One Man's Opinion

I realize it’s usually in vogue to see something popular and want to tear it down. There’s no icon somehow quite as satisfying as that of toppled greatness. Perhaps it’s an element of human nature, or perhaps it’s a classic example of why humans will eventually wipe themselves out, but no hero is ever quite as interesting as the fallen one, the high-school quarterback who now works at the glass factory, the starry-eyed politician whose long forgotten indiscretion becomes fodder for twenty-four hour news, the once trendy band that becomes instantly trite and offensive when heard on pop-radio.

I realize too that what I’m about to say can be dismissed as this kind of vicious and admittedly annoying deconstruction, the counter-argument to popular theory that flies in the face of convention simply for the sake of doing so. I might even entertain some self-doubt if I had a more significant history of snobbishness, if I listened to independent music that you’ve never heard of while attending films with subtitles. But, I am frankly not that complex, and rarely do I lose interest in a thing merely because others have adopted an interest in it.

So, with that disclaimer tendered, let me offer the following: I believe Bioware’s games are vastly over-rated.

Lovers of RPGs remember a time a little more than a decade ago when the genre was virtually gone, and then Baldur’s Gate came to us like a shining dream delivered from on high. Not only was this an RPG lover’s RPG, but it was a deep and complex narrative delivered with incredible depth, astounding artwork and faithful AD&D 2nd edition rules to make even the most grotesquely skeptical role-player shed a silent and joyful tear. The game was an epic, and it became the standard for a freshly reinvigorated genre. This was the company’s The Sixth Sense, the property from which Bioware leveraged a legacy of good-enough games that would be elevated to greatness and critical esteem simply by birth-right.

Bioware’s greatest accomplishment is not the digitized code that is pressed into millions of DVDs, but its astounding ability to capitalize on opportunities for success. While I am not necessarily beguiled by the company’s library of games, I am positively dumbfounded at the savvy of Bioware’s management to nimbly traverse the gaming business landscape. These are not men to be trifled with, and I would never denigrate their accomplishments by implying that some form of lesser-luck was involved. These guys are good at the art of manipulation, managing to paint themselves, their company and their products as paragons of the gaming landscape even if they don’t necessarily deserve it.

For example, Baldur’s Gate and its sequel are good, but were in many ways eclipsed by the Infinity Engine powered games from Black Isle, Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series. Yet, despite a far more impressive track record, it is not Black Isle that survived the sucking whirlpool of Interplay’s bungling to become the crown jewel of Electronic Arts, but Bioware.

Bioware makes you believe in them, be you consumer, critic or executive. They seem unimpeachable, in the company of places like Blizzard for consistently issuing genius into the gaming landscape, and let’s be completely honest here, they are undeniable hit-makers. This is a company that will move product, that will get people through the door with money in hand, but to me Bioware seems better at making you believe their games are top-tier than actually making top-tier games.

I contend that with a lesser brand (and certainly without the Star Wars trappings) Knights of the Old Republic would have been a largely forgettable experience. And, Jade Empire would have been a product praised for making the effort but condemned to a host of average scores instead of being heralded by one IGN reviewer as “one of the greatest action RPG's of all-time” while another IGN reviewer suggested that the first had “underrated” Jade Empire by giving it a 9.9!

Oh, c’mon.

It’s not like I’m cherry picking here. This is pretty a common sentiment, and one that I questioned when I played Jade Empire for all of four hours before quitting in some amalgam of boredom and dissatisfaction. Like Neverwinter Nights before it, Jade Empire seemed to me like a game rife with averageness that was elevated by an admittedly competent story – that’s actually high-praise for gaming narratives – and the boisterous enthusiasm of reviewers who, I assume were playing the same game as I but coming to dramatically different conclusions. Maybe these folks are seeing something I’m not, but every Bioware game since Baldur’s Gate II seems to me like a ghost of an RPG with half-hearted trappings of the genre surrounding worlds of little depth with little choice.

Even the most recent effort in Mass Effect was a game that false started for me three times before I finally and doggedly surged through, waiting the entire time to be wowed by its supposed greatness. Mass Effect was pretty good in parts, but there were interface issues, load issues, texture issues, framerate problems, all within a game that still conveys the vast and open universe as a series of interconnected and unimaginative hallways. Exploring the galaxy turned into little more than surveying planets by pressing the A button to fighting with the controls of your interplanetary dune buggy as it bobbled and weaved from rocky crag to perilous valley. Mass Effect, like KOTOR, Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights before, wasn’t a bad game by any means. It was an average game that was elevated by a decent narrative and the funding to add real production value.

My point of view, however, is very different from X-Play’s Adam Sessler who said of Mass Effect that it was a “towering achievement that surpassed my expectations on every level,” or Gamespy’s reviewer who concluded that “BioWare's space opera is one of the greatest role-playing games ever made.” Man! I wish I’d played whatever game they were playing. I’m pretty sure I got the same version asThe Onion’s AV club, which offered the game a respectable but wholly appropriate B- score. Their review being one of the few that didn't simply dismiss the games flaws as odd and inconsequential aberrations.

I don’t believe there is anything nefarious going on here. I believe that reviews of Bioware games are good faith efforts by professional reviewers, but I also believe that there is a well cultivated sentiment among these professionals and their readers that anything from Bioware is naturally brilliant. Bioware does a good job of not dispelling this myth, putting the effort in the right places to sustain this perception, and even cultivate it, but I think more critical analyses of the games show that there are deep flaws which are too often glossed over.

Comments

I guess I didn't see it like that at all. Aerie (the wingless faerie) seemed like the girl trying to gain security by way of flirting with pretty much anyone who seems in control. I certainly have known people like this, which is what made her believable (if a bit repulsive) to me. When you rebuff her, she's perfectly willing to take off with Haer'dalis with whom she has a bit of a roller coaster relationship with. The interesting thing about her was how she developed through these experiences: at the beginning she's naive and innocent, while getting wiser and more worldly towards the end when she seems to gain greater acceptance of herself.

I saw Jaheira as having a legitimate conflict with how to behave in the absence of her husband. I never got the impression that she forgot about him or stopped loving him in place of the PC; rather it seemed she had room in her heart for both her deep sorrow and another person. Again, this seems believable to me as I know there are certain people in my past I will always love, and as I know they will never return I keep myself open to new loves. This is not replacing or diminishing the old, which will still be there, but rather wedging the new into a place in yourself seemingly accessible only to that person. Much in the way your parents loved you both "the same." It's not the same by any stretch of the imagination -- it's a unique love for every person (disclaimer: perspective from my relationship with 3 stepsisters, I don't have kids). Under no circumstances, however, is the love any less intense. This is the way Jaheira's subplot seemed to me. I don't think I picked up the third character you mentioned so I'm not sure about her or the male character.

Again, these are just ways of looking at the subplots. I can certainly see how you'd get the impression you did from them. I'm almost inclined to see it your way in fact, if only because of the inherent emptiness in any videogame romance. The development of the characters' relationship is what I was focused on, however (it never seemed like Jaheira and me, but Jaheira and my PC), which I think is a perspective allowing greater leniency in judging the realism of game relationships.

The combat in Mass Effect sucked. Bad. The pop-in textures were annoying, but I could live with it. The planet "discovery" got old after the third planet when I realized the utter lack of creativity that went into designing that experience. The inventory layout was archaic and brutally pointless.

However, I was too caught up in a dialog system that was shaping my character to my every snap-quick decision, creating a blend of black and white and presenting the toughest moral decisions I have made in a game for as long as I can remember. I cannot remember the last time I just stared at my responses, wringing my hands and weighing the outcomes based on my information to date, determining what types of "evil" I was comfortable to live with, for the greater good. All this, while being captivated by a cerebral synth soundtrack and the promise of hot, alien sex.

Mass Effect at it's core was a bit rough, but it was a unique and memorable experience, and here's hoping they fix the ugly in number two.

PS, I also made it about 2 hours into Jade Empire before being completely uninspired. I'm sure someone who's more down with Asian culture would have probably had a much better experience.

Nyles wrote:
Tannhauser wrote:

You should really check out the NWN2 expansion: Mask of the Betrayer, created by Obsidian. A central figure behind Planescape: Torment was Chris Avellone, the lead developer; who later went on to work at Obsidian (along with a few other people from the PS:T development team, such as Dan Spitzley, Aaron Meyers, Dennis Presnell, Brian Menze, Yuki Furumi, and Scott Everts). I think Mask of the Betrayer is much closer to Planescape: Torment than the direction BioWare has decided to take their games.

I avoided the hell out of both NWN games, but you had me at Planescape. I thought it was just an expansion. Time to look at some prices.

Mask of the Betrayer does a really good job of making the game about the player's dilemma, as opposed to saving world yet again. It's well worth picking up.

I haven't played Mass Effect yet, but but I do think Elysium sells Bioware's past achievments a bit short here. So far I've thought the only game they've made that's worth indifference is Jade Empire. The setting was pretty awesome, but combat didn't really work and the game felt pretty truncated.

BG is pretty creaky now, but it was very significant at the time, essentially ending the great rpg drought singlehandedly. (Yes, Fallout came first, but it didn't have nearly the same impact.)

BG2 is the silverback gorilla of the infinity games, and one of the greatest games of all time. Yes, Planescape has a better story, but that's offset by its inferior combat. BG2 merges narrative and tactical combat better than any of the others.

NWN is admittedly only significant significant for its toolset and DM client, but the things people have vreated ended up completely overshadowing its limp original campaign.

KotOR was the first successful translation of a western rpg to a console, *and* made Star Wars not suck, both no mean feats.

If think Bioware's problem is that they're very much iterating on the same core design, and that can make people suffer from fatigue. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.

It is tough to see some franchises get a "free pass" against criticism because of what they might have brought to the table in the past.

I see it all the time where beloved franchises that have rested on their laurels for years are reviewed favorably when in comparison new IPs in the same genre who actually advance the medium forward are given a much more critical eye while they are simultaneously considered a poor man's (insert untouchable franchise here).

While I like to see the next-gen version of cornerstone franchises as much as the next guy, it still burns my briefs to see younger development houses putting more effort and risk-taking into genre evolution and still getting less respect, recognition and deserved sales.

Here's one thing to consider: Is anyone else doing any better? The only competitors for AAA single-player RPGs these days seem to be JRPGs (almost a different genre) and Bethesda. And to my understanding, Bethesda's games are not nearly as story-driven as BioWare's. With almost no direct competition, it's easy to glorify mediocrity.

And who would be crazy enough to enter that arena? Story driven epic RPGs with high production values are expensive to make.

Sean, I obviously agree with you. And the solution is simple: I will never play, much less buy, a BioWare RPG. To me, missing 3 hours of Portal would be a far greater loss than 40 hours of a BioWare RPG.

IMAGE(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)

I’ll admit first-off that the BioWare games are not the greatest thing since sliced bread. They do, however, fill a gap in the world of RPGs that nothing else really does.

There are two main-line models of RPGs in the world, as far as plot goes.

The traditional eastern style RPG tends to be very heavy-handed with the plot. In general, things are on rails: You go to place A and do things 1, 2, and 3, which opens up the path to place B, where you continue with 4 and 5. Each step you take forward opens the next area in the progression. The plot generally depends highly on showing how the characters develop, without much choice in the direction of the development. A standard model for “expansive content” is a large sort of plateau near the end-game where you can go anywhere and there are a large number of tangential side-quests available. Usually, these quests are of the form “kill world-dragon A”, “kill world-dragon B”, “clear the evil wombats out of place C”. These side-quests are mainly excuses to gain more XP and maximize the R of your character before you go on to the climactic railroad track where you face the final boss and save the universe. The recent game Lost Odyssey is practically a cardboard diagram demonstrating this structure.

The big problem with this “T”-shaped plot structure (mostly “|”-shaped, honestly) is that the character is not really yours at all. You’re playing somebody else’s character through events that have been completely pre-determined. It can be an interesting story, but you’re removed from it in that you’re just doing the fighting and trying to gain more power—you’re not thinking about questions like “who do I want to be”. The “T”-shape also intrudes upon the pacing of the story, since just at the moment when things ought to be the most tense, you’re given the most choices about where to go next, which removes all sense of urgency.

The traditional western style RPG is somewhat plot-light, with a very large “immersive” and “detailed” world. The Elder Scrolls games are a good example of this. The Ultima series is a good older example. These games take the stance that by building an immensely complex world with a lot of options, they leave the player free to tell whatever story he’d like to tell about his character. Much of the fun of these games is exploring the world and finding little corners of it that most people will never see. Most if not all of the content is bound up in side quests, but the side quests tend to be more interesting than in an eastern style game. Instead of being just “kill thing A”, there’s often a progression of related quests as you become involved in some organization. Generally, there is very little constraint on character actions: the world is open for exploration from the get-go, and only your lack of R can prevent you from doing whatever you want.

I'd say that there’s another level here which is rather less main-line, which is the Roguelikes. These games are almost completely plot-free—there may be a main goal that allows you to “win” the game, but the point of the game is playing. These games generally have settings that are randomly generated, sometimes pieces of the core game mechanics that are randomly generated, and very complicated character statistics compared to the other types of games. So you can see through this the progression of both “less plot” and “more flexible characters”.

In both of these classes, the question of “who do I want to be?” is clearly at the forefront. The down side plot-wise is that there’s not much story there—you do in fact have to make everything up as you go along. The narratives that do exist feel disconnected and somewhat tacked-on to a game that really wants to be a sandbox. Added to that, the completely open structure of the game removes almost any sense of urgency at all—and to a certain degree, I think that’s intentional: after all, the developers of this sort of game want you to explore, not just chase after the main plot. (The worst games of this sort, in terms of main plot, make it decidedly difficult to even find the main plot.)

The niche that BioWare has wedged into is somewhere between the eastern and western models. Their games have always been plot-heavy compared to western style games, but have typically allowed a greater amount of flexibility in character definition than the eastern style ones. They also tend to have a structure that starts with narrow choices, opens out, and then closes back in towards the end game. Using this diamond-shaped structure, the largest number of choices is available in the middle of the story. This is a point where there’s room to explore your desires for the character, and the world, without the impending destruction of the universe shouting in your face.

The other thing BioWare has done over and over is implement some sort of alignment system. In reality, these systems don’t really impact the direction of the game: in the end, everything comes to the same place. But it does give the illusion of choice. And that illusion of choice is where BioWare stands tall above the rest of the crowd. Even though you’re on rails, you feel like you’re in control. You identify with your character more because you’re able to make your character more unique than in an eastern-style game. You identify with the choices you’re making more because it feels like there’s a moral side to each choice. And in the end, that makes the linear plot that much more effective: when the clichéd tragic thing occurs, it’s happening to a character that’s yours.

This is, of course, not to say that BioWare’s games are flawless. Jade Empire failed partially, in my opinion, due to a completely incomprehensible alignment system. It was clear that one side was “good” and the other side was “evil”, but you just didn’t care for any reason except game mechanics. Another big failure was that they pretty much did away with character customization. You had a handful of characters you could play as, and that’s really about it. The old Baldur’s Gate games had problems with game balance: if you chose to follow the plot and ignore the side quests, you would get heavily beat down by the main plot enemies. In contrast, the “solution” to this problem by scaling encounters to character level in NWN and games since then has met some bitter complaints at times because it removes some of the difficulty of the game.

I do think, however, that BioWare tries to address these problems. Clearly, they discovered after BG and BG2 that building a world that was both open-ended and closed-plotted was a very time-consuming task. I think that resulted in the more constrained worlds of their games since, purely based on time constraints when building games. The scaling difficulty level thing is actually a solution to the earlier problem, and they seem to be getting better at that. And as far as alignment systems go, I think it’s apparent that they’ve learned how to really turn the illusion of choice up to eleven. Jade Empire failed, but Mass Effect gets it very close to as good as I think you can get with this sort of system. Removing the black-and-white of having a single “goodness” score based on your good and evil choices makes the world seem more like shades of gray right from the get-go. And, I must admit I’m kind of a sucker, but I really got involved when playing through the “renegade” side in ME, because I found myself needing to think about “why is my character doing this” in order to make the “right” renegade choices.

The big flaw in ME is the characterization of your comrades in the game. All of the romantic interests are tissue-paper thin, and many of the other characters are not much better. Wrex and Garrus are the most interesting party members, and this isn’t so much because they’re interesting people but rather because they act as portholes through which we can see two alien societies we don’t have much contact with during the game.

Oh... *cough*... Yeah, so the other big flaw is the unexplored planet missions, which are complete bollocks. Hopefully they can figure out a better way to give a sense of immersion in the next game.

In short, yeah: If you want a sandbox game, BioWare’s stuff is not for you. But if you want a game with a very strong plot that still lets you develop a character of your own and build some attachment to the story, BioWare very much is for you. I can only hope that they keep trying new things and improving their techniques, because even their failures are pretty good, and can inform other developers as well. (Like the “if you want to be in this niche, don’t keep people from making their own characters” lesson learned from Jade Empire.)

P.S. Planescape: Torment was awesome, it is true. The Icewind Dale series was awesome in a different way, though: It wasn’t really an RPG as much as it was a tactical combat game. And it was very very good at that. But I’m not sure you can call it better than BG, just different.

P.P.S. Damn you. Now I’m going to waste too much time going back and re-playing all of the BG and IWD games.

I have a friend who told me that when not playing Mass Effect she was barking orders around as if she was Sheppard herself. What the game seems to do for her is provide a frame work that her own imagination can latch on too and expand.

She isn't so much playing a game, as playing in her own fantasy world. Considering this will always exactly provided what you're looking for, it's the perfect experience for everybody and review scores reflect this. Unless ofcourse you're just looking to be entertained. So I imagine is this why reviewers tend to give Bioware games exceptionally high scores.

Personally I've found that games like Kotor or Jade Empire require quite a bit of an investment. You have to sit down and be genuinely interested in the characters because allot of the events revolve around them.

Replaying the BG and/or IWD games is surprisingly unrewarding, I've found. They haven't aged as well as you remember (but then, what has?)

Game players/reviewers have favorite developers who can do no wrong!?! Who'd have thunk it?

Have you forgotten Black and White already? Just add Bioware to the Rockstar, Meier, Wright, etc. pile.

We're all "fanboys" about something, but in general there are very few sacred cows here. We have threads bashing Half Life 2 of all things! That is the biggest reason I hung around after stumbling on GWJ.

Well, that and the homoeroticism ...

P.S. Nice writeup Elysium.

Bots, to be fair, that kind of "romance" isn't relegated to geekdom. If you take those same archetypes you listed and swapped the gender you'd have pretty much every single romance novel I've ever read, and I've read a surprisingly large number of them. It's most romances in sci-fi/fantasy novels, many of the fiction novels I've read, many (if not most) movies, and in every other medium out there. It's wish fulfillment, plain and simple, and that knows no boundaries. Calling it a "geek fantasy" is, I think, disingenuous. It's just a fantasy, who it's targeting doesn't change the core problem you seem to have with it and calling it a "geek's fantasy" seems to imply that geeks are the only ones who could think up something so outrageously unrealistic.

Swat wrote:

PS, I also made it about 2 hours into Jade Empire before being completely uninspired. I'm sure someone who's more down with Asian culture would have probably had a much better experience.

I was finishing up my East Asian Studies degree when I played Jade Empire. I finished the game, but was... unimpressed. I have clear remberence's of characters in MAss Effect, Torment, the Balder's gates games, and KOTOR. I have no idea what happened in Jade.

Nyles wrote:
Tannhauser wrote:

You should really check out the NWN2 expansion: Mask of the Betrayer, created by Obsidian. A central figure behind Planescape: Torment was Chris Avellone, the lead developer; who later went on to work at Obsidian (along with a few other people from the PS:T development team, such as Dan Spitzley, Aaron Meyers, Dennis Presnell, Brian Menze, Yuki Furumi, and Scott Everts). I think Mask of the Betrayer is much closer to Planescape: Torment than the direction BioWare has decided to take their games.

I avoided the hell out of both NWN games, but you had me at Planescape. I thought it was just an expansion. Time to look at some prices.

The setting isn't anywhere near as crazy, but otherwise Mask does give off a kindred spirit sort of vibe with PST. Just don't go in expecting a PST 2, as I think you'll be let down.

The default AI will bore you to tears though. Do yourself a favor and Google up the latest version of TonyK's AI mod (over at the NWN vault) for NWN2 and MOTB. It's very well maintained, almost step in step with the official patches as they come out. The last version I used had a 9.X something approval rating, and it's well deserved.

update: Here we go, looks like version 1.08 of the mod was released not too long ago.

bnpederson wrote:

Bots, to be fair, that kind of "romance" isn't relegated to geekdom. If you take those same archetypes you listed and swapped the gender you'd have pretty much every single romance novel I've ever read, and I've read a surprisingly large number of them. It's most romances in sci-fi/fantasy novels, many of the fiction novels I've read, many (if not most) movies, and in every other medium out there. It's wish fulfillment, plain and simple, and that knows no boundaries. Calling it a "geek fantasy" is, I think, disingenuous. It's just a fantasy, who it's targeting doesn't change the core problem you seem to have with it and calling it a "geek's fantasy" seems to imply that geeks are the only ones who could think up something so outrageously unrealistic.

I have never been able to figure out if the romances were done that way because the BioWare staff are a bunch of socially underdeveloped geeks or they assumed that would be their core audience. Not saying those two are mutually exclusive. Having worked in technology for some time now, it's not an unfair stereotype but not quite as common as one would think. In many ways I think it was done as an assumption about their core audience. Reading message forums at the time of BGII's release I'd say it worked to. Despite the utter lack of on-screen sex, the commentary from gamers was downright creepy.

Bots, I think you're assuming far too much about the writers at Bioware based on a minor part of a few games. There are many reasons they could use stereotypical or archetypal characters in their stories, both the main story lines and the romance subplots, that don't make the writers "socially underdeveloped" nor pandering to those who are. Frankly I find it rather insulting.

OK, then, quick question:

What RPGs (and similar) *do* deserve an A+ rating?

I'm ambivilant about this article's premise - I've thought that the stories in KOTOR and Mass Effect and the rest were acceptable, but not really memorable in any really deep way. And I've never been impresssed with games that give the player the choice of 'good' and 'evil': the 'good' options invariably get saccarine and someone who wants to play 'evil' needs to be put in a padded room until they grow up.... and I've always thought 'good' and 'evil' as being pretty weak tea for character development. The mechanics of gameplay were ok, too... nothing captivating, and occassionallly annoying.

So.. what games DO blow people's collective socks off?

Disagree completely, although especially concerning KOTOR. If anything, the fact that it was based on one of the most beloved films of all time was a hinderance: How to avoid association with the long, indistinguished list of lazily licensed cash-ins that had gone before? Licensed games are met with any discerning gamer's fiercist skepticism, and rightfully so. Combine that with the heavy burden of taking up the Star Wars mantle and you had the paradoxical nightmare scernario of a bar set impossibly high for a game whose genre standards were impossibly low. Bioware might as well have attempted to stage Hamlet with an all-pornstar cast.

The result was a masterpiece. Not because of the light sabers or Jedi mind tricks, but because of the one immutable truth of good RPGs: writing is everything. The dialogue, the characters, the quests--everything about KOTOR's writing sparkled. Combine that with fun, surprisingly intuitive game play and an agreeable lack of ewoks and you've got every critic's GOTY--well, knee-jerk iconoclasts aside, I suppose.

The writing is what has sold me on every Bioware title I've played, and it's the main reason I'll continue to expect great things from them in the future.

I agree completely with Ely.

Bethesda makes the least structured style of RPG's where you can be anyone and roam freely.

Bioware makes the most restrictive RPG's next to JRPG's. Dialogue depth allows unique inter-party conversations and relationships. But your party is essentially picked for you or from a limited pool. Your character is customizable but is funneled into a narrower role during the big plot points. This plot also may be verbose but is largely linear or binary.

Black Isle adapted the technology and structure from Bioware, but in many of its older games, made the plot party centric. This allowed the players the freedom to customize whole parties. Their RPG's are combat intensive but don't be fooled into thinking the plot is too linear. Black Isle's story sets forth fixed tasks. Yet how you complete those tasks centers around how your party fights. How your party fights is up to how you designed your party. So Bioware, with the same core game mechanics is pigeon holing you by dictating your party makeup or limiting companion choices.

I guess in the balance between structure and freedom, I've always preferred freedom in party creation and structure in plot. Probably the worst game for me would be a main character with a strong central role with little party customization, in a Bethesda style sandbox game with vague goals.

Sing it Ely!

I've shook my head at the awe gamers have for Bioware for a long time. I was there too once, when I was reading breathless previews of Neverwinter Nights. It was to be a RPG creation machine like no other that put incredible tools of game developers in the hands of the rest of us. Then it was going to have a great single player experience to show us the power of the engine... Then it was more and more about the single player game, and finally the toolset appeared to be almost a tacked on afterthought. It might have been better than other creation engines out there, it was far from good, and fulfilled so few of the promises.

I tried Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Knights 2, and Mass Effect. All were entertaining, but seriously very average. I was swept up by Mass Effect for a little while, but the 10th time I had to watch -ugly- pop in textures during cut scenes, the 5th time I loaded into the same hallway, and the 1st time I drove down an unbelievably long path to the next story element. I was over it. I finished the game, and did enjoy parts, but overall? Average!

Game stopping bugs in Kotor1 for Xbox really cemented my skepticism.

Elysium, re-reading and re-thinking about your piece and my reaction to it, I'm wondering to what extent you would say your criticism is about Bioware's failure to execute on the level on which their worshippers seem to think they execute, and to what extent it's about what's for me the truly fascinating question of their style (what I called "depth psychology" above). If you had to choose the thing that makes you most unhappy about Bioware, which would it be?

IMHO KOTOR wins not on any revolutionary conceptual level but on good execution and the light sabers. If they had given me the light saber *earlier* it would win even more.

TinPeregrinus wrote:

Elysium, re-reading and re-thinking about your piece and my reaction to it, I'm wondering to what extent you would say your criticism is about Bioware's failure to execute on the level on which their worshippers seem to think they execute, and to what extent it's about what's for me the truly fascinating question of their style (what I called "depth psychology" above). If you had to choose the thing that makes you most unhappy about Bioware, which would it be?

Oso wrote:

It took a couple of readings for me to realize that Ely isn't really criticizing Bioware here. He is criticizing the writers who openly fellate them in their reviews and the fan-boys who think that KOTOR and Mass Effect are the greatest thing Evar!!!

As far as i read, he has no problem with their development style and the whole conversation surrounding this aspect in this thread is completely detached from the arguments made in the article.

As a great person once said: Ely's threads are always broken...

If Bioware starts believing its press then its fall from grace is not far off. What is most memorable about my Bioware experiences is that of the few games I actually finish the KOTOR series is among them. The BG series held my attention for a while but I never followed them through to the end. I just lost interest. Same with NWN series. I guess I like being the center of attention.

With Mass Effect coming to the PC in May, I will be clearing my gaming calendar to play it, mostly on the recommendation of the GWJ community.

bnpederson wrote:

Bots, I think you're assuming far too much about the writers at Bioware based on a minor part of a few games. There are many reasons they could use stereotypical or archetypal characters in their stories, both the main story lines and the romance subplots, that don't make the writers "socially underdeveloped" nor pandering to those who are. Frankly I find it rather insulting.

Careful there, I explicitly stated I didn't know exactly why they developed the romances the way they did.

However, having been unavoidably immersed in geek culture thanks to a combination of my hobby and my job these are the typical archetypes I see geek culture fawning over all the time.

I believe they could have done better. The romance subplots were so predictable that it was not any effort to figure out how to trigger them.

Part of the issue also could be that the romances were done just as shallowly as the good/evil development. Frankly, evil has not been much of a choice in BioWare games. It's more of a school bully beat someone up for their lunch money evil. I still remember in KOTOR that one of the "dark side" choices was basically swindling some poor mother out of her money. It was a mean petty evil that ultimately had little impact on the overall plot. Sure, you got a different ending, but even as you descend into evil your "allies" continue to support you. I don't mean your teammates, but the actual Jedi Council. BG2 was much the same.

Now, just to be clear, I don't want to make it sound like BioWare makes bad games so let me reiterate that I think they make good games. I just believe there is still significant room for improvement.

Icewind Dale 1 and 2 were just big D&D combat sims. They had essentially no story. You just ground your way through fight after fight after fight.

Yes, the fights were interesting and well-designed, but it was just a bunch of set pieces. BG2 wasn't even playing in the same league. It had the same type of setpieces (arguably not quite as good, at least until the expansion, which got better), but it also had a very good story indeed... a reason to keep slogging through that 100+ hours of gameplay.

IWD was just fighting. Yuck.

Torment was better than BG2, but I attribute most of that to the power of Tim Schafer's writing. Saying that Black Isle was better than Bioware is much less accurate than saying the Torment team was better than Bioware.

I thoroughly enjoyed KOTOR. I thought it was a fantastic game, and had an absolute blast playing it. I went all the way through it twice and probably enjoyed it more the second time than the first. I also enjoyed Jade Empire a lot, though not quite as much. I'd give KOTOR a 10 and Jade Empire a 9. KOTOR2 was a disappointment, but I think the community rightly called them on it. I'd rate it about 7. It could easily have been a 10 if they'd finished baking it.

I haven't, oddly, bought Mass Effect yet, mostly because of the complaints about the technical problems, so I can't comment there.

I think, for the most part, they live up to their reputation, and deliver stellar games. They've had a couple of missteps, but overall, I think the high ratings are entirely justified.

psu_13 wrote:

IMHO KOTOR wins not on any revolutionary conceptual level but on good execution and the light sabers. If they had given me the light saber *earlier* it would win even more.

I liked having to work for the light saber, rather than just starting off as a badass Jedi. It's also a natural transition from the first act into the second. I think one of the few good things about KOTOR 2 is that they take absolutely forever to give you the light saber.

Nyles wrote:
psu_13 wrote:

IMHO KOTOR wins not on any revolutionary conceptual level but on good execution and the light sabers. If they had given me the light saber *earlier* it would win even more.

I liked having to work for the light saber, rather than just starting off as a badass Jedi. It's also a natural transition from the first act into the second. I think one of the few good things about KOTOR 2 is that they take absolutely forever to give you the light saber.

Actually, I thought KOTOR2 made you wait far too long. We all know the point of the game is to become a Jedi, it would be different if we actually had a choice. One of the frustrations of KOTOR2 (aside from FedEx quests that spanned multiple long loading maps) was that you had to constantly manage how you levelled because you've got to be ready to take that step into Jedi-hood.

I liked that KOTOR didn't just give you a lightsaber. The game up until that point was very much full of purpose and setting you up for becoming a Jedi. I think they waited just the right amount of time. KOTOR2 just took too long. For a game about Jedis, there weren't very many of them for most of the game.

Botswana wrote:

I liked that KOTOR didn't just give you a lightsaber. The game up until that point was very much full of purpose and setting you up for becoming a Jedi. I think they waited just the right amount of time. KOTOR2 just took too long. For a game about Jedis, there weren't very many of them for most of the game.

I disagree, but I don't want to argue that anything in KOTOR 2 was better than KOTOR. It makes me feel dirty inside. Say what you will about Bioware, at least with KOTOR they actually finished making the game before selling it.

Duoae wrote:

As far as i read, he has no problem with their development style and the whole conversation surrounding this aspect in this thread is completely detached from the arguments made in the article.

Hmm. What about this:

Elysium wrote:

Mass Effect was pretty good in parts, but there were interface issues, load issues, texture issues, framerate problems, all within a game that still conveys the vast and open universe as a series of interconnected and unimaginative hallways.

?

So I guess I'm asking whether he thinks it's the little things that are the problem, or the big one?

As some people have said, to enjoy individual RPGs you need to identify with the characters and also enjoy the world within the game. I played KOTOR but it was a 'so so' game for me (the Star Wars universe has always, inexplicably, (because I love science fiction) left me cold.)

I started with Jade Empire on my original xbox and it left me cold but I recently popped it in on the 360 and the game took off for me. I'm really enjoying it now.

I'm glad the game finally 'clicked' with me because the mythical Chinese world really appeals. For anyone thinking of giving the game another go, my tip would be to pick a fast character. My first try at the game was with a balanced character and I found the combat underwhelming. My second try is with a fast character and the combat seems to be one hell of a lot better. I'm actually really enjoying the fighting even though many people, even fans of the game, say it isn't great.