The Glade 4.0

Posted without comment...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/06/ ... 3e43000015

hmm. Twitterspam @EA_DICE @VisceralGames @BioWare and #starwarsnextgen KOTOR without the #$%$#%#$ MMO. Some of us are on the patch and wont be playing any MMO's.

<insert Something about a million geeks crying out in horror and being suddenly silenced here>

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

You just won the internet with that comment

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Holy shitsnacks!

Pffft. Whatevs. Dragon Age II was great.

It was. Even the environment design was good. Too bad they kept reusing the same dungeon for every single mission.

I still loved the game, but they're specifically referencing environment design there, and nobody can argue Bioware didn't slack in that department.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins were when I gave up on Bioware being able to deliver a quality product. It was clear starting with those two games that they relied solely on fanboyism to move games. Each game after that attempts to cater to gamers that aren't their primary fanbase, because their regular customers will buy whatever **** they put out.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Hmm. I may have to sign into Twitter to include those hashtags with "Origin is the surest way to kill my desire to play a Star Wars game."

Because, you know.. Yeah.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Those were both awesome games. I've played both through several times. (ME2 more than DA:O).

I liked DA2 better than DA:O, though I have to admit much of that was because the greater "life" given to a game when the protagonist is voiced.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

...I loved Dead Space 2's multiplayer

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

This, I finished DA2 eight times. I also found it to be a lot more fun than the first game.

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Raell Kromwell

To each their own. Played through DAO three times, got so bored with DA2 I didn't even finish it.

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Didn't finish DA:O (got very far but lost interest and just watched Phe play through it...which she did, many, many times). Finished DA2 and started a second playthrough.

I didn't mind the whole "Hope you like the city!" game that was Dragon Age 2. What I was most disappointed over was that there weren't many "evil" choices to make that Bioware has been famous for in their previous RPGs. Your choices were pretty much "More of a dick" or "Less of a dick."

It wouldn't have bothered me as much had I not made this game the first RPG that I vowed to play as "evil" on my first run-through. Boy did I pick the wrong game for that one.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Corolinth's right ...

The best part about the entire Mass Effect franchise is the multiplayer for ME3. The rest of the game ... earned EA Worst Company of the Year last year ...

Dragon Age isn't finished. Dragon Age 2 wasn't even worth buying after the paid-for content in DA:O was so abysmal. And, just in case you haven't figured it out, Bioware has only ever made one game, and it was only good the first time they did it: Knights of the Old Republic. And KotOR's gameplay is a piss poor excuse for a game; the narrative worked though ... but it's the same narrative, with the same twists, and the same companions in EVERY GAME since.

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You keep saying that, but seriously, my favorite single player RPGs of all time remain, in no particular order:

Knights of the Old Republic
KotOR2 (not Bioware)
Jade Empire
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age 2

MMO? SWTOR (though it's not nearly as good as the single player games above, it's the first MMO that even attempts an acceptable level of NPC interaction).

Games like the Ultima series or Elder Scrolls come distantly behind.
NPC interaction is everything. You can complain all you want, but they're simply the most fun I've ever had in games.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

But the story's on rails and the player's actions don't matter, Talya.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That's a lovely opinion you have there.

FarSky:

I think you guys have a completely biased set of expectations for Bioware. I was fortunate, because I never played Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. I did, however, play Knights of the Old Republic and loved it. And I still like it as an SWEU narrative. The gameplay is horrible, mostly because it lacks a whole slew of things Neverwinter Nights had right at the level of gameplay. The narrative is amazing.

Dragon Age: Origins -- the game unceremoniously ends when you get done with the standard Bioware Acclimation Sequence. You don't have time to get invested in your characters because you have to FORCE the companion interaction. There's actually no downtime written into the game except the very first camp sequence. At the level of gameplay, it's ludicrously not-involved -- I scripted out combat rules and defeated the game without pushing a single button interactively during combat in one playthrough. The scripting is nice and all, but the gameplay is not a big component.

Dragon Age 2 -- recycles more art assets and level design than Halo, but no one mentions that because Bioware made it.

Jade Empire -- total trash in almost every aspect -- bad gameplay, bad narrative, recycled assets and components from other games. It had a few neat companions, but the rest of the game was so terribad as to be painful. Oh, and more predictable than anything ...

Mass Effect -- That's kind of a duh thing, but a new Bioware game is announced and no one wants to hold them their failings or admit them.

Bioware makes terrible games; in fact, gameplay is something we can categorically say they failed at. ME3 actually has decent gameplay, and fortunately, I can play the game without having to involve myself in their tired, uninspired string of cliche's they call an RPG, especially since the story is on rails and player choices have no meaningful impact on the core game experience. In fact, I need to pay for a DLC called the Citadel to make good on the promises that got Bioware and EA censured for false advertising. The rest of their games are either NWN 10 years too late or just bad on the gameplay level.

That leaves us with narrative; and narrative quality is a large reason most of us played most of the games we play. KotOR has good narrative quality. KotOR 3 would have had amazing narrative quality, but it was carved up to give us an MMO. Mass Effect series? Good companions, near worthless meta-narrative. Jade Empire? One good companion, horrible meta-narrative, predictable. Dragon Age: Origins -- missing 75% of its narrative. Dragon Age 2 -- I hear the narrative is better than DA:O, but since Dragon Age was originally promised as a single-hero trilogy like Mass Effect but set in a fantasy/medieval setting, I'm not really sure how to weight this.

In all honesty, the Bioware issue is simple -- no one here except Coro, Kaffis, and myself ever consider their games independently and without bias. Everyone else on this particular forum is ... "Yay, Bioware! Lemme go clean the jizz stains out of my shorts."

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I disagree. People mention this all the time -- it's the most common complaint about DA2 and the biggest reason people didn't like it much. Personally, I don't put a lot of weight on it, but I certainly complain about it.

I actually don't care much about the gameplay. Truth be told, I usually cheat heavily and edit my characters in single player RPGs...or even edit the game rules. (ME2: Ammo? We don't need no steenkin' ammo!) I find the stories entertaining in a pulp-fiction kinda way -- I'm not expecting Aasimov or Tolkien here, mostly what I want is that cinematic, epic feeling, and they always deliver. And most importantly, character interaction with NPCs. That includes companions, yes, but almost as important are the detailed conversations you have with other characters. It gives the false sense of the game being alive. NPC interactions in most games turn the NPCs into nothing more than bulletin boards to grab a quest from.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Generalizemuch?

I have bones to pick with every Bioware game. Some are better than others, but only a couple of them make my top 20 favorite games list. I even quite playing KOTOR after a couple of hours because of how infuriated I was over the game's mechanic forcing me down a path I didn't know I was being forced upon, therefore completely and utterly wasting talents and abilities I had spent up to that point. I eventually came back to it and gave it another (begrudging) shot, and found it enjoyable.

I just don't like or dislike games in a binary fashion, which you seem to tend to do. Watching you with SWTOR was like watching a person with bipolar disorder go through their super-highs and super-lows.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

SW:TOR is a terrible game. I played through every origin (through ship) at least 3 times. Some more than that. In fact, 1-20 on everything but Marauder ranks as 7 of the most enjoyable single-player game experiences I've ever had. And that's sad, since it's an MMO. And I don't dislike or like games in a binary fashion, but we're talking about objective qualifications and mechanics. We're also talking about narrative. What I don't like is this free-pass the Glade gives Bioware ...

Taly's most recent post highlights the problem: she wants experiences Bioware definitively doesn't deliver. Jade Empire never feels epic. Mass Effect never feels epic. Taly wants lots of interaction with NPCs; she wants story telling; she wants something that approximates a single-player tabletop experience. Bioware used to do that ... KotOR delivers on that front, ME and Dragon Age? Not so much. SWTOR just removes the 4th joke option from the conversation wheel.

In fact, you can pretty much say my entire problem with SWTOR appears only when I have to confront the MMO elements; and once my characters become pigeon holed and unlike RPG characters.

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That's fine. Personally, I'd go a step further and disagree with you and say even KOTOR didn't have that level of interaction and that even it was all along a rail (and I've played through it both full light and full dark side). But I expect that. That's the formula that Bioware has been using long before that game.

I don't like or dislike it, because that's what I expect from them. I'll rant a little when it's more restrictive (the evil options in DA2 compared to KOTOR) and I'll give my thumbs up when the "fun" factor is better than their norm (I enjoyed DA:O more than Baldur's Gate 2, even though BG2 is technically the bigger, better, and more detailed of the two).

The more freedom a video game attempts to give a player, the more watered down it's going to be. It's the nature of the beast, since it's a one-sided interaction. The closest a video game has come to tabletop role playing is the stuff from The Elder Scrolls. You're given a dangling carrot by the game (DM), and you are still free to completely ignore it and go on a completely different tangent with your own wholly different adventures. And while conversations may be a bit one-sided, you're still given freedoms in that game that others don't give.

A guard looks at my assassin and says condescendingly , "Let me guess, someone stole your sweet role?" In any other game, you are forced to let that slide. Here? Oh look, a guard's throat was slit in the middle of the street. My barbarian comes home to his wife, to have the live-in man guard ask him "What the hell are you doing here?" Oh look, there's a severed man-guard head in the ally behind his house.

I don't give bioware a free pass. But I also don't expect their games to be the same as Elder Scrolls.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!