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The History of BioWare
Posted by
Zonk
on Monday November 19, @05:31PM
from the our-delicious-northern-bounty dept.
from the our-delicious-northern-bounty dept.
It seems somehow appropriate, given the day, to link over to a historical perspective on the developer BioWare. Eurogamer took a look back at the house the doctors built to give us some insight on where the company came from, and where it's going. "The modding community had always rallied around Baldur's Gate, so Neverwinter Nights wisely shipped with the game's toolset available and ready for use by fans. Improved quests were soon blooming all over the internet, like so much role-playing lichen. BioWare also supported the game with their own official expansion packs, and later through smaller downloadable modules, while the game brushed seductively alongside the world of the MMORPG with a hefty multiplayer component that enabled players to join up across the internet to tackle the main story."
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Mass Effect Review 147 comments
Some two years after the 'next generation' of console games began, I've finally had a 'next-gen' experience. I've never met a BioWare game I didn't like (even liked Jade Empire , if you'll recall), and the much anticipated, hotly discussed Mass Effect is my game of the year ... which is not to say it's perfect. Gamers hoping for crystalline purity will be disappointed by, among other things, graphical pops, lengthy load times, and some occasionally stupid AI. It doesn't matter. Warts and all, this voyage to the edge of the galaxy and back is some of the best storytelling I've ever experienced in a game. It's like living a movie, a good one, where you decide the ending in a deeply meaningful way. Read on for my impressions of humanity's first steps onto the galactic stage.
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Post-Mortem: Bioware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:EA Cliche (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday February 20 2007, @08:36AM)
Of course, had Bioware been bought out by Nintendo, we could have expected to see:
1) "Lovable" mascot characters running all over every game from the moment the first intro screen flashes up.
2) Menus that look and feel like they were designed in 1980, with sound effects that appear to have been produced on a cheap keyboard synthesiser of a similar vintage.
3) Voice acting? What voice acting? All you need is a bunch of random squeaks and twitters. Surprised nobody yet released an epic science-fiction RPG that sounds like the Teletubbies?
4) A soundtrack that might, just might, have been passable on the SNES.
5) Mass Effect: Red and Mass Effect: Blue. If you want to see the entire game, make sure you buy both versions!
What a shitty article (Score:2, Insightful)
Next paragraph: They made a game! Next paragraph: They made another game! Rinse, repeat.
This is merely a listing of each game they've made, not much of a "history" at all. How did they start they company? Who were the early employees? How did they come to work with Pyroteck? How did they raise the capital to start a company? How did they learn the basics of computer programming? What were their early influences? What was the role of each founder? What was their first office like? How did it change as they grew? What was/is the corporate culture like?
Simply list all the Bioware games, write a quick summary review of each game, and you have this article. History, my ass. Slashdot, why are you wasting my time with this crap? I have better article downstairs in my cat's litter box. Nice pick, there, Zonk.
Have they gotten better? (Score:2)
IMHO all their cred comes from Baldur's Gate II. And that cred is well deserved. BG2 is still (imho) one of the best games (let alone best RPG's) ever made.
Neverwinter Nights OTOH, never made anyone's top 10 list. And KOTOR was fun, but the criticisms of "too easy", "too boring", "too limited" were all too frequent to make it a real contender for longevity -- although I did enjoy the hell out of it.
I have high hopes for Mass Effect -- but I can't say that I'm a fan of BioWare's evolution. To me they'll always be the guys that made some beyond-perfect AD&D games a few years back. Since then they've pushed out in new directions that may have scored big points with the console crowd -- but haven't really impressed the hardcore gaming set.
Re:BioWare No Big Loss For Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
Re:thats sexy....i guess..... (Score:2)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
The days of assembly language are long gone, my son. You need to speak plainly of object interfaces and naughty bits for youngsters to understand you.
Re:BioWare No Big Loss For Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
You seriously expect every bit of dialogue to have an impact on the outcome of the game? In what alternate reality do you think BioWare, or any developer, has the magic wand to make that happen?