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Bioware

2020-02-12T04:07:01Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:FC9A:FB04:E041:A174: /* Mass Effect: Andromeda */

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[[Image:Orig 320200 1 1257581825.png|750px|center|thumb|Remember, class, templates are the beginning of truth, not the end of it. (In other words, take it to the Discussion tab, James!)]]

A major computer game studio primarily driven by two lead designers; their names are Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.

One of the most popular RPG game makers of modern day, making titles such as Baldur's Gate , Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. At one point they were working on making a [[Warhammer Fantasy]] MMORPG. Have been brought under the heel of EA Games, resulting in a mass exodus of staff and new staff were brought in to fill the gap, but for now there's still life left in them.

They're currently working on games like Dragon Age 4 and weighing up the future of the Mass Effect franchise.

The company is possibly full of xenophiles, going by Star Wars: the Old Republic and Mass Effect, and family is a recurring theme in their works (especially daddy issues).

==The Rise of Bioware==
Founded by three Canadian doctors in the 90s, Bioware didn't start out publishing RPGs. In fact, it ''started'' doing medical software, before the founders decided to act on their mutual passion for games. Their first game was a [[MechWarrior]]-style simulator game, with the serial numbers filed off. But the founders were all fans of tabletop RPGs, and their second game began life as an independent RPG, but publisher Interplay saw potential in it for hosting their next D&D game, and it became [[Baldur's Gate]], Baldur's Gate became history, and Bioware became renowned as the savior and shining new light for the CRPG.

==Bioware Games==

===Shattered Steel===
A MechWarrior 2 knockoff with less customizability and weirder enemies. No one, not even diehard Bioware fans and video game history nerds, cares about it, so moving on.

===[[Baldur's Gate]]===
The game, the legend, the start of it all. The title that single-handedly saved the CRPG genre from its gloomy slide into irrelevance and [[Blizzard|Diablo-clones]] with smart writing, clever dungeon design, and attempts to actually let the player role-play instead of just throwing in tons of mindless hack-n-slash. Uses a cutdown version of [[AD&D|Second Edition AD&D]] rules, and is generally regarded as one of the best things about the [[Forgotten Realms]] setting. A recent "Enhanced Edition" remake brought it more in line with the sequel, graphics and gameplay-wise, and is well worth a look for the curious.

===MDK2===
This, this is an outlier to everything Bioware was making at the time, considering they were focused on making RPG's with a tight connection to their tabletop counterparts and this is a Run 'n' Gun Third Person Action Adventure Shoot 'em Up.

It is surprisingly good.

===Baldur's Gate II===
The second game, the even more legendary legend. From dating your adventuring co-workers to taking the piss out of the situation in dialogue, if you love Bioware's stuff it probably has its origin here. Also a pretty badass follow-up/finish to the saga of the first game, and using a fuller set of the game's rules. Don't play it first, you'll fucking ''ruin'' the original for yourself. Recently got an "Enhanced Edition" too, following in the footsteps of the first.
====Baldur's Gate II: Siege of Dragonspear====
Brand new expansion from the developers of the Enhanced Edition, complete with the ''entire'' cast from the original 20-odd years later. Composed entirely of skub; see the main article for details.

===Neverwinter Nights===
On the one hand, the story and characters are generally regarded as forgettable at best. On the other hand, a pretty good recreation of [[Dungeons & Dragons|3rd Edition]] rules in video game form, and enough fan-made modules and content to make that last complaint rather moot. If you want to try the official stuff, read a summary of the core game and play the "expansion" stories instead (''Shadows of Undrentide'' and ''Hordes of the Underdark''), which start from level one, tell a continuous story, and have Deekin, who is one of the best things about the game.

===Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic===
One of the first [[Star Wars]] RPGs ever made, KOTOR received widespread praise and acclaim for its complex story and well-written characters, including one of the most famous twists in gaming history. Gameplay-wise, a mostly-fun conversion of [[Dungeons & Dragons]] rules into the Star Wars universe. Faggots will complain about "binary moral choice" systems because that's the trendy thing to do right now, but it broke ground at the time for actually ''incentivizing'' roleplaying and staying in character in a way few other games had before. Sure, the villain's a bit lame, the finale is just an endless swordfight against armies of piss-easy droids, the level cap's way too low considering the levels you can accidentally essentially waste before you can become a jedi, but on the other hand, ''holy shit I can slice through an army with a lightsaber''. To this day, often held up as one of the best things about the Star Wars brand as a whole.

===Jade Empire===
Kung-fu ''wuxia'' action brawler glued to a pretty sweet story with ''another'' great video game twist that plays with the "formula" mentioned above more than the chart would suggest. Bioware's first original role-playing setting was something of a sleeper, not selling in great numbers compared to previous efforts, due in part to cutbacks and restraints, but in the present day is well-regarded by most players. If you haven't tried it, give it a whirl. If nothing else, it's a rare RPG that lets you [[Fist of the North Star|punch someone's pressure points until they explode in a shower of gibs]].

===Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood===
...Yeah, it happened. Story's okay, the character writing is a highlight, and the gameplay mechanics are at the very least quite creative, but the soundtrack is a goddamn ''abomination'', balance is a distant dream on both sides of the screen, and there's just not enough content to justify its existence. Better than the average 3rd party ''Sonic'' title, but... well, that's not exactly a high bar to clear. And the plot ends on a blatant sequel hook that will never amount to anything.

Behind-the-scenes development drama is the chief culprit: Bioware started out on the title as a bit of a passion project for one of the founders, but after working with Sega turned out to be a pain, Ken Penders kicked up a lawsuit against both SEGA & EA, and ''Dragon Age'' started looming on the horizon, they ultimately rushed the whole thing out under the door partway through to fulfil their contract and breezed away, never looking back.

===Mass Effect===
A cosmic horror story-space opera with much potential; handled properly from start to finish, it could have been to video games what Star Wars is to movies and Star Trek is to television. Despite being a flagship franchise of Bioware, the series ended up being a microcosm of the company's gradual rise and fall.

====Mass Effect 1====
The first game in the series was excellent, with top-notch characters, setting and story. The player character is Commander [insert custom name here] Shepard, a skilled soldier that nearly everyone calls Shepard, whose customization goes right through to their backstory, love life and gender. Humanity is new to the scene and wants more of a say in the galactic community; [[Skub|some aliens support this, others think humanity is too greedy/selfish/domineering/impatient/etc]]. Said aliens include the asari (always female blue-skinned space elves, with head crests instead of hair and ears, who can move objects with their minds and are oversexed in-universe and among the fans), the turians (a dutiful race of avian/reptilian humanoids with a militant culture and carapaces who were the first to make contact with humanity), the salarians (skinny, quick-thinking, short-lived amphibious lizard people with a talent for espionage), the quarians (spacefaring, tech-savvy humanoids with full body envirosuits and weak immune systems living in exile; the sole member who appeared in the first game became [[Love Can Bloom|one of the franchise's most beloved characters]]) and more. While Shepard is undergoing assessment for joining a group of galactic peacekeepers called the Spectres by protecting a human colony under attack, the leader of the attack, a human-hating rogue member of said peacekeepers, shows up. He murders Shepard's mentor, having allied with the attacking robot race using an ancient machine for his own ends... but there is MUCH more to the situation than meets the eye (the mission where we see the entire story shift from an action Space Opera to a [[Yog-Sothothery|Cosmic Horror Story]] is EXCELLENTLY DONE).

The presentation... not so much; the graphics and gameplay could be awkward, clunky, and even glitchy at times (ie; sniper rifles have a large hit area where even an intentional close miss would somehow result in a hit, seemingly joint-less ragdolls that often resulted in everyone being in bone-breaking positions even while alive, periodically lulzy physics that can sometimes unintentionally impede your progress, the unpatched overheating bugs that potentially rendered non-soldier classes utterly weaponless... you get the picture). It was still good. There were plenty of interesting side missions to do, most of the characters had decent development so you could like/hate them better (Hell even the side characters were given brief but good backstories), it had a lot of RPG elements that made RPGs lovable, tech and especially biotic powers were hella-fucking-balls fun to use because they were geared towards being more overpowered but mad fun to throw around instead of being stringently balanced (Like in ME2. ME3 worked a bit to make powers more fun.), and overall you had more control of how you want your Commander Shepard to be through dialog and actions (ME2 gave you slightly less control though it introduced "interrupts" where you push a button to trigger an alternate scene, such as "hug Tali" or "kill jerkass mercs". ME3 made it worse).

There was a gripping DLC mission, "Bring Down the Sky" which involved stopping an anti-human Batarian terrorist from using an asteroid to destroy the human colony of Terra Nova. Of course, while you did have to pay for it in the past (Now it's free), Bring Down the Sky had very little in the way of the story as a whole, so even if you missed out on it, you aren't really missing out on the plot. But then, EA realized this wouldn't make them money, so they turned up the antee in ME2 and Emperor damn them in ME3 for literally making all the important plot-points DLC. It also had "Pinnacle Station," which... existed. (Its smoldering wreckage can be scanned in ME3, an apology to all the fans who bought it.)

Also famous for the indestructible (until you meet a Thresher Maw)-flying-almost-impossible-to-control-never-run-out-of-ammo-but-only-hits-shit-15%-of-the-time-and-then-gives-you-no-XP armoured exploration vehicle, the MAKO.

====Mass Effect 2 (the peak)====
Mass Effect 2 was a great game, arguably the best of the series (according to fans and critics alike). However, while presentation and gameplay improved it did (debatably) show a drop in character and mission quality compared to the first game; though given how high the first set the bar the second was still good on these counts.

To be fair, ME1 had lots of characters, and it's the job of a good sequel to continue the story while fleshing out existing characters and introducing new ones. ME2 accomplished both, though some characters were better developed than others. At the very least, your squadmates get the full package on character development. Also, something many gamers overlook, there's a limit to much data you can put on a disk and ME2 still required TWO DISCS to fit in all the content (not counting DLC) in a day and age where that kind of thing was not often done anymore. This game also introduced several more alien races such as the Drell (fish/reptile people who live on the Hanar homeworld when they overpopulated theirs), the Vorcha (goblin-like aliens who can re-generate and live on average only 20 years) and the Yahg (big, burly aliens with eight eyes, a pack mentality and armor-plated bodies).

The other shift in direction was that gunfights were ''heavily'' given emphasis, a good chunk of which went in the wrong direction. Long story-short they reduced the effectiveness of power-heavy classes (mostly the adept) by making them largely redundant in the face of combat classes in higher difficulties. As a consolation prize, some classes got nifty new powers related to their class such as [[Awesome|controllable "Bullet Time" for soldiers, Predator-style invisibility tech for Infiltrators and the biotic charge for Vanguards]].

There was quite a change of scope of the story: where ME1 had a mystery to solve and a villain to beat, in ME2 it is your goal to assemble an elite team of the galaxy's best mercenaries, criminals, and specialists to stop a race of aliens called the Collectors abducting humans from their colonies (the Collector's motivation is pretty epic, but explaining that would be a spoiler reveal). You're forced to work with an extremist organization from the first game, who are financing your mission and are certainly not planning to betray you when you're no longer useful. The main story is told via a series of side missions that are flung at you now and then (up to a mission aboard a certain derelict where things progress more as an RPG should), but the game keeps telling you that you ABSOLUTELY NEED these people and should recruit them all to improve your chances of survival (some [spoiler: such as your returning two squadmates from the first game] ARE essential, others not so much). Then again, as a character-focused story, some of the best parts of the game came from going on "loyalty" missions with the crew on adventures to different corners of the galaxy, and the "fragmented" nature of the main plot, almost as a side effect, gives the player immense freedom in choosing what order to do them in.

Of course, in regards to DLC, EA ''really'' left their mark. While the minor DLCs (Weapon and armor sets, an old veteran merc out for revenge and a [[Blood Ravens|master thief]] as squadmates, plus an optional story that involves you trying to shut down a rogue AI/Human hybrid before it sets off a technological apocalypse) were decent, EA took three things that should have been in the original game and rendered them DLC: being able to drive vehicles (A hover-IFV this time) in short side missions and two stories that heavily influence the plot of the next game (Liara taking over the Shadow Broker's position and a mission to hinder the Reapers' arrival). Overall however, if you don't mind those 3 things, ME2 is still full of boundless amusement from the immersive setting and multitude of ways you can approach the story.

====Mass Effect 3 (The Downfall)====
Mass Effect 3, while it had some good elements, like stream-lining combat, was a big step down from the first two Mass Effect games. Some of the biggest complaints are that it trivialized several choices from the first two games, such as whether or not you chose to xenocide a race in ME1 and whether or not you went the traditional or progressive route with a Krogan squadmate in ME2. Also, story-essential characters were reduced to DLC. The first was the sole-survivor of a race thought to be extinct and even then, said character should have been included in the game by default anyway (especially since a lot of the character was on the disc). The second was the remnants of the Reapers' creators, who you were forced to ally with despite the fact that they were obviously evil (They could control the minds of entire populations, [[Eldar|saw themselves as the apex species and everyone else being inferior to them]], and had a massive God complex. Their MO was [[Vlad von Carstein|"serve us willingly or serve us via mind control"]]. Never mind the fact that their own creation bit them in the ass and caused this whole Reaper problem). Surprisingly the game never addresses the fact that, once the Reapers are defeated, their creators will try to take over the galaxy again, something the previous games would have addressed. The most hated part was a sub-par ending that caused massive complaints from players for leaving literally all the plot threads hanging. However, these problems with the third game were because [[EA|most of the development team for the first two games (including several of the writers and head writer Drew Karpyshyn) quit partway through developing the second game/did not return to work on the third game. Their reasons for this were internal strife with Bioware as they were subsumed into EA, conflicts of interest and disagreement over the direction they wanted the story to go]].

Apart from all that bullshit, the gameplay from ME 2 was finetuned to something pretty fun to play (tho still lacking the depth of a true RPG), including melee, new weaponry and powers, and while widely assumed to be an unneeded addition, the multiplayer 'Horde Battles' did have a few good things, like being able to be a fucking Krogan Warlord with a four-meter long Thunderhammer and a cranky temper, or simply win any Bronze game automatically by playing a Geth Prime. A few characters were added and old ones came back, being generally pretty well written, or fucking amazing, if playing the Citadel DLC, and small things, like the "I'm in the middle of some calibrations." social bullshit was removed and made more interactive with the crew. These points are, however, only a few shining lights compared to the black holes of failure the above paragraph details, and are generally not mentioned when discussing ME 3 - And often for good reason.

After the game was released Bioware eventually caved in and produced a free replacement DLC ending that made a bit more sense (and even then the ending is still bollocks and still made little-to-no sense when you add up your whole journey from ME1 to ME3. It did very little to explain the fates of the people and races you met and nothing at all about how the plot as a whole ended up, and ultimately came off as a passive-aggressive jab at their fanbase for daring to want actual closure to the trilogy). Some argue that the series devolved into a Gears of War clone with more dialog options, complete with multiplayer mode. Bioware is making some new game in the franchise, but many say that the main plot of the original trilogy was not resolved well, and said resolution is so broad and ambiguous as to make a new game's story... difficult, to say the least; then again, as mentioned before, the change in plot and quality was due to disagreements and rearranging of the games development team. This hasn't stopped them from announcing work on a sequel anyway.

====Mass Effect: Andromeda====
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[[Chaos Spawn|That-which-does-not-exist]] is the cursed spoiled child of the franchise; [[Alpha Legion|its legacy is so bad that the wider fanbase does not acknowledge it exists]]. Expand at your own risk.

tl;dr: It's like Halo with the Mass Effect name plastered on but without subtlety, good writing or good animation.
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After years attempting to essentially build ''No Man's Sky'' inside the Frostbite engine, the old devs got shuffled away, new devs were brought in, handed a pile of assets, and ordered to slap something together and shove it out under the door in a year and a half to recoup costs. Naturally, this went about as well as the last time they tried it.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is an intergalactic travel/space soap opera plot shoehorned into the story of the original trilogy. You play as a member of the Ryder family, made (in)famous by Alec Ryder, a former war hero and Pathfinder for humanity who was blacklisted from the military for making the illegal AI SAM. There is also his deceased (spoiler - actually terminally ill and cryogenically frozen) wife and his adult children, who are male/female twins the player chooses from for the player character. Alec and a group of rich individuals pooled money and resources to build Ark ships and a knock-off the Citadel called the Nexus to go colonize the Andromeda galaxy (also to escape the Reapers, but that's classified in-universe. At the meta level, even though there are closer galaxies, the devs chose Andromeda because it's the most well-known galaxy besides the Milky Way). During the six century journey, massive amounts of [[Not As Planned]] occur - everyone arrived at different times, the multi-species quarian ark went M.I.A. and humanity arrived last with the human Ark sustaining damage and the non-PC twin rendered comatose. The Earth analog planet chosen for humanity to settle turned out to be uninhabitable for humans, when exploring it you made contact with hostile aliens and after an accident Alec dies saving the player character, who gets SAM implanted in their head and becomes humanity's new Pathfinder.

Throughout the story, the Milky Way races deal with all the socio-political and mental baggage they brought with them from the Milky Way while trying to establish new homeworlds. Along the way, the Initiative meets and interacts with alien races or their technology native to Andromeda. The first are [[Halo|Forerunner]]-expies called the Jaardan who don't appear in the game, but built artificial planets and may have left behind a [[Eye of Terror|semi-solid energy cloud]] that attacks anything near it, is attracted to certain types of technology [[Grimdark|and can shatter planets]]. The second are overemotional furless lizard-cat people with genetic memory called the angara, who struggle to trust aliens after their first contact (with the following race) went badly. The third are the hostile aliens encountered earlier; [[Doctor Who|Dalek]]/[[Halo|Covenant Empire]]-expies called the kett, rocky-looking aliens who worship a scientific genetic assimilation process around which they built an expansionist, eugenicist cult. They're one-dimensionally [[Stupid Evil]], blatant negative allegories of various beliefs and ideologies in real life; their leader the [[Archon|Archon]] is the game's [[BBEG]], the ultimate example of the kett's poor writing and arguably Bioware's most poorly-written antagonist. Unlike evil races of games' past (such as Mass Effect's geth and Dragon Age's Darkspawn), the kett aren't really analyzed or given anything more. No seriously, think about this; the Darkspawn were based around the concept of being a "living plague" and "bad guys (the player) wouldn't feel bad about killing", and they had more characterization and deeper lore than the kett.

The characters are almost all two-dimensionally nasty (such as practically every kett), lacking (such as Addison) or divisive (such as Peebee). Even the rare exceptions (such as Vetra) are watered-down versions of characters from the original trilogy, and were it not for that lack of good characters, the soap opera feel might have been forgiven. The few interesting characters barely get fleshed out, such as Bain Massani, son of the bounty hunter Zaeed Massani from the original trilogy's second game DLC, and a few characters from the original trilogy make hard-to-find cameos. Some interesting plot threads with characters and factions are hinted at, such as the disappearance of the quarian Ark ship (later resolved in a novel) and how not all kett support The Archon, but few get resolved and even fewer get resolved well.

The voice acting varies from good to terrible, though the latter outweighs the former along with several poorly written lines; such as the infamous "my face is tired", "I think I really pissed that one off. Maybe because I shot him in the face!" and "...I swear, we're the galactic good guys". There are also many glitches, bugs and instances of sloppy animations such as infamously bad facial expressions and running. Good animation is there (good luck finding it under all the derp though) and the environments while lacking in uniqueness are visually appealing and very open. The combat engine was functional and it probably would have made a good multiplayer, but that's arguably a kiss of death for a CRPG series. And since this is a Bioware game written after 2014, the writers made the mistake of pandering to woke culture and identity politics, especially since at least two key members of the dev team, including a leading writer, were avowed [[SJW]]s - but as was typical of the 'checklist' approach to representation, [https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/03/underwhelming-gay-romance-options-in-mass-effect-andromeda-disappoints-many-fans/ some people STILL complained] and got [http://blog.bioware.com/2017/06/06/mass-effect-andromeda-patch-1-08-notes/ even more tone-deaf pandering in response].

As far as actual gameplay goes, Andromeda is halfway decent, though quite uninspiring and mediocre at times. One of the few positives is that it takes a more open-world approach similar to the first Mass Effect, as opposed to the less appealing corridor-heavy sequels. The crafting system from the third game returns, along with a mining system that allows wider item access to party members. The combat is fairly solid, if lacking the usual ME polish, with a good amount of depth added by a short-range jump pack and the inclusion of previous classes' abilities and passive skills based on the specialization tree chosen. Even without the controversy, neither gameplay nor story is strong enough to carry each other, and far from up to the usual Bioware standard where it matters.

In closing, the game devs tried to push and capitalize on progressive narratives in a ham-fisted way, neglected to tend to the actual game, and failed miserably on both ends. In addition, the game was ''so'' widely panned that [http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/mass-effect-andromeda-is-officially-so-bad-it-killed-a-studio it caused EA to liquidate the game's development studio, not even 6 months after its release] and [http://mashable.com/2017/08/19/mass-effect-andromeda-story-dlc-officially-cancelled/#nrgDvEJVpmqH caused EA and Bioware to discontinue all support for the single player campaign and focus on multiplayer]. EA, already in the midst of subsuming Bioware, has pretty much given up on its lifeless corpse ''not even half a year after release'' due to the game being so subpar and fierce backlash from fans and critics alike.
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===Dragon Age===
The Dragon Age series is a more blatant example of this degradation.

====Dragon Age: Origins====
The original, Dragon Age: Origins, was a game six years in the making, which shows in good ways (immense depth and craft to the situations encountered) and bad (wonky graphics that looked worse than ''Mass Effect'''s, despite coming out nearly a year later.). While far from being the grimdark spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate that Bioware hyped it as, the story of Dragon Age: Origins was above average and possessed an interesting character creation mechanic where your background changed numerous parts of the storyline.

The premise is that your character is a Grey Warden, one of the last of a legendary order of guardians in the world, and the story takes place on the continent of Thedas ('''The''' '''D'''ragon '''A'''ge '''S'''etting) in a nameless world. Start your adventure by picking your race as a Human, Elf, or Dwarf, then your class as a Warrior, Mage, or Rogue. The story begins with an explanation of the Blight and the Darkspawn who both caused it and arose from it according to Scriptures from the in-universe religion Andrastianism (a deistic religion centered around a woman called Andraste, whose essentially a combination of The Virgin Mary, Jesus, Muhammad and Joan of Arc). Darkspawn are Orc-like beings similar to Tolkien Orcs who were mutated by a contagious supernatural corruption (which may or may not be a divine punishment) and are also described as a "living plague". This living plague is said (and confirmed in future games) to have originated from a group of mages who entered the Fade (a spirit realm like the [[Warp]] but easier to enter and safely leave) who entered the Golden City (Dragon Age's version of Heaven) then tried and failed to overthrow the Maker (Dragon Age's version of God - whose existence is being kept deliberately ambiguous by the writers). The mages actions turned it into the Black City, a place so dangerous no one who goes there comes back out and [[Malal|even demons avoid it]] and according to the Chantry (Dragon Age's Catholic Church analogue for the religion Andrastianism) this was a punishment from the Maker.

The Darkspawn are normally roving bands, but sometimes they rally under one leader, an archdemon - ancient powerful spirits taking the physical form of dragons, and when this happens it causes an invasion/natural disaster/epidemic called a Blight. During the first one, after much trial and error the Grey Wardens were created and successfully stopped the first Blight by killing the Archdemon leading it and have been a revered order of protectors ever since. However, history along with political and religious differences have divided the peoples of the world and do so between each Blight, and things seem to be coming to a head in the first game. You play through the intro which establishes who you are and what your lot in life is and varies based on what you made your character, then the life you knew gets upended in various grimdark ways (ranging from being the elf who killed a human noble for raping your friend to being a Dwarf prince who gets back-stabbed by your younger brother), you prove your mettle and get inducted into the Grey Wardens to stop the Darkspawn in the human kingdom of Ferelden. Things later go really pear-shaped when the king's general/father-in-law abandoned him to die in battle then framed the Grey Wardens for his death, making Ferelden's best hope outlaws or exiles. While the nations are threatened by a Blight and most of the realms are engulfed in civil war, you have been chosen to unite the shattered lands and slay the current archdemon once and for all.

The character development was good - there are some squadmates who are optional but have fully-fleshed out stories and character arcs. Evidence that things were starting to fall apart were obvious right when you met the questgiver who forced you to buy a DLC pack if you actually wanted to do the quest, but only after giving you the sales pitch. The "expansion pack" Awakening wasn't too bad either, at least if you ignored the fact that it had been visibly rushed and was loaded with gamebreaking bugs.

====Dragon Age II====
The most tragic game on the list. A perfect storm of wrongheaded design and corporate mismanagement, Dragon Age II was dead on arrival - the story veered from one plot thread to the next without any rhyme or reason while being completely disconnected to the previous game, most of the characters were either idiots, one-dimensional, or just plain unlikable, and both clearly put trying to be "different" and "unconventional" on a pedestal over being good. [[Star Trek#Films|'Cause it worked sooo well in ''Generations'', right?]] Gameplay was the worst kind of busywork, consisting of [[Dawn of War 2|running through the same not-even-reskinned maps over and over again]], pressing the same buttons to do the same things to the same generic enemies as they teleport in out of nowhere. All these problems might've been ironed out as development went on, if not for the fact that their [[EA|corporate overlords]] had them rushing the game out in '''less than a year''', in their endless quest to have ''all'' their properties work like the Madden and FIFA games they're used to bankrolling. And when, thanks to ''their'' interference, the game under-performed, EA promptly scrapped the expansion they were building to wrap up the dangling, jangling plot threads.

The game can be skipped entirely without missing anything; the narrator appears again in the third game and summarizes all of the important parts in one conversation. It's actually sort of the point of the story that despite Hawke and company winning every battle they were subsumed by greater forces, everything in their lives falls apart anyway, and nothing they did had any lasting effects.

====Dragon Age: Inquisition====
Dragon Age: Inquisition picked things up... a little. It's certainly the best Bioware game for a while, but a lot of that is because literally everything about the game is risk-averse. Both the story and the gameplay are assembled from pure fantasy cliche and the [[grimdark]] city-based environmental art style prevelant in the previous two games has been replaced with a glorious [[noblebright]] mostly-outdoor setting. The storyline is based on the player character accidentally becoming the [[Mary Sue|Chosen One]] by accidentally picking up a shiny green thing which allows them to fix tears in the fabric of reality. The villain has some interesting implications about the lore of the setting, but the writers never really actually commit to any of that lore, preferring to have it remain as hearsay, and the villain becomes boringly one-dimensionally evil because of that. Gameplay-wise, Inquisition started as an MMO, and you can still feel the MMO influence; you explore about ten wilderness zones which are very large and pretty but have very minimal interaction, spend most of your time running fetch quests, and only hit story beats every three levels or so. Combat is a game of managing cooldowns and throwing particle effects everywhere.

That said, unlike some of the past games from Bioware's decline-and-fall period, Inquisition is actually fun to play. Most of the characters in your party are well-rounded (except for Vivienne and to a lesser extent Sera), there's a ridiculously large amount of party banter, and the romance quests actually feature involving character development instead of being something to add to the checklist. There's even some series-essential lore locked away in some of the romances (in particular, Solas's romance reveals absolutely vital information about the history of the Elven race). The gameplay, cliched and MMO-ey though it may be, is actually involving and fun at times, and the quest to hunt down all ten High Dragons is pretty awesome (as well as being pretty much the only way to get value-for-money from the game's otherwise superfluous crafting system; pretty much every piece of gear you can craft is outclassed by the loot you find from monsters, except for crafted items which use Dragon Bone, which are hilariously overpowered). Certainly not a great game, but it's quite good if you aren't overly sensitive to cliche.

*'''Alternate Opinion:'''
:: The above opinion is way too naive. If its an improvement, it's only because they hit rock bottom in the prequel and had nowhere else to go but up. Both the story and the gameplay are assembled from pure fantasy cliche and the grimdark city-based environmental art style prevalent in the previous two games has been replaced with a cookie-cutter outdoor setting that looks like it was directly copied from Skyrim. The storyline is based on the player character accidentally becoming the Chosen One by accidentally picking up a green orb which allows them to fix tears in the fabric of reality, and despite claims to the contrary the choices made in prior games have minimal impact; the fact that all of these choices can be preselected and modified via the use of an application released with the game causes the marketing of "your choices matter" to fall flat on its face. The villain was a character who was introduced in the DLC of Dragon Age 2, which will confuse everyone who didn't happen to <s>buy</s> pirate that particular DLC as his presence in the plot is never foreshadowed even though the player is expected to know who he is, and as stated above any of the larger implications he had for the lore aren't explored, reducing him to a Sauron-knockoff BBEG. Gameplay-wise, Inquisition started as an MMO, and you can still feel the MMO influence; you explore about ten wilderness zones which are very large and pretty but have very minimal interaction. Nearly every quest boils down to "get this crap for me", and the story progresses in fits and starts (and once again ends on a barely coherent cliffhanger where no plot threads are tied up UNLESS you get the dlc, because that worked so well with Mass Effect 3). Combat is a game of managing cooldowns and throwing particle effects everywhere.

::Most of the characters in your party are only marginally less one-dimensional than they were in Dragon Age 2, and the dialog can go from dull to pants-on head retarded ("You want to ride The Bull" comes to mind, among many others). The romance sidequests are often tacked-on and seem to cater mostly to yaoi/yuri fans who don't comprehend the fact the average player of a CRPG doesn't appreciate characters whose entire romance subplot can be summed up as "I'm homosexual, now let's buttfuck/scissor each other". The gameplay is copypasted from virtually every MMORPG there is, and while it's not as aggressively bad as Dragon Age 2 that's not saying very much. Overall, it's sad how a supposed successor to Baldur's Gate devolved into a shallow batch of cliches held together only by a colossal marketing budget.

====Dragon Age: The Dread Wolf Rises====
Bioware and EA have announced that there will be a fourth Dragon Age game, called the Dread Wolf Rises. It will revolve around the character from the previous game who has a vital role in the history of the elven race, and his plans for the elves and Thedas. The developers estimated its release to happen three years time from the game's announcement.

However, Dragon Age 4 has already generated massive amounts of [[Skub]]. Several key developers - including Narrative Director John Epler - made announcements on social media directly stating this game's story [[SJW|will be “political” and that it will be “celebrating our diversity and differences.”]] Even more worryingly, they've dropped lots of buzzwords surrounding EA's push to turn all their series into "live service" model games, supported for years, and right after their previous attempt to do so (see below) fell flat on its ass and died on arrival.

Terrified fans predict this could be the moment when EA finally puts poor Bioware's neck in the guillotine...

===Star Wars: The Old Republic===
{{Main|Star Wars: The Old Republic}}

TL;DR: Bioware aimed to develop an MMO combining the setting and story of KOTOR with the sprawling, open-world appeal of WOW. Delays caused by production caused Bioware to rush development of other games in order to meet fiscal targets. The game itself became more controversial with time as expansion stories seemed to take TOR further away from KOTOR than its 100-year timeskip had already done.

===Anthem===
Anthem is an online multiplayer action role-playing video game developed by Bioware. Everyone in Bioware was on this project, with many people saying this is the company's do or die game. The game was initially slated for a 2018 release on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but this date was moved to February 2019. It is a [[Star Wars|science fantasy]] game, where humanity has numerous civilizations on a single planet.

The story has some potential but is quite shallow, especially for a Bioware game. The planet Coda was created by mysterious beings called The Shapers, who some humans consider gods; they planned to make the world in nine days but vanished on day three, leaving everything incomplete and hostile, especially for humans. The only trace of them left is their technology which can access the titular "Anthem" of Creation, a mysterious reality-warping power which is like a combination of [[Star Wars|The Force]] and the [[Warp]]. At some point humanity was enslaved by blue aliens called Urgoth until a female former slave named Helena Tarsis freed them. A friend of hers invented suits of power armor, called "Javelins", which have jet packs, can go underwater and otherwise works like a cross between Iron Man's armor, a T'au battlesuit and some aesthetics from Warframe. She formed a faction of [[Space Marine|power armor wearing soldiers]] called The Legion of Dawn and freed humanity from the Urgoth, [[Horus Heresy|before The Legion of Dawn got split by infighting]] into The Freelancers, the Sentinels and The Dominion. The player character is a Freelancer; the Freelancers tried to stop the ruthless Dominion faction centuries ago but failed and accidentally allowed the destruction of the old city that Fort Tarsis, the location of the protagonist faction, was built over. Now they're considered a shadow of their former selves, reduced to being mercenaries taking jobs that require the Freelancers to leave the city in hopes of atoning for their predecessors' failure. Then the Dominon attacked centuries later at the behest of Armas Brom - better known by his title The Monitor - leader of the Dominion's secret police. The Monitor's plan was to weaponize the Anthem to reclaim Coda for humanity, and the protagonist has to stop them (while helping random NPCs and fighting mobs of <s>cannon fodder</s> insectoid aliens called Scars along the way). Of course, [[Fail|almost none of this shit matters]] because the gameplay ultimately pushes the story to the margins; it's become a popular perception that Anthem is visibly trying too hard to be a Destiny-like game at the expense of fleshing out what could've been a decent plot with a little more time and care than Bioware could manage under EA's direction.

Development was rough, with rumors swirling that EA is deliberately putting Bioware in a no-win scenario where no matter what happens, the C-suite has an excuse to exercise more control over or liquidate the studio; given the amount of resources put on this project, if Anthem fails EA will actually take a major financial hit, so all in all Bioware may have become expendable by this point, while if it is a success it could mean supporting and making more games like it instead of the kinds of games fans love and want more of. Worryingly, several members of the dev team left during development, including the lead writer Drew Karpyshyn.

When Anthem reached the stage of a VIP "demo" (called such by Bioware/EA) released to certain players (which was made free, to their credit) the game ended up running into problems: The demo was swamped with loading problems and even suffered DDoS problems, an already shaky start for Bioware's/EA's possible "do or die" game; on the flipside the weapon options, controls and graphics are amazing, and showcased a chunk of the game's potential. It's just a shame that the many flaws, rampant monetization, and mandatory grind all do their best to cover up what specks of greatness might have been there.

By the point of release, Anthem received mediocre scores at best: with the game having 61 Metascore and 4.1 User score to date, developers promised a 90-day roadmap to fix the game. Of course this hasn't stopped the game from suffering a backlash, with many people disliking the final product for the sloppy release and squandered potential, and some others enforcing a boycott in order to slowly choke EA out of money. A common complaint is that this game lacks the deep and engaging characters and stories that originally made Bioware famous. Another problem is some of the side missions are story missions shorn of plot and repeated over and over. Time will tell if Anthem and Bioware can survive, but the prognosis has proven to be grim and the "roadmap" was abandoned. It also doesn't help the EA also released Apex Legends a month before, a free-to-play Battle Royale shooter game that takes place in the Titanfall universe that released to an overall better reception.

==Associated Games==
Often grouped with Bioware's games, and highlighted as the pinnacles of Bioware's talent, these games were actually made by other, completely-independent, studios: Black Isle Studios and Obsidian, both of which included lot of the same staff. These games used engines developed by Bioware and were licensed by shared publishers, which resulted in graphical and interface similarities. Thus, many players believe that they were made by Bioware when this was not the case.

* [[Planescape: Torment]]
* [[Icewind Dale]]
* Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords
* Neverwinter Nights 2

Both of those last two were rushed out for Christmas, NWN2 with only around nine months development, resulting in whole chunks of the game missing and bugs out the ass. Obsidian wasn't allowed to patch either, though much of the lost content has since been restored by fans.

==The Decline of Bioware==
In 2007, Bioware was bought by [[EA]] and since then their games have been slowly declining in quality. It began between the release of the first Mass Effect game and Dragon Age: Origins (note how EA isn't shown in the opening credits for ME1). More on this can be found in the entries for those two franchises. Simultaneously, their games since have been characterized by rushed output, bullshit predatory business practices, and terribly prevalent DLC. Then the founders all left because it just wasn't fun anymore with the glowing eye of Jon Madden/Sauron looking over your shoulder and trimming away all the fat until only a skeleton was left. Followed, in the next few years, by most of the senior writing/production staff. Unfortunately, the people who stepped in, or were put forward by EA, to fill the gaps this mass exodus left tended to be incompetents, and it's shown in their later games such as Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda (see above for more details). They also have developed a rather nasty workplace, pushing their staff extra hard to work long hours to the point where it's causing them emotional and psychological harm. And, of course, EA relentlessly pushes for them to stop making the kinds of popular, deep, well-written single player RPGs that made them famous and that their fans want to play, and instead focus resources on heavily-monetized and monetizable looter shooters or multiplayer modes.

They haven't yet been sucked bone dry and thrown on the pile like so many other studios "acquired" by the Men From Redwood City yet, but everyone knows it's coming. [http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/mass-effect-andromeda-is-officially-so-bad-it-killed-a-studio With EA liquidating their Montreal-based Bioware studio, it looks like the clock is one minute closer to midnight for Bioware.]

So in short, if you want a good Bioware game, look to the past.

Stupid Evil

2020-02-12T03:39:25Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:FC9A:FB04:E041:A174: /* Other /tg/-relevant examples */

{{Topquote|No Muttley, we can't win fairly. We are villains, ergo we have to cheat!|Dick Dastardly, recognizing his role in the cartoon while being unable to avoid playing it. Naturally, the finish line is right behind him.}}
{{Topquote|If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you'll be treated as a mad dog; taken out back and slaughtered for pig feed.|Roose Bolton to his son Ramsay in ''Game of Thrones'', on why Stupid Evil is such a bad idea.}}

Yes, [[Lawful Stupid]] has its Evil counterpart. A general trait of '''Stupid Evil''' is doing evil things for the sake of being evil (e.g. pettiness, self gratification, etc.), rather than because they are (morality aside) easy or viable paths towards wealth, power, revenge, or whatever the villain's goal is. This is especially true when a non-evil, or less evil way of doing things would work better.

A villain who is truly insane can get away with this sort of thing since what compels them to act in an evil manner is the fact that they have some screws loose, and likewise comedic villains can get away with it because their evil-ness is just a plot device to cause funny things to happen. However, "serious" nemeses and long-term, high-threat villains are usually expected to have a goal and some capacity for rational planning; a villain who takes time out of a busy day to kick a puppy or eat a kitten just to establish evil credibility will probably be treated with derision by players. By the same token, a villain who presents an otherwise seemingly insurmountable threat being undone by a massive fatal flaw - such as pride or hubris - can make for quite a compelling yarn.

[[TVTropes|Compare]] to [[Chaotic Stupid]]. They're not quite the same, but there's often a lot of overlap due the tendency of bad players and writers to mistake "chaotic" with "act like as big of an obnoxious asshole as physically possible".

==Examples of Stupid Evil==
===[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]===
The amount of retarded villains in this series is truly staggering. And yet despite all of the stupid evil committed by them, [[Grimdark|they were able to secure victories in the beginning]], even if only because the good guys are either more [[Lawful Stupid]] or [[Stupid Good]]. Ultimately however most of the Lannisters and their allies including the Boltons and Freys met their ends in spite of their ruthlessness.

Of course, A Song of Ice and Fire is known for its frequent grey morality, and most Stupid Evil characters have something of an explanation. Even then, you'd be inclined to wonder how far ahead some of them were really thinking, especially in the adaptations - though it's arguably intentional, possibly to demonstrate how [[Not As Planned|a lack of pragmatism fucks people over in the long-term]], especially in a realm so rapidly driven by [[Just as planned|ever-changing politics and schemes]] ([[Skub|or possibly because of bad writing, who knows]]).

'''The Lannisters'''

Lannister-brand parenting and ruling revolves around an iron fist and enough money to solve any problem thrown at them. While they enjoy significant successes at first, they also gave birth to some of the most short sighted sociopaths, who rely on their fortune, both material and immaterial, to try and win the Game of Thrones and ultimately losing in the end due to both fortunes running short. Examples of the Lannisters' worst offenders include:

* Joffrey Baratheon is overall far too impulsive and sadistic for his own good, which is an already disastrous pairing of personality traits to combine with the fact that he's 12 or 13 years old in the books. On the note of not-even-really-excuses, there's also possible mental instability resulting from the fact that he's inbred and his mother is Cersei (more on her in a moment).
** He sends an assassin armed with a Valyrian Blade (one of only a few hundred such weapons in all of Westeros, and an unusual weapon for a common hitman when a common dirk would have sufficed) to kill Bran Stark, and when that fails, it causes the Starks to suspect the Lannisters. He also kills Eddard Stark to make an example of him, therefore sparking an unnecessary and very costly civil war that went against what his family had planned. Despite that, they still came out on top since they are still standing while the Starks are scattered, due mainly to Tywin and Tyrion being [[Creed|tactical genii]] and strategic masterminds.
** He also chooses to ignore his duties and the welfare of his people in favor of satiating his sadistic behavior, even abusing his people when they're seeking his help. He regularly abuses Sansa in particular, and threatens to have her killed despite the fact it will reduce her value as a political hostage and (in their eyes) could cause the Starks to kill their political hostage, Jamie Lannister.
** He shows no regard for the peasants and working class under his charge in the capital city. This is already a bad idea, but especially when there's an impending siege and tensions are already high. This leads to a riot that causes several deaths, which started because he ordered the execution of a man who threw a ball of dung at him.
** Even his family isn't safe from his viciousness, occasionally to the point of team-killing fuckery: he has one of his Kingsguard try to murder his uncle Tyrion in the middle of the Battle of Blackwater instead of just simply poisoning him (as Tyrion pointed out). He even calls Tywin a coward. ''Out loud. In front of other people. '''To his face.''''' Luckily for Joffrey they were related, or he would have been struck down. And as what turns out to be a final hurrah at his wedding, he insults his in-laws and his bride at their wedding reception and subjects Tyrion to petty tortures in front of everyone.

* Cersei Lannister, while not as dumb as her son Joffrey (hardly something to be proud of) is egotistic and paranoid as fuck; if she, for any reason, thinks you might threaten her or her children, even for something as minor as telling her her latest idea is a bad one, you're in trouble. At best, she will view you as an enemy and will be a passive-aggressive bitch to you, and at worst she'll have you brutally tortured to death, even if you're one of House Lannister's allies to whom good relations are vital. On top of all that she's a contender for Worst Mother in Westeros, and her cruelty drove away even her incestuous lover, Jamie Lannister (which happened much earlier into the books than in the TV show).
** She invited Gregor Clegane (see below) to King's Landing at the same time Oberyn Martell is visiting, despite the fact that Gregor is the reason there's bad blood between house Lannister and House Martell, and the Martells know it.
** After Joffrey died, she went out of her way to rig the trial for his death against Tyrion, despite the circumstances ''already'' being against him - this made him more determined than ever to survive and tips off Oberyn that Tyrion is innocent of the crime. This led to the duel between Oberyn and Gregor that ruined the Lannister/Martell alliance and cost the Lannisters their pet beast.
** She also responded to a satirical puppet show about House Lannister being evil tyrants by having anyone who saw it either sharply fined (up to half of all their money if they're rich) or mutilated (an eye cut out if they're too poor to pay) and ordering the puppeteers executed. She didn't even mind the play at first; she only took offence because the ending had the Lannisters getting their comeuppance at the hands of a Targaryen. Then, instead of the headsman, she did something worse and handed the puppeteers over to her resident mad scientist for deadly experiments at his request. Ironically this happens in the end, vindicating the puppeteers for their play.
** Cersei encouraged the worst aspects of her kids; in the case of Joffrey, this is like attempting to put out a forest fire with napalm. Her atrocious parenting, combined with conceiving Joffrey with her brother Jamie AND Robert's own negligence, is the reason Joffrey's such a repulsive asshole. She ignores the numerous acts of cruelty and stupidity of her eldest son and brushes off any criticism of him as being a personal attack.
** She was an overbearing mother to Tommen - her actually half-decent person of a second son - to the point of [[What|trying to make him more like Joffrey]], and when that inevitably failed, she inadvertently made him a gullible yes-man of a momma's boy in trying to stop him disagreeing with her. This in turn left them vulnerable to the ambitions of Margaery Tyrell, who tries to drive a wedge between them and threatens her plans to rule as queen regent until Tommen was of age.
** She killed a high septon because he was a cat's paw Tyrion put into power to keep the faith in House Lannister's pocket, being a decent but easily manipulated man, because Cersei's paranoia meant she feared that Tyrion was out to get her and that guy was in on it. This leads to a more competent and devout high septon getting into power with ambitions of his own. She then let him raise his own army, creating another player to threaten House Lannister's precarious position and one unbeholden to politics, which leads to her arrest (though he was smart in the books and played Cersei like a fiddle, not to mention Cersei's undoing is a good thing - especially for everyone not allied with House Lannister).
** In the TV show, as revenge for the High Sparrow imprisoning her and Margaery taking her place as Queen (which is partly her fault in the first place, she makes the perfectly rational decision to blow them all the fuck up using magical napalm while they were at church for a trial. The end result: Pissing off nearly every person in the Seven Kingdoms who followed the Faith; driving Tommen (who was friends with the High Sparrow and loved Margaery dearly) to commit suicide via jumping out a window; and pushing a pissed Olenna Tyrell to withdraw all the house's support from King's Landing and declare for the resurgent House Targaryen alongside Dorne and the Sparrows outside of Kings Landing into a fervor at the Septon's martyrdom. Cersei and House Lannister now literally have no major allies left in Westeros sans the Freys, who aren't at all reliable and was destroyed by Arya along with the Boltons when their treachery outstripped the benefits. Unfortunately, she was still one step ahead and easily took out Houses Tyrell and Dorne, despite their efforts in backing the Targaryen, by using the Iron Bank to buy herself a mercenary force and recruiting Euron at the cost of losing Casterly Rock to her rivals (though this was helped by some internal team-killing from Oberyn's widow, you'd swear it's a bloody epidemic in that show).
** Also in the TV show, when Daenerys and her supports come to parley with Cersei's forces for help against the White Walkers and their zombie armies (bringing a captured zombie to Cersei's court as proof and cutting it up with all the pieces still attacking), Cersei did the stupidest possible thing and refused to support them, deciding she'd rather "let the dead eat them all". She ignored the fact that this would leave her on the receiving end of a curb-stomp battle from either the aforementioned Walkers (who would be bolstered by the dead from Daenerys' forces) or Daenerys' forces AND everyone still living in King's Landing who's had enough of her tyranny. This ultimately comes back to bite her when she kills Missandei and pushes Daenerys over the edge from lawful neutral to stupid evil as she gives no quarter to anyone in Kings Landing as the Dorathki, Unsullied and her dragon proceed to rape, pillage and burn down King's Landing, leaving no survivors including her and her brother Jaimie as they were crushed to death by the falling rubble.

* Arguably Tywin Lannister, while known for his image of being a deviously competent politician and general, his actions don't hold up to the hype under further scrutiny. His neurotic obsession with not having his house's reputation damaged leads him to condone and engage in acts of excessive cruelty and brutality that have long term negative consequences.
** Spurned Tyrion out of spite for his unintentional role in his wife's death - she died in childbirth. He did this for Tyrion's entire life, including annulling Tyrion's marriage to a peasant girl by having her gang-raped while forcing Tyrion to watch - and later join in (this act horrified even Tyrion's sword-for-hire Bronn, who said in Tyrion's shoes he'd have killed Tywin for that, father or not - note Bronn is an amoral mercenary who outright said he'd kill a baby for the right price). All this leaves the only one of his children who was both competent and legally available to inherit Casterly Rock with a burning hatred for Tywin.
** Sent Gregor Clegane after Elia Martell and her kids, planning for the children's death but not for Elia's death (he'd hoped to use her as leverage against the Dornish), resulting in House Martell despising House Lannister and his possible(though ultimately ineffectual) poisoning by Oberyn Martell with Widow's Blood (it stops up the bowels until the victim dies of sepsis, which may have been why he was on the shitter when Tyrion killed him).
** Ordered Gregor Clegane and the Brave Companions/Bloody Mummers mercenary company to run wild in the Riverlands, causing a major agricultural zone for the continent to drop in productivity during the onset of a winter that could last years. Those effected by the rampages of Gregor and the Bloody Mummers also started to join the Sparrows religious movement, which from a story perspective creates more opponents of House Lannister that have deep personal grievances with them (such as a peasant inkeeper whose son the Mummers murdered and whose daughter Gregor raped).
** Orchestrated the Red Wedding, shredding House Lannister's political image and credit throughout Westeros (nobody wants to negotiate with someone who doesn't follow the same rules of war as them, like say, obey a hospitality right that the entire continent respects).
** He was a major hypocrite to Tyrion. He berated Tyrion for whoremongering while using prostitutes himself. This last hurrah also got him killed, as he mouthed off at Tyrion when the latter had a loaded crossbow pointed at him while he was stuck on the toilet and had learnt of his ultimate betrayal.

* Gregor Clegane is a serial killer with severe anger control issues, having gone through three wives who died under suspicious circumstances. At his keep there's a high turnover rate among the servants, and even animals avoid his chambers. Before this, he maimed his brother Sandor - and would've killed him if three other people didn't intervene - and he's heavily implied to have murdered his sister and father, despite the father doting on him even when his evil started to become apparent.
** The circumstances surrounding him and his brother are as such: Gregor once caught his brother playing with one of Gregor's discarded toy soldiers when they were children. He took the logical next step of holding his brother's face over the fire, permanently disfiguring half his face and mentally scarring him, and from that point he's arguably stagnated into a phase of prolonged "adult childhood", based on this and his other actions.
** Before the story starts it's an open secret that he raped and murdered Rheagar's wife Elia Martell, even though he hadn't been ordered to do so. He also killed a baby, and though he'd been ordered to do so, the fact remains that [[Grimdark|he had no qualms about the deed and went so far as smashing its head against a wall]]. This bites him and the Lannisters in the ass BIG TIME later on, though he deserved it.
** After losing a jousting match, Gregor decapitates his own horse, then tries to kill his opponent, Loras Tyrell, and his own brother when the latter intervenes. Had Gregor succeeded, it's likely the Lannisters would've kissed any hope of an alliance with the Tyrells goodbye.
** The men who Gregor recruits as his hand-picked warriors aren't chosen for their intelligence or resourcefulness, just their fighting skills and sadism (not even loyalty, as they serve Gregor out of fear and desire plunder); the group essentially rape and torture random peasants to death for the lulz. This includes the prisoners from the taking of Harrenhal, many of whom were nobility and could be used as leverage in the war.
** Arguably when, before killing Oberyn, Gregor shouts a confession to his crime of murdering and raping Elia in front of all of the nobles in King's Landing. This would've put House Martell and House Lannister at open war if the Martells hadn't been already secretly plotting to destroy them, though this ''does'' push their schedule forward.
** For all that, there is at least some "justification" as to why this guy is kept around by House Lannister. He's a brutal warrior in every sense of the word who has an aura of fear, and for all his butchery, rapine, rage and blunt cruelty he's never threatened House Lannister directly and is (for want of a better word) content to be their pet beast.
** The logical conclusion of this and the damage from fighting Oberyn makes it painfully literal: he is now kept permanently addled by powerful cocktails of painkillers and other drugs, likely on purpose, to keep him useful as a warrior, albeit an effective husk of one. It is mentioned that milk of the poppy (opium in all but name) has basically no effect on him any more due to consuming it so much.

* Ramsay Bolton is the son of Roose, a cunning general who manipulated and back-stabbed his way into rulership of the North; unlike Roose, Ramsey lacks any strategic foresight and critical thinking, and is totally fearless and reckless with his actions, which Roose correctly points out will be his downfall if they are not curbed. This ends up coming across as more of an informed attribute due to the TV show's writing, but the result is ultimately the same. [[Fail|Shame he didn't listen to his old man, huh?]]
** He killed his half-brother, despite the fact that this also deprived his father of another heir, which in medieval-esque societies is important; the more offspring they have, the more like the noble family is to survive.
** His savage exploits are known across Westeros, and he continuously pisses off the other Northern lords by hunting down their subjects for fun. This is part of the reason why half of the Northern Houses rebel against Bolton overlordship. He chooses to flay Ironborn captives alive despite promising them clemency if they surrendered, along with turning Theon Greyjoy into his personal eunuch slave. This has ensured that the Ironborn will now fight to the death rather than sue for peace, and contemplate a full invasion of the North instead of merely raiding its settlements.
** In the books, after marrying the fake-Arya Stark (who everyone else thinks is the real one) he tortures her, threatens her and [[FATAL|tries to make her do certain things to his hunting dogs]]. This sets off the Northerners' [[Powder Keg of Justice]], causing an uprising against the Boltons that will likely end with Ramsay's and Roose's heads on spikes.
** He sent an assassin after Jon Snow. As Roose pointed out, Jon was the leader of a well-known and politically neutral organization, who's claim to the throne of House Stark was tenuous at best, and would've gone against his vows, a big deal in Westeros. Killing him would almost certainly create a martyr, or at least demonstrate to the other houses that House Bolton has no respect for neutrality.
** The TV version actually murdered his father in the middle of the war, fed his step-mother and infant half-brother to his dogs, and he'd also raped Sansa Stark beforehand after manipulating an arranged marriage between them. Yet he [[Mary Sue|somehow manages more (often downright insane) successes than his book counterpart]] in spite of acting like little more than a rabid dog raised in nobility (the infamous "twenty good men" scene where trained killers' armor and expertise suddenly become useless against a half-naked Ramsay comes to mind). **Unfortunately (for him), his fortune doesn't last, as being a team-killing fucktard ultimately got his own army wiped out before he was beaten to near-death by Jon Snow, culminatint in Sansa feeding him to his own dogs -- who were only hungry enough to turn on him because he'd starved them for a week beforehand in anticipation of feeding them the Starks.

* Slaver's Bay (aka ''Stupid Evil: The Civilization'')
** The neo-ghiscari civilization of slaver's bay is run by a bunch of decadent slave dealers who do nothing besides wax on about how great the 5 millennia dead old Ghiscari Empire was and leave their society in the bronze age in a world one step removed from [[Medieval Stasis]]
** Of the four cities of Slaver's Bay, two of them (Meereen and Yunkai) believe that a bunch of slaves with spears and shields led by fops on horseback or in chariots wearing linen vests and helmets made to accommodate their stupid hairdos constitute a proper army. After Yunkai gets its butt kicked by Dany when she brings a half decent army to the field which does not run at the first excuse, they decide that it would be a good idea to raise new slave armies that are [[What|chained together and fight on stilts]].
** One of them (Astapor) trains Unsullied elite spear slaves who obey any order given to them without question, which they sell and use for defense. The Masters of Astapor [[Derp|agree to sell all the Unsullied they've got to Dany]], who proceeds to have them sack their city and kill them.
***Admittedly, the prospect of owning a dragon, especially after they’re thought to be extinct for centuries and being the equivalent of a self-replenishing WMD, is an awfully tempting one given how new Unsullied are made each year. Despite that, it’s at extremely stupid that they neither questioned how they can control said dragon (leading to one Master burning to death seconds after grabbing the dragon’s chain) or if selling every Unsullied warrior-slave to the same person and leaving none to defend themselves is a good idea. They also never considered that the Unsullied, though trained to be obedient, might resent the brutality involved in their training ([[Grimdark|which included castrating them at a young age, sending aspirants into the city tasked with killing babies in front of their mothers to prove they'll follow even the vilest orders, giving them a puppy to care for in their first year then making them strangle it to death as a test of loyalty - killing those who fail this test, and making them take new names each day on pain of death - demeaning names like "black rat", "blue toad" or "red flea" - so they can't develop a sense of individual identity]]) and would seize a chance for vengeance (which Dany gave them).
** For no particular tactical reason, the leadership of Meereen decided to taunt an oncoming army by having child slaves nailed to mileposts to die along the road - a decision which backfires on them rather spectacularly.

* Daenerys Targaryen (show version).
** Show-Dany proudly takes her newly earned spot in this list with one action, but a major one, through bad writing. In the second last-episode she subjects the entire citizenry to being turned into dragonfire kindling no other reason than "Ships I somehow kinda forgot about killed one of mah dragons, captured and murdered muh friend and muh nephew doesn't want to fuck me." At that point, virtually nobody in King's Landing held much love or loyalty for Cersei and Danny would have likely be about to be received as a liberator by most of the common folk once the city surrendered but instead she goes "Dacarys" and does to them what her father tried to do.
** Don't get us wrong, signs of a dark, sadistic side to Daenerys were always there with the signpost punishment and a "pay evil unto evil" mentality" that shaded doubt onto her image as the Breaker of Chains. But with the way said signs were developed in the show (which is to say, not at all), it is beyond stupefying how she went from "Messiah, breaker of chains" to truly being her father's daughter in the grand span of ''two episodes''. It's no wonder everyone save the Unsullied (who themselves were retconned enough that they might as well be unthinking automatons now, though Grey Worm had the excuse of being distraught over Missandei's death) and Dothraki (who actually enjoy random acts of slaughter like this) turned on her the moment they saw what she has become and got her assassinated.
** To reiterate, while the signs were there the majority of this is due to bad writing. For one thing, in a televised interview the showrunners were asked why Daenerys didn't do anything about the Iron Fleet. In response, Beinoff nervously said she kind of forgot about them. That is almost but just barely not quite Dexter finale levels of bad writing. Even worse it has been wasted on such a spectacular crew and cast. Especially, well, literally everything except the writing. One things for sure, if GRRM intends to turn Dany evil and kill her off, he knows what NOT to do in ADOS (that is assuming TWOW, let alone ADOS, are ever finished).

===Other general examples===
* Strawman Villains in poorly written fiction across the board.
* Villains in Saturday morning cartoons and similar fare (e.g. Wacky Races, Captain Planet).
* [[Grimderp|Grimdark as a whole often suffers]] from characters who make things crappy just for the sake of making things crappy.
* [[Edgy|Edgelord]] characters by preteens/actual teens (or users with a similar enough mentality) on DeviantArt.
* The 'villains' of fringe-conspiracy theories would be stupid evil if they existed since their plans undermine their own power bases, have little to no tangible gain or draw attention by plastering their logo on everything. It's also weird that despite how cartoonishly evil they are thought of, they don't bother to kill anyone exposing the conspiracies while making it look like an accident. This is probably because there is some overlap with the Strawman characters.

===Other /tg/-relevant examples===
* Humans in science and fantasy fiction often end up being Stupid Evil when the (usually incompetent) writer wants to make a statement about discrimination. According to these tales, humans are apparently overly-panicky and violent psychopaths itching for an excuse to murder the shit out of other species. For instance, in [[Avatar]] the human army is portrayed as a bunch of jingoist lunatics who want to slaughter the peaceful Na'vi for the resources they need rather than trying to reap long-term benefits by making peaceful contact. The advent of [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] is in part a reaction to this phenomenon.
* Some followers of Chaos such as [[Firaeveus Carron]] can prove to be this most of the time.
* [[Lolth]] actually enforces Stupid Evil in her worshipers. Because of her the Drow spend 3 quarters of their energy fighting each other instead of defending themselves, which is a really bad idea since they live in an underground city under constant threat of being [[Rape|raped]] by [[Illithid]]s and [[Beholder|Beholders.]] In fact, when things get really bad she literally has to tell them to stop for a short period of time.
* The [[Skaven]] from [[Warhammer Fantasy]], whose rival clans always plan on backstabbing each other even if they're all fighting a mutual (and far worse) enemy. A perfect plan for them involves getting their own enemies and allies to kill each other, until they are the only one left to face the next enemy (keep in mind that "they" doesn't just mean rival clans either, in an apocalyptic scenario even their personal secretary is only barely less of an enemy than the hordes of the undead). As above, it takes the [[Horned Rat]], their god, as well as the invention of instant communication via the [[Farsqueaker]] to get their fuzzy little asses united.
* The Joker. Once merely a criminal mastermind with a chaotic, unpredictable bent and joke-themed weapons (like a joy buzzer that gives a lethal electric shock and a squirting flower that sprays acid), he's devolved as time goes on into a murder-happy rabid dog who kills for the jollies and because [[Gay|he gets off on being punched in the face by Batman]].
* Starscream from [[Transformers]]. He's too ambitious and egotistical to realize how good his position as Megatron's second-in-command is, and so spends much of his time trying to usurp his leader with predictable failure. He also tends to do things on the spur of the moment to satisfy his own ego, as demonstrated in ''Prime'' where he angrily takes credit for killing Arcee's best friend Cliffjumper ''while in handcuffs in front of Arcee'', simply because he doesn't want Airachnid stealing the credit for things he did.
* The Sith in the Star Wars universe suffer from this greatly, and it's a major reason they keep losing to the Jedi and failed to keep any of their empires intact long-term. In fact, one could argue that they're a perfect case study on why Stupid Evil is a bad idea:
** Firstly, whereas the Jedi code encourages understanding yet controlling your emotions (that way you take them into account, but they don't prevent you from doing what is necessary), the Sith code encourages embracing your emotions and indeed, many of the most powerful Sith like Darth Vader are incredibly emotionally damaged. Thus Sith tend to do things in the heat of the moment and often lack the patience needed to be truly effective. Darth Malak can't find Revan and the Ebon Hawk crew on a planet he has control of? Oh well better just ''level his own planet'' with Star Destroyers, costing himself thousands of workers and soldiers in his psychotic and desperate rush to off his old master.
** Secondly, the Sith code is built on a hyper-Darwinist, "survival-of-the-fittest" structure. While this sounds decent enough on paper, in practice it meant that the Sith ''constantly'' backstabbed each other in idiotic power plays, often leading to Sith killing each other more often than they killed Jedi. Crossing with the "overly emotional" thing above, their lack of patience often led to them betraying each other way before it was beneficial to do so. Darth Bane was the first major Sith Lord to realize how stupid and unsustainable this lifestyle was and did something about it for the benefit of the Order rather than themself. His "rule of two" may have led to the Sith population being lower than ever before or after, but at least it kept the Sith order alive and prevented most of them from slaughtering each other in pathetic attempts to gobble up more power.
*** It should be noted that even the Sith themselves violate or weasel their way around the Rule of Two every now and then. Darth Maul was alive at the same time as Dooku & Palpatine, and in the EU during Vader's time there were the Force-using "Hands of the Emperor" agents such as Mara Jade. They also have characters like Ventress who aren’t officially Sith Lords yet are trained just like one. So while it decreases their numbers by a lot, they find ways around even when they actually obey said rule. This again is an aversion of idiocy, as a spare is a good a idea when only two people are allowed.
*** Also don't get the idea that Darth Bane's plan was sensible or not-backstabby. He wiped out almost all of the sith in exchange for merely a part (though to be fair the survivors (read: the assholes who didn't help with the 300 year long galactic dark age after two and a half millenia of almost non stop war) policies lead to decline of the Jedi Order until they got Order 66'd) of the Jedi in an admittedly epic and arguably goddamn hilarious backstab, and part of the reason he did so wasn't because he was sure they'd fall into infighting- rather, Lord Kaan had most of them under his thumb thanks to psychic influence and strength- but because the Sith were acting in very un-sithy ways relying purely on strength of arms and unified armies rather than mastery of the dark side. Even when there was a very real chance the Sith could've won via these methods, he couldn't have that or slink off and make his rule of two on his own- he had to backstab everyone else first. Then, go figure, his sucessors ended up using those same pragmatic tactics until the Jedi declined enough to almost destroy in one blow.
** Thirdly and finally, Sith who engage in too much evil and envelope themselves too deeply in the Dark Side often suffer from an inability to properly sense the Light Side. This alienation of the Light is what lead to the otherwise brilliant Palpatine's death. He alienated altruism and good so utterly that he was not only unable to sense Luke Skywalker's presence during a critical moment, but he was also unable to sense that his apprentice Darth Vader still had some morality in him. Thus he attempts to tortuously kill Luke and is killed himself when he fails to expect Vader to attack him out of paternal feelings.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Alignment]]