“Bioware – Hey, at least we‘re not Konami!“

 

Yeah, that article confirmed pretty much all of my suspicions about Anthem's development. It wasn't hard to see from the state of the final product.

The big takeaways I got from it is that Bioware management was really stupid enough to think Anthem wouldn't be compared to Destiny, and that the studio itself is heavily dependent on very specific people to get anything done, most of which have left the company as a result of this shitshow.

DA4's development is gonna be interesting to watch.

 

DA4 might as well not exist in my mind. Bioware is dead. I'll keep an Eye on Aaron Flynn's company though. Also whatever else Drew Karpshyn touches.

 

Well, thanks for reaffirming my decision to not even touch Anthem, Schrier.

Game companies need to stop setting these sort of hard development deadlines. If a game is not finished, just fucking delay the release. The players will be pissy about it sure, but nowhere near as pissy as they'll be if you release a half-assed piece of crap experience, say you'll fix all its problems post release, then wash your hands of the whole ordeal by passing further development off to your "B team". Smh.

With the piping hot mess Anthem is turning out to be, I expect DA4 is Bioware's last chance at success before EA shutters them.

 

On the other hand, without a release deadline of some sort the game could still be going through all the pre-production chaos that had kept there from being any real progress until 2017. Going of Schrier's report Bioware was constantly rebuilding and rethinking the game without doing any serious design work, up until EA gave them a hard deadline to get it out the door and put someone in charge to make them stop farting around and get shit done.

That's not to say that another delay to get the release properly polished wouldn't have helped the game once they finally got their act together, but seven years was more than enough time to get it done properly if Bioware hadn't been so dysfunctional.

 

The whole thing's really unfortunate, because there's a core of a fantastic game in Anthem. The basic gameplay loop really is quite excellent, and the feel of flying around wrecking bitches is a whole lot of fun.

It's just a shame almost everything around that is so bad.

 

If the article is accurate, then what Bioware really needs going forward is a few quality changes/hires in the project manager department. Get rid of the design by committee / equal-input writer's room standard that plagues a lot of modern creative efforts.

A person or two with final say on all creative/story/tech decisions (like Hajime Tabata for FF15 when it was stuck in dev hell) seems like it would have been a godsend for the Anthem people.

 

It was, that's how Hudson and Darrah salvaged the project and got it to vaguely resemble a game.

The big issue was that once Hudson left, his successor(s) were apparently simply unwilling to make final decisions and stick to them, so the game languished in development hell for 5 years. By all accounts, once Hudson came back, things started moving again.

He's apparently also helming DA4 as well, which is honestly a good sign for that game. Remains to be seen if that project will end up good, but if nothing else, Hudson is good at defining a vision for the project, so there shouldn't be those issues for DA4.

But yeah, without Hudson, I get the feeling Bioware is pretty screwed. They've really gotta sort their shit out so that their output isn't entirely dependent on specific people, or EA is gonna axe them pretty soon.

 

Dragon Age 4 was dead on future arrival the moment Mike Laidlaw left in 2017. Although I personally doubt DA4 will even make it to launch. I think we'll maybe get a few trailers but BW will be shut down completely. First BW Austin, then Edmonton.

 

I'll only touch DA4 if people say it's as good as the Witcher 3.

Laidlaw is at Ubisoft now. Which makes me curious...

 

I won't touch anything EA, period. The only chance BW has to bounce back and regain BW magic is to go indy, like Bungie. The article (although I don't like Schreier, he's a little bitch) suggests that BW fucked around for 4 or 5 years without direction, only that it was gonna be a game like Bob Dylan, referenced for all time (it will be, for being the final nail in BW's coffin), and only started putting together Anthem proper after the 2017 E3 demo. At this point I'm not even surprised EA went "you've been dicking around for 7 years, we want the game you promised NOW".

 

Honestly, I'd settle for DA4 being a solid game somehwat above DA:I (which I did play and liked). I don't expect miracles, and the Witcher 3 is a ridiculous benchmark.

 

Lol what. Why is it a ridiculous benchmark? It exists, not like it's an unattainable platonic ideal. Are you saying that BW is not capable of making a game like TW3? I agree.

 

Pretty much. TW3 does seem like an unattainable goal for the current BW line up. Which is why I'd settle for a DA:I like game in quality, maybe a cut above.

 

I'd rather not have a middling game just because it's a particular IP rathen than settle for something less.

 

I’d hold DA4 to that standard because

A) it’s possible.

B) The Witcher 3 is starting to become an older game. The tech is far more available.

C) BioWare used to make my favorite games, but this isn’t the same BioWare. Show me you can make a great game.

D) It’s still EA. I don’t touch their games unless it’s setup to be a really epic game. A mediocre DA doesn’t cut it.

 

Meanwhile, more from Schreier & Bioware…

“BioWare Boss Addresses Studio Issues, Vows To ‘Continue Working To Solve Them’”

That great and all, Casey, but why the fork do you have to continue with doubling down on an obviously erroneous interpretation of the original article?

 

Because...EA.

I have mixed feelings about Hudson.

On one hand, he was in charge of KOTOR and Mass Effect. On the other, he wasn't the senior writer and as surrounded by other great talent. If the Schreier article is accurate, then I'd definitely see him as one of those believers in "bioware magic" that everything just comes together.

 

Eh, Hudson has to play PR, not like he can say "yes we fucked up and it's shit". Nah, he must be "proud of what we've achieved". We can no more expect him to say it than we can expect Andrew Wilson to admit that lootboxes are an exploitative money grubbing scheme rather than "player choice".

Edit: meanwhile folks at the Anthem subreddit continue playing the battered wife who stays

 

Hudson is a familiar face that on first glance immediately invokes “the good old days,” but I have yet to see anything from him that would make me think “Yeah, he’s going to drag this company out of the mud.”

I can’t recall whether this has been brought up before, but I think the degree to which Anthem gets fixed might turn out to be indicative of what we can expect from Bioware in the future. If they manage to right the ship on that project from where it was at (and has mostly remained since) its launch, I am willing to see what they have to offer. Within reason. If it gets abandoned, by EA’s directive or otherwise, and everyone just carries on as if nothing has happened… that would not be good.

I wonder if he knows that everything he writes via Bioware communication lines will get leaked anyways, and whether there will be harsher words behind closed doors.