VG247 Article - How Bioware is losing its heart

A. Fortanatley those kinds of quests are few and far between.  Crunching those numbers since I crunched the numbers and since the game crunches the numbers those kinds of quests make up roughly 30% of the content.  Whereas quality quests, IE those with a story, make up roughly 70% of the overall game.  

B.  It would have been stretching the limits of the known lore had we run into more then two alien species in a single cluster as that only happened once in the OT.  Maybe twice?  As far as the personal preference on 'looks' are concerned I am rather fond of the art design for the Angarra.  I mean *maybe* the Kett aren't too special but they are servicable and I don't notice them as 'bad' or 'fan art' (as in the negative connotatio you are using the word in).  

C.  You just roughly described the plot line of roughly ninety percent of video games out there.  Dragon Age Origins: Go to Ferelden, fight the evil bad guys, Dragon Age 2: Go to Kirkwall fight the evil bad guys, Dragon Age Inquisition, go to Southern Thedas and fight the evil Corypheus.  MET: Go across the Milky Way and fight the Reapers.  Witcher 3: Go to the Northern Kingdom and fight the (pathetically written) Wild Hunt.  Skyrim: Go to the land of ye olde Skyrim and fight Alduin.  And even games that are considered especially ambitious and *wow such awesome story* like the Last of Us boils down to 'Go West and fight the Zombies, Fireflies, and any random psychopaths....Walking Dead style.'  

And besides ME A was not about 'go to a new galaxy to fight the bad guys' it was to go to a new galaxy to explore it.  The going to a new galaxy to fight the evil bad guys (the Kett) are only a small part of the overall game.  Only one plot line.  Like any good tv show it has several different plot lines going on.  And some of them do not even involve a single shot fired in anger. 

I honestly think a lot of Biowares problems stem from EA if I have to be perfectly honest.

Bottom line is that EA cares more about a quick cash grab then anything else. That usually means rushed games with pretty graphics and MP.

Biowares best selling point for me has always been characters. Andromeda didn't show any change in that quality for me. The story suffered from being not properly edited however. Like someone gave it a glance over and called it good. It's not a bad story, it's just a bit generic and poorly executed.

I can't speak for everyone, but I have run into people that feel that "choices matter" only if they have a major impact later in the game and don't consider that there are choices that impact how conversations themselves unfold.  That one conversation in particular I didn't use the interrupt and thought the way I picked it to work out with "I don't care" was a much better outcome then if you interrupted the conversation.

I didn't make the meme lol

There really isn't any comparisons between Bethesda games and bioware games. Bethesda puts a lot more focus into quest lines and side content than bioware ever will, it's why I'm scoffing at people even thinking Andromeda has better side content as I'm going to say you never played skyrim, oblivion, or you're simply giving Andromeda way to much credit. Bethesda is a true dev to an actual open world game. Their focus has never been the main line quests like bioware, and their games have much more empowerment to the players imagination.

Bioware games focus more on the main story as well as character involvement, one weakness of the Bethesda games. I've never cared at all for companions in skyrim, oblivion, or fallout 4. I also went out of my way to do side stories and such over the main line quests in those games. The civil war in skyrim was one of the last things I completed, along with finishing off alduin. Instead I went into exploring the deadric ruins, finding some of those deadric gods were trying to rise back into power, took part in assassinating the emperor, bringing the thieves guild back to relevance, finding out why've village is scared if a specific ghost, exploring ruins to strengthen the power of the dragon born, uncovering mysteries of a murdered family, going through flash backs of a war between orcs and elves, finding corruption in a family that enslaves people into labor camps, etc etc it's leterally endless on the content with no relations to the main plot. I still have yet to finish fallout 4 but truth be told I've never liked fall out games as post apocalyptic worlds don't interest me.

Like I legitimately can't see Andromeda doing quests that are better than any Bethesda game, at all. There's so much more, and they carry quality with them without rehashing so much. It's what Bethesda is known for, big ass sandboxes with a multitude of things to do that actually do vary. It's not something I expect bioware to ever master nor do they have to. Bioware is known for story and character development, not great side content or an open sandbox. So I don't see the point in comparing Bethesda to bioware, CD red on the other hand is a different matter entirely as their games are much more relatable and they're based off each other to an extent. CD red afterall took after bioware and their style while changing some things up to make their own style being slightly different.

We can argue quality all night, but as I said, it's what Bethesda is known for and why they pull in huge sales. That main story line isn't why they're popular, nor is it their characters. It's the open environments, soundtrack, the multitudes of ways to establish a character build, and all those random quests you find that empowers player imagination as well as their game simply looking great at the time it came out. Years later it's still a popular game because of mod support as well and Bethesda encouraging it.

in the end it's subjective, but I'm still going to question those in saying Andromeda does side content better than a skyrim, especially when it's not even brought up by many people as one of the games positive notes and tends to be the opposite.

I agree I couldn't care less about the MP - PLEASE focus on the SP Bioware - that's what you do best. Let other games handle the MP angle.

Here are two comments that stuck out to me below the article:

"I do now dread the words 'Open World.' For me it means tons and tons of inconsequential map markers that are quite simply time sinks and that add very little to the story or overall game. It's something that Ubisoft games have become synonymous with and too many others have followed suit with."

"The success of The Witcher 3 is a large part of why this is happening so much right now.

The problem is that most of them completely fail to understand what made that game so successful. It wasn't the fact that it was a huge world full of markers to find and collect - it's the fact that the things you did in that open world actually felt substantial and rewarding. The side quests were given just as much care and attention as the main story. Corners weren't cut on that stuff. "

Agreed on both points.  Quantity != quality.  I'd much rather have a tighter 40-50 hour game (hello ME2, ME3) than a gi-normous 70-100 hour game with lots of things to do, albeit meaningless things.  LESS IS MORE!!!

The guild and Daedric quests are not part of the radiant ones though. There are a lot of quests there that are neither radiant nor mainstory. Still mixing in a radiant dungeon every now and the spices things up.

Guild and daedric quests in Skyrim were pretty damn good. Skyrim's real flaw as with the truncated Anduin storyline and copy pasta of catacombs way too much on top of the signature shit combat and ugly character models.

And what sets Elder Scrolls apart is the lore. It's really a lore nerd's playground. They open some threads but always keep active mysteries, because it's genius and keeps fans engaged speculating about what happened to Dwarfs and the affairs of the Aedra and Daedra. The Night Mother's storyline with a whispering corpse. The racial politics.

The game is obviously built on an amazing mod community, but the IP really gives framing for all that wonderful creative play.

I've learned my lesson and pretty much stick to main storyline and companion quests. Any menial quest gets the axe.

My enjoyment of Dragon Age Inquisition was pretty damn fine ocne I stopped giving ashit about those skulls or completely irrelevant tasks. Stick to the story based quests and both DAI and ME:A are not bad at all for me.

I've always been the type of person who would prefer a well crafted 30 hour storytelling affair over 100 hour soul-less sandbox. I did the same with Horizon Zero Dawn (which got raving reviews but I found the story pretty laughable, it's just a really good looking game with a great sense of aesthetics) and was happy to progress along the story withotu dealing with all the hapless villager fetch quests.

Geralt is Geralt, he has too much personality even before the game starts, so even though I can choose what to do, I feel OOC because he would never do that in that situation.

Not for the first time, you'd be completely wrong.

You can also throw Witcher 1 & 2 in as well (I nearly got all the sex cards in the first one).