Editing Bioware (section)

===Dragon Age===
Bioware's "we don't need those folks at D&D to do a High Fantasy game!" Unfortunately, the Dragon Age series is an even more blatant example of the degradation mentioned above. 

====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 two years 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) called the Blight; they're even described as a "living plague".  This originated from a group of powerful mages who travelled through the Fade (a spirit realm like the [[Warp]], but connected to dreams and 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 (the setting's Creator God who may or may not exist - this ambiguity a deliberate move by the writers).  The mages actions turned it into the Black City, a place so dangerous no one who's gone there since them has ever come out, [[Malal|including demons, who actively avoid it]].  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 - Blight-infected ancient and powerful spirits whose physical forms look like dragons, and when this happens it causes an invasion/natural disaster/epidemic also called a Blight.  During the first one, after much bloodshed and 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, cultural, political and religious differences have divided the peoples of the world and do so between each Blight, and things are 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 peasant who killed a human nobleman for raping your friend to being Dwarf royalty framed for fratricide by your younger brother). When a Grey Warden leader rescues you, you've proven 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.  With the nations threatened by a Blight and most of the realms engulfed in civil war, you have been chosen to unite the shattered lands and slay the current archdemon once and for all. The setting itself has a few notable differences from your standard run-of-the-mill High Fantasy world, including [[Inquisition|a clerical order of Templars hell-bent on keeping mages in line]], [[Skaven|cutthroat Dwarven politics]], [[Witcher|Elves being second-class citizens and a shadow of their former selves]] and an interesting threat in the form of the aformentioned Darkspawn.

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, and is easily not just the least beloved entry in the trilogy, but the least beloved thing Bioware did prior to its decline period (more on that later). The story had some interesting ideas and angles (the main character's family being rags-to-riches immigrants, Templar/Mage conflicts, etc.), but too often veered from one plot thread to the next without any rhyme or reason while being completely disconnected to the previous game. It 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?]] 

Some characters, mostly Isabella, Varrick, and the player's hot/cute sister Bethany went over well, but overall, DA II's story, characters, and world are generally seen as a step down from the first game even if you ''aren't'' a hater. If you ''are'' a hater, then many of the characters were either idiots, one-dimensional, or just plain unlikable.

Gameplay fared worse, being 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 much of anything; the narrator (the aforementioned Varrick), 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 [[Grimdark|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 of the more recent Bioware games by a solid margin, 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 prevalent in the previous two games has been largely replaced with a glorious [[noblebright]] mostly-outdoor setting (dang if it doesn't look gorgeous though). Much of the shittiness of the DA world still exists, but its all moved to the periphery so as not to sour the fun times. Put a different way, if DAO felt like Lord of the Rings if it was written by George RR Martin or Andrzej Sapkowski, then DAI feels a bit like a Dragon Age entry written by Disney (the characters even sing to lift their spirits at one point). Which isn't to say that its ''bad''. It just doesn't have the Grimdark edge that was part of what fans loved about the first entry.

The storyline is based on the player character accidentally becoming the [[Mary Sue|Chosen One]] by accidentally picking up a shiny green orb 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.

While the main game doesn't add much to the setting's lore (such as the lore around the BBEG), the DLC missions add '''a lot''' of lore to the setting.  The first is a mission to help a Dwarf realm plagued by earthquakes and Darkspawn where you learn more about the origins of the Dwarfs and Lyrium (the setting's equivalent of [[Warpstone]]).  The second is one where you fight the fanatical followers of a tribal war god while trying to unearth the lost history of the Inquisition (it reveals more about the nature of the human vs Dalish elves conflict).  The third takes place after the main game and has the biggest implications of all in the setting, where you start by dealing with political blowback against the Inquisition and end up in a counter-espionage move against qunari assassins and conclude by meeting an elven god whose plans to help the elves endangers the world.

====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 elven god introduced in the previous game and their 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 about identity politics, 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 "Anthem" 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, while still hoping frantically that it will instead be Bioware's second wind, something they could desperately use right about now.