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

Also
...I liked the Environmental Meters. It was like the only small bit of sciencey explorer stuff they kept. Everything else made the Initiative and exploration seem like a breeze. Ryder would say "WE'RE GONNA STARVE IF WE DON'T" but then I'd....Not see evidence of that.

Essentially what I asked in my review: What makes a Mass Effect game? While MEA improved the DAI recipe it still doesn't deliver a true open world (or neither wants to do so) but spaces out the storyline missions too far in between (for the average OCD player gobbling quests).

Please stop writing nonsense about a game you've never played... If you'd rather read a book than play as a man, read the witcher series and you'll see that these sorceresses are basically the scum of the earth. They use sex to get what they want. Like, you know, some women do in real life. But that's OK because the men aren't any better. Half of them are rapists and the others murderers on top of it. And if you read the novels you would understand why they all want to sleep with the only decent man they ever met in this awful world they live in...

The games aren't as deep and profound as the novels, and they aren't flawless (W1's gameplay is so bad I gave up after 4 hours), but all this dismissal or outright ridicule because of a set characters and boobs is a bit sad.

I respect if the character creator is most important to some people. Outside of that though, and it's not even done well in MEA, I don't personally see the appeal anymore. Missing out on great games with set characters in favor of something more customizable but mediocre I don't really get.

That said, we all miss out on well made games because they don't meet our personal criteria. Bashing them with ignorant comments serves no point, though.


EDIT: A lot of people take the grim dark fantasy setting too seriously. It's a PARODY. The witcher novels/games make fun of classic fairy tales. It's over the top on purpose.

OMG!?

You can also have beautiful relation with her, and save her. Role Playing Game you know!? 

People please stop writing nonsense, especially you who didn't play TW3. Don't embarrass yourself!  

Witcher 3 has a perfectly serviceable forum. Here is the link for those who don't know:

forums.cdprojektred.com/forum/en/the-witcher-series

There, you won't have to read what you consider nonsense, there will be no controversy, unwarranted opinions, etc. On the inverse, we also won't have to be told endlessly how the game we like is bad because it's not like W3. Win-win.

Even just having other nice male characters other than the Witcher himself in the world would have been a good start. But, no, they are all rapists and murderers - not my assumption, I am quoting verbatim a post from Kappa Neko who likes the Witcher a couple-three posts earlier. Blade and Soul was extremely heavily male-biased (to satirical proportions, tbh), but you could create your own protagonist, and it had a couple of a very appealing male characters along with the host of every kind of a female ones. And, no, Blade and Soul is not an example of an awesome game, but well, it's the only non-Bio/Obsi game I have played at any length.

I can play a game made for men and boys by men and boys if I like something about it. It's just I can't really see anything that gets me in the Witcher.

Is it really SJW thing to want a world wher eGood Things do exist and happen independently of the protagonist, that has bright and strong men and women in it (that are not protagonist), want to be able to create your own hero and have a game structured as a thrilling adventure with your pick of digital friends that belong to this Realm and are with your hero through thick and thin, beginning to end? Is it really that wrong to want that?

Dom you do know that Witcher isn't just playing as Geralt right?. Ciri who is insanely powerful is like a daughter to him. The whole game is about him tracking her down. But you play as Ciri as well to learn what happened even after they meet up she is the one you kill the crones with. She also saves the world and trust me she is a beautiful looker who loves both men and women in her story side.

Witcher 3 you play as a male (Geralt) (Father figure) and female (Ciri).

What isn't just downright shaky, but flat out wrong is when they start spreading blatant falsehoods, such as "you only play as Geralt" or "all missions end with sex"

You play her for limited periods of time to flesh out her events in the story, while they are present they are much more limited in scope and size than anything you do with Geralt.  She can flirt with at least one guy, but due to the nature of her story (as well as her own sexual orientation lesbian or bi) nothing comes of it.

You keep saying that, and it keeps not being true. Sure, Andromeda wouldn't have become the meme-worthy mess it had been, but it's just all around disappointing. It still would have gotten hate because it still doesn't elevate itself that far above Inquisition. Mechanically, it's a bit better (shooter combat sure helps), but creatively, I think Inquisition is a far stronger game. I went out of my way to hear a ~5 hour super-cut of DA:I's companion banter because its characters were a joy to listen to. I have no intention of doing that for Andromeda.
No, you just haven't read any of my other posts. Cutscene animation and camera placement are frequently poor, the dialog is all over the place, the optimistic tone is at odds with the pessimistic setting, the new aliens are visually uninspired, resource collection still sucks, fetch quests still exist, the non-cinematic camera still exists and still annoys to no end, encounters are repetitive, UI is abysmal, characters are hit or miss and often miss hard, BioWare still has a penchant for distilling complex information down to progression bars (e.g. viability) which makes the experience "gamey," combat and mobility are good but is often let down by boring open combat spaces, etc.. I really could go on. This game has problems. Fundamental ones, but worse than that, it's still lathered in a veneer of bugginess.
And I think you're deluding yourself. For nearly every feature that Andromeda has, there is another game that does it better.
So BioWare should be a pioneer and do the thing that everyone else is doing, and do it worse? At this point, it would be more original for an RPG developer to make a more linear game. And given how fantastic BioWare games are when they are linear, I'm sure it would hold its own among the competition. Right now, Mass Effect is just a cheap knockoff of both itself and any other open world game that's actually figured itself out. Big is not better. Deep is better, and BioWare just can't seem to make an open world game wit hthe same depth as the competition.

And Jesus, I hate it when people imply that open world is the logical conclusion to everything. It isn't. It's just one game design trick among many, and it just doesn't sit well within BioWare's design philosophy. I'm well aware that you think open world is this beautiful gem of perfection, but incidentally, that's your opinion, and it's not representative of the entire market.
I wasn't fond of Witcher's open world, but I can admit that it worked for people. And it's clear why: lots of quality content and great writing packed into every corner of the world. Andromeda doesn't have that, and like I said, it could never have that. BioWare's staff is more expensive to maintain. There is simply no way BioWare could achieve that CDPR did from a purely logistical level, and quite frankly, I don't think BioWare's creative leads (other than the combat designers) can match what CDPR's team did either.
And in the opinions of the masses, they failed twice, and actaully got worse between releases. Inquisition is not remembered fondly, and Andromeda has had a terrible reception.

You keep saying that BioWare can improve, but how? There's no individual mechanics that BioWare can tweak to get it right. More polish and more quality content takes more money, and I don't thing EA is going to greenlight a bigger budget for BioWare's next attempt.

So, will it be correct to conclude from your amalgamated posts that playing as Ciri is inconsequential and how she is not really powerful, and does not really have a romance, rather than the:

Dom you do know that Witcher isn't just playing as Geralt right?. Ciri who is insanely powerful is like a daughter to him. The whole game is about him tracking her down. But you play as Ciri as well to learn what happened even after they meet up she is the one you kill the crones with. She also saves the world and trust me she is a beautiful looker who loves both men and women in her story side.

Witcher 3 you play as a male (Geralt) (Father figure) and female (Ciri).

So, in summary, you really only get to play as Geralt, right?