- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
Sorry, Saudi Arabia don’t like sci-fi. Just football and hacking up journalists.
They’d love to make a game about hacking up journalists, but their lawyers say it would be inadvisable.
I’d love to see Microsoft buy EA, then close it
EA was bought by the Saudis along with Trump’s son-in-law. This Bioware closure likely isn’t the first we’ll see.
They closed studios they acquired since they started acquiring game studios…
Yes, but the Saudi deal is a new wrinkle. It’s VC bullshit at its worst. EA was bad before, but it’s nothing compared to what’s coming.
Or EA buy XBOX and close it. (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)
they could buy steam instead and close it 😃😃 what whys everyone looking at me like that
Lol. They already pull in $17B/yr, ~4B/yr profit, ~70% market share, <400 employees… Privately held…
Gabe already has >9B himself.
Why would they sell?
Sure, some day they may enshitify, but by the time that happens, I’ll be able to reverse engineer and recompile my STEAM library on my home server.
That works too!
Removed by mod
Time to rename EA to Saudi TM Gaming
All aliens must wear hijab or be executed. /s
I mean, the Quarians were basically hijabi
Scopely Premium
The T stands for Trump!
Perhaps they can make a game about dismembering journalists.
not gud enough, ea needs to BURN
For letting them have free reign and them squandering it?
BioWare did this entirely to themselves.
Lmao I like how everyone was saying this was going to happen like a year ago. So predictable.
A year ago? People called it eight years ago with the Anthem disaster that Dragon Age 4 would be the studio’s last chance. BioWare was already dead, this is just the merciful last bullet.
Anyone that cared about RPGs was pushed out by greedy losers.
Any good old style rpgs old style out there? I haven’t found anything since Icewind dale…
Baldurs Bate 3 is turn based strategy with great writing.
Thanks, I have tried it but couldn’t get into it, guess I’ll have to try again!
There’s Divinity Original Sin 2 from the same developer. It doesn’t use the DnD system like BG3 but it’s very good.
Thanks! I have played the beginning, the start is really cool IIRC on a ship, but then it just bogs down in an incomprehensible mess in a village in the jungle (or I’m too stupid)… Maybe I’ll try it again, at least I already have it!
Depending on how old you like your old school, you might enjoy Spiderweb Software’s games. They (mostly just a guy and his wife) have been cranking out RPGs since 1994. While all their games are superficially similar, there’s an impressive amount of narrative and mechanical variety. If you’re a D&D fan, especially the Forgotten Realms setting, you might enjoy the Avernum series. You’re a prisoner, banished to the underground realm of Avernum , never to see the light of day again. However, you are not alone, as the ruthless Empire which sentenced you has long enjoyed sending its dissidents into the subterranean realm. In fact, there are several factions which vie for influence, and the player can throw their lot in with any or all of them. In some ways, it feels like an old school Underdark module for DnD.
Their other series are worth checking out too. In Avadon, you play a party of inquisitors (essentially) for a tyrannical, immortal overlord who exercises nigh totalitarian control over an alliance of 5 nations. Over the course of the game, your party uncovers a far-flung conspiracy against your boss for his abuses of power, and you are free to RP your characters’ reaction to this in a number of ways. Even further afield of that, the Geneforge series is set in a science fantasy world which blends magic with bioengineering and genesplicing. As an apprentice of the Shapers Guild, you have the power to change (or even create whole-cloth) life forms to suit your purposes. Brings created in this way are programmed (for lack of a better word) to be completely obedient to their Shaper, despite otherwise being sentient, free beings. The ethics of this form a large part of the tension in the plot. Mechanically, though, it means that the game is like a weird Ultima/Pokemon hybrid, where your party consists of your mad scientist chimera creations, who will protect your squishy gene wizard until their dying breaths.
I first came across their work when I watched Jeff Vogel’s GDC presentation several years ago. It’s an hour long, but, if you have the time and interest, it’s a very candid look at how the sausage is made in indie game development. In particular, I appreciate that he is very conscious that the games’ visuals could at best be described as “quaint”, but that just encouraged him to lean into the writing even harder to make up the difference, since that cost almost nothing.
And that after the success the last Mass Effect game was…
Hey, I liked Andromeda! Maybe it just needed a few patches, I played it a few months after release and didn’t see any of the bugs I remember people posting about.
Maybe it just needed a few patches,
I don’t think you patch out the idea of ‘exploring a new galaxy except someone else already did all the exploration for you’
I beat the whole game but thought it was bland as hell. Looking back, I feel like 90% of the game was just running from one side of the map to the other to collect some item and bring it back. None of the characters were very appealing especially the protagonist
I didn’t finish it (I’m a serial quitter, I almost never finish games) but I enjoyed that Ryder was sort of an anti-Shepard. I played the Shepard trilogy as a Vanguard and even on the highest difficulty Vanguard!Shep is an unstoppable biotic death god, especially in 3 where Charge > Nova > Charge > Nova is possible. On the hardest difficulty in Andromeda, Ryder is a plucky underdog who has to somehow squeak by against enemies who frankly outclass them one-on-one (or at least my Ryder was; perhaps there is a stronger build I could have been using, but this one sold the fantasy).
Similarly I remember cracking up when Ryder tried to call a crew meeting about something important and immediately lost control of the room.
I don’t remember much about the plot, tbh.
I played it a good while after launch. I couldn’t find any of the goofy bugs either by then and I did actually like the beginning of the game. But I felt the story was the strongest at the beginning and then it became a bit formulaic. Overall though I didn’t think it was a bad as some made it out to be but also not stellar of course.
They’ve had 3 flops in a row, and the worst part is that they did absolutely no learning from any of them. Each failed for the same reason. Bland boring story, no risks, souless worlds from the studio that was known for epic deep lore based worlds. As sad as I am, EA and Bioware did it to themselves.
Everything EA touches loses its soul. EA was always this turbo-capitalist locust-plague of a company. ‘Consume and destroy’ is their unofficial company motto.
As soon as they bought Bioware it was just a matter of time.
good. It died years ago, should have killed the walking corpse way earlier.
We should’ve never let the psychotic zombie making fucks at EA buy any of these studios in the first place.
I guess Exodus and the Expanse game will have to fill that void
I think good stories and corporations are at opposite ends. Corporations and the opposite of human, and thus can’t write good human relatable stories. They can’t make art. The more people in the room the more bland the outcome will be. Too much overhead - marking, advertisers, lawyers, HR, everyone. I think Bioware proves they can’t do it. I think smaller studios are the only ones really capable of it. The only outliers appear to be rockstar and CDPR, for the time being at least.
I’d not heard of an Expanse game. I hope it features Shohreh Aghdashloo. I fucking love that woman.
I really hope Exodus will live up to the expectations.
What void? The void of casual role playing games with bad gameplay and worse writing?
I don’t think that void needs to be filled. The last BioWare game I enjoyed was Mass Effect 2 in 2010.
ME2 is amazing and ME1 was great. 3 had good mechanics but worse writing, and Andromeda was terrible on many fronts but the ability to change your build on the fly was cool.
When I talk about Exodus and Expanse Im talking more about the style of third-person sci-fi RPGs with companions.
Jade empire was really good
and it had Nathan Fillion!
Who actually is a gamer himself too
Apparently day 1 of Firefly filming he told Alan Tudyk to go buy an Xbox so they could play Halo. Day 2 he asked Alan “so what’d you think” and Alan was confused, having thought it to be a joke. That day he had to go and buy said Xbox.
I’m listening to their podcast (Once We Were Spacemen) right now, though the episode where they talked about how they became friends was ages ago, so I might be misremembering some details. They also have an episode with the guy who directed the Uncharted fan film Nathan starred in, Allan Ungar.
Apparently day 1 of Firefly filming he told Alan Tudyk to go buy an Xbox so they could play Halo. Day 2 he asked Alan “so what’d you think” and Alan was confused, having thought it to be a joke. That day he had to go and buy said Xbox.
And then both of them ended up in Halo as Buck and Mickey in ODST.
Which I did not know or remember from the podcast (though they may have mentioned it) because I’ve never played Halo myself :( Never been a console gamer unfortunately. Though protondb lists Master Chief Collection as Gold status so I may yet get to play it, it just happened that it came to PC when I was already an adult with little time for vidya :( Then by the time I got into my career enough that I didn’t worry about hitting 8 hours a day in the office to stay employed, I’d forgotten it existed again. Aaand now I have new reasons for not having enough time for playing as much vidya as I’d like.
Aw man. Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, and OG Dragon Age saw me through some of my formative gaming years and it’s been a shame to watch since. I didn’t even bother with Veilguard.
Larian is our big shining hope for this kind of game now, it seems.
Tomorrow: “EA to acquire Larian in $100B deal”
Check out Owlcat’s new Expanse game, Osiris Reborn. It’s an obvious love letter to everything about the Mass Effect series, while also being the best looking video game adaptation of the Expanse yet.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’m not familiar with the Expanse but I’ll keep an eye on the reviews! My windows gaming days are over but if the Xbox version is good I might pick it up.
Strongly recommend reading through the books if you have time. I couldn’t ever get in to the TV show but I’ve gone through the books several times.
The TV show is also great once you get through the first half of the first season, which is sloooow. The rest is amazing though, I actually prefer some aspects of it over the books (like introducing Avasarala earlier and giving Bobbie more to do).
Ooh another Owlcat game to sink too much time into.
The masses were uneffected!
I’m guessing ME4 looked more like ME:A or Anthem than ME1/2.
EA has bought so many good game studios and forced them to make shitty games and then closed those studios because the shit games that they forced them to make didn’t turn a profit, i played Red Alert 2 so much and had so much fun and knowing we’ll never get anything like that again makes me want to launch all these life sucking corporate ghouls into the void.
You didn’t like Generals?! /s
I spent so much time modding Generals and it was fun BUT it had a problem that’s present even today that if you play longer it would get slower and slower and eventually crash, there might be a fix but i haven’t bothered to check for the past 20 years.
Hence my /s
The mass-unit slowdown was terrible, sadly because the mods were epic
I’m a bit out of the loop with studio purchases, but were they going under originally and needed to sell? I have to assume anyone selling their company knows it’s on borrowed time.
EA offered them a ton of money 100 mil or something in the ballpark and they thought they could keep going as before but with EAs corporate boot on their throats they fell apart, unhinged demands, release dates that required a ton of overtime, etc., just typical corporate assholes destroying a team that created some of the most iconic strategy games to date.
I just replayed all of the mass effect games and dragonage games about a year or 2 ago, once Saudi Arabia bought EA I was like, welp, there goes that. (PIF can suck my DIF)
Now with Bioware being closed, glimmer of hope a new powerhouse independent studio pops up.
Honestly, is Andromeda worth playing? That’s the only one I haven’t finished but do have it downloaded
It has a different feel than 3 does, but I liked it as it’s own thing.
I definitely recall the ship bugged me a little more, the beginning you’re forced to navigate it and that bugged me. There are a lot of good aspects to it. If you like the series it definitely deserves a play. When I was playing and reading reviews I felt many reviews were overly critical and not really accurate. More popular to bash it, etc.
I’ve eventually managed to play it through to the end, there’s some enjoyment but it’s such a forgettable experience to me. Maybe I’ve misunderstood it, one day i’ll give it another go. It has very little to do with the original trilogy, in anything except name and some references. Combat isn’t too bad but the story is not that compelling
As an FYI, I’ve been having a blast with Tempest Rising, it’s not exactly like Red Alert but it’s definitely got that old school C&C vibe to it.
I played it and it is good but i grew up playing Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 so that might be why it doesn’t click with me, it’s too much like Red Alert 3 and apart from Tim Curry (R.I.P.) it didn’t take long for me to be bored of it.
Tiberium Wars was kinda the last game from EA in this genre that i would call good and i won’t even bother mentioning the garbage that EA made afterwards.
TR did get some updates so i might revisit it and see how it clicks.
I second that. Frank Klepacki delivered some very good tracks on that title too!
Well now I’m definitely getting it!
Sounds like EA is doubling down on live service games, Star Wars and sports. Not surprising, the industry has been moving away from the big AAA single player game culture for a long time. That might end up being an era that was linited to Millennials.
So much better game experience, but nowhere near the cash cow of people blowing money on cosmetics in live service games and pay to win. Even super low effort mobile games will frequently milk out way more cash.
Basically the good money is with low quality content, so good quality has to come out of enthusiasm for gaming, not from board rooms.
Bioware was already rotting in the mass grave where formerly successful studios they bought spend their last days being milked of any remaining collective goodwill in the gaming zeitgeist before being summarily executed.
This was just them posting the obituary we all knew was coming.
