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 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!

This is true. But it's true only because the Star Wars universe was what really make KotOR click. The narrative would not have made any sense in any other context, and the combat wasn't that great to begin with. The game's "moral" choices and consequences don't really make any sense for any other universe.

Jade Empire was an above average story brought down by mediocre combat. However, the narrative was strong enough to make me want to finish the game. It wasn't the greatest action RPG ever, but it certainly wasn't the worst.

I guess the issue here is perception: people don't expect an RPG to have anything groundbreaking for gameplay. However, they do expect a good story. And Bioware has, in general, delivered on this promise.

Bioware's strength and focus is on telling the story, almost to the exclusion of everything else. They focus on it almost as much as Japanese developers like Square. Unfortunately, this focus makes other parts of their games lose quite a bit of polish. The question here is expectation: Bioware cultivates an expectation that their games will tell a good story. They don't make their games out as the end-all for gameplay.

TinPeregrinus wrote:
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?

what's for me the truly fascinating question of their style (what I called "depth psychology" above).

I meant style as in the psychological aspect of the development of a role (i guess that's what you're talking about in that quote) where the quote you show here was about technical aspects.
I think that perhaps Elysium's article meandered from the main point in a few places towards why Mass Effect shouldn't get great reviews on a technical basis from the main thrust of: the mentality of 'faith' given to the developers gives them better scores. Which can also be applied to Nintendo games and has recently been touched on in a few episodes of the Cagcast.

I agree with the article to a degree. The only Bioware game I ever actually finished was the original KOTOR, even though I have played the majority of the games they have produced. I simply lose interest a few hours in. So in that respect I also feel they are overrated.

However, they did create Neverwinter Nights, which is my most-played game of all time. Not that I finished the campaign - I stopped after about 10 hours - but the multiplayer component of the game was revolutionary. There is still a thriving community today, and Bioware is *still* working on a new, free, content patch for NWN1 that is in open beta and should be released fairly soon. That, to me, is amazing customer support. They stopped getting my money a long time ago for NWN, but I am still getting new stuff and support for it. They listen to their customers and treat them right, and to me that is the key to their success.

I think that perhaps Elysium's article meandered from the main point in a few places towards why Mass Effect shouldn't get great reviews on a technical basis from the main thrust of: the mentality of 'faith' given to the developers gives them better scores.

I don't want to derail the conversation by injecting my intent, but I'm not sure I could've written about how the media gives Bioware a pass without pointing out where that pass is given.

You are such a lollygagger, Ely! =P

(Hah, how about that? FF spell check doesn't know lollygagger!)

Elysium wrote:
I think that perhaps Elysium's article meandered from the main point in a few places towards why Mass Effect shouldn't get great reviews on a technical basis from the main thrust of: the mentality of 'faith' given to the developers gives them better scores.

I don't want to derail the conversation by injecting my intent, but I'm not sure I could've written about how the media gives Bioware a pass without pointing out where that pass is given.

I obviously can't speak about Mass Effect's relative merits as I haven't played it (and maybe I've been shielded from most of the slobbering since I generally only read Eurogamer's reviews, and they awarded it a healthy but not awestruck 8/10), but I do feel you got a bit overboard with the retrospective tarring of their games. The Jade Empire criticism was more than fair, but the other ones *were* significant games, even if they had their flaws, and deserve their reputation by and large.

It was when KOTOR sent me to a drab, lifeless dungeon to kill what amounted to Star Wars Kobolds, with its "hay look at me I am stratagic lulz pew pew !" realtime combat w/pause, is when I realized that it was as much of a Star Wars game as those Star Wars ewok TV specials.

The only games that felt like Star Wars to me were Dark Forces, Jedi Knight (1), and Shadows Of The Empire (epic !). None of them were made by Bioware.

Elysium wrote:

I don't want to derail the conversation by injecting my intent, but I'm not sure I could've written about how the media gives Bioware a pass without pointing out where that pass is given.

I hope I'll be forgiven for stating the obvious, that saying something is overrated necessarily involves criticizing that thing, and that the argument about the overrating therefore stands or falls on the basis of that criticism's cogency. I think it therefore might be worth discussing what exactly was the key point of the criticism you made. But if you'd rather not, it's your prerogative (just to state the absolutely obvious :D).

I think it therefore might be worth discussing what exactly was the key point of the criticism you made.

I tend to not try and expand on my articles. Either I stated it originally to the satisfaction of the reader or I didn't. That's not meant to be glib, but kind of a principal that drives me to try and be more concise next time if I find that I'm not being clear.

That said, while I do give Baldur's Gate its due, I am far less impressed with NWN and KOTOR in particular. At some point I may elaborate on why I think these two games are, in effect, as damaging to the RPG genre as Baldur's Gate was positive. KOTOR, which clearly many people love, strikes me as an illusion of an RPG with limited scope and an annoying dumbing down of the genre.

You could probably marry this with another recent article of mine about storytelling in games to get a clearer view of my opinion if you so desire. (link) The long and short is the I couldn't disagree more with those who say the only or even most important thing in a RPG is story.

Thanks, Elysium--that argument makes a lot of sense to me, though I'm in the opposite camp where story is concerned.

Good timing, I literally finished Mass Effect last night. After right around 25 hours worth of time, I came away thinking that the story was good (and right up my alley), the setting was great, and the game itself was basically meh. It's the same vibe I get from a good Final Fantasy game: the game is the thing you do to earn the next bit of story. I've finally come to the conclusion that the kind of turn-based, tactical, PC party RPG that I prefer has gone the way of the adventure game. RPGs really did die off, the so-called revival that happened in the Baldur's Gate and Diablo era wasn't what it claimed to be.

While some elements of what I enjoyed in the old RPGs survive, the games now tend to be... different. Examples of the actionification of RPGs abound, as do RPG elements in action games. Heck, the combat mechanics in Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect are more alike than different. There are career modes in sports and racing sims. Platformers that have you gathering items and leveling up have been around for decades. Even Rock Band has you advancing through tiers, earning fans, and buying items (of clothing).

The RPG is dead. Long live the RPG.

KOTOR was just such a great experience for me that I have to disagree with you. With that said, I was severely dissapointed with Mass Effect because of the overall lack of polish and horendous side-quests coupled with the EXACT SAME environments for every planet you visited. Thats not exploration when you know what you're going to find before you land on the planet. I think that in their development cycle they most have run into a bunch of severe technical issues that shifted their overall focus from the design of the game to just getting the engine to work properly.

Blasphemy, how dare you speak evil of Bioware!

Ill agree so far that most games they have made werent exactly perfect, with NWN being the best example. The campaign in that game surely felt like it was meant to be a sales demo of the aurora tools in the same way id games often feel when they release new graphic engines.
In my opinion both BG1/2 and KOTOR were awesome though.
In some ways, yeah, the media gives Bioware a pass, but thats hardly a problem specific for Bioware, unfortunately.

Its going to be very interesting to see how Dragon Age shapes up, as it was supposed to be more of a refreshed old school rpg, compared to Mass Effect and in some ways KOTOR, which tried to change the formula to something they believed (rightly so, maybe) the customers liked more (e.g. action).

Personally the story means much to me in a game. Not just the text, which partially seems be what both you and Ken Levine was hitting at in the article linked above, but also the atmosphere the game creates, the 'lore' might even be a better word for it.
I love a game like HL2, not just because its a great action-game, but because it incorporates an interesting world around it. Sure its not worth much to have a good story in a terrible game, but for me at least the opposite can be somewhat true also.

If I could choose between Awesome actiongame 1 and Nearly as awesome actiongame 2 with a good story, I would probably pick game 2.

On top of that I'm not especially fond of sandboxing either, more often than not I had rather have a pretty linear story with purpose than too much freedom like Oblivion (even though the game was still good).

I had to register just to respond to this. First of all, let me say that I fully agree with Elysium here and want to thank him for saying the very same thing I've been parroting on several other RPG discussion boards...only without that awfully annoying flame brigade and ban-hammering that comes afterward.

With that being said, let me state for the record that I am a huge Infinity engine fan. The games that Bioware and Black Isle released in that late 90s, early 00's period are some of the best RPGs to ever grace the PC and I don't think most hardcore D&D'ers would disagree with that. The problem is, in my eyes at least, that ever since the release of BG2, things have gone downhill.

Maybe it's the goldbox gamer in me (Anyone grow up playing the old SSI D&D games?) but I prefer the style of their pre-KOTOR games. To me, it seems like those early Bioware games were "Gameplay first, story second", whereas the post BG2 Bioware RPGs were "Story first, gameplay second".

I like deep combat, I like to min/max my characters, I like to exploit and break the system and find new and exciting "builds" to create...and most of their games now seem to prevent that. NWN didn't, of course...but KOTOR, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect seemed to be very limiting in that respect.

It doesn't end there either, since I have also been disappointed with the repeating tilesets in the games (Mass Effect and KOTOR were big offenders in this department) and the overall feeling of sameness prevalent in their newer titles. It's something I can't put into words, but I feel like I'm actually playing the digital equivalent of a 1980s "choose your own adventure" novel. It's fun, certainly, but it just doesn't hit me in that special place that their pre-KOTOR games did.

I did a review for Mass Effect on my own site and gave it an 83%. I felt that was about fair, and the score put it on par with other modern RPGs such as Oblivion and Morrowind.

I don't fault Bioware for going down this new route. They did this to breach into the mainstream. They already had hardcore, supergeeky 30 somethings like me that grew up eating and breathing D&D day and night...they just wanted to solidify their connection with casual RPGers that might be unwilling to jump from JRPGs to Western RPGs. Considering how many of my Final Fantasy addicted co-workers loved Mass Effect, I'd say that they accomplished their intended goals. Unfortunately, in doing so they have alienated grognards like me and elysium.

Someone earlier in the thread asked what games seem to be "doing it right" or something along those lines. Well, in my opinion, I think all three of Troika's released games "got it right". Arcanum had some wonky combat AI, but the core game was solid as a rock and combined extremely deep character creation with a pleasing but not too overbearing story. Yes, tech was weak and magic reigned supreme, but player made mods fixed that imbalance.

Likewise, Temple of elemental Evil combined highly strategic RPG gameplay with a light but enjoyable plot...creating what I firmly believe is the best D&D PC RPG since Curse of the Azure Bonds on my Commodore 64.

Then, in their own effort to placate the mainstream, Troika released a nice Deus Ex-esque (Mouthful, ain't it?) RPG called Bloodlines. While it wasn't as deep as their two previous games, the non-linearity more then made up for it and I still consider it to be one of the best action RPGs ever made. Far better then Jade Empire, anyway.

Also, Sir-Tech's Wizardry 8 deserves praise. I feel that game was unfairly criticized and was overlooked due to it's name having become synonymous with old-school grognardy-ness. Simply put, a lot of people wouldn't try it due to it's intimidating pedigree.

I bought NWN1 & 2, Mass Effect, both KOTOR games, and Jade Empire. Beat all of them except Empire...but I really never had the desire to second trip them. Like I said earlier, they seemed to be "Story first, gameplay second" RPGs. If I want that, I can dig out my Infocom collection and maybe later hunker down for a Zork marathon.

Though really, elysium seems to be focusing on the free ride that reviewers and gamers give bioware. They are now the "golden child" that Blizzard and Bethesda became a few years back. They are part of that new club of "Do no wrongs" who could put a turd in a box and sell millions of units in a month. Crude, yes, but not too far from the truth.

In the end though, I think a previous poster put this whole thing to rest when he said "What other choice do we have". As sad as it may be, he's right. You won't find high profile, big budget single player western style RPGs anymore unless they are being done by Bioware or Bethesda, so we should just all grin and bear it.

I do hate the fact that after beating Mass Effect earlier this year I quit my second trip character about one hour into it and went back to playing Baldur's Gate 2 with a few new NPC mods. I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about both Mass Effect and Bioware's current path.

Elysium wrote:
I think that perhaps Elysium's article meandered from the main point in a few places towards why Mass Effect shouldn't get great reviews on a technical basis from the main thrust of: the mentality of 'faith' given to the developers gives them better scores.

I don't want to derail the conversation by injecting my intent, but I'm not sure I could've written about how the media gives Bioware a pass without pointing out where that pass is given.

Yeah, i wasn't trying to say you did wrong - just that people were focussing on the wrong part of the article.

Elysium almost lost me when he called the IWD games superior to the BG games. But leaving that aside, he's obviously right about the reviews. It was really weird to see reviewers lining up to praise NWN1 while the consensus on Bio's own boards was that the moddability was great, but the adventure that shipped in the box wasn't very good. Of course, most of those reviewers changed their minds about the NWN1 OC when the expansions came out; then it was commonplace to say that the expansions fixed the main problem of the original game, which was a lackluster campaign.

Maybe it's something about RPG reviews. How many Oblivion reviews pointed out that the game was kind of boring and that the level scaling implementation produced idiotic results?

Hmm, with utmost respect to the author, I think the blog shows only one perspective and its not fully thought thru.

First of all, I think its illogical to compare games and say one is better than the other, even if they are in the same genre. Its like comparing apples to oranges. I think comparison is possible to some extent if the game is a direct successor or a remake but still you do have consider the...

Second point, technological advancement over time... "the once trendy band that becomes instantly trite and offensive when heard on pop-radio." <--- yup exactly what you said here. As the saying goes, nothing is perfect after all. Adding to that, it doesn't matter how perfect people think the game is in their review, it still going to be outclassed by newer games. But that doesn't mean that your once thought-to-be-perfect game is not that good after all.

Bioware's Baldur's Gate was truly a breakthrough during its time. It provided immersion into an RPG game world because of its depth. That was a 2d game... 1998 i think. Top that off with BG2 and its expansion for one truly complete epic. There is also the possibility that the newer games build upon the ideas/technologies of older games, you mentioned Planescape Torment and the icewind dale series which came after BG1, so is it acceptable to say that these newer games would be greater than the old game if the old game never existed?

Then came Neverwinter Nights. Yup, the OC never latched on to me unlike the baldur's gate & icewind dale series. But, you didnt mention the other half of the game that made it endure even after all this time. The content creation tools was truly something groundbreaking. It allowed ordinary gamers to create their own stories. Some even rivaling the OC in scope. There is still a large active community even to this day.

Yup, blizzard produces ground breaking games. They do Hit after hit after hit. But in my eyes, these companies are great... but none of them are greater than the other.

My guess is what makes these game companies great is simply their ability to break new ground, by innovating rather than sticking to the norm.

Hmm, with utmost respect to the author, I think the blog shows only one perspective and its not fully thought thru.

I really did recognize this going in, which is why I titled the piece One Man's Opinion. I appreciate the comments, good food for thought.

nsmike wrote:

Eh, I disagree. When I bought KOTOR, I didn't even know who BioWare was. I hadn't played Baldur's Gate. I bought Jade Empire (still haven't played it, though... It's on the pile) on the recommendation of the Gamestop employee that informed me it was made by the same developer that made KOTOR.

I enjoyed KOTOR a great deal, and it is memorable. In fact, in thinking about it, it kind-of makes me want to go and install it again...

Same. KOTOR was the first BioWare game I ever played, the first Western RPG I'd ever played and only the 3rd traditional RPG I'd ever played. And it was my favorite and is still very very memorable to me.

And I loved Mass Effect. I rarely put 40 hours into a game. Especially one that so prominently features a vehicle as flawed as the Mako. Yet I loved it and enjoyed every minute.

Elysium wrote:
It took a couple of reading 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!!!

Give that man a cookie!

Well, criminy, if we're going to talk about that, how about Nintendo. They're milking Mario and Pikachu shamelessly and will never stop doing so, no matter how much people get tired of them. Mario Galaxy may be great, but best game of the year? Every Mario game is the greatest game of every generation if we're to believe the critics.

Well its not so much the fawning press, but the lack of conversation that comes after.

Reviews are basically first impressions, usually written quickly before the game is released or right at the beginning. What I think the article points to is a need for a deeper conversation. I don't think anyone is going to make a strong argument that reviews need to change, rather a deeper conversation needs to be encouraged after we've had a chance to play the game, get beyond the hype and put it in a richer historical context.

Something I notice looking through the discussion here (I've been out of town a few days and am just now looking in again) is that there is a lot of praise (for the most part) for Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale and a lot of "meh" for Jade Empire, Mass Effect and (to a lesser extent) KOTOR (mostly getting higher rated due to its license). (I'm leaving NWN out of the mix since I think of it less as a game and more as a toolkit.)

With this split, I note that the change from praise to "meh" occurs at the point that the primary platform shifted from the PC to the console. While I am certainly not trying to start any sort of platform war, could this mean anything? Is there something fundamentally different between the PC and console platforms (or, more significantly, does Bioware think there is something fundamentally different between the two platforms) that is affecting the design?

Or maybe its just between old and new.

Although its probably not unreasonable to imagine people who loved the complexity of those old games think the console RPGs are watered down.

At least earlier many game companies have probably believed console games had to be "simpler" than PC games due to the playerbase and their expectations. Consoles were for story driven Japanese RPGs while the pc was for western RPGs, to exaggerate the argument a bit.
With the success of consoles, it could be changing, probably the reason why even RTS games are starting to focus more on consoles. Its where their players are these days.

Wait, people seriously were giving Jade Empire merit-scores for its plot?

It's the most hackneyed, cliche thing ever. You spot the Sensei twist at the beginning of the game, and the one good narrative point it's got is a result of a semi-misleading cutscene. I honestly had more fun playing Super Mario RPG than slogging through JE.

Shadout wrote:

Although its probably not unreasonable to imagine people who loved the complexity of those old games think the console RPGs are watered down.

Well, there's a way to solve this: Get young players who've played some of the latter 'consolised games' and then get them to play BG, BG2, IWD or Planescape. Then see if there is a high percentage who rate them higher than the newer games.

Tin, Oso - we need a proper study into this!

Duoae wrote:

Tin, Oso - we need a proper study into this!

Too many variables!!! *waves robot arms* Danger! Danger!

Seriously, I'm not sure I buy the split, above all because of KOTOR. I don't think "consolizing" is what's actually going on. I think Bioware tried something with KOTOR, a game that because it was designed with a console in mind had a kind of gameplay that represented a break from the BG style, and found themselves so glowingly praised for it that they abandoned elements that should never have been abandoned, though I'll always maintain that much more was gained than was lost with the new "depth psychology" game that arose as a result. I imagine Bioware sees that as their niche, now, as Bethesda sees the open world as theirs.

Boilerplate wrote:

I like deep combat, I like to min/max my characters, I like to exploit and break the system and find new and exciting "builds" to create...and most of their games now seem to prevent that. NWN didn't, of course...but KOTOR, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect seemed to be very limiting in that respect.

It doesn't end there either, since I have also been disappointed with the repeating tilesets in the games (Mass Effect and KOTOR were big offenders in this department) and the overall feeling of sameness prevalent in their newer titles. It's something I can't put into words, but I feel like I'm actually playing the digital equivalent of a 1980s "choose your own adventure" novel. It's fun, certainly, but it just doesn't hit me in that special place that their pre-KOTOR games did.

I think it's certainly fair ding KotOR for its combat, it's certainly not up to BG2's standards when it comes to tactical challenges. (As long as you don't simultaneously hold up Planescape as some sort flawless gem, as it's far worse in that regard. Of course the narrative more than makes up for those shortcomings in my book, but then I don't mind "choose your own adventure" style rpgs.) And partly I think that can be put down to their desire to make a more entryist rpg for the consoles, but I also think it could partly be grappling with making a 3d games, something I it's taken a while for them to get comfortable with. Certainly the repeating tilesets can be put down to that.

Someone earlier in the thread asked what games seem to be "doing it right" or something along those lines. Well, in my opinion, I think all three of Troika's released games "got it right". Arcanum had some wonky combat AI, but the core game was solid as a rock and combined extremely deep character creation with a pleasing but not too overbearing story. Yes, tech was weak and magic reigned supreme, but player made mods fixed that imbalance.

Are you *really* sure you want to put Arcanum down as a rock-solid rpg? Don't get me wrong, I love the awkward bloody thing, but I also remember the hilariously unbalanced character system (especially how owerpowered the dexterity attribute is), and the real-time-or-turn-based combat tried to please both camps but didn't wind up satisfying in either version.

tanstaafl wrote:

With this split, I note that the change from praise to "meh" occurs at the point that the primary platform shifted from the PC to the console. While I am certainly not trying to start any sort of platform war, could this mean anything?

No. The real split has to do with which of the games the person saying "meh" played first. IMHO.

My first Bioware game was KOTOR. I went back and tried the older games, and the only one that really held my interest was Planescape, and that was mostly for the old school text novel aspect than anything else. To me, any wonder that you might extract from BG or BG2 is completely drowned out in the general tedium of the user interface, especially the inventory management.

The general trend in the development of these games has been to streamline the systems that don't have much win in them (character micromanagement, inventory, replacing the spell system with magic, er, force points, etc) to attract a wider audience to the things that they want to emphasize (dialog, story, light sabers). Personally I have no problem with this trend, but I realize there are certain people who are attached to the way the older games played, where I find them tedious.

psu_13 wrote:

The general trend in the development of these games has been to streamline the systems that don't have much win in them (character micromanagement, inventory, replacing the spell system with magic, er, force points, etc) to attract a wider audience to the things that they want to emphasize (dialog, story, light sabers). Personally I have no problem with this trend, but I realize there are certain people who are attached to the way the older games played, where I find them tedious.

Bioware just hasn't been that creative in its console games. They've been playing it safe.

KOTOR: 3d and lightsabers. Done!
Jade Empire: Asian hotties. Done!
Mass Effect: Radial menu for dialog trees, booyah baby!

Okay, I too had to register to comment.

Let me start with the fact that I am a HUUGE Bioware fanboi. The only game of theirs I found BAD was NWN1. (Which was mosly due to the lacklustre OC)

Now, don't get me wrong, their games have flaws, but they ARE really fantastic games.

Baldur's gate was awesome. BG2 was, quite possibly the best RPG of all time. Yeah, Planescape's narrative kicked it's legs out from under it, but Planescape had a crappy combat system and was generally less polished (which says a lot, really) BG2 was close to perfection: A huge sprawling interesting world, neat characters, gripping story, beautiful locales (for its time I found it rather pretty)

Did it have its problems? Yeah. 2nd. Ed. D&D was clumsy, there were lots of "broken" or half-finished quests. The game was buggy.

Now, Planescape and the two first Fallouts both had some respects that were better than BG2's, but they both also had significant flaws. (mostly bugginess, to be fair, Planescape also had an uninteresting combat system)

Now, Bioware after BG2 I think went into a kind of shock. In a "How can we top this?!" way. and really, they couldn't. BG2 was the apex of it's particular type of RPG.

So they tried something different. NWN was basically a demo for the aurora engine. KOTOR and Jade Empire were.... Different from BG2. Rather than trying to create the epic "Feel" of a fantasy novel or well-run D&D campaign they tried to evoke the "feel" of movies (Star Wars in the case of KOTOR, Kung-fu movies in the case of Jade Empire) both games had relatively uninteresting combat, but both were competently written and managed to create an.... not "nonlinear", because the games are on rails, but what I'd almost call and "exisentialist" experience. (Basically you can't control what happens, but you can control how you react to what happens... makes any sense?)

KOTOR1 was a fun game, and I actually rather liked Jade Empire: A lot of it was clearly cribbed from bad Kung-Fu movies, but it was fun and campy and it had John Cleese as a conquistador.That said the game was far from flawless, it was too short for starters, some of the choices made no sense and combat was simplistic at best.

The problem, as mentioned, is that there really is no competitor: Bethesda's games have always been simply boring to me, and what other RPG developers are there? If Bioware's games are considered the best of their kind then it is becuase there are no other games of its kind being made.