Dragon Age 4 - Not Likely to be Good

Speaking of agendas, I'd say it's obvious the writer of the article has one.

Yes, today's Bioware is a far cry from old Bioware, but this guy is going out of his way to exaggerate certain things. I agree with Bobo, it's more of a rant (and a poorly written one) than an article.

Dragon Age 4, now with jet packs!

Well, one can only hope they (EA/Biowere) can learn something from their failures and stop throwing away money.

Originally Posted by Ripper
Yes, I'm not quite sure when we had this golden age where fiction was free from political thought and personal values. I think I missed that.

I don't really think that's the root of the Bioware problem. To me, their recent games simply smack of having been designed by not-particularly-talented committee. I just don't think they have the right creative people steering things anymore.

Exactly every veteran has left by quitting, getting fired, or going on sabbatical. Just look at Anthem three of the main leads were basically let go after that Kotaku article.

The one's left are modern fans/gamer's who have no idea how to make a proper RPG.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Speaking of agendas, I'd say it's obvious the writer of the article has one.

Yes, today's Bioware is a far cry from old Bioware, but this guy is going out of his way to exaggerate certain things. I agree with Bobo, it's more of a rant (and a poorly written one) than an article.

Sometime a rant article is better then a professorial article.

More emotional without the usual BioWare ass kissing going by the Anthem previews/interviews. The hype in those articles was on par with EA & TitanFall.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Exactly every veteran has left by quitting, getting fired, or going on sabbatical. Just look at Anthem three of the main leads were basically let go after that Kotaku article.

The one's left are modern fans/gamer's who have no idea how to make a proper RPG.
Sometime a rant article is better then a professorial article.

I think a lot of it has to do with the company lifecycle. People start a tech company with an exit plan - where they grow it and cash out at the right point.

I sometimes think the game industry should be more like the film industry, and have the equivalent of the movie director. If a director/writer has some success, no one expects that they are going to start their own film studio. The creatives are usually detached from the technical/commercial side, and hired by the studios on a project-by-project basis. I think it would be good if the game industry adopted that type of model to a greater degree, and the top creatives had more independence and recognition.

The last two Dragon Age Games had huge glaring flaws -- reused assets, repetitive encounters, awful tactical camera, etc. -- mostly due to time and money constraints from EA, but also due to what seems like growing burnout and cynicism from the Bioware guys working under those constraints.

They also offered a lot to enjoy.

I don't really expect anything different this time out -- I'll buy it on sale.

People try to connect with characters in games they are playing. I think BioWare games these days have characters that don't ring true to people and their lived experiences and are therefore hard to connect with for most people. Put simply the characters are too one dimensional and maybe voice acting is to blame here for the lack of depth. Not to mention the lack of revision time when you have to reallocate voice actors and what not. EA corporate interfering with what gets funded and dictating engines is another factor.

However writing can still be punchy and on point if a solid vision is established early. Its not through which leads me to assume that the people at BioWare nowadays are sheltered and lite in real life experiences to fall back on. Given the long work hours and being tied to the close confines of like minded colleagues, it seems likely to produce insular and inward looking content. If you can't connect with your audience at the emotional level people tend to reject whatever messages you are pushing. That is if they are even trying to connect to the gaming audience at all.

BioWare itself is like the wounded or obviously disfunctional member of a tribe who is being ostracized and isolated to protect the health of the tribe, at this point.

As long as there is a ton of pay to win options I am in…

I think BioWare games these days have characters that don't ring true to people and their lived experiences and are therefore hard to connect with for most people.

Excepting ME:A and Anthem, Bioware games have been commercial and critical successes. I liked the characters in DA:I for the most part. Some were sort of forgettable, but that's the case in pretty much all BW games.

I liked most things about DA:I except for

That. Damned. Camera.

But the camera damn near ruined combat for me, and there was a lot of combat.

Originally Posted by Hexprone
I liked most things about DA:I except for

That. Damned. Camera.

But the camera damn near ruined combat for me, and there was a lot of combat.

I suspected that the camera would be borked before release. They focus mostly on the console audience after all. What mostly buggered it was the amount of pan or the lack of. You could not zoom out very far at all.

I played it for a couple hours on my brother's PC and was not impressed, to put it kindly helter skelter. I paid no attention to what my characters were doing and still won easily. I think that game was made to auto-pilot through encounters but limited play time and all that and you have much more play time, so I gather it got more interesting later?

I was playing hinterlands and not finding any interesting content.

Originally Posted by FizzyShellfish
Excepting ME:A and Anthem, Bioware games have been commercial and critical successes. I liked the characters in DA:I for the most part. Some were sort of forgettable, but that's the case in pretty much all BW games.

Dragon Age 2 and ME3 were commercial and critical successes?

Dunno about ME3, but DA2 was critical success scoring 9/10 and 10/10 everywhere. The audience was confused what critics exactly praised so much, but that's another story:
https://www.pcgamer.com/dragon-age-2-review/

The best RPG combat ever. Not gaming's best story, but maybe its best storytelling. Darker, sexier, better.

Originally Posted by joxer
Dunno about ME3, but DA2 was critical success scoring 9/10 and 10/10 everywhere. The audience was confused what critics exactly praised so much, but that's another story:

Ah, the old days when EA didnt have enough money for standard game development time but have enough money for media.

ME3 was a success all round, wasn't it?

My impression is the backlash wasn't from critics or the general purchasing public, but from fans once they had already paid their money and played the fifty hours to get to that ending.

I never bought it as I don't play shooters, but I think the negative buzz was from a small, loud group of the hardcore and didn't really affect the game's bottom line.

I clearly recall Mass Effect 3 having a lot of negative user reviews from the get-go. Same with DA2.

As far as being a critical success, I think that's debatable to say the least. If there are only 40-50 critic scores vs 5000+ user scores, which one are you going to have more faith in?

Critic scores.

People writing Metacritic reviews are a bunch of cranks with axes to grind -- and they're hardly vox populi either, as they come from a very small subset of the player base.

Originally Posted by joxer
Dunno about ME3, but DA2 was critical success scoring 9/10 and 10/10 everywhere. The audience was confused what critics exactly praised so much, but that's another story:
https://www.pcgamer.com/dragon-age-2-review/

Still remember the controversy over that review. Good memories.

Originally Posted by Hexprone
Critic scores.

People writing Metacritic reviews are a bunch of cranks with axes to grind -- and they're hardly vox populi either, as they come from a very small subset of the player base.

Yeah, I'm sure every one of those 5000+ people were just trolling.

You're forgetting that there are just as many fanboys who are willing to rate certain games 10/10 just because.

If we're talking about a game with a few hundred reviews, then I have no doubt the bottom line can be skewed by enough trolls (or fanboys), but when we're talking about a score averaged over thousands, I'll usually take that over a few dozen critic reviews.

Originally Posted by Silver
I suspected that the camera would be borked before release. They focus mostly on the console audience after all. What mostly buggered it was the amount of pan or the lack of. You could not zoom out very far at all.

I played it for a couple hours on my brother's PC and was not impressed, to put it kindly helter skelter. I paid no attention to what my characters were doing and still won easily. I think that game was made to auto-pilot through encounters but limited play time and all that and you have much more play time, so I gather it got more interesting later?

I was playing hinterlands and not finding any interesting content.

Yep, Hinterlands was terrible, the game got much better and more interesting later.

Originally Posted by Stingray
Yep, Hinterlands was terrible, the game got much better and more interesting later.

Good to know. Maybe if EA releases the game on GOG I will give it a second chance.