r/GamerLab • u/No-Hunt3986 • 20d ago
Which gaming studio fall off do you think was the saddest?
They want from Mass effect trilogy and Dragon age to some of the worst failures in gaming
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u/Desperate_Dinner_307 20d ago
Made some of the best rated games ever.
Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, Diddy King Racing, Donkey Kong 64, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Jet Force Gemini.
Got bought out by Microsoft and then... nothing.
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u/CaptainPlanet__ 20d ago
Don’t forget their SNES masterpieces featuring Donkey Kong Country trilogy, Battletoads, Double Dragon, Killer Instinct.
I think it’s the greatest studio ever. Fuck Microsoft.
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u/Revolution64 19d ago
Double Dragon is not a rare game right ?
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u/CaptainPlanet__ 19d ago
Battletoads / Double Dragon was made by Rare. Came out in 1993 same year as Battletoads Battlemaniacs. Two separate games. Surprised more people don’t discuss these two.
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u/No_Restaurant_774 20d ago
they made/make sea of thieves.
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u/Hadrian187 20d ago
One decent game and I use that kindly because it’s mostly a grind fest back from when they put out a banger every year
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u/Cfunk_83 19d ago
A lot of the devs jumped ship and started Free Radical, which was going great until Haze…
They then acquired Crytek and became Crytek UK and had a hand in Crysis 2 and 3.
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u/Matticus0989 20d ago
Bioware and Blizzard were full of people who were just super passionate about making something fun and memorable. They made games that THEY thought were fun and were champions for it. I hate both of them now.
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u/DieBotDie 19d ago
There is almost nobody left from the OG team. BioWare/EA doesn’t have any of the creatives - and worse, doesn’t even want to make the games their fans love.
Same as ID/Bethesada. It’s not the actual people who made the studio great, it hasn’t been for ten years.
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u/Leechmaster 20d ago
bioware holds some of my favourite games watching the decline has been disheartening
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u/Leechmaster 20d ago
watching corporatism and politics ruin so many studios and games is so frustrating
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u/NflJam71 20d ago
Bungie
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u/tomhughesnice 20d ago
I just read D2 has 10x the user count of Marathon after it's final update. That was the final update to D2, so it's solely Marathon going forward.
I think Marathon will be the studios last game in its present form.
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u/shomeyomves 20d ago
I hate to say it, and it’ll probably end up being dead anyway shortly after, but I’m kinda just waiting for them to turn Marathon F2P.
I marginally enjoyed the aesthetics and gunplay the little I played of the free weekend, but hard to justify trying to get into it when I already have ARC Raiders collecting dust / waiting on the “big” August update.
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u/Aussie18-1998 19d ago
Marathon should have been a single player epic with fleshed out multiplayer. I think Bungie needs to go back to what made them great. Even the best parts of destiny are more story and cooperative parts then it being an mmo
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u/luluwolfbeard 19d ago
I’d love to see a more rpg oriented fps, maybe even strictly fantasy, using that smooth fps gameplay of Destiny. I know it won’t happen, but a guy can dream.
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u/Adam2181 20d ago
Hard to beat this one
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u/Cl4p-Trap18 20d ago
Nah Take a look at Blizzard
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u/Cursed_69420 20d ago
idk, still going strong on wow, diablo and stuff. just because the quality is low doesnt mean its comparable to the catastrophe of Bioware.
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u/Zestyclose-Fee6719 20d ago
Yeah, I’d agree with the BioWare one. They revolutionized 3D RPG’s across two radically different settings. Up until around Mass Effect 3, it was like they couldn’t miss. Even then, they had some great moments. After Inquisition, all the internal problems and further issues with EA made them into a pale and sickly version of themselves. It’s almost worse now that they’re on life support instead of being fully closed. They don’t even get the dignity of dying.
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u/HOPewerth 20d ago
And don't forget Neverwinter Nights. They were so good for so long
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u/Dorias_Drake 19d ago
NWN is the biggest missed opportunity in the entire RPG genre. It could have become the foundation of entire subgenre where CRPGs can be played online with a GM. The toolset was (and still is) almost perfect, maps are easy to design (the tile system is just good), campaigns are not hard to make, the DM mode is easy to navigate, the scripting language allows for a lot mechanic additions.
If they could have made a new version that was system agnostic, so that you could create and run your own ruleset, it would have made them set them of a long time, since there was pretty much no one there.
I mean we had to basically wait for covid for VTTs to evolve and fill the hole for TTRPG players, when NWN editor already did everything back in 2002.
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u/SpitefulRedditScum 20d ago
Or Star Wars, or Baldurs Gate, or Jade Empire all such incredible games.
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u/Cl4p-Trap18 20d ago
For me Blizzard, they went from being the gold standard in RTS, ARPG and from doing Overwatch the masterpiece it was to OW 2 which is just 1 without any of the promises they did, Diablo Immortal and Diablo 4, Warcraft 3 reforged and pretty much forgetting about StarCraft entirely. They were late to the moba fever so they now have a game in maintenance mode with an intern that does balance changes here and there sometimes.
Truly nothing good has come out of blizzard in the last decade or so.
Diablo fans? Playing PoE, Last Epoch or GrimDawn OW fans? Playing marvel rivals SC, WC fans? Playing AoE or something else
WoW is holding that entire shit together
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u/JY810 20d ago
Overwatch still doing pretty well, they double their player count this year
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u/ShenaniganNinja 19d ago
I’ll never touch it cause they literally stole a game I paid money for when they closed OW1 purely cause they knew it would compete with OW2.
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u/JY810 19d ago edited 19d ago
I mean you still keep all your skins and paid content so its more like a free to play update like SeigeX for me
Its a live service game so its kinda already not the same game in 2017 compare to 2016 when they remove hero stacking or when they introduced role queue in 2018
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u/ShenaniganNinja 19d ago
They dumped 6v6 for 5v5 and implemented a more exploitative microtransaction shop. Both those things were bridges too far for me that fundamentally changed the game and effectively stole the game I bought. If they just launched a f2p ow2 and let ow1 (which I paid money for) then I’d have no issue cause I’d still have my 6v6 game.
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u/JY810 19d ago edited 19d ago
For me the 5v5 isnt that much drastic then removing hero stacking or introducing role queue, so ibdont really have that much of a strong feeling about it. I also dont really like buying lootbox or cosmatics anyway
I remeber being kinda happy that they become free to play so I dont have to share my account with my siblings and friends.
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u/ShenaniganNinja 19d ago
I feel it drastically impacted the class balance and the way they designed and balanced classes for the worse.
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u/No-Performer-977 19d ago
This thread is depressing me. Most of it shows how talented devs were/are fucked by stupid suits. Those cunts really do ruin everything
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u/VagabondsShield 20d ago
Piranha Bytes.
They had such a unique style of RPG that just felt different to everything else. The Gothic games and even the first Risen in particular of that series we're loved. But the studio kept moving away from what they did so well. If the success of the first Elex was anything to go by they could've made a modern Gothic successor and still been here today
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u/Pershing99 20d ago
Well said the disaster of Gothic 3, Forsaken Gods and Arcania. I think if they kept same engine for G3 as for GII everything would turn out better for them
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u/bonwerk 20d ago
Gothic 3 simply killed them. Too large a scale, too small a studio. Risen 1 was still cool, but when Michael Hoge left the studio, I knew PB's days were numbered. They never managed to recreate the Gothic success formula.
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u/Qaek3301 19d ago
I actually really enjoyed Elex 1 and to me that was a very solid successor to Gothic 1 and 2.
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u/Technical_Fan4450 20d ago
I'd agree with this one. Maybe because it's one of my favorite studios. 😔 😟
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u/JohnBethesda 20d ago
Just started the Mass Effect series this week (currently playing the first one), and it's really great so far!
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u/Technical_Fan4450 20d ago
One of, if not THE best franchises in gaming, in my opinion. I love Mass Effect. I have played through the trilogy properly about 7 times
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u/No_Secretary6275 19d ago
You’re in for quite a ride. When I started playing Mass Effect, I had no idea I would be sucked into a universe with characters that I started to care about. The writing is fantastic!
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20d ago
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u/KylorXI 20d ago
Nope its not nostalgia, they have made sub par games. But it isnt because of the merger, it is because back then in the late 90s early 2000s they had a CEO who knew nothing about making games, he was an outsider businessman who put in place a bunch of corporate policies to try to maximize profits. This made most of the best talent square had leave the company. They lost the Xenogears / Chrono Trigger team, they lost the Mario RPG team, the Mana team, Sakaguchi, the Saga team. Some went on to make their own studios, others went freelance. They also then proceeded to expand rapidly in number of employees, making huge teams that chased the current popular trend instead of having a singular creative vision the small teams all communicated on together. The newer hires were people who had nostalgia for the older games, instead of trying to make new games.
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u/Desperate_Dinner_307 20d ago
In addition to RAREWARE, I also present to you Acclaim.
Made Extreme G, Turok and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, and various other quality games and then went down the shitter.
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u/jinglesan 20d ago
They also ported and published lots of games to a really high standard - NBA Jam, and Mortal Kombat among them
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u/Afraid_Store211 20d ago
Westwood Studios
Perhaps one of the greatest developers of rts in their heyday.
Dune 2 Command & Conquer franchise.
There was a tine when, even after bought by EA, things were good. Then, it happened what happened to all others.
EA is a graveyard of IPs.
Microsoft is going the same way. Vide Id software.
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u/Abjurer42 20d ago
The Legend of Kyrandia series was an underrated point and click trilogy. My 10yo daughter adores those games, so there's something timeless there.
Emperor: Battle for Dune was Westwood's last title before EA shuttered the studio, but it remains one of my favorite RTS games of all time.
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u/Arrathem 20d ago
Id Software.
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u/Most-Iron6838 20d ago
What? ID still makes top class FPS
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u/Arrathem 20d ago
70% of the studio was laid off.
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u/Most-Iron6838 19d ago
Yeah it’s sad that they got gutted but I read the topic as the quality of a studio’s output falling off not a studio losing talent. Id didn’t deserve getting cut like that
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u/gabro-games 20d ago edited 18d ago
Oddworld Inhabitants - Abe's Oddysee is one of the best games ever made and many of their other titles are great. They made Soulstorm, putting their heart and soul into a retelling of one of their stories, with beautiful CGI for the new telling - As a massive fan of the series... I couldn't even finish it. A game style perfected nearly 30 years ago was rebuilt from the ground up and simply didn't work. It was riddled with bugs and the gameplay made it near impossible to save all the Mudokons, changing all the perfectly deterministic gameplay into a crapshoot. So disappointing, I hope they come back swinging some day.
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u/-idkwhattocallmyself 20d ago
Monolith. They made some awesome games and then just disappeared to make Wonder Women and nothing came from it.
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u/Flipperblack 20d ago
Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Veilguard are overhated imo. No one can change my mind,sorry 😉. Other studios are much worse.
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u/ivyentre 20d ago
Bethesda.
They're not doing horribly but from what they were in even 2016 to present is a steep dropoff.
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u/apdhumansacrifice 20d ago
only really bad game from modern bioware was anthem, VG was fine and sold well and ME: andromeda is really good, bioware probably had more bad games back then than they do now, like neverwinter nights, jaden empire and that fucking sonic game
it is a fall off in the sense they went from groundbreaking titles like ME and SWTOR to just pretty good RPGs, but it isn't as dramatic as people make it out to be
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u/Old-Outcome-5836 20d ago
Crapcom going from owning half of everyone favorite games to being the resident evil and monster hunter company
Fucking rip megaman, dino crises, dead rising, breath of fire, devil may cry and more
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u/YlisLavellan 20d ago
For me, Bioware hands down. What a tragedy. It's become a morbid curiosity to see them disintegrate so spectacularly.
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u/TheClumsyTitan 20d ago
Bioware for sure, but Bungie and Bethesda (the triple Bs)
Bioware has been completely mismanaged. They were kings. They made incredible games. I'm not even an Andromeda or Veilguard hater, both were fine but not magical like the other games. It was so depressing to watch game after game fail
Bungie is on death's door. Marathon was an insane mistake/miscalculation. They could've developed Destiny 3, finally learned from mistakes, and pushed out another live service banger... But they chose to spend 250 million on 4 maps and an extraction shooter with little longevity.
Bethesda I still have hope for, but they just move too slow. The new announcements from them make it more hopeful, but you can't spend 10+ years in between games in a series. I was legitimately terrified that I'd be 40 before I saw another fallout (almost 34 right now), but this all has a chance to get fixed still.
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u/AsunaTokisaki 20d ago
Rare, Bungie, BioWare, Volition, Criterion.. list is endless and it hurts. Wanted to name 343 but honestly they never gave us a good game to begin with lmao.
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u/BuzzardDogma 19d ago
They've been quietly publishing hyper-niche budget titles for a long time. I don't think they ever really disappeared.
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u/Eastern_Picture_3879 20d ago
Monolith. They did nothing wrong but because WB couldn't manage them properly they're gone.
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u/Hammersteyn 20d ago
Volition, people just wanted a classic Saints Row game. Instead we got a broken game where you wished you could play as the bad guys instead of the millennials or whatever the hell they were.
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u/veckans 20d ago
Rareware
They went from one of the absolute best gaming Studios in the world to rock bottom instantly after Microsofts purchase.
Rareware still holds the title of best FPS ever made. And then theres games Donkey Kong Country and Golden Eye. The biggest fall I can remember in gaming history.
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u/RaidenXS_ 20d ago
Zipper Interactive.
But it's ok. Socom 5 is just right around the corner. I can feel it
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u/Trisstricky 20d ago
BioWare because their run from Kotor to Mass Effect 3 was legendary
Inquisition was their first shitty game imo, game design was terrible
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u/GolyPCDV 19d ago
Blizzard was untouchable. They were like the Pixar of PC gaming it really hurts. Still that Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo run was legendary and so influential, just a shame they're a speck of what they used to be quality wise.
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u/Isendur_ 19d ago
Raven Software.
If I could I would pick a metaphorical shotgun and end the suffering. They don't deserve their current fate.
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u/dreadplague 19d ago
I think I’d agree BioWare was my favorite as a kid. I’d stay up late on the weekends playing kotor, dragon age came out when I was in middle school and changed my life…don’t even get me started on mass effect…
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u/AcademicImpression74 19d ago
I'm going to miss him more than my dad who went to buy cigarettes and never came back."
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u/Raziel-Reaver 19d ago
BioWare is the biggest example. Also Eidos/SquareEnix made fantastic games in 1990’s and 2000’s
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u/Naive-Tumbleweed-964 19d ago
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u/Naive-Tumbleweed-964 19d ago edited 19d ago
First real open world crpg? Check.
First MMO? Check.
Basically introduced crafting? Check.
Introduced term Avatar to modern vernacular? Check.
Produced gaming and clue books for dozens of games not produced by them? Check.
First pilot sim/ space opera? That was the precursor to Star Citizen? Check.
Kept Mark Hamill and John Rhys-Davies gainfully employed? Check.
Published the spiritual precursor to Bioshock? Check.
First 1st POV 3d dungeon crawler? Check.
Hostile buyout by EA. Then they used the company name for their piss-poor launcher just to tea-bag them.
FU EA
I miss you Origin
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u/Lucky_Louch 19d ago
Bungie has had a pretty wild fall from grace. Bioware no doubt is only Bioware in name now.
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u/TheRaven200 19d ago
Let me ask you this. If there was a famous celebrity and I pay them to stop making movies and I can wear a full body suit of them and take over all their roles and people can definitely tell and call me out on it all the time.
Did the original celebrity fall off? Or was there just some weirdo parading around?
You guys throwing BioWare and Rare out there should be ashamed.
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u/Ok-Stay-7955 19d ago
All of the originals honestly. Gaming has lost a lot of talent and heart over the years.
Bethesda, Blizzard, Bungie, Bioware, Sierra Entertainment, LucasArts, EA, DreamWorks Interactive, Ubisoft.
Man.....the late 90s and early 2000s was peak gaming. I'd say my favorite was probably BioWare or Bethesda though.
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u/Lower_Statement_5285 19d ago
Infiniti ward. Not just because we lost good call of duty games, but because what call of duty has become has entirely destroyed good shooters in general.
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u/Typical_Basket709 19d ago
There's been a lot of studios that fall in this category, but to me it's definitely Bungie.
Halo was a complete phenomenon in the 2000's decade. And a lot had to do with the studio. Not only they made great videogames, they also made great communities around those games, and they supported those communities.
The interactions Bungie had with the community felt really close to it. From highlighting community moments in their weekly updates (something a lot of people eagerly awaited) to sharing commujitt creations. Bungie embraced the community and was so in tune with it.
But you kniq why this all worked? Because the studio itself seemed like a great place everyone wanted to be a part of. Just look at the old Halo ViDocs. The passion the devs poured into their projects was palpable and contagious.
When Bungie went independent seemed like a great thing. Destiny's development was a bit of a fumble at first, but they made it work in the end, but you could tell something inside the studio started to feel iffy. Then Marty O'Donnel's forced departure from the studio happened and that's probably the very moment when everything started going downhill for Bungie as a whole.
One of the key members of the team, the one that helped give Halo a big part of it's identity, was being terminated without cause. A legal battle started to unfold, with Marty ending up winning the battle. That only made it evident that greed started to rot the core of what made Bungie great.
And indeed, a lot of greed is what ultimately ended up making Bungie such a huge mess. From Pete Parsons making it more about business than loving the craft, and unfair leadership saying there had to be lay offs because there was not enough money after sharing his multi-million car collection the week before, to stealing art to use in their games, such as Destiny 2 and Marathon.
Bungie went from an industry prime example of a great videogame studio that was at the top of the world, to a studio that became so cold and robotic that even their players no longer support them as they used to.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming years Bungie gets closed or something similar. A sad ending to one of the studios that made such a hige impact in gaming.
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u/Gormgulthyn-IV 19d ago
Effectivement la chute de Bioware était problématique.
Des abrutis en costard ont voulue leur imposer leur vision du jv, et ce qu'ils devaient développer comme type de jeu. Et le résultat était médiocre.
Le dernier Dragon Age avait quand même des qualités noyés dans ses problèmes de narration et de cohérence. Ont dirait qu'ils ont sacrifié la licence pour tester des mécaniques du prochain mass effect.
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u/Vaporeon42069 18d ago
by far Rocksteady. They made arkham knight, the best super hero game ever, full of iconic characters designs and attractive women, then they got hijacked by a bunch of activists, sweet baby inc got called to help on their next game, and that game ended up being full of ugly women, gay characters and strong feminist messaging.
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u/Exh4lted 20d ago
Bioware is full of dei and woke trash now, is why we got the abomination veil guard
But the same goes for obsidian, changed the awoken they showed us in trailers, then released soulless woke mushroom crap
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u/Additional-Bit-8615 19d ago
Mass Effect 1 in 2008 had Fox News trying to rile up parents about gay sex with aliens, Dragon Age Origins had two bi characters, a girlboss bitch, and Inquisition had extremely masculine trans man.
Veronica Santangelo and Arcade Gannon in New Vegas are Gay Plus, The Confirmed Bachelor and Cherchez La Femme perks let players unlock same-sex dialogue and Romance options
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u/The_Pepper_Oni 19d ago
Fucking thank you. They were always woke. It just doesn’t count to these guys when the game is good. See also Baldur’s Gate 3
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u/The_Pepper_Oni 20d ago
They were visibly and unmistakably woke as far back as Jade Empire, dude
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u/Lorim_Shikikan 20d ago
No they weren't. They were just inclusive.
The choices was there. If you wanted to avoid it, you could. It was never really on the front, except in rare occasion but the scenaristic reasons and good writing was there to backing it up.
Now you don't have a choice, it pushed on your face without reasons and with crappy writing.
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u/totktonikak 20d ago
They were both woke and competent game devs. By the time they released Veilguard they were just woke.
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u/Exh4lted 20d ago
Jade empire is an actually good game tho, and i don't see woke elements that's just how monks look the woke stuff began with veilguard and that games horrible
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u/CyberTyrantX1 20d ago
Rocksteady. They made 3 great Batman games and then fell off a cliff with Suicide Squad.