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PaperclipPerfector  22hr ago (text post)   1023 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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This was a studio whose last quality game was Dragon Age 1. It was in 2009. ME2 and 3 had high production values, but were mostly my little pony friendship is magic simulators with non equestrian characters. And their absolute peak was 26 years ago.

There is nothing left to grief for. So I feel the only thing appropriate in this case - indifference. The same thing I will feel when Martin and Rothfuss die with their opuses unfinished.

Take Mass Effect - the combat there was never enjoyable interesting or challenging. So why having so much of it? In a studio of a thousand people not a single soul dared to say - this bland gears of war lite just doesn't work? (It didn't work in gears of war too, but that is different topic).

Veilguard didn't kill the company. The company was already dead. Bloated budgets, bloated games, bloated teams, bloated production. To make bank they had to abandon their RPG roots and try and chase all kinds of audiences. And they failed. There was no spark in any of their games.

So i will install Baldur's gate 2 again, couple of high res mods, pour a glass of whiskey and drink for and age of gaming gone with the wind.

Hot take: the Infinity Engine games also play like ass.

That doesn't mean they're bad games, but they have the same kind of confusion about timing and positioning and resources which plagued cRPGs well into the 2000s. Plagued ttRPGs, really. Even after 3E D&D staked out its own niche, designers couldn't decide if they wanted combat chess or charop playgrounds. At least Baldur's Gate was early enough to avoid the WoW craze.

There are lots of good reasons to enjoy all those games anyway, but the same can be said for ME1.

I agree that BioWare was a walking husk before Veilguard.

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