Shamus Young - BioWare is Dead

Arkadia7 said:

Oh, where O' where have all the bioware defenders gone?

Click to expand...

Careful, you might summon back DArt

purpleblob said:

Careful, you might summon back DArt

Click to expand...

True but I counter you with summoning Azarhal AKA the "Die Hard BioWare"Crusader."

Inquisition was not a very good RPG but it was a very fun game if you have some tolerance for bullshit. I really enjoyed it back when it was launched. However, BioWare has gone downhill since then. Each new game just gets worse. It's kind of sad, really.

Lucky Day said:

This article was lost to me when he called out PoE and other modern RTwP games as something that just doesn't do it for him. This tells me he wasn't a true Bioware fan if he thinks these RPG Shooters are what the company stands for.

Click to expand...

I like that he does say that stuff because of the context it provides ... while RTwP and isometric games have many fans (me for one), the general audience (especially younger) is seeking first/third person ‘epic’ games similar to Mass Effect series.

sakichop said:

Who is shamus young and why do we need him to declare the obvious?

Click to expand...

Haha - I liked his web comic ‘DM of the Rings’ and have enjoyed many of his articles since. But ultimately ... ‘just some guy’.

In part 25 of a blog series on Mass Effect: Andromeda…

Click to expand...

What?

This sentence reminds me of something from a Douglas Adams novel.

txa1265 said:

I like that he does say that stuff because of the context it provides … while RTwP and isometric games have many fans (me for one), the general audience (especially younger) is seeking first/third person ‘epic’ games similar to Mass Effect series.

Click to expand...

I understand what you mean. I think of Origin as the early Ultimas but later fans treated U7 like it was the second coming. But even in the early 90's the company was better know for Wing Commander, so much so that actual RPG's by them were largely abandoned and WC got itself a major movie (that no one watched).

Still, those folks didn't see the rot on the inside of Bioware until it was too late, though the heavy handedness and the eventual complete breakdown of the new (and unnecessary) Social Forums should have made it obvious.

There is another point in this article he brings up - that if you hire developers and designers who work on FPS's they won't give a lick about World Building (tm) so they will only give it lip service and meet the legal definition.

I saw this coming with Bio in general with their emphasis on 3D games and move to hire Unreal Engine developers. There is a clear shift to Shooter RPGs at this point, away from Isometric style RPG's. The same thing happened with Ultima 9 (Iolo's arrow instead of a crossbow bolt in the promotional art was a glaring mistake that should have been caught).

You could even make this statement about Electronic Arts and EA in general over the decades.

I don't know who is this guy but I suppose good on him on noticing BioWare's death... some years after everyone else?