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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1747 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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Anyone interesting in talking about BioWare going kaput? It’s very much a culture war item. I have to think any honest broker would see this is a clear case of go woke/go broke. Andromeda, Anthem, and Veilgard were total disasters. Even if Anthem wasn’t overtly political like the other two, it’s clear that the company started hiring people that were not good at developing video games. It’s really remarkable since market theory should incentivize the exact opposite. But perhaps this closure is the market correcting and other developers will take note.

Separately, I couldn’t help but check in on Jason Schrier’s coverage. He released a YouTube video this week going over the closure. Early in the video he reminds the viewer that EA was recently taken private by Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner. Ah hah! I said to myself, that’s how he will spin this! And sure enough he gives a nuts and bolts overview of the poor sales over the years. And he spends an awful lot of time getting into the nitty gritty on leveraged buyouts and unreasonable meddling publishers.

I’ll remind everyone that when Veilgard came out, Jason posted “Go woke / go to the top of the charts?”. What a hilarious turn of events. The game literally killed the company. It would be funny except for the fact that I think a very large part of the blame for the state of the games industry can be laid at Mr Schriers feet. This guy does nothing but launder the industries perspective as fact and add credibility to the party line.

One thing you will see a lot on Reddit is people blaming publishers and corporate executives for bad releases that are total failures. I’m not one to defend these mercenary executives, but I think the actual rank and file game developers deserve the lions share of the blame. The executives can be blamed insofar as they are the ones making hiring decisions. But the actual developer and artist talent is bad. I’m glad they’re out of a job.

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.

ME2 and 3 had high production values, but were mostly my little pony friendship is magic simulators with non equestrian characters.

Wild take. Mass Effect 3 had its issues, but Mass Effect 2 was outstanding.

ME2 had a main story which railroaded you into working with one of the villain factions, in which characters from the first game continually acted like idiots in order to "justify" you having to work with the space Nazis, and which didn't even give you options to try to work to undermine them from within. It did nothing to advance the overall plot of the series (causing serious problems for ME3), and made serious tonal errors with the main villains (the Reapers are Lovevraftian gods, who see mortals as insects, and yet Harbinger not only notices Shepard but has personal antagonism towards him/her). It also dumbed down the game mechanics so hard that the game wasn't even really an RPG any more, it was just a shooter with a very extensive story and dialogue.

The characters were (mostly) well written (except when they had to get the stupid bug to "force" you into working with Cerberus), and the loyalty missions were (mostly) well executed. But the game was a whole was not outstanding. It had serious problems, was a big step down from the first game, and was the start of Bioware's decline.

Outstanding-ly stupid?

What exactly was outstanding? The stupid story? The destruction of the worldbuilding of part 1? The mediocre gameplay? The totally irrelevant paragon system? The humanoid reaver?

The only quality thing was the writing in the loyalty missions.

The only quality thing was the writing in the loyalty missions.

That's part of the tragedy: the loyalty and recruitment missions outnumber the main plot missions, and are far superior... but unlike the loyalty missions, you can never choose to skip the main plot on a playthrough.

ME2's characters and sidequests were outstanding. The main storyline and Cerberus and the Illusive Man? Not so much.

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