Polygon's open-letter to BioWare regarding their open-world-like games.

The side quests are the best thing about that game for me. There is no "fact" to what you say. Skyrim is built completely different than a mass effect game, they have completely different priorities, fans have completely different expectations. I'm not expecting a great main line story to any Bethesda games but I do expect a huge open sandbox with various things to do that let the imagination go wild. With Mass effect I expect a great story and characters that I can get attached to and enjoy.

expectations change from franchise to franchise. When it comes to fps games, I expect great fluid gameplay, with halo in specific I expect a decent story as it's one if the few that uses story to its advantage where as a CoD game relies off multiplayer and has to have addicting gameplay to keep people interested, they could care less about the awful campaigns as that's not why people play that specific game.

there is no double standard when one says mass effect has awful story and character but then admits a skyrim lacks that. Why? Again, different focuses, different expectations, different ways to draw people in to play. If one goes in to skyrim expecting a great main line story they'll be disappointed as that's not what the devs focused on, it's the sandbox that lets you do whatever you want with a variety of things to do, including side quests that do have mystery to them.

Should I have remained emotionless?

I don't see what the problem is with applauding at the end of a good game or movie even if none of the developers will be consciously aware of it.

And yes I have clapped at the end of certain films I enjoyed and in the cinema on one or two occasions (when other audience members would also join in).

I like to recognise and show the appreciation in a way that I am physically motivated to do, and this in turn forms a stronger memory of the event within my mind. Does that help explain it to you?

I'm surprised you consider it to be weird given I can think of many stranger things people do in life.

You're still comparing quests with non-quests and camps,nests and caches can all be found without a notice board mentioning it. They don't impede progress unless you autistically need to see and do every single thing on the map. Also they make sense from a story perspective.

Overall, I've noticed a 'hate for Bioware' is a thing and it goes way back to the Hamburger Helper fiasco and the ME3 ending nightmare. Some people want to have heads roll (Literally) at Bioware and can't be reasoned with. I try to stay away from them, myself.

You can certainly compare the known features of one game to another. As far as I know, it is accurate to say that you can only play as Geralt and you do not have characters joining him during his adventures in the Witcher.

No ones selling you crap crybaby. Witcher 3 is a better "game" than bioware' recent titles. People don't like LGBT parades because they're degenerate, I'm sure most here disagree with that also. Your opinion means nothing.

Good to see a reasonable article with helpful suggestions. I won't argue the game is flawless, but I still had a lot of fun with it, and the silly internet dogpiling is just going to deter game developers from taking chances or doing anything that deviates from a successful formula.

Interesting bit on the old paragon/renegade option versus MEA's conversations. I felt the same way about the All The Little Things quest.

In the same way the article suggests, had it been, there could have been a real moral dilemma to ponder before making a decision. And it would have avoided the original trilogy's saint vs. Satan bichromatic morality.

With regard to open-world-like games and where Bioware stands in regard to them, here's my take on it:

All open-world-like games must overcome the same kind of problem: how to fill their worlds with interesting content, or how to make up for the fact that you don't and still want an enjoyable game. There are several key ingredients that can make a contribution. Not every one of them is of equal importance, and players value them differently, so there isn't a definitive answer for the question of making a game that works, but here is my list of the most important aspects:

1. Creativity in storytelling.

Stories aren't just sequences of events. They engage me most, emotionally and intellectually, if they're not completely predictable and gain a life of their own as you experience them in a game. Now, consider that every sidequest should be like a little story in itself, and ask yourself how many of MEA's and DAI's sidequests where satisfying in that way? If your answer is anything better than "not many" then I say your standards are lacking. In DAI, some of the companion missions were well-crafted, but almost all of those in MEA were full of tired old tropes used in fairly straightforward ways and without any twists to make them interesting. MEA's main plot is more interesting, but that's not enough to carry an open-world-like game.

I think Bioware has lost a lot of creative drive over the years and become increasingly formulaic. Their first idea for MEA's main plot involved......some ancient evil, if you can believe that. Then we have yet another antagonist who wants to turn us into X, yet another species of "aliens" who are nothing more than a different human culture in essence, yet another spaceship that looks like an airplane, sets of sidequest whose solutions lack anything that would make them engaging, etc. etc. I've been wondering if they even write new code for enemy AI, so much everything feels the same. The Remnant mystery is nice - *really* nice, and the saving grace of MEA down to a very satisfying ending - but yet again, not enough to carry a game of this kind alone.
The last game where I felt that Bioware gave the whole world and its details their creative attention was DAO. And the most recent game where I felt another developer did that was TW3.

Another symptom of this lack of creativity is writing that's at best uninspired and workmanlike, and all too often cheesy, juvenile or campy. ME writing was never good, but in ME2 and ME3 the mostly superb voice acting made up for it. In MEA, not so much.
 

2. Dynamism and interactivity

Open-world-like games are games aimed at making just being in the world enjoyable. In order to do that, their worlds must be lifelike. People move around and do stuff, talk to each other etc.., and ideally you can interact with pretty much everything. TES games used to be good at that - in Oblivion you could do things like setting a table for a nice romantic dinner, all by yourself, because all the objects in the game world were interactive and could be moved and placed. Modders took great advantage of that and created locations of unsurpassed beauty. Meanwhile, Bioware games have always been incredibly static and very much less interactive. When they didn't make open-world-like games that was not so much of a disadvantage, but it is a problem when for instance, in DAI's Redcliffe people don't move and you can't move anything around. In MEA, people do talk, for instance on the Nexus, but interactivity is extremely limited and quite often, you don't even see anything happen if you interact with an object. You don't even see containers opening. How boringly static is that?

While TES: Oblivion is perhaps the most interactive game I know, TW3 has come to be the king of dynamism. Don't believe me? Just visit its cities and tell me they aren't the most alive you've ever seen in a game. Bioware? Novigrad alone has probably more non-hostile dynamic AIs than MEA as a whole, and if you can interact with a character who isn't part of a quest you can already consider it exceptional. Low, low standards that desperately need to improve if they want to make another game of this kind and make it a success.


3. Variety in content

This ties into creativity. A large world can all too easily become boring, so you need variety in content. Variety in quest resolutions (see above about creativity in storytelling) is what works best, and Bioware has not been good at that for a long time. DAI made up for that by variety in landscapes and landscapes there were truly impressive, and its variety of enemies was, while not impressive, enough to make you want to play on. What do we have in MEA? 80% kett, roekaar and exiles who all use a human template for movement and use basically the same combat AI, and Remnant whose ground-bound units also use the same combat AI and move like humans. It's the epitime of boring - MEA is supposed to be a game about exploration but if I find nothing but kett camp #1502 and Heleus loot chest #2411 why should I even bother? Also, naturally there is a limit to landscaping if you must design marginal worlds, but surely the worlds could've been made a little more interesting in MEA. Havarl is nice and so is Habitat-7, but that's about it. The only saving grace of the others is that you can drive around in the Nomad more easily. 


The problems in these areas contribute to the fact that when I play MEA, at any time after the first encounter with the angara I basically do everything just in order to get to the next main story event and be as powerful as possible when I get there. Counting by the time I spend for it, about 70% of everything I do between that point and the salarian ark - which I delay as much as possible - is not particularly engaging at best and anything between a tedious chore or a meaningless time sink at worst. What comes after - everything that has to do with Meridian - is very satisfying, but getting there, the whole middle part of the game, is not.

In general, creativity and variety in storytelling has become a rare virtue in crpgs, not just for Bioware. I think here's the most potential for improvement, though, and hiring better writers and allocating more resources to realizing their ideas in-game, especially outside the main plot, will have the most effect. That doesn't just apply to open-world-like games.  Imagine a game with a premise and story like DA2's, created with the same attention to making the world come alive, making the world plausible, world detail, consistency and quality of content as TW3. Imagine the dialogue and lore of a sequel to MEA written by an experienced SF writer with a dedication to creating consitent worlds with fantastic elements. I don't think actual writing is a particularly expensive aspect of an rpg (as opposed to scene production and VA), it makes no sense to be so utterly cheap in this as Bioware appears to be.

Sure, if you ignore the parts where you play as Ciri

or when you have Triss, Yennefer, Hjalmar, Lambert, Eskel, Vesimir, Dandelion, or any number of more minor characters along

On one side we got the "men centered game" and the other side we got the "SJW game". The best of both worlds i would say.

You all should stop producing such high amounts of bullshit and enjoy more things.