Bioware

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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 (actually the just published that, Black Isle studios made that), Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. They are currently working on making a Warhammer Fantasy MMORPG

(Note, the above table is not fully accurate. For example, regarding Mass Effect, you also have to travel to the planet Ilos and the Citadel space station. Though this example could have been left out due to the spolieriffic nature of those two).

During the early 2000s, Bioware was bought by EA and since then their games have been slowly declining in quality, and they have also been getting massive amounts of (often) bullshit and terrible DLC.

An example of this slow degradation would be the Mass Effect series. The original was a masterpiece, with characters, story, gameplay, and presentation all top-notch. There were a couple of DLC missions, such as "Bring Down the Sky" which involved stopping an anti-human terrorist from using an asteroid to destroy a city, which were very gripping. The second game, though good, did show a drop in character and story development. 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. Also, there's only so much data you can put on a disk, and ME2 still required TWO DISKS to fit in the content. That's not including the DLC which includes a few missions (such as the inventive and tragic "Project Overlord" mission, where you try to shut down a human/computer hybrid before it causes a technological apocalypse ala Y2K bug meets Skynet. However, not everything is what it appears to be.), and extra squad mates (a betrayed mercenary leader and a professional thief, both who are reasonably well developed characters). The third game, while it had some good elements, was a big step down from the first two. It rendered several choices from the first two games redundant, an story-essential character was reduced to DLC and, worst of all, a sub-par ending that requires DLC to make any sense at all (though Bioware at least acknowledged the problem and made the DLC free, which is something many other video game companies wouldn't have done).

Some say the series is in the process of devolving into a Gears of War clone with more dialog, complete with multiplayer mode. There is even talk of Bioware they're making a sequel, even though they haven't even resolved the main plot to the original trilogy in a way that makes sense and is not just the most literal example of a deus ex machina ever written coming out of absolutely nowhere, spouting bullshit that invalidates the entire plot of the trilogy up to that point, and forces you to choose from three equally unappealing outcomes that have nothing to do at all with the rest of the game. Instead, the writers just decided to call their consumers idiots who wouldn't know a good story if it hit them on the head (and still insist that the people who hated the ending were a small minority in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary). Ironically Gears of War ended up being being better than Mass Effect in regards to story. Everything has a clear set up, (ex the secret third faction was hinted at in the first game) The story ending weapon works the way its said to and the ending was clear.

Dragon Age is a more blatant example of this degradation. While far from being the grimdark spiritual successor 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 character development was good- but 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. 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 was the final nail in the coffin- the story veered from one plot thread to the next without any rhyme or reason while being completely disconnected to the previous game, all the major characters were either idiots, one-dimensional, or just plain unlikeable, and the gameplay consisted of running through the same reskinned dungeons over and over again, all problems exacerbated by the fact that their 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 making. Dragon Age III's developers have openly announced that the game would be "heavily influenced by" (read: a ripoff of) Skyrim, which says a lot about how far they've fallen.

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