Is it really that bad?

Yeah, people go insane/ridiculous about Bioware games.  Are we just a more emotional fanbase? More prone to hysteria? Politically charged?    I have no frame of reference because I only come into Bioware forums for game discussions.

While I thought the Witcher was lovely graphically, and had a cool story, there was not a single character in that whole franchise that came close to Legion, Morrigan, Dorian, or Wrex.  In my opinion, no other games have been able to draw me in like Bioware games. I hope that will be the case in MEA (and who the hell knows after 10 hours?). For example, I did not dig ME2 in the first few hours of gameplay.  I thought it felt contrived and the faces looked so damned weird to me and I hated Omega. But it started growing on me with the Tali mission and Lair of the Shadow Broker and all the emo stuff with Thane and getting to visit Tuchanka. Then Legion came along in the last 1/3, and he is my favorite character in any video game ever! And the final mission?  Woah!

Who knows what we will think about MEA until we actually play it through? People need to calm down a little! It is way easier to find fault with things than to explain what you enjoy about something.  And personally, I have not had the chance to enjoy this game yet. (although I did play with the CC alot and it really does suck )

I have never played COD but do you play a specific character and role  that you can name throughout the game? And is there character development over the course of the story? If not then its a first person shooter, if there are character development elements then its an RPG. RPGs existed 10-15 years ago but without classes and dialogue choices that necessarily altered the game. That's generally more of a modern thing in relation to RPGs nowadays. 

    I have not played COD so I can't compare without playing it and tell you the reason its a FPS rather than a RPG.  I just know horizon is a RPG. 

The call of duty version I played I think is about 15 years old and it didn't have character development, it wasn't about the character. There was no Nick Reyes in he story but its so long ago I can't remember. Thats probably why its a FPS rather than a RPG.

I guess then I will further extend my definition to state that horizon has aspects of skill building, dialogue choices and limited choice that alters the worlds narrative. The integration of these elements make Horizon an RPG but COD not an RPG but rather a FPS.

I am going to be honest here. I didn't notice the lack of animations like people are talking about. I also suck at reading faces in real life too, so that might be why. One thing that does bug me and it also bugged me in DAI is the lack of pretty characters and the ability to make them. That is one area where it has failed for me.

I always play a male lead, so I picked the best one out for me. For the females, trying to design a sister that doesn't look ugly was hard.

Just treat it like FO4 wait for modding community to save the day. Current BW team is simply not talented enough.

Regardless of whether it eventually turns out to be a decent game or not, this game has been marketed terribly. If the beginning sections of the game are as bad as almost everyone seems to agree they are, then why on earth would you restrict reviewers to talking about them? We live in an age where first impressions sadly matter more than ever, and this game has failed on that score *big time*.

For myself... well, I'm still going to play it as I believe in making up my own mind on things. (If I listened to other people's opinions too much, I'd never have played Dragon Age 2 or Dark Souls 2, both of which I love). But this game... it just doesn't seem like its a good game quite frankly. The comparisons to Dragon Age Inquisition are depressing, because I really hated that game, and feel that Bioware are going in entirely the wrong direction. Their games were never about open world exploration, and IMO no game should be about fetch and carry, collecting nonsense.

And even as probably the person on this planet who cares the least about graphics etc, the distractingly bad animations and mediocre voice acting, the dreadful looking planet scanning (seriously, why bring this mechanic back, when it was so despised). Its really hard to be optmistic right now, especially as I'm one of those obsessive plastic surgeon style nutcases who fuss about for hours in the CC trying to find the *soul* of my character. I couldn't give a damn about graphics most of the time, but I *need* my chatacter to look exactly right or I just can't engage properly. Because I'm always looking at my character and thinking 'But this isn't my character, it just doesn't look right'.

Problem is RPG never had a definition to it. Or at the very least, a concrete one. The term has always been somewhat meaningless for a while now.

This is mostly due to the liberal use of the term and the prefixs we attach to it giving it meaning. It started with the WRPG/JRPG paradigm which is outdated now, and we're slowly transitioning to new terms based on sub-genres, action RPG, roguelike, rougelite, dungeon crawler, Isometric RPG, Open World RPG; the list goes on. What gives these games meaning is us and our definitions of what a RPG is; it will never be concrete. 

Ive been writing about this for a while now too if you want to read more on it. A whole series dedicated to RPGs in that regard.

Think that making up your own mind is the best way to go       and only looking for the negative bit leaves you focused on it.

I'm playing the trial right now and I love the game, hope you will enjoy it too when you try it. I just got the new ship and it is wonderful!

Good for you tziwen, I guess. So long as you don't treat everyone who says something negative as the enemy, or even just people like me who are expressing concern. Because what would be the point? It won't change the content of the game. I wanted it to be good too, but if it isn't then I reserve my right to say so. *If* it isn't. I don't know that yet, but what I've seen does not inspire confidence *at all*

All I'm saying is that when even the critics who usually bend over the barrel for Bioware, because they are so terrified of the bioware fans coming after them, when even they break cover, it suggests something has gone badly wrong. And from what I've seen, they're right. The real clincher being that in 2017, Bioware are still making games where people give that golden line:

'We couldn't do anything before, but now *you're* here...'

This s**t AGAIN?!

lol I realized that after I posted.