The big story this past week in gaming was the official closure of BioWare by EA as the latter shifts to a “success-oriented” strategy (i.e. ball, gun and [not] gambling games). The first wave of news and reactions depicted near-uniform shock that such a “legendary” studio could get shuttered.
Now, with all the post-cancellation Mass Effect 5 leaks, it seems like everyone is rushing to express their disappointment and hope that, somehow, the project will return. As a fan of BioWare and Mass Effect myself, though, none of these reactions make any sense to me. BioWare as it was just before it was closed, was nothing like the BioWare everyone is trying to cling to. Neither was Mass Effect, nor was Dragon Age. Guys, it’s over and has been for years now.
Are we all just going to ignore the entire past decade of BioWare games? Which, by the way, consisted of only three titles. Three: Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. That’s it. And all three of them were out and out stinkers that sold just as terribly. Need it be said also that Mass Effect 5 was still, after 6 six years, still in pre-production by the time it got canned.
Also, all of these leaks coming out now were just ideas; things still getting kicked around and pitched internally. None of it was actually planned to see the light of day, yet we’re all whining and crying as if we’re absolutely missing out on something fantastic. Why? Why are so many of us desperately trying to construct this idea of a legendary Mass Effect sequel when, based on the studio’s past decade of work alone, there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to be even slightly optimistic about it?
Putting aside all of the political and culture war hullabaloo (that’s an entirely different conversation), modern BioWare proved three times over that it absolutely could not make a decent game. You can blame EA all you want, and, yeah, EA deserves plenty of heat for mismanaging the studio (especially with Anthem), but BioWare’s failure to produce anything substantial still largely falls on BioWare itself.
The studio that built its reputation on telling engaging stories, creating compelling worlds and crafting well-defined and interesting characters spent 10+ years doing none of those things. In all three of its most recent games, the stories ranged from bland and boring to almost nonexistent. Anthem’s world was just “mysterious”, while those of Dragon Age and Mass Effect received no meaningful expansion. And the characters, well, do you remember any of the characters from any of these games for any positive reason? I don’t.
Quite frankly, if I were EA, I probably wouldn’t have even waited this long to close it down after ten years and three several hundred million dollar failures. Loathe as I am to say anything in EA’s defense, it wasn’t EA that was responsible for BioWare’s poor creative decisions and processes. Even as far back as 2010, things were already trending poorly for the studio.
Dragon Age 2 drew a lot of criticism for massively scaling back DA:O’s RPG elements (though its story and characters were still decent); Mass Effect 3’s dogwater ending sat at the center of one of the biggest gaming controversies of the 2010s, and Dragon Age: Inquisition didn’t exactly sit well with a lot of folks when it first released either. Sure, EA didn’t help in any of these cases, but the things players hated most were all the result of BioWare’s own choices and internal issues.
What I’m trying to get at here, is that BioWare hasn’t been the “legendary” studio everyone wants to remember for a very, very long time now. You could even argue that it hasn’t been so since its founders sold it to EA all the way back in the late 2000s. The downward slide began almost immediately after the sale, and it pretty much turned into a spiral after Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Is it EA’s fault? Partially. EA is very guilty of grossly mismanaging it (like all its acquisitions), but BioWare was still largely the author of its own downfall through poor creative decisions, chaotic processes, failing to retain its best talent, and replacing them with people who were just plain not as good. No disrespect to those who lost their jobs, of course, but frankly the results speak for themselves.
It’s always sad to see a once great studio close its doors, but, if we’re being real, its shuttering had been coming for a very long time. BioWare hadn’t had a hit in over ten years, had a very dysfunctional development style (as revealed by leaks over the years), and was staffed by hardly any (if any at all) of the old hands that made it great in the first place. BioWare and its IP have been long gone for years now, and it’s time to let it go.
What was your favorite among classic BioWare’s games? When do you think was the beginning of the end?
Image by Flickr user: Ryan Somma (cc)