EA is nearing an agreement to move the ongoing development and operation of MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic from BioWare to third-party studio Broadsword Online Games, IGN has learned. The move is intended to allow BioWare to focus on Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
This might be a good thing all around. Bioware needs to focus on DA and ME, they need love and attention to not have another ME:A or Anthem.
In addition 3rd party studios are usually trying hard to prove themselves, depending on the relationship it could end up great. Fallout:NV of course is a great example of a studio handing IP over to a third party.
I agree, BioWare does not need to be devoting its resources to SW:TOR at this point. It's been out for a good, long while and the fact is, MMORPGs are not big money-makers these days. There was a huge wave of them in the wake of WoW's success but none of them were able to achieve the kind of market success, player base or staying power of WoW. That ship has sailed, and it's only appropriate to let the BioWare devs get back to doing what they do best.
I don't have high hopes for the next Dragon Age game, but would love to be pleasantly surprised. They've changed directions so many times during the development of that game, so I'm expecting the end result to be a mess. Mass Effect gives me slightly more hope as a possible return to form for BioWare though, if they learn from Andromeda's missteps and focus on what made the original trilogy (particularly the first two games) great.
What have we even heard about DA4 yet? From my knowledge there have been 2 teaser trailers and a weird behind the scenes video, and just dead silence beyond that. I hope they're taking the time to just nail it. I've heard rumors that they think if they don't nail it that'll be it for Bioware and frankly.... kind of yeah.
I haven't seen anything solid, just the occasional story here and there about the changing vision of the game. It was originally intended to go hard on the multiplayer game-as-a-service model but EA backed down after Anthem and a couple of other failures. I think now, they're back on board with making the focus single-player? I'm not sure though, as nothing official has come out yet. Maybe we'll see something about it at Summer Games Fest in the near future.
I really want to see where they go with Mass Effect and I do hope they’ve learned from their mistakes. I actually think ME3 was better than 2 in a few respects right up until that terrible ending. ME:A turned out okay once they fixed the issues but it wasn’t the Mass Effect I was hoping for.
I played ME:A all the way through and.. so much filler. Not a train wreck though, I tried to start another playthough and couldn't do it because while the engine was good when you scratched the surface, it was just surface.
For the record I love the mass-effection of Dragonage called Dragon Age 2 so I get it.
Yeah that's why I compare it to Assassin's Creed. It was fun, had a good time, I wouldn't put it on the top tier of my favorite games though. I think people should just judge it for what it was, a spinoff
I must be one of the 10 people who liked Andromeda but I believe it was unjustly criticized. It is more bland that the Mass Effect trilogy but still a decent game.
Me too, I thought it was a fine game. It was not at the same level as the original trilogy - but I had a fun time in it. The story was fine, the worlds were a bit empty but fun, gameplay was fun. I put it on par if not a little better than an assassin's creed game.