EA: Bioware Friend or Foe?

I like both, and am happy that there are significant differences, but I think they have enough in common to compare. Most RPGs have a similar base structure- there’s a main quest (which accounts for a relatively small amount of total time), a world to explore, people to meet, side quests to do if you want, items and upgrades to find and/or craft, etc. Having companions is probably the biggest core difference, although Geralt did have a circle of friends and quests tied to them, which isn’t completely unlike companion quests, with the full range of interactions of course.

I think it’s perfectly fine to say if one game did certain things better than another, as long as you’re not too much of a dick about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if some people took it too far, nor would it surprise me if that wasn’t entirely one sided either.

But that wasn’t really my main point anyway. Which was that even if I didn’t enjoy the Witcher 3 at all, I’d still be happy it was so successful. Because it shows that a big budget single player RPG can be both massive a critical and commercial success without relying on multiplayer and with no loot box nonsense. That’s what BioWare were famed for, and what I believe what most of their fans still want them to do.

But I think it also means that the bar has been raised a bit. If they want DA4 to be successful, I doubt they can get away with filling the game with anything that feels like repetitive busywork. Things like closing rifts, collecting shards, etc. probably won’t go down well if they try that again. IMO it would be better to have less stuff, and make what they do have feel more meaningful.

I do love The Witcher but anyone that has played Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights is pretty aware that there would be no such thing as CDPR if it hadn't been for those games. The engine itself of Neverwinter Nights is used in the very first Witcher game.

Then again, Witcher 3 did turn out a lot better than Inquisition, so I do believe that the latter has something to learn from the former. Doesn't mean I hate anyone or that I believe anyone sucks. There's no reason why we shouldn't play both the Witcher and Dragon Age franchises and fully enjoy them both.

W...why ?! I could easily argue The Witcher 3 is probably one of the best games ever made.

You can easily argue that for any game, because everyone has their own personal metric for "best".

Ahahaha. I think you will find it is actually quite difficult. At the very least, I think I can pretty much guarantee that you and I would never agree on a set of criteria. My favourite games of all time have next to nothing in common with Witcher 3.

I like Witcher 3 overall, (at least I like what I played, since I have never finished it), but I have my criticisms, and the constant comparison of Dragon Age to Witcher 3 and BioWare to CDPR on this forum is incredibly boring and annoying, and sort of concerning, in that it seems like most of this forum haven't played anything else since 2015.

Besides which, why do all games need to be like Witcher 3? Personally, when I'm in the mood for a game like Witcher 3, I boot up... Witcher 3.

It's probably more useful to establish a bunch of individual metrics to compare games in areas where they are trying to do similar things. For instance, I think we can safely say that DAI and TW3 were both trying to incorporate OW elements into a story-driven experience, and the consensus is that TW3 handled this aspect better

Mandatory criteria for me for any game to be considered "best" is a customizable character. Can't have that with Witcher. Can't have that with Assassin's Creed. Can't have that with some other RPGs that have been released in the past few years. I also don't like iso cam.

I have a fairly narrow set of criteria, so yeah, I think it would be difficult to agree on a set by which to judge a game "best."

Dragon Age and Skyrim (haven't played the other ES games) offer what I want, which is why I continue to play them.



You didn't even mention characters, which are a huge draw for Bioware games.

Sure, but all I'm really saying is that I WANT games to be different from each other. If every single game offered an identical experience, why would I bother buying more than one?

Every game (or at least every IP) should be trying to offer a unique experience that players cannot get elsewhere. That's what keeps the industry alive and interesting, that's how you find individual success in the crowded market, and that's what's also best for us, the players/consumers.

I certainly would love Dragon Age to be less keen to be Skyrim
What i'd love to see that i see in the Witcher which is essentially i'd have seen in Bioware games is a little less tiptoeing round the unpleasantness of their settings.

I thought Mass Effect Andromeda had some pretty nasty moments. The voice recordings of live Salarians being cut open by Kett was pretty darn brutal to hear. I don't think any other Mass Effect game has depicted torture like that.

Granted, Inquisition was quite fairy tale. There were dark aspects of the story, but these aspects weren't really convincingly presented through the environments, and the NPCs.

I suggest you go under Cryosleep judging on how long it's taking Bioware to make a game.