EA fucked up sooooooooo bad this gen

[mormapope]

Three great IPs from last gen:
Mirror's Edge
Mass Effect (2-3)
Dead Space

Shit got butchered by really mediocre sequels, or as per usual, the bought out studio gets flushed by the disgusting daddy. Battlefield is in the toilet as we speak, the newest Need for Speed is the same fucking F&F d grade clone.

The best EA published games are yarn platformers, or Fe, a game that most people frankly gives no fucks about. TitanFall is good too, but that series is buried.

A mass Effect trilogy remaster with all DLC, 4K 60 FPS, would be a no brainer for a functional company. That's all I want from Bioware at this point.

Remember Anthem came out this year?
 

[bluemax]

Yeah but they added a story mode to Madden and made a ton of money off FIFA cards. So really we all lost.

[thisismyusername]

Mirror's Edge 2 was solid. I won't hear different from folks that can't appreciate parkouring in open-world.

Dead Space died with 3, so... they didn't butcher that this generation.

[mormapope]

Dead Space died last gen, but Visceral as a studio was flushed this gen.

Yeah but they added a story mode to Madden and made a ton of money off FIFA cards. So really we all lost.

Fifa has been EA's flotation device for years at this point. 

[thisismyusername]

Visceral died last gen as well, since Hardline didn't sell that well.

If anything, EA's problem this generation is chasing the #WOKE crowd when 1) they don't buy shit like games and 2) they don't buy shit like games to where they complain to make the game GOOD.

Also most of their developers that made good shit have jumped shit to elsewhere.

[kingv]

I think it’s even simpler....

They just haven’t made good games.

I’ll play the wokest blue hair game if it’s good, but EA has only made trash this gen.

[mormapope]

I think it’s even simpler....

They just haven’t made good games.

I’ll play the wokest blue hair game if it’s good, but EA has only made trash this gen.

Exactly!

Their Star Wars output from DICE amounted to two beautiful but mediocre shooters. Dragon Age Inquisition was a well reviewed game, even though its a simplistic bloat fest. Mass Effect Andromeda was the weakest possible follow up to the original Mass Effect trilogy. Apex Legends is a great foundation, but Fortnite and even Black Ops 4 are getting substantial updates with battle royale shit.

[Momo]

Add Battlefield to the list

[Beezy]

Titanfall and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare are their only franchises that I've gave a shit about this gen.

Are Criterion Games and Burnout dead?

[archnemesis]

Are Criterion Games and Burnout dead?

They released a remaster of Burnout Paradise recently. Maybe that means that some at EA still care about the franchise.

Criterion has moved on to Need for Speed and Battlefield.

[HardcoreRetro]

Titanfall 2 was good.

[Nintex]

EA spend all their development time on stupid bullshit this generation.
It was pretty apparent they had no plan when they did that E3 where all they showed were demo's.
A demo of a vehicle in Mass Effect, a demo of an untextured AT-AT/Snowspeeder scene etc. .

Mass Effect 4 - BioWare tried to get the Frostbite engine to run and add in procedural planet generation. Didn't work out, released it as a buggy mess because it was the best they could do
Battlefield 1 - Started out as an alternative history WW1/WW2 game, re-imagined as a WW1 game which meant it was extremely light on content
Star Wars by Amy Hennig - EA was surprised Amy was making a single player game as opposed to an MMO GaaS, shopped it around to a few studios until they binned it
Star Wars: Battlefront II - DISNEY GAMBLING. Had to spend a ton of resources removing all their micro transaction systems and thus destroyed the balance of the game until a few months ago
Battlefield 5 - Had to double back the #woke after it tanked. Because a WW2 shooter is not an ideal platform to reel in progressives (who knew?). Rebranded themselves a a sort of indie studio in marketing so people would understand the shortcomings and half the game missing
Anthem - BioWare showed Patrick Sutherland pretty demo's of guys flying in rocket suits to not get canned. Dev team didn't know what the game would be like until the scripted trailer of E3 2018

EA's downfall is a combination of developers and producers not giving a fuck and running on auto-pilot and management trying to GaaS everything.
What EA needs is someone or anyone capable of crafting a vision for their software output and sticking with it. A creative director for their slate of games.

At this point they should just split the company in Sports and Games and sell the EA games label to Microsoft or something.
In that case, we'll at least have all poorly planned first party output under one roof. 

[kingv]

I do have that Respawn Star Wars game on preorder, but I think the only other two EA games I actually paid for this gen are Titanfall 2 and Dragon Age Inquisition (which wasn’t pretty bad compared to Witcher which came out like 3 months later)

[nachobro]

Titanfall 2 was great and worth every cent I spent on it. Anthem was also worth every cent I spent on it but only because I paid $25 new

That's all I played from EA this gen

[Tasty]

Best thing to come out of EA this gen have been the Kotaku postmortems.

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

https://kotaku.com/the-collapse-of-viscerals-ambitious-star-wars-game-1819916152

https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428

[Brehvolution]

Madden 20 is amazing.

[thisismyusername]

Last EA game I bought was Battlefield 3 in 2011. Vote with your wallet!

Then you missed out on 4, which was great.

[CatsCatsCats]

Titanfall and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare are their only franchises that I've gave a shit about this gen.

Are Criterion Games and Burnout dead?

PvZ GW 3 looks good

[thisismyusername]

I think it’s even simpler....

They just haven’t made good games.

I’ll play the wokest blue hair game if it’s good, but EA has only made trash this gen.

I mean, yes, but also no. Part of the "they haven't made good games" is BECAUSE of the #WOKE chasing. If they stopped fucking worrying about politics and focused on game design then the games would stop being shit (hopefully).

Thing is: If you look at the Bad Company 2 credits and then look at modern DICE, like 80% of the BC2 team has left EA and went to indie studios (where they make flops. #PBUT), which is mighty telling of EA's problems in regards to crunch/development.

[Great Rumbler]

Only EA game I've played semi-recently is Andromeda. It was okay, but a very obvious step down from what came before. Now the franchise is pretty much dead and so is Bioware, but Bioware's has been beaten six ways to Sunday in the RPG realm in the past decade so whatever.

[Akala]

Most of their output has been pretty dire/phoned in this gen, but honestly I have been playing the shit out of their sports games this gen. FIFA and Madden are best they’ve ever been IMO...pretty good (huge) games. EA pretty much gives away NBA, NHL, and UFC games in sales and aside from UFC they aren’t bad.

Madden 20 is amazing.

If serious why? I actually really liked the commentary updates throughout the season in 18 enough to get 19 day one and not play much (actually felt a bit burned as it was half off very soon after launch). Will prob get 20 at first sale.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/BenIrvo/status/1162042498140819456
 

[paprikastaude]

They are trash, but like Ubi and Activision, there isn't even that much to mourn about. They've forever been doing passionless focus tested crap and pushing for the worst trends in gaming. Like five percent of these companies' output is interesting, sometimes more, sometimes less (EA currently around zero). I'll gladly buy good games if they make them, but not that much would change for me if they were gone by tomorrow. The legacy IPs aren't that strong either.

The schadenfreude for shit like Anthem and Diablo GO is better than the majority of their output in the last two decades.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Only EA game I've played semi-recently is Andromeda. It was okay, but a very obvious step down from what came before. Now the franchise is pretty much dead and so is Bioware, but Bioware's has been beaten six ways to Sunday in the RPG realm in the past decade so whatever.

They dont even make rpgs anymore since DA1

[Great Rumbler]

We're in one of the best eras for RPGs since the end of the 90s and Bioware's got...nothing. They peaked a decade ago, pretty much right after they got bought by EA, and it's been downhill ever since. EA destroys everything they touch.

[toku]

Titanfall forever

[Cerveza mas fina]

Hawt take: Bioware always sucked.

I still think Kotor was a good game

[Akala]

Hawt take: Bioware always sucked.

I still think Kotor was a good game

TBH I think it’s the only BioWare game I have ever beaten, but it was clunky as shit even when it came out. One of these days I will just dive into ME2 as it’s supposed to be fuckawesome but I have never gotten more than a few hours in on three attempts of ME1.

[Svejk]

If you didn't get into ME1, ME2 isn't going to do it either.  Stick with the memories of enjoying KOTOR back then.

[kingv]

I think ME2 sucked too.

It’s a mediocre RPG presented as a mediocre TPS.

The choices are sort of like Telltale games the way they are done.

I think it’s only notable because not a lot of rpgs were dropping at that time.

[thisismyusername]

I wouldn't even consider Mass Effect an RPG after the first. Yes, there's "choices." But like KotOR the choices are superficial at best and don't really factor into the gameplay/design too much.

ME1 had different stats, sure. But you didn't really need (beyond "lol more damage lol") to equip better shit in ME2.

KotOR is a bit of a fluke because it's using AD&D 2E (or was it just D&D/3rd edition at that point?) rules within Star Wars but also fudging things a bit better than Baldur's Gate/Infinity Engine rules did.

[Human Snorenado]

ME was ok, ME2 was much more fun.

BioWare has cornered the market on the "hey don't you wanna fuck this alien/dwarf/whatever" crowd, they'll always sell games to those people because those people are trash with no standards, they just wanna fuck the alien/dwarf/whatever.

As far as EA goes, they just generally don't publish games I enjoy playing. Big FPS games, licensed sports games, shit riddled with lootboxes and other mtx? Nah fam. I played Dragon Age Inquisition and it was tolerable to a point but I put it down and have no regrets for not ever finishing it. It became a chore, and I had no interest in fucking any of the dwarves or whatever.

I do plan on getting Jedi Fallen Order, so we'll see how that goes. Maybe you can fuck a droid.

[Tuckers Law]

Last EA game I think I genuinely loved was either Battlefield 2.  Maybe include Bad Company 2 and BF 1943 in there as well.  By the time microtransactions up the ass were infecting everything, I had already abandoned their games once EA moved away from allowing community run multiplayer servers.

[nachobro]

Dragon Age Origins was quite good. 2 was a trashheap, never played Inquisition

[Svejk]

If my ducks are in a row, Yall's thoughts... would DA:I have turned out better if they had the rights to D&D instead?  If Bioware technically made a new BG (or BG3) instead at the time?

[Akala]

I mean probably? DA:I was fiercely uninteresting.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Dragon Age Origins was quite good. 2 was a trashheap, never played Inquisition

2 was like a bunch of fans got the level editor from 1 and just made one location, i quit within hours

Tried 3 but it was an Ubisoft open world game template + early 00s mmo, quit within 2 hours

[Svejk]

I mean probably? DA:I was fiercely uninteresting.

I've never deleted and redownloaded a game so many times as much as I wanted to give DA:I an honest go...  And every time after an hour or so, I'm bored to death. 
What made me question it, is that I've recently started playing BG1 on my phone and it's sucked me in much more than I expected. 

[Rufus]

DA:I did well and might have salvaged a lot of what went wrong with DA2. DA is still a valuable IP.

Besides, the audience that cares about D&D would have been disappointed with the kind of game Bioware now makes. A hypothetical AAA D&D game from them would have been much closer to Inquisition, structurally, than to Baldur's Gate. Top-down RPGs are in a renaissance, but they don't pull the numbers Bioware wants/needs.

[Rufus]

I've never deleted and redownloaded a game so many times as much as I wanted to give DA:I an honest go...  And every time after an hour or so, I'm bored to death. 

"Get out of the Hinterlands ASAP (or you'll get bored)" was a constant talking point when the game was current.

[kingv]

I've never deleted and redownloaded a game so many times as much as I wanted to give DA:I an honest go...  And every time after an hour or so, I'm bored to death. 

"Get out of the Hinterlands ASAP (or you'll get bored)" was a constant talking point when the game was current.

Imo the other places weren’t really better, they just didn’t have as many side quests.

The side quests still sucked though.

[tiesto]

I thought the world building and the soundtrack of ME1 were incredible, but everything else about it was super clunky and not very fun to play. Awful combat, extremely repetitive sidequests, a mess of an inventory system where you're over stacked with tons of weapons with barely any discernable difference between them.

The sequel improved combat but totally streamlined any sort of rpg mechanics or adventuring that I hesitate to even call it an rpg - more like an OK third person shooter with dialogue trees and a really clever final mission. I don't understand how people can call it one of the best rpgs ever tho. The 3rd game felt super rushed and is where all of the typical EA shit (i.e. stuff that seemed to be obviously part of the main game was broken out into DLC) really hit the fan.

I remember last gen everybody was so quick to ride Bioware's cock and I'm just like, ehh...

[MMaRsu]

I've never deleted and redownloaded a game so many times as much as I wanted to give DA:I an honest go...  And every time after an hour or so, I'm bored to death. 

"Get out of the Hinterlands ASAP (or you'll get bored)" was a constant talking point when the game was current.

Even then, the game was still a fucking snoozefest

[nachobro]

if they put proper planet exploration in ME2 it'd basically be the perfect game

[Nintex]

What I liked most about Mass Effect was the world building and of course some great characters like the Illusive Man from Mass Effect 2.
ME2 had the best gameplay in the series I think. ME1 was unrefined but that had its charms.

ME3 was a good late-gen asset flip sequel (except that dumb ending lol) and the DLC's were decent too.

ME4 is weird. It has possibly one of the best premises for any video game ever (you get to discover an entirely new galaxy) and they completely squandered it by having space Nazi's on one hand and slightly different humanoids on the other.
Finished it and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it (especially for the $5 it cost me) but it was quite a drop in quality from Mass Effect 2.

I think what destroyed them was Witcher 3. Which was pretty much the type of game BioWare had tried to make but couldn't. And then when Mass Effect 4 came out they got bitchslapped by Nier: Automata and BOTW around the same time.
BioWare got lucky that they joined the 'over the shoulder' ARPG game early. You could argue as one of the first. But as soon as they lost that advantage and the competition catched up on them they just couldn't compete anymore.
I wonder what they'll do next and if they will ever get back on their feet. After Anthem I sort of worry that there's literally nothing they can develop at this point. 

[Trent Dole]

Kind of surprising that they never packed the first three together as a trilogy either during the PS360 era or afterwards as an upres/remaster. Maybe for next gen to prep for another attempt at a new set of games since Andromeda and its story appear to have been bailed on.

[kingv]

I’m betting BioWare’s next project is a card based RPG: madden ultimate team.

[BisMarckie]

I’m betting BioWare’s next project is a card based RPG: madden ultimate team.

NEW in MUT:

you can romance and fuck Aaron Rodgers

[Nintex]

Kind of surprising that they never packed the first three together as a trilogy either during the PS360 era or afterwards as an upres/remaster. Maybe for next gen to prep for another attempt at a new set of games since Andromeda and its story appear to have been bailed on.

EA is no longer using Unreal Engine, which is what Mass Effect 1/2/3 were build on but insists on Frostbite for all their shit.

The PS3 version of ME1 already didn't have the Pinnacle Station DLC because the source code of that DLC was corrupted.
And from what I understand 1 is by now nigh impossible to remaster due to the fact that they lost the source code.

Without 1 you can't remaster the others and without the source code it would be very difficult to do (you'd basically have to re-do the game from scratch).

[EchoRin]

How does a company like EA lose source code for any game from 2005 onward 
Crazy if true 

EDIT: Black 2. When?

[Trent Dole]

Kind of surprising that they never packed the first three together as a trilogy either during the PS360 era or afterwards as an upres/remaster. Maybe for next gen to prep for another attempt at a new set of games since Andromeda and its story appear to have been bailed on.

EA is no longer using Unreal Engine, which is what Mass Effect 1/2/3 were build on but insists on Frostbite for all their shit.

The PS3 version of ME1 already didn't have the Pinnacle Station DLC because the source code of that DLC was corrupted.
And from what I understand 1 is by now nigh impossible to remaster due to the fact that they lost the source code.

Without 1 you can't remaster the others and without the source code it would be very difficult to do (you'd basically have to re-do the game from scratch).

Lmao, gg ea.

[Chooky]

the fact that the ME trilogy isn't readily available (and no the pc versions with no controller support and $50+ worth of dlc sold separately do not count) is one of the greatest tragedies in gaming. fuck ea.

[thisismyusername]

>not just pirating the PC versions
kek

[Himu]

EA gets worse every gen. They are a pale shell of what they were in ps2 gen last gen and this gen they're a shell of that.

[Nintex]

EA with all their departures and moving studios around has been pretty bad at archiving their shit.

It wouldn't surprise me if they lost the source code of nearly all of their non-sports titles.
The only reason I can think of why they're not doing remasters of games like Need for Speed Underground other than the exotic self developed engines they used made by developers who no longer work there.

If bet as a veteran developer you could make a fuckton of money if you made a tool to decompile RenderWare, EAGL and UE3 titles.

[Rman]

Hawt take: Bioware always sucked.

ME2 was legit GOTG.

[Himu]

Hawt take: Bioware always sucked.

ME2 was legit GOTG.

Different strokes but

[Great Rumbler]

Mass Effect 2 was really good.

[toku]

[Himu]

It was a good game, but gotg? No wonder last gen was so bad.