While checking out to play Jade Empire, I found the following chart of bioware games:
Most here probably have seen it before, but I'm posting it for those that haven't. Related to that, it makes me crave for some original settings too. You can almost take any two ideas (settings, games, movies) and the combination thereof is at least quite interesting in a vague crazy way.
Lets say: Chinese culture + the expanse, alternate reality + India
It probably sounds better in my head, but I still want to see some of them.
Just saying it is a pity that developers (have to) play it safe. What two settings do you want to see combined?
Btw: I just noted there is no bioware forum around here.
Yes, I've seen that chart before & it's as much malicious horseshit now as it was then. It was a meme created after Dragon Age Origins was released nearly 10 years ago.
The hub structure is actually an extremely good design & no-one has ever complained about hub-structures. In fact, it's a crying shame more games don't follow this design rather than the rather mind-numbing open world approach. You'll notice now I mention it that Divinity Original Sin used the hub + 4 design for Cyseal & you'll also notice that most people praise the Cyseal part of the game with great enthusiasm while the later part of the game, which uses no hub structure, is the part where people started quitting the game in their droves.
Were hubs ever 'cliche'? Maybe for avid Bioware fans who replayed all their games 14 times & burned themselves out on the concept, but in terms of reality they're actually the least used and most effective design for any cRPG system.
As Zloth points out, having an opposing force is just what pretty much all games have & it's utterly retarded to cite that as Bioware cliche. At the beginning of Mario the Princess is kinapped, your opposing force is established, game-on.
The only cliche that's kind-of genuine on the list is the notion that the player character is some kind of chosen one, the 'special person who will bring balance to the force' etc etc. But even here, that's not a bioware cliche, it's just the routine they stuck with. And the person who made the chart even fucked that up by instead using the phrasing "humble origins", which, in case you're not entirely thick, you'll notice applies to pretty much every RPG ever made and is intrinsically tied into the concept of 'levelling'.
Further, you'll notice that a lot of the games there don't even fulfill the very short and mostly horseshit list of 'cliches' the asshole who made that chart wanted to force onto the world.
You could make a chart like this for literally any game series ever made, but for some reason people don't. Oh, I wonder why.
And I know I'm unobseravant of every thread on this site, but are you honestly telling me that you've been a member here since 2009 and you 'suddenly notice' there's no Bioware forum? Did you also happen to notice that there's no forums at all for any developers of any kind, or are you entirely focused on just suddenly noticing things about Bioware? And further, in this regard, there is indeed a forum dedicated entirely to the Dragon Age series.
And no, I'm not even a Bioware fan, I'm just not someone's who's 'obsessed' with them, either in love or hate.
Your post claims that somehow this chart is 'proof' that Bioware 'played it safe' and it made you "crave for original settings', when that list already has many original settings just within the span of a few games, you even came across it from looking-up playing Jade frakin' empire, so, to be honest, no, I have no idea what the point of this post is and I'd be delighted if you could clarify exactly what the point of this post is as I have no idea beyond assuming it's just another bullshit cover for paving the way to praise some shit non-RPG by some hack-frauds that want to call their random game RPG because for some reason they think the RPG fanbase is potential untapped market in the post-steam greenlight world of desperate fraud-developers.
