"No Brothels to be in DA4" as per Mark Darrah Tweet.

Tolkien's biographer (Humphrey Carpenter) said Tolkien wanted to create a "mythology for England" rather than just a story. Whether that's true or not ... *shrugs*. Anyway it helps to explain away all the extra information and digressions.

Well nobody is ever gonna be perfect. Mieville is one of my favourite authors, but that is in spite of the fact that his language bends my brain in half. I put up with the wanky writing style because I find his worlds so different and fascinating. I haven't read PSS, so I can't comment there. His Bas-Lag chronicles are just too intimidating. I've read nearly all his shorter books, and Railsea is by far my favourite, probably in large part because it is more accessible than the others, having been written as an "all ages" adventure story.

Howard is like a... "take it in the context of the time" sort of thing? I don't like the way he portrays women and non-white characters, but his action scenes are fantastic, and I have a lot of respect for anyone who can write good short fiction, because that's something I struggle with.

I have tremendous respect for Tolkien's work and worldbuilding but I fully get the criticism of his actual writing.

And honestly in terms of setting I'm a bit more of a Howard guy, myself. Conan the Barbarian is what got me into fantasy to start with.

And really what I want here is the ability to play more of a Conan-esque character. I've been harping on the sex maniac part of it but that's a very narrow aspect to what I actually want.

Yep, Bio had to use Frostbite instead of building their own engine. It's hard to tell if this was a problem or not because we don't have access to an alternative universe where they bought a different engine or built their own.

But we were talking about creative decisions. What are you actually accusing EA of foisting on Bio? Do you even know?

Edit: sorry for getting in the way of the fantasy discussion, folks.

FWIW, the early reviews on that have been pretty good.

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Only the situation wasn't that simple. Neither with MEA development nor with Frostbite. And no - indie studios don't have access to such powerful tools. Frostbite is a long-term investment. Yes, they had to develop tools for RPGs and others and that came with its own set of growing pains. But you know what all that work and training basically all of developers under EA to use Frostbite means? A lot of programmers able to use Frostbite without need to retrain them to use different engines and assets + talent from across multiple different studios. From what I understand that is a big advantage in the long run.

CDPR developed their own engine when Bioware should have. That simple.

If you think that any of it simple, I've got some bad news for you.

One of the major advantages western game developers have over their Japanese counterparts is the ability to radically cut down development time (and therefore money spent) through licensing one of the many game engines on the market that are available. Square Enix spends god-damn years building a new engine for every game. Final Fantasy 15 was created using Square's Luminous Studio engine whereas Final Fantasy 13 was created using the Crystal Tools engine. The Western habit of licensing an engine is efficient and practical whereas the Japanese habit of building a new engine for every game bloats development time. There's a reason Mass Effect was created using the Unreal Engine, which produced arguably better results than what the Frostbite engine produced for Andromeda, and there's a reason TOR was created using the HeroEngine. Bioware have spent 5 years trying to mould the stupid Frostbite engine into one that can be used for RPG games which is not just money down the drain but time they could have used on the actual game experience. 

Sure Dragon Age Origins used a new engine, it was also in development for so long some considered it vaporware xD

It's not a time down the drain, in fact it is entirely opposite. Only in recent interview Mike Laidlaw said, that when team migrated from one ME to DA as they ramped-up production, not only the studio lost time re-training them, but some of developers literally couldn't look into code due to licensing/contract issues (DA and ME used different engines).

Now imagine that you have not only a whole studio trained in Frostbite, but all studios under entire video game company that owns that engine.

This was the reason why they switched to Frostbite. This is not just about Bioware games. Bioware, and all other studios, can now tap into talent, expertise and assets of every studio under the umbrella of EA. This is how the rest of Bioware could come to the rescue when Montreal scrapped 3 years of MEA development. This is why Need For Speed team could've helped MEA team improve Nomad, for example. Or how Austin was able to create Descent. Or how EA could have absorbed BW Montreal into Motive, which allowed most of devs to retain their jobs, or how the SW game Visceral was working on is not lost in files somewhere, only switched to another studio.

This is also how FiFA - and now Battlefont - got story mode. All those RPG tools Bioware prototyped? They are now used across all EA games (I didn't take it out of nowhere, devs who worked on DA were open about this). And all the tools other studios prototype? They can now be used by Bioware. It's not just them who are working on Frostbite - they just had a hard task of pioneering games on it that went beyond shooters and car races, so others could follow.

This is why Frostbite is understood to be a long-term investment. A powerful, flexible engine hundreds of devs across all studios can use and further expand, building experience, engine modules and asset library. Imagine how radically it'll cut down development time and money too. 

We shall see how this is going to pay off for BW further down the road. But in the very same interview I mentioned above Mike did compare DAI to Witcher 2 - specifically because Witcher 2 was where CDPR cut its teeth on new engine and make it work for them, so they could have set up groundwork under success of TW3. I don't know about you, but I have a feeling that he wanted to tell us that we should prepare for something that could be, at the very least, interesting. And I don't find it objectionable that, in case Bioware had problem on technical level, EA can just throw devs at them from other places that can help them with the game, just like BW Motreal devs now help with Battlefront 2 and who knows what else.