After years of holding out hope, 2024 was the year I finally gave up on BioWare
After years of holding out hope, 2024 was the year I finally gave up on BioWare
The Veilguard was the very shiny, very pretty nail in the coffin.
I really tried to enjoy myself. God, I tried so hard. I attempted to find nuggets of joy within its hamfisted dialogue, one-note companions and the flashy but soulless fights. But I just couldn't do it. Every time there was a glimmer of hope, it was dashed against the rocks of infinite disappointment.
Honestly, I'm amazed I finished it. There was certainly a point where I was starting to feel like I'd rather do anything else than listen to a hot Grey Warden talk about his big dumb bird for the hundredth time, or play therapist to a giant dragon slayer who just wants to moan about how their mum doesn't understand them. These should have been great characters. A veteran knight reclaiming his order's lost legacy, a proud warrior wrestling with their cultural and gender identity—there's so much good stuff to mine here. But nope, they're just plain boring. All of them.
I'm beating a dead horse, I know. I've already said my piece. But it's just a real shame. When I got to the final cutscene that teased what we can expect from the next Dragon Age, it really sealed the deal. I'm out. BioWare just isn't telling stories I care about anymore. Instead of moping around, I'm moving on. BioWare had an exceptional run, but that developer is long gone. What's left is just an EA studio that makes middling games I'm not really interested in.
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Once EA came into the picture, things went downhill quick.
Did they? Mass Effect and Dragon Age began under EA, which a lot of people would argue are pretty good.
Also, what does EA do, that's so bad? As far as I know, they're really hands-off, so they don't really meddle in the development, like what we've heard from Bobby Kotick.
At least for Dragon Age (2009) was in development since at least November 2002, 5 years before EA purchased Bioware.
You could also look at DICE, and the absolute shitshow every Battlefield has been since they were purchased by EA.
the absolute shitshow every Battlefield has been since they were purchased by EA
That would mean basically no good games for almost 20 years, which I can't believe. Even Bad Company 2, BF3 and 4, apparently beloved games in the franchise, are terrible?
Look, I barely play EA games, I just think that they aren't the sole or even major reason a bunch of their dev teams have turned to shit.
Nuance is lost. Simplistic narratives are everywhere - and there's nothing simpler than blaming the big boogeyman for everything. I'm not saying that they haven't made mistakes and aren't to blame for a great many things, but not every time and everywhere for everything.
Destroyed Sim City franchise, made The Sims 4 a DLC hellhole, made Mass Effect 3's shitty ending, maybe the mishandling of Battlefield 2042 and Battlefield 5?
Other things I could think of is releasing Origin and pulling their games from the Steam store. Other than that, I don't really follow gaming news enough to list more, nor know enough to determine if everything I already listed are caused by EA.
Edit: I forgot Mass Effect Andromeda.
I guess if a game is bad, it's EA's fault, but if it's good, it's all because of the dev.
What about Mass Effect 1 and 2, EA had already bought Bioware at that point. What about other Battlefield games? People always rave about Bad Company 2 or maybe 3 and 4, but how come EA only chose to interfere after 20 years?
The interesting thing about BFV was that Dice got spread thin during development of the updates.
Battlefront 2 was not in good shape and started recieving a ton of fixes, and during that time is when BFV development slowed to a crawl.
I'm assuming disney was not happy with the negative press? But I have no real clue
So, one thing that's funny is the one instance that popped into my head was when an EA exec actually recommended a feature that ended up making Anthem better (but also possibly worse?). There's a famous story of how they were requested to add flying to the game, which added tons and tons of work and a good portion of dev time. But arguably was the best part of anthem. Unfortunately, they were unable to salvage it as we saw.