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

"Dragon Age: Inquisition did win a lot of awards..."

Even though i loved DAI, winning awards is not really an accomplishment when for example Polygon gave one to Gone Home, in a year with GTA V, The Last of Us, Bishock Infinite or Tomb Raider reboot around. so even if 2014 had similar games, there is no guarantee that the likes of Polygon would choose them instead of DAI. wasn't polygon's 2015 GOTY Her Story instead of Witcher 3? he should write an open letter to Polygon regarding their possible agenda. sadly current EA as a greedy company has it's own business agenda as well, so old Bioware is gone.

Regarding the open world, if Bioware wants to continue with their semi open worlds, then instead of quantity they should focus on quality. i rather have fewer maps that are more connected to the story. i am playing Nier Automata right now and there is just one large map so far with more connections to the main story and a command center. plus they had time to focus on other aspects and the music is always present to entertain. regardless, even though MEA is Bioware's weakest imo, it is still a good game. opinions vary of course.

There's no meaningful difference between tasks in MEA and bandit camps/smuggler caches in TW3. If you're going to condemn one then you should condemn the other too.

D.I.C.E. Awards are run by The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), they are a non-profit organization of industry professionals and presents a series of annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

Ok what's your point because you aren't proving anything here?

Agreed on everything but the Bethesda part. Bethesda game worlds are dull and one dimensional imo.

Wait, did I write this? I don't remember writing this. But those are my words...

someone totally missed the purpose of the frying pan contract

There is no difference between stumbling on a bandit camp and walking by someone in ME3 talking about a missing loved one.  They are the same level of incidental task.  The only difference is you draw your sword in TW3 and in ME3, you walk up to the person and hand them an item you've picked up while on a mission.  In TW3, you can be told where some of those camps are located through the Notice Boards (although they won't be labeled differently than assorted other sites).  In ME3, you can be told about the item you need ahead of time by walking by that person before doing the mission where the item is located.  Yet, people here complain endlessly about the "meaningless fetch quests" in ME3... but they are the same level of crap in TW3.  In fact, I would say the ME3 variety are more connected to the story since the purpose for being in the area of the item IS generally a fully involved side mission (e.g. picking up the target jamming tech during the mission that rescues Admiral Koris).

The open world design propagates a higher percentage of these sorts of meaningless tasks based on just walking through a location... so, I'm quite sure ME:A has a lot more of this nonsense than ME3.  This second shot I've given TW3 is absolutely convincing me that open world games are crap... period.  I'm hating TW3 (and probably won't finish it- again), and I would love it if Bioware stuck with a reasonably tight story (with some branching due to choices) but stayed away from this open world idea of the player being able to do anything in any order.  IMO, they had it right in ME2 and ME3.  ME1 had a lot of repetitive planet quests, but even it was mercifully short compared to TW3.  They should have never listened to all you TW3 fans and just did it the way they had in the past.

As I said, I've so far removed from the story now in TW3 due to all this open world distraction, I can hardly remember what it is I'm supposed to be looking for anyways.  I'm hoping ME:A at least isn't as long.

It doesn't matter what Polygon or anyone else thinks... EA has decided to go open world and backing down from that would be admitting a mistake. So they're going to double-down and make the next game and the next open world. The days of linear Bioware games are long gone. And besides, I'm pretty sure they're gearing up to take on Destiny 2...

I always believed that it was virtually impossible to make a tight RPG in an open world. Witcher 3 is said to have pulled it off although I have no idea how. But at the end of the day Witcher is like that 100 year old man that smokes 10 packs a day and somehow isn't dead - it's an outlier. Practically everyone else that tried this has failed miserably with very few developers making open worlds more than ghost towns with UPS style fetch quests. It's no surprise that Bioware is having a hard time because practically everyone else is too - and they're not even making RPGS!

I think the only way Bioware is going to be able to knock it out of the park is if they ditch this open-world pipe dream and go back to linear games and focus on their strengths so that they can better craft their stories and gameplay. But like I said that isn't happening...

No, you're the one splitting the hairs here in order to say one is a quest and one isn't.  What makes a quest... if it's that you're told about it... then the you are told about the bandit camps and monster nests, etc. when you read various notice boards and then the ? mark appears on the map.  Just because it's a sign rather than overhearing an NPC say something does not make it not a quest and the other a quest.  Just because one is "go kill" and the other is "to fetch" doesn't make one a quest and the other a non-quest.  They are essentially the same thing... and equally not story-connected, equally meaningless, and equally all filler... just to make the game longer and distract the player from the main story line.  I would rather pay the same dollar for a good 50-hour linear game than a 200-hour piece of crap like TW3.  At least I'm going to get to see all the 50-hours worth of content rather than skipping over 150-hours of filler.  I gave it a second chance... it doesn't get 3.  If ME:A is a bad as TW3, then ME:A will likely be the last Bioware game I buy.  I don't like this attempts to combine open-world with story-driven games.  I'll go back to playing campaign mode of regular action games and forfeit the RPG before I slog through 200 hours of trying to connect to fragments of little scattered stories out of any sort of logical sequence.

DA:I and ME:A is what happens when you have no passion and just try and emulate previously successful games because...reasons.
And i wouldn't mind them "copying" (to some extent) more successful games IF they (BW) didn't suck at it, but they're incapable of even creating living, breathing world (consistently), let alone content to fill that world.
World needs to be built around content, not the other way around. You can't make those massive empty maps and then sit there and think:"Well, i guess we need to fill this with something". Every quest needs to be a predefined self-contained story with it's own "map" that you then fit and weave into a larger story and world if needed.

Also, Power/Viability meters can go and burn in hell for all i care and can't understand folks who find the system believable. Show, don't tell.

Can't say i "omg i just must free this camp" enjoyed those, but at least, by freeing a camp, you are impacting the world (people come back and start living there again). 
Caches often gave you worthy rewards. It was something you could do in your "free" time and were not mandatory

Wow, 10 pages in 15 hours. Didn't read all but completely agree with one of the first comments on page 1.

Article is total nonsense. DAI and MEA are bad games because the writers completely failed to measure up to the fantastic work of their colleagues in the environment, sound and gameplay design. The quests are boring, dialogues wooden, main hero is a joke, main villain is a Disney Channel Sunday morning cartoon character, Angarans look like Gungans and the general level of imagination is extremelly pedestrian and low-talent.

If this Rowan Kaiser imagines the current writing team would shine if only they didn't make an open world game than he is delusional and shouldn't be in the game-analysing business at all.