#[Data Leak] - Dash Meme

[digital-oddballs]

Tag Dump

[thessalian]

Thess vs Blame

Okay. While I’ve been largely holding off on commentary about game devs and the like because I am amassing a stockpile of writing for Patreon project, I’m going to take the liberty of saying a thing with a huge - and I mean huge, because I am in a really shitty mood right now - amount of swearing.

STOP. BLAMING. FANDOM. FOR. ANDROMEDA. TANKING.

I occasionally get flashes of, “Oh, fandom didn’t give it a chaaaaance!” on my dash. I’m sorry, but what part of ‘fandom’ were you watching? I saw half my dash ignore all the problems that plagued that game - and let’s face it, there were problems; I haven’t even played it and I can see that - in favour of, “We really just bought it as a dating sim”. That was actually the meme running around and it was largely acknowledged as mostly true.

Oh. I see. You mean people like me, who didn’t buy it straight away because it didn’t look worth the huge financial outlay for a game that was plagued by bugs right out of the gate. Or the people who played it and found that yet another repetition of The Bioware Story still doesn’t fit in a sandbox very well, particularly when the sandbox is the approximate size of the entire universe. You’re blaming people for not just consuming it.

I’m sorry - I missed the part where we have to spend money on things we don’t want just because we want the people who did want them to have them.

I actually pride myself on being a discerning consumer. I won’t buy into preorder culture, particularly in a system like we have to day where we are very rarely getting a physical disc and thus are not prone to “preorder or you won’t get it for a week because your local shop will have sold out” issues. Why do we preorder if we play on PC? For shiny extra content, usually cosmetic, the cachet of having it maybe a day early and to show that we trust the developers.

I don’t trust the developers anymore, guys. I haven’t in a long time.

Let me break it down for you:

Dragon Age 2 was a game rushed out too fast by a company (or more to the point, the company that owns said company - looking at you, EA) trying to cash in on the popularity of Dragon Age: Origins. Given the slapdash dungeons and the relative brevity (largely padded out by extra mob waves), the fact that I consider it a good game on the whole is a testament to the story.

Mass Effect 3 was a great game brought down by a cheap ending, changed last-minute because someone had leaked the original ending and they wanted to have a surprise ending for the player base, changed by someone who refused to take input from anyone else and basically put together a cobbled mess that required an extended cut and a paid DLC to make any remote amount of sense, and it still needed some kind of explanation.

Dragon Age: Inquisition decided to be a sandbox with a story that demanded a frame for the narrative ‘because everything is sandbox now’. That was a triumph of marketing data over the needs of the story. Again, the fact that there’s a good game in there makes me not entirely regret owning it, but three tries down the line and I’m getting a little sick of looking past the flaws.

Star Wars: The Old Republic was a pretty respectable MMO until the writers by their own admission started mining their old tabletop game for ideas and taking us out of the Star Wars universe we know and love to do it, promising an agency for the player characters that no MMO can give because shared world states and so setting themselves up to disappoint the player base, and basically churning out some pretty cringeworthy story content that relies on our characters having the approximate brain power of a can of baked beans.

So why the hell are you blaming me and people like me for maybe not trusting Andromeda enough to preorder it? Why are you blaming people who refused to play it until EA/Bioware fixed the egregious bugs, and even then took a look at the story and decided they weren’t willing to spend £50 or the equivalent on the game so would wait until it was on sale? Why blame reviewers who just gave their actual opinion of the game instead of saying, “Eh, it has its problems, but give it a chance, okay?”

We’ve given Bioware a chance. We’ve given Bioware all the chances. They’ve been progressively blowing those chances for years. They are resting on their laurels and putting out The Bioware Story with subtle variations everywhere - Big World/Galaxy-Ending Threat, Group of Misfits Who Must Work Together, Romance For Those People (but let’s face it, SWTOR shot that out the airlock really fucking quick once we hit Odessen), Shock Twist and Hard Decision (but only for the players; they haven’t worked out how to wrench our characters’ heartstrings by making us choose between beloved characters since Mass Effect 1), ‘The Adventure Continues...’ Ending. If you’re cool with that, more power to you. I, personally, am not. And it’s my money.

I was actually thinking of buying Andromeda on sale (it’s pretty cheap on Amazon) if for no other reason than perfume, and I’m actually more likely to do it now that I know that this is it in its end state. No “oh, they can patch it later”. No, “oh, we’ll get an explanation in DLC”. No nickle-and-diming us with stuff they should have included from the beginning. Bioware’s been worse and worse at that lately. I mean, Trespasser, I am sorry, should have been base game content. Hell, so should Leviathan. At least this way I won’t have to wonder when the DLC that makes this all make sense is coming out, and how much I’ll have to pay when it does.

You want to blame someone for Andromeda tanking? Blame Bioware. Hell, blame EA. Don’t blame people for not being willing or able to overlook the things that others could. I don’t think anyone should have to.

[renegaderhythm]

TAG DUMP !