Wherein I fall out of love with a game company

[beyondugliness]

Imagine that you're a game developer. What do you do if you want to develop a game series where the emphasis is on the universe rather than a single character?

Do you:

a) Tell your stories accordingly, by having a good balance between universe and character focus and give a nice, closed resolution for each protagonist?

b) Make a game that

Comments

[urbanberber]

Oh my god, thank you.

As much as I love DA as a series, and despite having had fun with the second game... I cannot get over how incredibly sub-par the second game was, nor can I get over the fact that we're expected to shell out money for content that should have been part of the fucking game in the first place--since apparently, it's that important. I also sneer at the importance of Hawke and your "decisions" when everything is predetermined in the first place. The game boasts of choices, and yet there are zero consequences for your actions. Sure, you can be a dick--unlike Origins, your party members will admire it begrudgingly instead of telling you you're a stupid asshole and/or try to kill you.

IDEK.

[thessalian]

So ... okay. Either Hawke ends up Viscount of Kirkwall ... and inexplicably vanishes ... or quite reasonably disappears after essentially leading the mages in open rebellion against the Templars. And the Seekers are looking for Hawke. And Varric is all about "Oh, I'm sure Hawke's still around somewhere". And ... we have to trust the people that gave us Witch Hunt to wrap this up properly in DLC for a game we've already paid for?!?

I can see where the hype is about Hawke being 'the most important figure in DA' at the time. I mean, seriously. Whatever path Hawke chose, s/he captained the first battle in an open war between mages and Templars. But giving us a new protag every time? Why does this smack as an excuse to produce more games with more shoddy endings that they can half-arsedly cobble into some semblance of resolution and incidentally get us to give them yet more money for the privilege of seeing an ending to a game that we've already paid to play?

I get why no more Warden as PC. I'm glad there's no more Warden, if only

[reservoir]

I haven't even bothered to DL Legacy because I just don't care.

This is why I'm glad Mass Effect features the same protagonist and general plot for all 3 games (everyone in the DA community going omg SO UNREALISTIC just makes my head hurt because okay, sure, one person usually isn't that important but hello sometimes they are?) because we pretty much know the third game is going to wrap stuff up.

...if they screw up ME3 I will go nuclear.

[lickety_split]

You forgot Option "C".

c) Decide to turn entire series into an MMO, thus alienating the portion of your fanbase that does not have the extra time/money to play that kind of shit.

/still bitter about KOTOR, and what they're thinking of doing to Mass Effect

[lickety_split]

And uh, can we get Morrigan back please so she can kill Merrill or something?

[beyondugliness]

I'm pretty sure the sage of Flemeth and Morrigan is something else that'll remain under wraps until the end of time.

[beyondugliness]

As much as I love Bioware's games, what they're doing lately just makes them an example of an industry that cares more about money than creating good games. The Old Republic being a prime example that my old school "if I buy a hard copy of a game, fuck this paying to play shit" self still won't forgive them for.

I blame EA.

/bitter as hell