they have shipped about 2 good games in the last 24 years so it’s hard to argue that they should not be re-orged onto respawn projects or something
I played half of veilguard! I’m pretty willing to give them a shot because I find their foibles endearing! it was still quite bad. and something like jedi survivor is really not that far from what they’re trying to do, they just aren’t good at it presently.
I saw someone on social media lamenting that the person who wrote the nazi scientist who loves musical theater in mass effect 2 no longer works at bioware
mordin was actually one of their better characters
Something of an indictment of the rest of the cast but I can’t disagree
rumors were circulating in edmonton that bioware was shutting down entirely soon… idk if this is that or if that’s still on the horizon or if ppl were just mad about veilguard haha
i could never figure out how bioware was so successful. I only ever tried to play mass effect 1 and found it really mid. I’d watch lets plays of other bioware games and they also felt kind of mid, so I couldn’t really understand the mass appeal. And then there was Anthem.
I watched someone here play Veilguard and the entire time I was like “that’s it?”
you could fuck naked aliens in mass effect and they allowed you to be gay. pretty much had those markets all to themselves in moderately big gaming space for like 15 years
saints row 4 is the best ‘bioware game’
KOTOR and Mass Effect 3 were good (technically I’d say that KOTOR and Mass Effect 2 were more like 2/3 good between them but it’s quicker to just recommend KOTOR and 3). the rest of their games were not but they were written like CW shows in the years after final fantasy had fallen off and there was a huge audience for them
I do find it pretty crazy how many people think mass effect 2 is the best game ever made, though. it’s like a standard answer to that question. who knows.
well it’s probably about as many people as love final fantasy 8 which is the most instructive comparison. JRPGs basically stopped being mainstream around the same time as Bioware became the most credible heir to their audience, but they pretty much collapsed at the end of the PS3 generation
Neverwinter Nights persistent world servers were the best BioWare games
I wasn’t into the PWs but nwn custom modules were 100% the best thing that was in any way linked to bioware
So I’m just gonna type my mental process out here.
Thinks “Hey, Mass Effect had some warts but was still a fun time overall, maybe I should defend it”
Have a vague recollection that hellojed worked on vehicle physics or models in various video games
Remembers trying to steer the Mako vehicle in ME1
…“Yeah, they would likely not care for that at all”
Also can we get a sticky?
I think Bioware’s success in the 00s and early 10s was largely because the RPG, whatever subgenre, was borderline dead. Same story as post-Morrowind Bethesda (and they can both get partial credit for nailing the coffin shut on RPGs for so many years. Much like D&D in the tabletop space, they took up too much room and suffocated the alternatives)
Like, nothing describes that period of video game rpg better than how excited people were for mediocre kickstarter-funded nostalgia fests like Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity. Even something as stale as an infinity engine homage or a unity engine kitbash of a tactics rpg felt like a breath of fresh air when compared to the Bioware/Bethesda hostility towards complexity (in mechanics, in narrative, in character, in aesthetic)
I played kotor 2 first so I think kotor is COMPLETE SHIT but I probably would have stuck with it if I wasn’t spoiled by the best star wars game ever
kotor is super conservative and very overrated in hindsight but it was also the basis for almost everything they did well over the following decade
such a sadness
I’ve still never played KOTOR2… from everything I’ve read it’s really good but also it’s like, not even finished?
Anyway Baldur’s Gate 2 is still one of the greatest CRPG’s of all time, but I feel like Mass Effect 1 was their last good game. Makes you wonder where they’d be now as a studio if MS bought them instead of EA.