Problem is that they haven't: not the frontline designers/coders/writers. The gaming industry is poorly paid and turnover is high.

This isn't like the movie industry. Very few make a career and those that do have been promoted up and out.

There are some exceptions like studio-for-hire Obsidian and tiny independents like Jeff Vogel/Spiderweb, and outside of the USA Piranha Bytes and Larian.

I have more news on the 'open-world' nature of DA3.

They're going to keep with what they've done for DA2- that is, you travel to zones instead of travelling through a continuous world. The only difference is that they're going to increase the number of places you can travel to; this includes adding multiple cities.
Basically, you'll be teleporting between stage sets. There's nothing 'open-world' about DA3.

I expect much laughter and derision on my part when I finally play it.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjexkoGVKlY&feature=player_embedded (fast forward to 4:30)


I didn't say it was. What I'm saying is, independently of whether you think Bioware makes good games or not, DA2 was a bad, bad game.

Oh, and softnerd, yes, I have played DA 2. dreadpiratesnugglecakes summed up what's wrong with it well enough.

Dragon age: The scrolls.
[censored] I can see it aleready.

At least Bioware does dragons right.

You mean like the bone pit dragon that birthed hundreds of babies in seconds to act as canon fodder? I prefer Skyrim dragons.

It was made of fail. You are ignoring history by acting like it wasn't. Sales dropped off phenomenally after the first week. I bought it for 20 bucks bundled with Mass Effect 2 a month after it came out (and ME2 was the only reason I felt it was worth that price). That's how horrible the game and sales were, they had to have major price reductions right after it came out to keep it going. The gameplay was lacking in a number of ways. Copy-paste dungeons/levels was everywhere (worse than FFXIV certainly). Combat lacked tactical depth due to many factors (including monsters just spawning in out of the ground and air all around you, but the combat abilities didn't help). The game had no cohesive story, but instead was largely 3 different stories jammed together one after another. I played through it once; never again. It was a rushed hack job of a game.

It was awful and the sales history and price reductions prove it. It's not a game like DA:O where it will continue to generate revenue for years and years.

Frankly, given how Bioware wants to go with a "rush games out the door as quick as possible" model, I am going to NOT buy ME3 on release. I'll wait a bit and see how it is reviewed. Similarly, I am certainly not going to buy DA3 on release even if ME3 does well. I don't really trust Bioware to release quality products anymore. They've fundamentally changed their desired business model away from what brought us classics like NWN, BG1/2, KOTOR, DA:O, etc. They don't want to make games like those anymore. How they handle DLC doesn't help my view of them either, given their use of 0-day DLC and how overpriced the DLC is for the content you get. Really they have a lot of revolting practices now.

Honestly this news doesn't affect me one way or the other. You can take lessons from Skyrim and make a good game or bad game. You could not take lessons from Skyrim and make a good game or a bad game. Bioware is capable of doing either one.

I really detest EABioware.

I was told you know its also apparently Biowares plan to rip the RPG away from their games and make them more action oriented. I am also not going to get Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 3 on release.

I hope that since Dragon Age 3 is trying to rip off Skyrim that that at the very least can breath new life in the series.

They've definitely gone more with action oriented games. I did't mind with Mass Effect. It was fun and the combat mechanics were pretty good. They have some depth to them and some tactical considerations. ME2 had some good and some bad changes. Didn't care for how armor/barriers/shields stopped dead all crowd control. While CC was OP in ME, it lost too much in ME2. How it added armor/etc to all enemies on hard really hammered this home. The game lost a great deal of depthon hard. ME3 looks like it will fix this, but I am not 100% sure. I did feel that ME2 took some shortcuts compared to ME1, though it did get rid of some really annoying stuff.

DA2 on the other hand was a departure from the great mechanics of DA:O. Not that the latter was perfect, but it was good and had depth. I don't mind some departures from more tactical and slow RPG combat systems, but I don't think giving up on them is right either.

Man typing this on my phone is annoying.

Hopefully it will be nothing like DA 2

Yes they have and its disappointing.

I hate drastic departures like from Origins to DA2. I wished the combat was more tactical like in Origins also in DA:O the story was far better and it had better characters.

I'm not opposed to them making a Dragon Age that is more like origins and takes somthing from skyrim.

After playing DA2 I lost faith though.. It will take a lot of assurances to get me to go anywhere near it.

Dragon age 2 was a complete joke. The game was worse in every way compared to Origins so unfortunately I will not even consider a second hand purchase of DA3

So.............Dragon Age is going to implement bad voice acting, worse dialogue and characters that are little more than expendable cattle?

Great, that should finish off the Dragon Age series.

Memo to Bioware, Look at your other great titles (DAO and the ME games) to get ideas for direction. Unless you're going into the Sandbox/loot buisiness, you're barking up the wrong tree.

I guess that's good in my book...I found DAO boring as hell so never bothered with the second one.

You know how alot of people feel passionately about all the stuff wrong with Skyrim? That's how I feel about modern Bioware games, completely overrated.

Same formula since Torment, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, just better graphics, worse exploration component, more tedious conversation...and IMO more cliched characters.

Yes, because it seems so logical that they would pick the absolute worst aspects of the game to use. Taking inspiration from something is very different from doing the exact same thing.

Hee hee. Well....duh.

Seriously though, the things that they do well are so very different from the things Bethesda does well I don't see much value there. They should tread carefully lest they lose their way altogether (many feel they already have).

They need to focus on the best of Skyrim, which is the world and the great dungeons.
The only problem with Skyrims dungeons is there needs to be more branching paths.

Makes no sense. Dragon age origins was by all accounts a top notch very good game. I liked it a lot. How they ruined the game with the sequel you would have to ask them since its pretty obvious all the things they broke with it. They can borrow from Skyrim if they want, but the original game had it all right to begin with so its on them why they choose to ruin it.

I thought the characters in DA2 were good. It's just they didn't have much to work with regarding the plot. That made the overall experience work. I agree completely that the departure from Origins in terms of the spirit of the gameplay was a huge mistake. There's definitely room on the market for deeply tactical RPGs.

I can't say I entirely like the ME-style conversation system either. I do like having more options. The DA series could have experimented with other systems, I think, rather than trying to streamline all of Bioware's RPGs into one system.


I don't think they necessarily need that, but better dungeons would be good for Bioware (but Skyrim doesn't have the best there either). I think GW2 also offers some very interesting ideas that even singleplayer RPGs can use. Dynamic Events so things keep happening in the world and you choose how to respond to them and change the world could be really cool and easily fit into either Bioware's style of RPG or Bethesda.


It's simple. Like the owners of Bioware have said, they want to get games out quick, quick, quick. They don't like how DA:O took several years to make. They want things out in a year or two (more profits). DA2 really suffered from that philosophy.

Anyone else miss the feeling of grand scale in Origins? You went from the mystic forests to mountaintops to the deep roads. What was in DA2? Hightown, Lowtown, Darktown......

Quick trivia: Darktown had no night setting. How lazy is that?

Honestly, I count DA2 as one of the worst games played even after the game breaking bugs were sorted out. I got right to the end of Act3 twice and never completed it. The 1st being because of the game-breaking Isabella bug and the 2nd because the game was so tedious and uninteresting.

The lack of grand feeling was intentional. Origins was supposed to be high fantasy, complete with impending apocalypse and a big bad common enemy to all mortal races. Hawke's story was intended to be a kind of immigrant story makes good, and being thrusted into a situation in which there is no winner, and there is no big bad. You can't be the big hero and save day this time. I thought it was refreshing. The best I could do is help friends. Players get a choice of changing Merrill's thoughts, for example. And it's realistic.. it's like a friend who dabbles in drugs, and thinks they're "invincible". You can either be an enabler or some one who drags them kicking and screaming. Same with others. Help Fenris get over his past, help Isabella find her good side. Or join her and laugh about everything. Some of these conflicts were more realistic than what most games offer.

Of course, the actual execution had a lot of faults. I'm not denying the lack of game areas or anything like that.

I understand your points. For me however, an authentic fantasy world needs a grand feeling like LOTR, Skyrim or Game of Thrones. My favourite bit in Origins was probably the lead up to the large fight in the beginning where you knew something big was going to happen

If they kept all the thing that made origins a good game and added the world exploration of TES, that would be a great game. Well if did it right. I just wish they made a third Baldur's Gate.

I never liked the Dragon Age series. I found Origins just to be dull.

I was so exited for da2 i thought it is going to be so cool what all of these choices will do in the next game
... Going from tons of options of what to do to be snark good or rude oh and decide whether you like mages or Templar or try to compromise but it gets ruined in an epic fail way.
considering how poorly choices carried over in 2 (i killed a girl and she comes back to life wtf)
3 with two main characters will be worse i might not even rent it and only if i hear great things about it.