barglenarglezous
Engaged Member
- Sep 5, 2020
- 2,887
- 6,339
When you look into the circumstances behind each game, this trend makes a lot more sense.
When BioWare lost the D&D license, they really wanted to continue making high fantasy RPGs, so they set about making their own world. Because they wanted to hurry up and get to the fun part (actually making the game) they spedrun the world building, which is why demons are literally just the 7 deadly sins, the spirits are just the 7 cardinal virues, the original presentation of Daelish was Native American-coded, the original Qunari were Muslim coded, etc). Then they spent a LONG time on the game itself, including building a propietary engine.
The game did well, and so did the expansion, so EA gave them 13 months to make a sequel. This is a VERY short turnaround for BioWare, which is why the story feels more like 3 chapters pulled randomly from an anthology with little in-between connective tissue and side quests are pulled from 4-5 recycled environments. They had to cut a lot of corners to make the deadline.
When they started on Inquisition, open world was taking off, so EA imposed an open-world requirement on them, and the existing engine didn't accomodate an expansive open world, so they had to change engines and playstyle -- only for the biggest complaint about the game to be the expansive open world and how it was implemented.
They then began work on Dread Wolf.
Midway through Dread Wolf's development, EA imposed a Live Service requirement on the game, so everything they had at the time was largely tossed, and the game restarted. Veteran DA designers began jumping ship. By the time EA retracted the Live Service requirement (which prompted another "toss what we have and start over") there was no longer anyone left at BioWare who even knew how to code for the Origins/2 engine, making a remaster of the original games impossible (which is why we'll never see a trilogy release like Mass Effect got). The final game was literally the 3rd attempt at making a follow up to Inquisition to be started at BioWare. Lead directors changed twice over, I believe. Most of the people working on it were actually from the Mass Effect team, not the Dragon Age team, which is why the quest structure feels much more Mass Effect 2 than any Dragon Age has ever been. And after 10 years in development, EA urged them to finish the game as a complete product, not plan for any DLC, and after a patch-fix post-release period, the team will begin workiing on the next Mass Effect in earnest. So it feels rushed because it WAS rushed. Two false starts and an impatient publisher will do that. The game winds up sharing a lot of the circumstances that Dragon Age 2 had as a result, and it's getting a lot of the same complaints that people had with Dragon Age 2 back when it came out. What a coincidence.
After platinuming the game, it was enjoyable and satisfyinig. It's not a game of the year, but it's definitely in my top 5 for new releases I played this year.
If anyone case, that top 5 is:
1) Persona 3 Reload
2) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
3) Veilguard
4) Mechwarrior 5: The Clans
5) Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance
Notes: I haven't played Metaphor Refantazio yet, but everything I've seen tells me it'd wind up on this list, and SMTV is only as low as it is because I wasn't in the right headspace for that kind of game when I played it, and will go back when I'm in the mood for it. If any of these games is falling off to make room for Metaphor, it'll probably be MechWarrior.
