Man, I remember being so fuckin stoked for the original release of Nevereinter Nights. You will be missed.
I remember being excited for the original Neverwinter Nights that was made by Stormfront and SSI
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_(AOL_game)
It may also have been the first graphical MMO.
Same. It was the first major title I recall with a native linux release. They famously didn’t deliver it on release but got it out eventually. Met a lot of good linux gamers on those forums while we waited.
We’ll build our own BioWare! With blackjack! And hookers!
But unfortunately without the IP
Surely copyright doesn’t last forever plus a day, and they will be released into the public domain in a timely manner.
Let’s just use AI and say that it’s fair use.
I’m guessing those new owners don’t appreciate stories where gay characters are treated with respect.
Eh… It was written on the wall 12 years ago when EA bought Bioware.
They don’t care. That kind of thing would be censored locally but as long as it makes them money, it doesn’t matter.
Yes, I’m sure THAT’S the reason, and not that Bioware has been dead in the water for 12 years at minimum
People keep blaming Saudi Arabia/Kushner for this, but it was going to happen with or without them.
Sounds like EA is doubling down on live service games, Star Wars and sports. Not surprising, the industry has been moving away from the big AAA single player game culture for a long time. That might end up being an era that was linited to Millennials.
So much better game experience, but nowhere near the cash cow of people blowing money on cosmetics in live service games and pay to win. Even super low effort mobile games will frequently milk out way more cash.
Basically the good money is with low quality content, so good quality has to come out of enthusiasm for gaming, not from board rooms.
And that after the success the last Mass Effect game was…
They’ve had 3 flops in a row, and the worst part is that they did absolutely no learning from any of them. Each failed for the same reason. Bland boring story, no risks, souless worlds from the studio that was known for epic deep lore based worlds. As sad as I am, EA and Bioware did it to themselves.
Everything EA touches loses its soul. EA was always this turbo-capitalist locust-plague of a company. ‘Consume and destroy’ is their unofficial company motto.
As soon as they bought Bioware it was just a matter of time.
Hey, I liked Andromeda! Maybe it just needed a few patches, I played it a few months after release and didn’t see any of the bugs I remember people posting about.
Maybe it just needed a few patches,
I don’t think you patch out the idea of ‘exploring a new galaxy except someone else already did all the exploration for you’
I beat the whole game but thought it was bland as hell. Looking back, I feel like 90% of the game was just running from one side of the map to the other to collect some item and bring it back. None of the characters were very appealing especially the protagonist
I didn’t finish it (I’m a serial quitter, I almost never finish games) but I enjoyed that Ryder was sort of an anti-Shepard. I played the Shepard trilogy as a Vanguard and even on the highest difficulty Vanguard!Shep is an unstoppable biotic death god, especially in 3 where Charge > Nova > Charge > Nova is possible. On the hardest difficulty in Andromeda, Ryder is a plucky underdog who has to somehow squeak by against enemies who frankly outclass them one-on-one (or at least my Ryder was; perhaps there is a stronger build I could have been using, but this one sold the fantasy).
Similarly I remember cracking up when Ryder tried to call a crew meeting about something important and immediately lost control of the room.
I don’t remember much about the plot, tbh.
I played it a good while after launch. I couldn’t find any of the goofy bugs either by then and I did actually like the beginning of the game. But I felt the story was the strongest at the beginning and then it became a bit formulaic. Overall though I didn’t think it was a bad as some made it out to be but also not stellar of course.
Time to rename EA to Saudi TM Gaming
The T stands for Trump!
All aliens must wear hijab or be executed. /s
I mean, the Quarians were basically hijabi
Scopely Premium
Perhaps they can make a game about dismembering journalists.
I suspected this would happen after the Saudi take-over. I haven’t played Veilguard, but i did see something about a non-binary character. I’d be very surprised if the saudi’s funded something progressive like that, even if it was poorly executed from what i’ve seen.
I guess Exodus and the Expanse game will have to fill that void
What void? The void of casual role playing games with bad gameplay and worse writing?
I don’t think that void needs to be filled. The last BioWare game I enjoyed was Mass Effect 2 in 2010.
ME2 is amazing and ME1 was great. 3 had good mechanics but worse writing, and Andromeda was terrible on many fronts but the ability to change your build on the fly was cool.
When I talk about Exodus and Expanse Im talking more about the style of third-person sci-fi RPGs with companions.
Jade empire was really good
and it had Nathan Fillion!
Who actually is a gamer himself too
Apparently day 1 of Firefly filming he told Alan Tudyk to go buy an Xbox so they could play Halo. Day 2 he asked Alan “so what’d you think” and Alan was confused, having thought it to be a joke. That day he had to go and buy said Xbox.
I’m listening to their podcast (Once We Were Spacemen) right now, though the episode where they talked about how they became friends was ages ago, so I might be misremembering some details. They also have an episode with the guy who directed the Uncharted fan film Nathan starred in, Allan Ungar.
Apparently day 1 of Firefly filming he told Alan Tudyk to go buy an Xbox so they could play Halo. Day 2 he asked Alan “so what’d you think” and Alan was confused, having thought it to be a joke. That day he had to go and buy said Xbox.
And then both of them ended up in Halo as Buck and Mickey in ODST.
Which I did not know or remember from the podcast (though they may have mentioned it) because I’ve never played Halo myself :( Never been a console gamer unfortunately. Though protondb lists Master Chief Collection as Gold status so I may yet get to play it, it just happened that it came to PC when I was already an adult with little time for vidya :( Then by the time I got into my career enough that I didn’t worry about hitting 8 hours a day in the office to stay employed, I’d forgotten it existed again. Aaand now I have new reasons for not having enough time for playing as much vidya as I’d like.
I think good stories and corporations are at opposite ends. Corporations and the opposite of human, and thus can’t write good human relatable stories. They can’t make art. The more people in the room the more bland the outcome will be. Too much overhead - marking, advertisers, lawyers, HR, everyone. I think Bioware proves they can’t do it. I think smaller studios are the only ones really capable of it. The only outliers appear to be rockstar and CDPR, for the time being at least.
I’d not heard of an Expanse game. I hope it features Shohreh Aghdashloo. I fucking love that woman.
I really hope Exodus will live up to the expectations.
ill never forgive EA for destroying westwood studios and maxis,
FUCK EA
Generals 2 was in the make. There was a promo gameplay video. They fucking canceled it. I’ll never forgive them for it.
Litteraly everything they touch, they kill. Either they cancel it or it becomes a pay to win gambling platform which lacks actual content. Enshitification Assholes.
Fuck. Now I have to add Bioware to the pile.
yoyo they found 21 missing people off of that music video. its really a song of hope.
Didn’t the song out a bunch of people who went missing on purpose and ruin their lives?
from the article:
It wasn’t always plain sailing for the families afterwards – kids don’t run away from happy homes – but maybe things had changed when they went back or they were older and able to cope better.
i don’t know the specifics, but that sounds like what they’re trying to say very gently. i wouldn’t go so far as to say it ruined their lives, but in our experiences (two of my cousins and one niece ran away when they were teenagers) if their lives were ruined it was the shit that caused them to run away that did it.
i know, small sample size, but most people expect their lives to be ordinary. it makes it easy to fall into the logical trap that everyone has the same experiences
Absolutely. Incredible what came from that campaign. The song still fit the tone I wanted for the meme.
Damn it. What’s the first one again? I instantly remember the feeling playing this game, but I can’t remember…
Thanks for the memories!
Fantastic game. I think it ran on Amiga 500 and other OS I can’t remember. Now my night is ruined until I recall.
EA is exactly the republican party. Destroy everything they touch with loads of bigotry and sheer incompetence.
The bigotry is probably a new thing for them then because at least back in the day they didn’t give a fuck as long as it made money. Bioware games usually had LGB(perhaps not T, don’t remember any) characters, often as romance options and I recall racial justice being a theme in both Mass Effect and Dragon Age games.
But I suspect the new owners don’t really want their games to infect anyone with the gays™
Ah, I didn’t know about that one because I could never get into Inquisition myself. Though it seems to have been well received enough as a game that perhaps I should try it.
Part of me wonders if Krem received less hate than some other Ts in media because the Internet hate machine mostly seems to have it out for MTF rather than FTM folks or because he genuinely had good writing rather than being shoehorned in
Typically MTFs are seen as “misogynistic perverts” and FTMs are seen as “misunderstood lesbians”
Neither are an accurate picture but one is far easier to sympathize with.
I wish it wasn’t so hard for people to see them as “folks just living their lives and not affecting mine in the slightest”
Everybody affects everybody else. We absolutely do not live in a vacuum. It’s why libertarianism fails.
Are EA bigots? They have always been the epitome of amoral capitalism in the gaming world to me
“Woke” was actually a problem with DA4 with how piss poorly the writers handled it, it was embarrassing. Absolutely not bigots
Given their new owners, it wouldn’t be too far off to call them bigots now.
Valid point
Good news is that EA self-destructed in the Saudi deal so a few guys at the top could fill their pockets one more time. The debt they loaded EA with will be paid by selling everything. There is no other way. EA can no longer operate and their IPs will go to different studios. Let‘s hope one or two of them treat the franchises a tiny bit more carefully. Maybe. Or it will all be AI slop. Time will tell. But the way I see it EA is toast.
Lmao I like how everyone was saying this was going to happen like a year ago. So predictable.
A year ago? People called it eight years ago with the Anthem disaster that Dragon Age 4 would be the studio’s last chance. BioWare was already dead, this is just the merciful last bullet.
Anyone that cared about RPGs was pushed out by greedy losers.
Any good old style rpgs old style out there? I haven’t found anything since Icewind dale…
Baldurs Bate 3 is turn based strategy with great writing.
Thanks, I have tried it but couldn’t get into it, guess I’ll have to try again!
There’s Divinity Original Sin 2 from the same developer. It doesn’t use the DnD system like BG3 but it’s very good.
Thanks! I have played the beginning, the start is really cool IIRC on a ship, but then it just bogs down in an incomprehensible mess in a village in the jungle (or I’m too stupid)… Maybe I’ll try it again, at least I already have it!
Depending on how old you like your old school, you might enjoy Spiderweb Software’s games. They (mostly just a guy and his wife) have been cranking out RPGs since 1994. While all their games are superficially similar, there’s an impressive amount of narrative and mechanical variety. If you’re a D&D fan, especially the Forgotten Realms setting, you might enjoy the Avernum series. You’re a prisoner, banished to the underground realm of Avernum , never to see the light of day again. However, you are not alone, as the ruthless Empire which sentenced you has long enjoyed sending its dissidents into the subterranean realm. In fact, there are several factions which vie for influence, and the player can throw their lot in with any or all of them. In some ways, it feels like an old school Underdark module for DnD.
Their other series are worth checking out too. In Avadon, you play a party of inquisitors (essentially) for a tyrannical, immortal overlord who exercises nigh totalitarian control over an alliance of 5 nations. Over the course of the game, your party uncovers a far-flung conspiracy against your boss for his abuses of power, and you are free to RP your characters’ reaction to this in a number of ways. Even further afield of that, the Geneforge series is set in a science fantasy world which blends magic with bioengineering and genesplicing. As an apprentice of the Shapers Guild, you have the power to change (or even create whole-cloth) life forms to suit your purposes. Brings created in this way are programmed (for lack of a better word) to be completely obedient to their Shaper, despite otherwise being sentient, free beings. The ethics of this form a large part of the tension in the plot. Mechanically, though, it means that the game is like a weird Ultima/Pokemon hybrid, where your party consists of your mad scientist chimera creations, who will protect your squishy gene wizard until their dying breaths.
I first came across their work when I watched Jeff Vogel’s GDC presentation several years ago. It’s an hour long, but, if you have the time and interest, it’s a very candid look at how the sausage is made in indie game development. In particular, I appreciate that he is very conscious that the games’ visuals could at best be described as “quaint”, but that just encouraged him to lean into the writing even harder to make up the difference, since that cost almost nothing.
They should make that failure of a game, Anthem, open source. No money to be made there. Make it so everyone knows just how bad. As an example of a terrible game and assuming terrible source code. Only 1 way to find out. I’m not still hopeful that it has huge potential. Nope nope nope.
not gud enough, ea needs to BURN
For letting them have free reign and them squandering it?
BioWare did this entirely to themselves.
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