawke and not a generated char.

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I don't think that anyone 'leaps' to that conclusion just for that… It becomes clearer when you look at their recent history: ie Mass Effect + the fact that the first info we get about the sequel to their 'traditional' game seems to have a lot in common with it.

Also, traditional isn't a synonym for good and neither is RPG…
In fact if something is not traditional it has a chance of being 'innovative' (that's a word we haven't heard a lot have we?) if it is traditional there's very little such chance.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

What if - against all odds collected here in this thread and elsewhere - DA2 turns out to be like BG2 in terms of success ?

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What if it does?
People will not complain about like they didn't complain about, say... Oblivion?

My issue with a static voiced protagonist, doubly so if it is going to be paired with ME's dialog wheel, is that it continually reinforces the sense that I am not the character I'm controlling… For me a big part of RPing is my ability to get into that character, to feel as though I am the character(or at least could be).

Their approach to ME killed that sense of ownership and by extension, immersion. The most obvious instance is having a voiced protagonist that sounds nothing like what the player expects/desires, second would be their dialog wheel where Shepard will blurt out something entirely different from what I selected and last but not least the voiced protagonist's responses, at times, imply/infer an innate knowledge regarding events/things that the player did not know. All of which leads up to the realization that the player is not RPing a Commander in the Alliance military, a specter, a good guy or a bad guy. At best you're influencing those roles/characters/attributes and going through predefined motions(admittedly all games are predefined to one degree or another - but why predefine something that doesn't have to be?), which for me is not an immersive, engaging or thought provoking RPing experience. It's an interactive book or movie, and while I can empathize with the protagonist in certain books or movies games offer the unique ability to actually be the hero, villain, coward, ect).

Talk about a lot of whining and doomsday prophecies. Geez. People need to relax, wait for the actual game, and try it out. Either it's good or it's not.

I even give Elder Scrolls 5 the benefit of the doubt, because I know the developers in Bethesda are skilled people - Morrowind is an excellent example.

Only time will tell whether or not games turn out okay.