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Video Games: Devils Die Twice


Red Tiger

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12 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Well, yes, Anthem seemed like an EA corporate mandate rather than the product of an organic creative process at Bioware right from the start. Dare I hold out one last hope for Dragon Age 4, or is that a fool's errand? It does seem that creative comebacks and redemption in pretty much every mass entertainment industry are rare, and if you remain under the yoke of the same corporate overlord it seems unheard of.

I'm not hoping at all. If they go to Tevinter and people say it's as good as DA 3 then I'll give it a shot. But otherwise, BioWare is dead to me

 

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Surely, EA has to realise they mucked up really badly with Bioware after Andromeda and Anthem and they need to change the way they manage Bioware.

Though Bioware also needs to stop believing in its own bullshit "Bioware magic" crunch practice that's just a euphemism for employee overwork abuse, that invariably leads to a poorer product at launch.

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39 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Surely, EA has to realise they mucked up really badly with Bioware after Andromeda and Anthem and they need to change the way they manage Bioware.

Though Bioware also needs to stop believing in its own bullshit "Bioware magic" crunch practice that's just a euphemism for employee overwork abuse, that invariably leads to a poorer product at launch.

They'll just close it when the profit margins decrease past the point of optimization.

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10 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

They'll just close it when the profit margins decrease past the point of optimization.

That would seem to be very soon, with Anthem appearing to go FTP it means there's no money it at the moment and it needs an injection of players who will start spending on micro-transactions. The only flaw in that strategy is that even a FTP game needs to be good and worth putting many hours into for its monetisation to bring in profits.

Andromeda has failed to make a profit and now Anthem. I think there is a chance if Anthem freemium monetisation doesn't work EA will shut down Bioware and cancel Dragon Age 4. Any Dragon Age game that's of good quality as a RPG with a good story and interesting characters can't possibly make enough money to satisfy EA's profit demands. And any Dragon Age game that has the kind of persistent revenue elements EA likes won't get a big enough player base to make money because for the Dragon Age fanbase it'll be a shit game (which means objectively it'll be a shit game), and it won't sell to anyone else.

So they might as well shut Bioware now.

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That would seem to be very soon, with Anthem appearing to go FTP it means there's no money it at the moment and it needs an injection of players who will start spending on micro-transactions. The only flaw in that strategy is that even a FTP game needs to be good and worth putting many hours into for its monetisation to bring in profits.

Andromeda has failed to make a profit and now Anthem. I think there is a chance if Anthem freemium monetisation doesn't work EA will shut down Bioware and cancel Dragon Age 4. Any Dragon Age game that's of good quality as a RPG with a good story and interesting characters can't possibly make enough money to satisfy EA's profit demands. And any Dragon Age game that has the kind of persistent revenue elements EA likes won't get a big enough player base to make money because for the Dragon Age fanbase it'll be a shit game (which means objectively it'll be a shit game), and it won't sell to anyone else.

So they might as well shut Bioware now.

Sorry. I've wanted to tell you. But we all have to arrive there on our own.

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5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So, news just(?) in. Sony is setting up a subsidiary TV and movie studio dedicated to adapting video games to movies and TV. The execution, especially with the first few projects will be vital to whether this is a success or it goes down in flames and big financial losses for Sony.

Video games are a massive source of revenue and profit for Sony, potentially its most important source of revenue and profits. It makes sense on paper that they leverage their move and TV making to increase the profile of video games. The problem is video games have almost never made for good movies or TV. Det Pikachu is the only video game movie to get a fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, but with a $150M budget it hasn't hit break even yet. So it's still going to only be a modest success. Though it is guaranteed to break even. I think Castlevania is the only good non-children's video game TV adaptation. For the kids I think the Pokemon TV show was both successful and good.

I'd love for this to succeed, but history is not on Sony's side.

Demon's Souls the movie! Or Bloodborne the movie. I think Bloodborne could work very well actually, with the right director and scriptwriter on board. 

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I haven't played Bloodborne yet, but I've played Demon's Souls. The good thing is that the game has very little story and few characters that an adaptation can ruin. The bad thing is that it has very little story or compelling characters around which to build a movie plot.

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Sorry. I've wanted to tell you. But we all have to arrive there on our own.

Pardon me while I go find a corner and have a little cry.

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2 hours ago, briantw said:

I'd be more sad about BioWare if CDProjekt Red hadn't come along and eaten their lunch around when Inquisition came out.  Witcher 3 made Inquisition look like amateur hour.

I have a bone to pick with that sort of comment because it implies you can lump RPGs like The Witcher, Souls games (even the latest God of War to a degree) etc into the same niche as Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity and the like. For me The Witcher scratches a very different itch to Dragon Age in the fantasy setting. I want full party based adventures (with a pause and play mechanic even if it's only optional) as well as solo adventures. I don't want one or the other and I don't want one to replace the other.

 

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8 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I have a bone to pick with that sort of comment because it implies you can lump RPGs like The Witcher, Souls games (even the latest God of War to a degree) etc into the same niche as Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity and the like. For me The Witcher scratches a very different itch to Dragon Age in the fantasy setting. I want full party based adventures (with a pause and play mechanic even if it's only optional) as well as solo adventures. I don't want one or the other and I don't want one to replace the other.

 

Want doesn't get.

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48 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I have a bone to pick with that sort of comment because it implies you can lump RPGs like The Witcher, Souls games (even the latest God of War to a degree) etc into the same niche as Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity and the like. For me The Witcher scratches a very different itch to Dragon Age in the fantasy setting. I want full party based adventures (with a pause and play mechanic even if it's only optional) as well as solo adventures. I don't want one or the other and I don't want one to replace the other.

 

I'd rank both of the recent Divinity games over any Dragon Age game, personally.   The first Pillars of Eternity was pretty good too.

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52 minutes ago, briantw said:

I'd rank both of the recent Divinity games over any Dragon Age game, personally.   The first Pillars of Eternity was pretty good too.

I've been playing the first Divinity co-op on and off for quite a while. There's a lot to commend it. But I play Dragon Age as much for story and character as for game, and for me I haven't really found a party-based RPG that measures up to Dragon Age (or Mass Effect 1-3) for story and character.

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14 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I've been playing the first Divinity co-op on and off for quite a while. There's a lot to commend it. But I play Dragon Age as much for story and character as for game, and for me I haven't really found a party-based RPG that measures up to Dragon Age (or Mass Effect 1-3) for story and character.

Alpha Protocol is in the same league, but the gameplay was kinda janky, thanks to new management at Sega who didn't want the game and rush-released what was barely an alpha, then had to spend months patching it to work properly. Still, it does hold together pretty well with a great story and characters, if not on the same scale.

The Baldur's Gate series, Planescape: Torment, the Knights of the Old Republic duology, Tyranny and Anachronox* are all comfortably at or above DA and ME's level as party-based RPGs with both excellent stories and characters. Wasteland 2Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera aren't as good as ME or DA1 or 2, but are also pretty decent, recent takes on the same kind of genre.

The Banner Saga trilogy (made by ex-BioWare personnel) have a much stronger story, worldbuilding and characters than the DA trilogy, but I'm not sure I'd classify them as out-and-out RPGs (although I'm not sure what I'd classify them as either).

* which was very clearly a major inspiration for both KotOR and Mass Effect

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14 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I've been playing the first Divinity co-op on and off for quite a while. There's a lot to commend it. But I play Dragon Age as much for story and character as for game, and for me I haven't really found a party-based RPG that measures up to Dragon Age (or Mass Effect 1-3) for story and character.

"Party-based" is the tricky part here; because there are a decent number of solo-player RPGs (best among right now being The Witcher 3 probably), but not so many party-based ones. At least, not at the AAA level; but I think there are several smaller budget party-based RPGs with stories and writing that match up to the former heights of Bioware. Wert's mentioned a bunch of them, another would be the Shadowrun games (especially the one in Berlin and the one in Hong Kong).

Beyond that, your best bet may be JRPGs, there's been a lot of really good ones in the past several years (and loads and loads of trash, and all of its on Steam). Though of course, there's generally not the freedom of choice in them, it's much more on-rails writing usually.

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The Baldur's Gate games were such a big part of my teenage years that I can't hear bad news from Bioware without being sad. It's like hearing that Father Christmas's workshop is being taken into administration. 

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20 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I have a bone to pick with that sort of comment because it implies you can lump RPGs like The Witcher, Souls games (even the latest God of War to a degree) etc into the same niche as Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity and the like. For me The Witcher scratches a very different itch to Dragon Age in the fantasy setting. I want full party based adventures (with a pause and play mechanic even if it's only optional) as well as solo adventures. I don't want one or the other and I don't want one to replace the other.

 

I'm with you. I love the Witcher 3, but it does not scratch the same itch for me as a great Bioware game, despite some similarities. It is nice that there are games like Tyranny and Pillars and Divinity out, but CRPGs really aren't my thing (though Tyranny was pretty great); there's no studio I can think of these days that offers a AAA party experience with companions you get to know over the course of the game. I hope Dragon Age 4 scratches that itch.

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1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

there's no studio I can think of these days that offers a AAA party experience with companions you get to know over the course of the game. I hope Dragon Age 4 scratches that itch.

Based on what little we have heard, I’m afraid that you and I will be greatly disappointed in that.

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