I try not to doompost, because I greatly dislike it. What's the point, you know? Why bother wasting time just complaining about something without being willing to engage in discussion about any positive aspects of it. It's a self-defeating argument and behaviour, basically. The first to doompost are the ones who used to be fans, and that's exactly the case with me; I’ve doomposted about BioWare IRL so many times it’s become a recurring joke among my friends, “how long until Octopus starts talking about Dragon Age then gets sad?” Usually it takes me about half an hour, maybe an hour before I’m talking about how lame Solas turned out to be, or how the cowards at BioWare Montreal never gave us the female Turian sex scene we were promised in Andromeda.
What do they look like under their armour? You promised us we’d see. I’m not even into this for some weird sex stuff, I just actually want to know what they look like from an anatomical standpoint. Show me, you cowards!
Show me her legs, cowards! I want to see what their weird knees look like!
What was I talking about?
But now, I’m just tired of it all. What prompted this apathy? A headline of the EA CEO, on record, saying in a financial meeting that they believe Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to hit projections because there weren’t enough “shared-world” features in it, aka some form of live-service features. That is so profoundly ridiculous of a statement to say that you couldn’t make it up; you could gather the best and greatest comedy writers of past, present and future and they could not collectively write the sheer absurdity of that statement. It’s buffoonery of such density and weight that you could mistake it for a neutron star if you squint at it, and this guy has a yearly salary of reportedly $25 mil.
That statement was said about a game that was first cancelled by EA because it didn’t have any live-service monetization, then was restarted a year later as a live-service game, and then was cancelled again by EA because they didn’t want it to be a live-service game anymore, then was restarted again as a single player game that they felt so confident in that they started showing off publicly with a reveal video and some concept art; then, after this, they ended up scrapping almost everything they had of that build and then we got Veilguard. Chasing the ‘live-service’ trend has famously never worked for so many companies that it’s transcended being a meme at this point, and become a fundamental law of the universe; “hark, for every one successful live service game, there will be twenty failures. If thou aren’t Destiny 2, or maybe a Warframe or I guess WoW as MMO’s are live service games by definition, you will most likely fail and it may even be a historic level failure like Concord. So it will forever be.” And yet, they keep chasing it.
Normally, I’d tear into that headline (that little spiel wasn’t even surface level of BioWare doomposter Octopus), because again it is so flabbergasting and confounding; but I’m just tired, man. All I said was “meh” when I first read it. I just can’t care anymore. But I want to care about BioWare, so I’m not going to keep doomposting, or keep being apathetic to some completely unfathomably out-of-touch CEO; instead, I want to talk about the good stuff. I want to look back at the BioWare I loved, not its current shambling corpse being kept alive out of corporate greed and ritual necromancy. I’m going to break the cycle of the whole ‘BioWare is FINISHED!” talking point that’s been repeated over and over again by doomposters for every game release since Mass Effect 3 (I only started around Andromeda, so give me some credit). I don’t want to doompost anymore, so let’s actually talk about what made BioWare so great. So behold; my rants about some of my favourite BioWare games. I’m not going to get into specific game mechanics or history or anything like that, so don’t expect these to be mini-reviews or something of that nature. They are just the musings of a sad, jaded BioWare fanboy trying to reignite the spark within by talking about 4 iconic games.
Dragon Age: Origins; The Warden Was A Baller, Man
The mythology of the series is well crafted and dense enough that people are still pouring over it and discussing it. What I liked the most about it, at least in the first game, is that it kept a lot of that mythology ‘mystical’ in a sense by not giving it a definitive answer in-universe. What happened to the elven gods? Is the Black City of the Fade real, and did the ancient Tevinter magisters corrupt it with their presence or was it already corrupted before they got there? Was Andraste really influenced by the spirit of Mythal, and really speaking to the Maker? Why do the dwarves not have a connection to the Fade? Even in the lore, these concepts are presented as being largely unknown, and I always liked how you’d hear conflicting stories from the Chantry or the Tevinters about how the darkspawn came to be; it made it feel that much more real, like actual mythology diluted over time and retellings.
The game absolutely nails that sense of scale and ‘lived in’ quality to it’s world, which is very good because the game unfortunately looks like this;
There’s a grand total of I think 5 different armour models you’ll see time and time again. Even for its time, the game looked rough.
I read a lot of people grouping Dragon Age: Origins into BioWare’s overuse of the ‘chosen one’ trope, which doesn’t make perfect sense to me (also, I don't think they've overused the trope to begin with). The Bhaalspawn of Baldur’s Gate was 100% a chosen one, and you could maybe argue Sheppard from Mass Effect 1 is since they are the only character other than the main villain who ‘received’ the vision from the Prothean beacon which starts the whole plot, but to me the Warden of Origins isn’t a ‘chosen one’. They’re of course the most important person in the room given that they’re the player character, but outside of that there’s no real significance to them; they’re not a child of a god, or the last of the spirit monks, and theoretically anyone else could do their job assuming they drank some gross darkspawn blood and suvived. They are just one of the last Ferelden Grey Wardens, and they’ve got an Archdemon to kill and a traitorous general to deal with (who also did nothing wrong, by the way).
Speaking of the player character, one of the things I still routinely bring up in my Dragon Age discussions is just how insane you could make them act. I think Origins has the most amount of possible decisions of a BioWare game that can affect pretty major outcomes, and it’s also the most unhinged and straight up sociopathic in its ‘evil’ choices. You can play the Warden as a complete lunatic. Here’s an example; you find your way to a Dalish (elves who wander around and live as hippies, essentially) camp as part of the story, and meet a guy who’s trying to woo his elf crush. He of course asks you for help with this, as you’re of course the player character. You can go talk to her, and do one of three things; talk him up, say that he thinks she’s cruel and ugly, or just seduce her yourself by badmouthing him. You can then go back to the guy and tell him that you ‘seduced’ her, including a potential dialogue option saying you were just ‘sampling the goods’ which causes him to yell that you ruined his life and run away. It’s unhinged, and I actually struggle to think of other games that let you be that cruel for no reason. There’s way more hilarious evil choices (and most are arguably more morally worse of course), but that’s the perfect example to me; it conveys just how pointlessly callous you can be without any cause.
Player agency at its finest.
This is mainly about the first game, but I will say a single comment each about the other games in the series as a Dragon Age bonus round;
Dragon Age 2; I both love and hate this game in equal measure. It feels like for every really good idea that it steps forward with, it later stumbles back an equal step with something bad. I like the system where you can get rivalry or friendship points with your companions based on what you do, which affects how they react to you. This creates different experiences with them and makes the role-playing feel more genuine, but then again one of your companions is Fenris. I will defend this game any day of the week, and I will die on the hill for it. It’s complicated, like a strained cyclical relationship where both people aren’t sure why they’re still going but then they do something nice for you and you’re dragged back in.
Inquisition; I used to dislike this game back when it first came out, but I have I think softened a little bit on it after coming back to it after playing Veilguard. The combat is still terrible, it’s obvious they were chasing a bunch of trends with the silly resource gathering and empty crafting. I hate the war table, but the companions make the game and there are some solid new story elements introduced with it mixed with some equally disappointing ones.
Veilguard; no.
Origins was BioWare going at it with all cylinders firing, and a big inspiration for the game came from them wanting to make a spiritual successor to their old Infinity Engine D&D games. My favourite D&D class? The monk. What’s this have to do with anything, like I’m trying to force a transition into the next game? Well, my answer is;
Jade Empire; Spirit Monks and Lotus Assassins, Oh My
The art design for this game is so ****ing good.
Jade Empire never quite gets the credit I think it deserves, and it’s a shame because I think it’s pretty damn neat. This was the first non-Baldur’s Gate BioWare game I played, and I bought it without any knowledge of what it even was, or that BioWare even made it, just because I heard it had cool martial art stuff in it.
The game has a great sense of style to it, and they pulled off the aesthetic very well. It’s mostly based on Eastern style martial arts and stylings mixed with some unique visual design elements. It has some really good monster and supernatural designs, and I’ve always found the design of the ghosts with their weird glowing veins particularly cool. It has some fantastic worldbuilding of course, being a BioWare game, but focuses towards being a more action heavy game befitting the martial art adventure inspiration.
As for the gameplay, it’s perfectly fine. It has some unique elements such as the combo system where you could instantly kill some enemies in an explosion of blood by hitting them with certain styles then ‘detonating’ them with the strong attack of another, and the use of your character’s Focus stat to either slow down time or use powerful weapon styles. It has just enough to stand out, but it isn’t an exceptional combat system; this was almost BioWare’s slogan until the second Mass Effect, or arguably Dragon Age: Origins.
Where Jade Empire really shines is the storyline, and this is what I think never gets its due. The storyline is tight, never dipping into many side tangents or overly long side quests, and its pacing of reveals is perfect. You play as the kung fu prodigy student of the great Master Li, and discover that you are the last of the ‘spirit monks’, defenders of the thin veil between the afterlife and the living world which has weakened since their destruction. Without giving anything away, the game has a really good series of twists near the end with the biggest being relatively similar to the famous BioWare twist in another earlier game, and I'm sure some of you know what I'm referring to. Twists are hard to do effectively and cleanly, but BioWare clearly understood the way. The twist is right in front of you the whole time, but you don't have the necessary context or information until it's sprung to see it; then, everything makes complete sense. The story's vibe is also spectacular, and really feels like the kung fu fantasy adventure that I pretended I was in when I was a small child.
The companions are mostly good in this, being an important part of the BioWare experience. One of my favourites is Wild Flower, a little girl possessed by two different spirits; the benevolent guardian of an amulet, Chai Ka, or the evil toad demon Ya Zhen. You can select either spirit for her to turn into for combat, and her conversations are a good mix of whimsical, precocious and tragic. There’s also the female ninja-adjacent rogue Silk Fox, and the browbeaten ‘master bun baker’ Henpecked Hou who is profoundly hilarious.
It just wouldn't be an early 3D BioWare game without some 'kinda bad even for their time' graphics.
Jade Empire also has a pretty good amount of important BioWare decision points that have a pretty major impact on other parts of the game. You can convert a companion to the ‘evil’ path (here called the Way of the Closed Fist, contrasted by the merciful Way of the Open Palm) and she fully commits and becomes very much Closed Fist, you can force a major villain to your side through soul crushing magic, and side with or destroy more than a few animal themed demons and even participate in some classic cannibalism.
There is one major issue I have with Jade Empire, however, which I have to bring up despite this article being about the good stuff; you cannot customize your character's appearance at all. You select one of the pre-made characters, and that’s it as there’s no character creator to play around with or an armour/clothing system to swap outfits. Some may see this as a minor detail, but it’s an important part of the BioWare experience to me.
What's next? Well, my beloved of course, and I think the truly greatest example of BioWare quality and the game that put them on the gaming map. I'm talking about;
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood; A True Masterpiece
When I think about BioWare, this is the game that comes to mind immediately. It's a perfect mix of whatever its gameplay is with whatever the story is, I don't know, I've never played it as this is obviously a joke entry. Wouldn't that have been wild if this was serious though? Way past cool, dude.
Let's talk about Mass Effect.
Mass Effect; From Star Trek To Action Schlock
The original trilogy of Mass Effect is easily one of my most beloved video game experiences, and one that I think fundamentally altered how I look at games. It's also I think the best example of BioWare as a company, combining all their strengths (and weaknesses) into one distilled epic. Was there a lack of memorable villains, something the company didn't have a lot of? Outside of I guess the Illusive Man, yes; Saren was cool and all, but he's hardly in the game and I'm not counting the Reapers as a singular villain. They are also famously kind of ‘meh’ once you actually see them. Was the worldbuilding and verisimilitude absolutely on point? Hell yeah.
The series drastically changed in theme and direction after each game, but especially from the first one to the second one. The first game is a quant episode of Star Trek almost, or a sci fi serial of old; it focused on building the world and lore, with much of the action being fairly grounded and lowkey. It still had some epic moments of course, but you weren't pulling out a rapid fire grenade launcher, blasting gigantic flame spewing mechs and pushing people out of high rise windows while dropping thematic one liners. That was Mass Effect 2. Maybe Shepard has always been a little weird, though.
The second game definitely changed, even going so far as to literally blow up the old plot so to speak in the opening section before bringing you into the new gritty, action schlock direction almost entirely removed from the first. It's even down to the gameplay and shooting itself. A cool thing about the first game is that in-universe every gun is essentially a ‘rail gun’, shooting off chunks of metal from an interior block; this means that there's no ammo to reload or keep track of, and instead every gun can overheat if you shoot it enough times before giving it time to cool down. It's a neat world building detail that actually had some gameplay impact and helped the game feel unique. In 2, Shepard wakes up to a world where somehow, in the course of 2 years of game time, every gun has been retrofitted and now uses ammo (called thermal clips, but it’s essentially the same thing) again with a rather flimsy and silly explanation. Allegedly this was changed as the EA playtesters of 2 couldn't wrap their head around the planned new weapon system they had cooked up for early builds, involving hybrid usage of both 1’s cooldown system and temporary thermal clip popping to quickly cool you down if you needed it. That sounds pretty cool, but so it goes.
Oh that silly Shepard. Once again, player agency at its finest. **** that krogan, dude.
Keep in mind that I'm not criticising Mass Effect 2 at all; I use the term schlock out of love, as the game is still an amazing action-shooter RPG. 2 and 3 to me are still nearly unequaled in the gameplay department for the genre.
The greatest strength of the series is in its world and its characters, and it delivers. Dragon Age had some great companions of course, but I find that they struck out more times in that department than Mass Effect does. If someone asks me who my favourite Dragon Age companion is, it really doesn't take me that long to answer and there is a specific list of options. When someone asks me who my favourite Mass Effect character is, I'll be there for probably 3 hours trying to narrow one down; it's much easier to ask who my least favourite is as that list starts and ends with Jacob.
You see, he's a former Alliance marine who really cares about his friends. I guess he has father issues? He’s clearly a very exciting character with a lot of memorable personality. He makes Kaiden look cool, which is an amazing feat.
There's more amazing moments in the series than I can count, and I could be here for hours writing about the game series; maybe in the future I’ll do a normal 'way-too-long Octopus article' entirely on the Mass Effect series, or maybe Dragon Age; we’ll see.
You may be asking “what about Mass Effect: Andromeda, Octopus?” Well to that I say-
In Conclusion
BioWare used to be great, man. I’ve been replaying the Mass Effect games over the last couple of weeks, and they’re just fantastic. It’s that BioWare energy that carries them, the synthesis of okay enough gameplay with astounding settings that feel lived in. But I’m going to stop thinking of them as the malnourished victim chained up in EA’s basement churning out low quality shadows of their former games, and instead remember what they were. It’s what they would have wanted, I think. Maybe their complete corporate refocusing on Mass Effect 5 will pay off? Who knows.You may now be noticing that there's a rather large KOTOR-shaped hole in this rant, or a lack of Baldur's Gate that everyone already knows I absolutely love (it should be kind of obvious, really); I haven't forgotten about those games, but I was trying to keep this article shorter than normal and concise. Perhaps in the future their will be an 'Octopus Rants About BioWare; Deux'.
A thought occurred to me while writing this article; wouldn’t it have been great if BioWare made a really cool mech themed game? It's a shame that never happened, but maybe it could now. Like picture flying around in a sick suit of power armour, with really cool and dynamic feeling weapons like the stuff from the last two Mass Effect games. Oh, it can be a unique sci fi world too of course, and you can explore cool alien environments as you battle enemies and uncover new things about the cultures and worlds around you. You know the setup; you have an awesome world of lore that's built up naturally through conversations with the varied characters you encounter as you answer the classic ‘hero’s journey’ trope that BioWare had mastered, off on an adventure. You become involved in important events and can shape the world around you through your decisions. Man, that would have been great. No way they could possibly utterly **** that up, right? Yup, could have been great.
It’s a shame that never happened. Real missed opportunity there. That would likely have been spectacular, too bad they never made it.
They never made it.
For my fellow BioWare fans out there, let's break the cycle of doomposting; share your thoughts and opinions on the games, and finally accept that all good things must come to an end eventually.
Until next time.
Last edited:
