News RIP Bioware

[Detached Nacelle]

EA have officially after 30 years shut Bioware down. Their later offerings over the past decade have been met with mixed reception and various internal turmoils but their legacy will continue to shine on.

The games Bioware produce are not to the taste of the new owners so this being an influence would not surprise me.

 

[Jax]

When it comes to EA titles in the future - it's the pirate life for me. Fuck that POS of a company. Mass Effect is my favourite IP and to cancel it, kills me.

Sell the studio and IP.

 

[eastman23]

The writing was on the wall. EA's new owners and all that debt means that the only focus is going to be on anything that be excessively monetized (ie. The Sims, mobile, etc) or where IP holders are paying a bunch of money for a game (ie. Star Wars, etc).

It's too bad. After playing through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition a few months ago, I was starting to look forward to see what they would come up with for the new game in the works.

Don't have interest in anything else that EA has going on. SimCity and Command and Conquer are long gone, and that was about it for me.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

I was really unsure about Mass Effect 5, the chances that it was going to be a soulless nostalgia fest like Picard season 3 felt quite high to me.

Would have been nice to have been wrong but we'll never know. Maybe someone will reveal what the plot was going to be even if it was still only in the planning stages 6 years after being announced.

What little EA is likely to produce in the future that will be of any interest to me will wait until hefty sales. Battlefield isn't really my thing and I have less than zero interest in sport games so there won't be a lot made by them for me.

 

[John Clark]

Seemed fairly certain it was coming
At one point, if it was a Bioware RPG, it was a must buy for me.

That said, because of hardware, I was waiting on Veilguard (and a lower price would have been nice). Not got that yet.

Beside Mass Effect continuations, I really wanted a Jade Empire 2

 

[Owain Taggart]

It was sadly inevitable. It's like a family member who you know has an illness with it only being a matter of time before they pass. Bioware has long since been limping along on life-support. I think what really threw them off-track was Anthem. You can't expect an RPG developer to perform in a completely different space than what they're used to. It reminds me of what happened to the developer that released the Gollum game, a game developer that was solely used to developing point-and-click adventures that were given an open-world project and expecting them to deliver on all fronts. They were led to fail by putting them into an impossible situation then leaving them out to dry.

My guess is that EA will sell off a few studios then will strictly be pumping out its sports games. It will likely end up selling Hazelight Studios, developers of A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction, all of which are two-player co-op games and are must-plays! It's really a unique developer that I don't see any other mimic due to its focus on two-player co-op.

 

[Reverend]

Aaaaand the ME5 trailer has leaked.

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Coincidental timing I'm sure. Not at all the devs desperately hoping for an IP buyout. Would be nice though.

 

[Jax]

That trailer looks interesting.

 

[icelus]

This is depressing. My life revolved around Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age for years.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Liara looks older so this was probably set centuries later so would have been a clean break in terms of story. Which probably would've been met with a lot of complaints from people who just wanted the trilogy characters back.

A Quarian definitely means they would have chosen either their victory or the peace ending to Rannoch. Unlikely to have annoyed many people in my opinion.

Krogan are so long lived that there'd still be plenty around regardless of the choice on Tuchanka so no clues there.

Protagonist would have been fully customisable but former Alliance soldier would be the background there. I can see Shepard clone criticisms.

Synthesis was definitely not the ending here. You might be able to wangle a control ending out of this and just say the Shepard Reapers have up and left by now. But it seems more than likely they would have decided on following the destroy ending. I can see this irking a few people.

I think this trailer would have been met with a more divisive reception had Bioware not been shuttered honestly.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

…money for a game (ie. Star Wars, etc).

EA pays Disney, the NFL and others for licenses to their IP’s.

 

[Jax]

More info...

• Set 600+ years after the Reaper War

• You play as a customizable N7 agent

• Instead of being a walking gun rack, you're a cross between John Wick and James Bond

• Shepard's legacy preserved, regardless of your ending

• A galaxy divided into three major factions• Humanity, Krogan, Batarians, and more allied together

• Council races forming their own alliance

• The Geth emerging as a third superpower

• A galactic Cold War instead of another Reaper style invasion with a shadowy adversary• Geth-built megastructures

• Connections between the Milky Way and Andromeda

• Experimental technology implanted in you as a unique point of difference• Hacking and manipulating the environment

• See through walls, identify systems, remotely trigger hazards and more

• Handcrafted missions like ME1-3

• But with Hitman-style freedom in how you complete them

• Brutal close-range executions

• Squadmates who can clash with each other

• Romance wasn't being sanitised

• Liara returns - now an incredibly powerful Asari Matriarch

I also saw a picture someone which seem to indicate someone wss attempting to make there own Reaper though it looked 100% organic.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Going to say it, I'm kind of okay we're not getting this. This game sounds like it would have been really bland.