They've really lost the right to be called bioware at this point. Almost all of actual bioware has left or been canned.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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It really is a ship of Theseus question at this point, huh.
If you replace the quality parts with manure bricks, at what point has it become the shit of Theseus?
At least with the ship of theseus it's an inanimate object. You could replace any board or sail and still consider it the ship in question. Is it still in fact the ship of theseus? That's debatable but you could say that it still represents the ship.
In this case BioWare is made up of thinking human beings all that are motivated by different factors. You can't replace one person with another and expect the same of them even if you got someone who followed the initial person's logic as closely as possible, they'd still end up with different results to the first.
That is if EA even cares enough to replace the previous developers with like minded individuals which I highly doubt. BioWare of old, make great games while telling the best stories possible. After modern day EA's influence? Make as much money as you can while puppeteering as the BioWare of old.
That's how I see it anyways.
You can’t replace one person with another and expect the same of them even if you got someone who followed the initial person’s logic as closely as possible, they’d still end up with different results to the first.
but this is... how businesses work. No business is the same people ALL the time. i don 't know why people expect any different here. and the quality of writing has suffered as of late, so why not get new blood in? i really don't understand what the issue is here.
I think just using % solves the silly Theseus question entirely. It is 30% original. Bam, no confusion
What if you replace each piece of the original ship with an identical piece? What if you use all of the removed pieces to build an identical ship? Which one is then the "real" ship?
What if you replaced half the pieces and used the replaced parts to build a new ship
What if you had a time machine and sent a ship made out of original parts back in time then swapped half of the parts between the two ships?
Will the older pieces immediately rot to dust because the older ship already had those parts swapped out in its past, so the older pieces are actually trapped in a time loop, but since they keep getting older they just disappear, but it's ok because you have the new pieces from the past so you're left with a ship with new pieces and slightly older pieces?
So I could have 3 original ships of Theseus?
.... If you have 33% of the original ship left. What makes you think there are 3 original ships. It's like you're trying to confuse yourself. If you took 33% of the original ship to make a new one, you did just that. Being vague isn't profound
What's vague? You can divide the ship into 3 and replace the missing pieces for each third. You now have 3 ships with 33% of the original, all of which fit your criteria
The original ship is where the pieces are coming from, the new ship are made from those pieces. This is sooooo dumb to be arguing. Just be more specific and no issues.
That's the story of almost all EA studios. Respawn afaik has kept their senior staff but also have expanded too much for me to believe there's a "Respawn identity" anymore.
What's funny that happened with Bioware and Criterion, too.
Respawn has only made like, five games? Two of which are licensed IP and not any good. They have one great game in TF2. There was never a "respawn identity". Hell the company was started by old Infinity Ward people.
Their Jedi games weren't any good?
Literally everything Respawn has made has been good.
Seems sadly on point. Their M.O. since at least as far back as Westwood (RIP Command & Conquer) has been to acquire a name brand, sap it for short term nostalgic profit, then dismantle usable assets. I love Dragon Age: Origins... and to some extent Inquisition, but damn if she ain't what she used to be.
Even playing through Mass Effect 1 > 2 > 3 back to back has been a challenge for me. The games just get simpler as you go along and it is so frustrating.
And I'm not talking about just the talent systems and looting etc, the fucking dialog gets to a point where sometimes 2-3 of the options will give the same result, and ugh. Ruins so much of it for me.
You make a good point. Is there a life-tree of devs that shows their companies and games? It'd love to see those art directors names we know across the different devs and publishers they worked for but also the lesser known names that really make great games what they are.
Hmm. It'd be interesting to go through game credit screens and build a database to try to predict good games.
There's MobyGames, but it's often out of date or missing information.
So, is the writing staff getting replaced by ChatGPT or any other LLM?
Probably just less experienced writers that can be paid less and pushed around more. Thus leading to the continual quality reduction of all modern media.
a sidegrade compared to recent output, but a regression from their classics
RIP the next Mass Effect. :<
Honestly only room for improvement here. The OG writer for ME wrote ME1 & 2 with ME3 being a guy who supposedly squabbled with him over details and abruptly changed course and retcons, and some even trying to put some of the worst ideas of Andromeda as stuff he passed on for them to use (note: this last one is mostly speculation without real proof to best of my knowledge)
Recent, last 10 years or so, Bioware games have not had the quality of writing they were known for in the 90s and 00s, with some charitable takes on TORs overall writing as being very shotgun approach and seeing what sticks and the fans react well to rather than a very clear end point in mind from the start.
RIP Dreadwolf.
It's a shame what happened to Bioware, great story tellers only to get canned because they didn't make enough money for papa EA.
They'll probably get an LLM to write their game plots now. 🙄
The Reapers have won.
This is not good news. Seems like Bioware gets to be more of a support studio for EA from now on
Kinda has been for a while tbh
All these studios are ships of Theseus at this point
Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark and Shadows of Undrentide were peak Bioware titles, IMO. The absolute pinnacle of their writing.
"Why do we need writers on staff all the time? They can just write the story and then we can fire them! What's the worst that could happen? We have to do millions of dollars worth of rework because we didn't pay someone five figures to stick around 24/7 and modify the story to fit the efforts we've already put in? Pshh..."