Bioware: EA carves another notch into their record of game studios killed.

Well that's it for them, I guess.

http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/r...m-BioWare.html

Will the last person with a soul at Bioware turn out the lights before you leave the building?

Don't tell me. Let me guess. It's an MMO, right?

Feh.

I'm in for Dragon Age: Inquisition.

It's not that EA closed the studio, it's just the founders left. Knew that last week. They made their killing selling out to EA, hung around for 5 years as EA VPs in charge of their not so little empire (5 studios in three countries) so now their are getting out before they watch EA suck their life's work into a dried up husk like they've done to so many studios. Their not even developers, just the original money guys with the money (they were medical doctors).

Good for them.

To be more accurate, they were guys who wanted to make games and realised they needed money, so became doctors to make money to make games.


Also; old news. I knew Bioware was dead as soon as I was subjected to the utter, utter {BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEEEEEEP} that was ME3.

At least Westwood, Bullfrog, Pandemic and co will have some new company to reminisce with...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

ME3 is so disappointing its not even funny.. I can barely make myself play through it once.. much less try it with different classes..

Eh, I thought it was alright. I only really had problems with the fact that they didn't at least give the option for a happy ending. If you had finished every game's achievements, did all possible side missions throughout, had full Paragon or Renegade, had full galactic readiness, did all DLC, etc., there should've been a difference to allow for a happy ending.

And no, I didn't play it before the Extended Cut came out. Maybe I just wasn't as emotionally invested in seeing what happened. *shrug* I do think they should've made every squad NPC romanceable in the second instead of bowing down to the soccer mom crowd screaming about sexboxing and the like. Because come on, who wouldn't want to see a FemShep/Ashley or FemShep/Miranda pairing?

ME3 was a great game. I loved it until the end. For me, though, the ending was SO bad, so out of step with the rest of the franchise, so incredibly stupid, it soured the whole thing for me. The only way they could have salvaged it for me was to go the indoctrination route. Even though I downloaded the extended ending, I still have yet to bother with it.

I'm right there with you, man. I haaated the original ending to ME3. It had a lot of problems, but for me it was just so out of character for my Shepard. She'd spent the last two games spitting defiance at the Reapers and their proxies, pulling off the impossible and saving the galaxy's ***. And then she gets to the Catalyst and listens to it's spiel and then she just... rolls over and accepts the crappy, death-inducing options that the thing gives her. I hated that. I at least wanted the choice to give the Catalyst the finger and work out a fourth option that saves everyone.

I almost couldn't bring myself to do any replays, knowing that it would feel pointless with that ending waiting (but I decided to try out a run on a Vanguard and it was so much fun I stuck with it).

Then the Extended Cut came out, and I decided to give it another shot. Believe me, it makes the ending soooooooooo much better than it was originally. It fills in most, if not all, of the plot holes (you know how your team mates on the ground get back to the Normandy, why Joker didn't try to pick you up before he bugged out, etc.) and it provides the closure that the original ending didn't. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm not saying that you'll think it's the greatest ending in the history of video games (or even the franchise). But it is a lot more palatable than the original ending was.

All I can say about what I'm doing next is that it involves a lot of beer.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, all I can say about what I would be doing next is that it would involve a lot of beer.

Here are my main issues with ME3:

1) We were promised for years that there wouldn't be an "A-B-C ending" by Casey Hudson, yet that's exactly what he delivered.

2) We were also promised for years over multiple interviews that the choices we made mattered. But they did not. I played through ME2 multiple times to get different endings, including a "Suicide Squad" one, just to see what effect that would have on the story. Turns out that effect was: Zero. If someone didn't make it through the ME2 finale, they were simply replaced by their sister/uncle/roommate/cat in ME3. It was just "replace character A with character B" laziness.

3) We experience the invasion of Earth in the opening sequence and then spend a good 50% of the game faffing off doing stupid fetch missions that are better suited for grunts, not the Hero Savior of All Creation. "Say, get some ointment for this random guy on that planet way over there."

3a) And this is related to the above for pacing: why do crew members play poker, or stare off into space, or go to a dance club? It's the END OF EVERYTHING and they're goofing off? WTF? They blather on about how driven they are, how much hatred they have for the Reapers, how much they want to save the galaxy... but after I finish this hand, esse. Come on, that's terrible writing, plain and simple. There was no sense of urgency.

I think this was due to EA pulling more team members to work on SW:TOR in order to meet deadlines, so they cut corners on Mass Effect. After three stinkers in a row with DA:O, TOR and ME3, BioWare has severely damaged their brand. They've lost people like me forever.