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So back to the topic at hand, rather than dragging the Witcher into this...
I'm still firmly in the crowd that says Origin isn't being installed on my PC. EA has done some shady crap, that has put me off of any of their new products since Crysis 2.
To that end, anyone else seeing the same thing happening here? Bioware released ME1, and it was obtusely an RPG with guns littered throughout it. ME2 was a shooter, with baked in RPG elements. Both of these games stood on an excellently realized, if somewhat generic, story. Based upon what I've observed of ME3, it's a shooter which begrudgingly has RPG elements to make you do all of the quests (read: to get a better ending). The story was decent, but the crap ending poisoned anything good the story had done.
Similarly, Bioware released Dragon's Age Origins and Awakening. They were traditional RPGs, and sold on mechanical depth. Dragon's Age 2 came along, and sold on streamlining everything. Smaller world, removing complex RPG mechanics, and selling all of this with more (if not more coherent) story). Now Inquisition comes out with significantly less of everything, but "makes up" for it by adding in half hearted new mechanics which seem aped directly from other games. It seems like the more EA influences a developer, the more homogenized a game becomes. While highly polished it may be, Mass Effect 4 seems to be simply aping their own work from Inquisition, but changing the names of things. It seems as though EA is so adverse to risk that literally reskining a previous work by the same developers is acceptable. If that isn't a massive and painful removal of what made Bioware unique I don't know what is.
It's my stance that no game can stand alone on story (they call those movies), nor can it simply be fun to play (love you Super Meat Boy, but only in ten minute bursts). EA generally forces developers to homogenize gameplay until nothing special remains. They keep a tight leash on budget, so stories are lost behind a wall of money. Bioware may have lasted longer than most, but this seems to be the greasy tentacle of EA finally sliding its way into the Bioware skin, and wearing it until all their good will is used up on crappy sequels. I hope I'm wrong, but as yet I don't see EA changing anything until it becomes less profitable.
I'm still firmly in the crowd that says Origin isn't being installed on my PC. EA has done some shady crap, that has put me off of any of their new products since Crysis 2.
To that end, anyone else seeing the same thing happening here? Bioware released ME1, and it was obtusely an RPG with guns littered throughout it. ME2 was a shooter, with baked in RPG elements. Both of these games stood on an excellently realized, if somewhat generic, story. Based upon what I've observed of ME3, it's a shooter which begrudgingly has RPG elements to make you do all of the quests (read: to get a better ending). The story was decent, but the crap ending poisoned anything good the story had done.
Similarly, Bioware released Dragon's Age Origins and Awakening. They were traditional RPGs, and sold on mechanical depth. Dragon's Age 2 came along, and sold on streamlining everything. Smaller world, removing complex RPG mechanics, and selling all of this with more (if not more coherent) story). Now Inquisition comes out with significantly less of everything, but "makes up" for it by adding in half hearted new mechanics which seem aped directly from other games. It seems like the more EA influences a developer, the more homogenized a game becomes. While highly polished it may be, Mass Effect 4 seems to be simply aping their own work from Inquisition, but changing the names of things. It seems as though EA is so adverse to risk that literally reskining a previous work by the same developers is acceptable. If that isn't a massive and painful removal of what made Bioware unique I don't know what is.
It's my stance that no game can stand alone on story (they call those movies), nor can it simply be fun to play (love you Super Meat Boy, but only in ten minute bursts). EA generally forces developers to homogenize gameplay until nothing special remains. They keep a tight leash on budget, so stories are lost behind a wall of money. Bioware may have lasted longer than most, but this seems to be the greasy tentacle of EA finally sliding its way into the Bioware skin, and wearing it until all their good will is used up on crappy sequels. I hope I'm wrong, but as yet I don't see EA changing anything until it becomes less profitable.