EA: Bioware Friend or Foe?

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Since EA has bought BioWare their resources and quality has increased dramatically, by and large, other than the opposite. The weakest games in their respective franchises was Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age Origins, for me, with each game being of higher quality. Though 3 was lesser then 2...make of that what you will.

Though it does bear keeping in mind that overall their two weakest games that I have played since they were bought was Anthem and TOR which suggests they have a multiplayer problem...but as far as their SP properties is concerned EA has done nothing but good for them (also as an aside the only reason I am even here in the first place is because EA bought BioWare).

I agree with your line of thinking, but I also think a lot of rookie mistakes were made with Andromeda which makes sense because it was made by a rookie studio with a lot of industry rookies.  Out of the two online games I think The Old Republic was the better product because it made better use of BioWare's strengths for where The Old Republic really had issues after the first month is the lack of endgame content which makes sense from a developer that has only made single player games.  The lack of knowledge of endgame and having all those different story campaigns to get to max level show making a single player game instead of a MMO just with community areas.  Anthem was full of technical hurdles in a genre that didn't fit BioWare's strengths, the looter shooter has always been light on story from the ones I have played and I would say Anthem is better in the story area, but they failed to overcome the monotony that is the end game there as well.  Keep running the same content over and over hoping for better loot so you can continue to run the same old content for better loot.  That is the gameplay of any of these looter-shooter genres.

Looking at what believe has happened I think the problems relate to burnout.  BioWare developers want to make something different then Mass Effect or Dragon Age because that is what they have done, but there really isn't another genre that fits into their strengths as a studio.  Bungie fit well into Destiny because its just a MMO Halo and that is what people expect, Division is just any of the other Tom Clancy games by Ubisoft, but always connected and that is what people expected.  With BioWare people want a good story game and I am not sure what genre they can go towards that would be a strong fit for that strength.

With all that said I am looking forward to Dragon Age 4 and seeing what they do.  I think too many people are jumping to conclusions at this point because we don't know what is in the game or not and even with things like "live services'" BioWare has said in the past that even Dragon Age: Origins qualified for that moniker.  So I am not concerned until I see the final product and then I can voice what I don't like because there will be hard evidence to what is wrong.  I would be as you pointed out more skeptical of an always online type of game, but that is because I am not sure how well it fits within BioWare's strengths as a studio, but then again I would also be highly skeptical of a flight sim or real-time strategy game made by BioWare for the very same reasons.

Then maybe its a good thing they decided to start over with Dragon Age 4 so it has their complete focus as a studio.

Casey Hudson is back. If he can't set Bioware straight then no one can.

To go backwards like that would require player's to move to that direction and from my experience with crowdfunding and some of the comments from developers on the issue player tastes of changed and they cannot go back for that isn't where they audience is.  Josh Sawyer has said in his blog that for there to be a Pillars of Eternity 3 they probably would "have to go back and re-examine the format of the game" because of how Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire did and they have no idea why it went that way. 

I think BioWare has shown they are going to shift with the industry back with Mass Effect 1 when they moved from being more of a RPG style game maker to the Action RPG market.  For players were shifting to more action based games.  Now the shift has been the perceived value players have with games, they want a $60 game to last hundreds of hours or more even if the core quality of the game is diminished that is what players seem to show they want.  I can see elements of Anthem moving forward into other ideas incorporated into future titles because those elements are what players are focusing on now, but after making The Old Republic as maligned as it was its still active at BioWare Austin but they didn't continue to chase that specific trend either.  That is what I think will happen to Anthem, they will house the game somewhere with minor updates as long as there is a playerbase for it.  Just like how Ubisoft is still trying to fix The Division 2 which they have bungled from the start.

Josh Sawyer's Blog

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Everything we’ve heard about the behind the scenes events tells us that EA takes a very hands off approach in regards to BioWare, I actually think EA needs to be more involved, not actually taking over creatively but instead send in a producer to watch over development and keep an objective view of the game.

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Ye I saw this one prior to writing my comment. I'm erring on the safer side with UE4 being more familiar. It's beautiful, but it's a tech demo and highly polished to make it insane-looking. I doubt any game will come close to that graphical level.

Just because of those are tech demos doesn't mean any game will be able to fully capture what is demonstrated nor a developer like BioWare would choose to make their look like those demos or even choose those options.  My opinion even if they were to switch engine they would run full tilt into any of the issues the engine has just like what happened with Respawn and Unreal 4.  Until games actually start using that engine then we can see what it is really capable of for right now its no better then an E3 presentation of an upcoming video game.  Cherry picked to show off the best aspects.