General Gaming News

[DjchunKfunK]

I kind of liked the combat in the first Mass Effect game, the move to more of a cover based shooter never really worked for me and is part of the reason why the first game remains my favourite.

[Sly Boots]

I kind of liked the combat in the first Mass Effect game, the move to more of a cover based shooter never really worked for me and is part of the reason why the first game remains my favourite.

Have you not tried replaying it in recent times? The gunplay is just about serviceable, but the biotic stuff is hugely awkward.

The addition of the jetpack in MEA was a massive addition. It's not really a cover shooter at all, as the emphasis is on mobility.

[DjchunKfunK]

I kind of liked the combat in the first Mass Effect game, the move to more of a cover based shooter never really worked for me and is part of the reason why the first game remains my favourite.

Have you not tried replaying it in recent times? The gunplay is just about serviceable, but the biotic stuff is hugely awkward.

The addition of the jetpack in MEA was a massive addition. It's not really a cover shooter at all, as the emphasis is on mobility.

No because I don't think any of the ME games would fare well on replay, the combat was clunky at the time and it's probably only got worse since. ME combat is very similar to GTA combat, both were way behind the genre standard but were excused this because of their status and other bits in the game making up for it.

[Lee]

ME1 felt like a RPG to me (better villian and whole what the fuck is killing races and being fresh) after that it went into shooter territory and for me that's not what I like. Story in the second was better but third oh boy did that combat start to grate that I never got past the 2nd or 3rd hour into it.

[Wrathbone]

For me all three are very much RPGs first and shooters second. Saying that, in 3 there are some great set piece fights.

[Raid]

Bioware have announced that they've stopped work on the Anthem rework.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021 ... lly-ceased

It's almost as if nobody should trust a word out of the mouths of Live Service developers, because it doesn't matter if you've already given them your money; they don't give a shit if that revenue stream dries up.

[Sly Boots]

Omni-shambles

[Mantis]

Can't even remember the last game developed by a core EA studio that I actually enjoyed. It was plainly obvious from the moment this one was announced that it was just a soulless cash grab. They blame Covid but I imagine they looked at the numbers still playing and realised that it wasn't worth over a year of development time to try and bring people back. Clearly they didn't have much faith in their own product. Good riddance to it.

[Wrathbone]

At least they've conceded that dragging it on would be a further waste of everyone's time and money. To be fair, though, I never played Anthem so I can't speak to how rubbish it is, only to how rubbish it looked from the outside. It's the only Bioware RPG I've never played.

Ultimately live service games are doomed to be short-lived in the grand scheme of things. I still play many old RPGs regularly, including Bioware's back catalogue. In 20+ years I'll still be able to play BG or KOTOR (and I hope I will be), but it seems unlikely that anyone will be able to play Anthem in 5 years unless they make a solely single player version available offline. Even then, it's not going to be the game as intended. I find it difficult to invest my interest in something as huge and complex as a typical Bioware RPG knowing that it'll be gone before long.

[Sly Boots]

Read a tweet yesterday from Jason Schreier (sp), saying that the calamity of Anthem has made EA change their plans for Dragon Age 4. Apparently it was originally going to be another live-service game, but they're now making it a proper single-player RPG.

One positive to come out of Anthem, at least.

[Wrathbone]

Good grief, they've actually learned a lesson!

[DjchunKfunK]

Read a tweet yesterday from Jason Schreier (sp), saying that the calamity of Anthem has made EA change their plans for Dragon Age 4. Apparently it was originally going to be another live-service game, but they're now making it a proper single-player RPG.

One positive to come out of Anthem, at least.

I think he said it was more the success of Fallen Order that showed singleplayer only games could be successful with the failure of Anthem also being a contributor but not the main factor.

[Sly Boots]

Read a tweet yesterday from Jason Schreier (sp), saying that the calamity of Anthem has made EA change their plans for Dragon Age 4. Apparently it was originally going to be another live-service game, but they're now making it a proper single-player RPG.

One positive to come out of Anthem, at least.

I think he said it was more the success of Fallen Order that showed singleplayer only games could be successful with the failure of Anthem also being a contributor but not the main factor.

Mentions both and gives equal weight to each:

The diverging trajectories of two recent games changed the minds of Wilson and other executives at EA, according to the people. One was Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a single-player game released in November 2019 that won critical acclaim and outperformed EA’s sales expectations, reaching more than 10 million players in its first four months. The second was BioWare’s Anthem, a multiplayer game that was widely panned when it launched. The games showed that single-player games could still be lucrative and that BioWare, traditionally known for its single-player, role-playing games, might be better off returning to its roots. A spokesman for EA declined to comment.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ultiplayer

[Mantis]

I would go into DA4 with a degree of caution following this news. Sure, it'll be a single player experience now, but games that see sudden shakeups mid development seldom turn out too well. No doubt there will be a lot of remnants of the live service element in there, and if they started with shared multiplayer in mind then in all likelihood the story will have taken a back seat and that's not something you can easily just change after years of development.

In all likelihood what you'll see with it is a multiplayer title at its core after years of development where the core of the content was rushed in over the last 18 months.

[Sly Boots]

Oh absolutely. After recent Bioware titles have disappointed I'm left very much in the 'wait and see' camp with all their future games.