McTeddy said,

I agree with both of you on this, though I think the problem is the watering down of genres.

Those of us who enjoyed old dungeon crawls wanted to explore and create our own story. Those who loved JRPG’s wanted strong characters. Those who enjoyed shooters wanted to shoot something. It was strict rules that we all understood.

Today, because of the massive cost of a mainstream game, they need to get sales from more people. Sadly, the only way to do that is to target multiple genres.

-Long drawn out (yet still cliche and overdone) story for RPG fans.
-Dumb down tactics for shooter fans.
-Add Upgrades for character development fans.

Sadly, this leads to the fact that as a fan I only get a taste of what I want. It’s like going to a buffet when all I want is steak… I paid extra and the steak is already gone.

Indy people can target niches. This means that they can give the specific target EVERYTHING he wants. This is why people like us pay more attention to indy. It gives ME what I want to play, not me and a billion other people.

Bad Sector said,

@McTeddy:
And the thing is, i’m a huge shooter fan and while i loved ME2 (and ME1 but shooting was more prevalent in ME1) i found the shooting the worst part of the game :-).

srobinson said,

First of all, I loved BG1 and BG2, both are still highly playable, though BG2 more so.

Things changed a little with NWN, again, still a decent game, and the toolset was genius, people still make mods for that game, some of them great. But putting aside the toolset, here is where a pattern started to emerge.

I’m only talking about NWN, KOTOR, and DA, didn’t play Jade Empire and ME was not RPG enough for me to play for long.

But basically all these games followed the same formula. You create one player. You gain party members as the game progresses. You get more party members than you can have at one time, so you can swap them in and out. If you talk to party members enough at the right time, they all have quests. Also depending on the game, actions and dialogue options will effect your standing with said party members.

Now, for the plot. After the first couple of hours, you will have an idea of the major plot, and you will have 3 or 4 options of where to go that you can tackle in any order, you need to complete them all, but you get to choose the order. For example, in KOTOR you have the choice a few planets. In NWN it is districts in the city. In DA certain regions to get allies. Again, can be done in any order, but all must be done.

Now for gameplay. Once you go to the area you choose, there will be some talking to npcs, then you go to the Dungeon, which really is a pretty linear string of rooms, all of which contain combats. This culminates in a boss fight. Rinse and repeat, this is pretty much the game.

The other thing to note is seeing artifacts from previous games. KOTOR seemed like NWN with much better graphics, but you start seeing the same fonts, same border for dialogue window, etc. Then you play DA and running through certain areas and the grass and plant graphics look a lil sharper but pretty much like KOTOR. These are just a couple examplea, but there are dozens.

Again I can’t talk to ME so much, but there is a clear connection from NWN–>KOTOR–>DA, and you can still borrowed items and design features through all three.

Now not to say these are bad games, just not the BG games, and also seems that bioware found a formula that worked for them and they continue to use it.

I could go into a lot more depth, I could write a long paper on this, but it is late, and Ive had a little bit to drink!

Calibrator said,

Personally, I have very mixed feelings about Bioware.
On the one hand they are undoubtedly a clever bunch who are able to pump out large quality games that seem to fill the need of many gamers out there. They are also clever business people who farm out commercially needed sequels to lesser studios like Valve successfully did with the Half-Life expansions. Only problem is that they chose Obsidian…

You are certainly right that there is a pattern here and that the Bioware “RPGs” have been dumbed down a bit in the recent years there are some things to be taken into account:

a) Bioware has to cater to console players to survive as a company that large. I don’t think the EA deal helps in this regard…

b) They *are* innovative and this still shows here and there. Whether it’s the quality of facial animation in ME or their capability to sell an Orient-based fighting game as an action-CRPG (no they weren’t the first to do that: Origin tried it with Moebius and Windwalker with mixed success before).

c) The newer games are in part criticized just because they aren’t like BG. This is especially problematic as BG1 & BG2 are in some respects the most overrated PC-RPGs ever (with the possible exception of Morrowind and Oblivion).
Just take a look at BG/BG2 with their “Infinity Engine”: Prerendered map graphics in multi-gigabyte size as a means for copy protection (clever!).
Yes, they were a bit (but not substantially) better looking than the much more economical tile-based games but they offer much less interaction with the map (some crates/barrels/chests here, a door there and some traps to get the player excited). Compare that to Wasteland…
OK, I admit it: I hate the IE games as I never felt that they offered an integrated gaming world. The party and NPCs always seemed to not be part of the gaming world but “floating” above a pretty picture they can’t do much with. Compare to the Eschalon games which do a much better job here, IMHO.
What made BG1/2 rise above the competition was the well implemented scenario, very good writing (even if the script sometimes hammers you with forced drama), a good combat system for the time and a large, diverse playfield to dwell in.
Yes, BG2 was a bit more streamlined and a higher screen resolution but it was essentially more of the same with quests hitting you as fast and thick as bugs hit a windshield on the freeway.

d) You criticize having to do every area and the only thing you can choose is the order. Well, friggin Ultima 4 was already doing the same: You had to do all dungeons to get to the lowest level to get the necessary stuff to complete the game.
Yes, at least you can choose the order – in *many* games you can’t even do that.

DungeonHamster said,

Bioware continues to make quality games, true. Games worth the money, more so than many other RPGs coming out. But I find myself preferring older games, even objectively crappier ones.

Realize I haven’t actually been into video games that terribly long. I started with Lloyd Alexander, CS Lewis, Arthur Ransome, Tolkien (of course), etc. then got into D&D, then played a couple of Mario and Zelda games on the N64, and only then started playing proper RPGs on the computer. First I ever played was BG2, and I loved it.

I was introduced to fiction, fantasy in particular, in media in which graphics were sparse or nonexistent. In the Baldur’s Gate games, the graphics really weren’t much more important than in tabletop. The NPC’s had character portraits and the occasional line to remind you what they looked like and how they sounded, but the games were a success because of the game mechanics and the writing. They’re convenient to use, easy to understand, and allow a great deal of flexibility in combat (true, they weren’t terribly interactive, but when I was playing it was never enough of a problem to break my immersion). More importantly, though, they told a story, told it well, and told it in a manner which mas very similar to the means (books and tabletop) by which I had been introduced to the genre (fiction, not computer games).

Newer RPGs don’t quite feel like RPGs to me. The way you see your characters in KOTOR or ME or DA reminds me more of Mario and Zelda, which was how I was introduced to video games, than of books, tabletop, or even BG, which was how I was introduced to fiction.

Then again, perhaps part of it is that they feel new. A big part of the appeal which fantasy holds for me is its feeling of age. By the time I started playing D&D, it had already been around for some time. Few things excite me like the sight or smell of the yellowed pages of an old book. Even Baldur’s Gate had been out a while when I first played it, and it’s whole aesthetic seemed designed to evoke the feeling of oldness and longevity. I even prefer the old grey minesweeper to the one that came with vista. I LIKE mediocre graphics. Give it 10 yrs, enough time for current styles to seem out-of-date, and I’d be willing to bet that I’ll look much more kindly on today’s games. Kewlnewness is all very well, but it’s not my style.

The obsession with “gritty, dark, consequences” doesn’t help either. Seems to me stories used to just have dark times and prices to pay without constantly harping on it and throwing in a few spouts of blood to make it seem Xtreme. Not a huge issue (none of these are, really), just something that bugs me a little.

Again, let me say that I in no way mean that recent Bioware games aren’t very good, or even that they are necessarily inferior to the older ones. This is just why it seems to me likely that I maintain a preference for older, simpler graphics, as well as the older style of game mechanics. I’m enjoying, for instance, Might&Magic 6 (which I’m now playing through for the first time) more than I did Oblivion and nearly as much as I did Dragon Age.

One last pet peeve to wrap up. In Baldur’s Gate, your party travelled with you. Sure, the party limit was a little immersion breaking, but you always had your whole group with you when facing down the bad guys. Since NWN, Bioware’s only let you take 2-3 with you at a given time and the rest just cool their heels back at the base. Blast it all, if I had fewer than a dozen companions to face all the Darkspawn/Sith/Shadow Creatures/Minion#3 in the world, I’d make sure every single one of them was earning their bloody keep!