Bioware is a game company that gamers may not have heard of now, they haven't released a new game in 5 years, and their last game, Anthem, was a half-in-production with rave reviews, and has been almost forgotten by players. But many veteran players who like RPG games must know that more than ten years ago, as long as it was a game produced by Bioware, it must have been a high-quality product.
Many gamers have heard the phrase "Blizzard must be a high-quality product", but for RPG players back then, the game produced by Bioware can be described as the best of the best. For example, each generation is a god-level "Baldur's Gate" series, the first two of which were developed and produced by Bioware, and "Neverwinter Nights", which led many players to enter the CRPG game, is also produced by this company. It is no exaggeration to say that Bioware represents the highest level of RPG games in Europe and the United States at that time.
However, for the vast majority of RPG players, Bioware is best known for the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, which I personally think represent the level of game production at their peak. Even if these two series are placed more than ten years later, they can still be called the highest level of Western fantasy and science fiction games.
Let's talk about the Dragon Age series first, this series has launched a total of 3 games, namely "Dragon Age: Origin", "Dragon Age 2" and "Dragon Age 3: Judgment". However, the quality of these 3 games is uneven, among which the origin of the original work is recognized by all players, whether it is from the macro aspect of the plot, gameplay, world view construction, or the details of the character creation and portrayal of each companion, it can be said that it was the pinnacle of RPG games of the year. Back then, no matter which game forum you asked someone to recommend an RPG game, nine times out of ten they would recommend Dragon Age Origins.
With the fantastic start of the first game, players are naturally looking forward to the 2nd generation of the series. But it's a pity that the level of Dragon Age 2 has dropped a lot compared to the original generation, and the overall play is that the game gives people a feeling of rushing work, as if the production team did not have enough time to develop it and led to a rushed ending.
This feeling is actually right, because compared to the nearly 5 years of slow work and meticulous work of the original work, the development cycle of Dragon Age 2 may only be about 2 years, and it is certainly impossible to ensure the polishing of the details of the game in such a short period of time, so the whole game feels very rough. The main plot also feels more and more wrong, from the perfection at the beginning of the game to the "bad ending" at the final ending, the change process of the quality of the entire main story also reflects the entire development process of Dragon Age 2.
As for the last work in the series, Dragon Age Trial, I think it's a completely different genre from the previous two generations. Due to the rise of ARPG games, Dragon Age Trials has greatly strengthened the game's combat system, allowing the entire game to shift from the strategic focus of the previous two generations to a more focused combat experience and sense of attack. This transition may not be easy for veteran players who like the previous two generations to accept, but for new players, this light strategy, heavy combat experience of Dragon Age Trials may be the best, so in that year it also won the honor of TGA Game of the Year.
After talking about the Dragon Age series, the next thing to talk about is the best RPG Mass Effect series in my opinion, I still think that the Mass Effect series shows all the game production concepts of Bioware at its peak, and this series is still recognized by many players as the best space RPG game.
A total of 4 titles in the Mass Effect series were released, the early trilogy and 2017's Mass Effect: Andromeda. However, in the minds of Mass Effect players, they almost only recognize the early trilogy, and the game Andromeda was expelled from the series by many people.
What's interesting about the Mass Effect trilogy is that almost every game has a very different style from its predecessors, but the quality of each game is quite high, and it can reach the level of a masterpiece. For example, the earliest original Mass Effect, due to the close proximity of the release time to the origin of Dragon Age, the overall game style is still biased towards traditional RPGs. The combat experience in the game is relatively average, and even the character movements are more awkward, especially the running posture is particularly funny. However, RPG elements are quite abundant, weapons and equipment have different enhancement directions, and players can collect a variety of enhancement chips with different attributes to build their own equipment.
In Mass Effect 2, the RPG elements of the first generation have been weakened, and the action and skill performance effects of the characters have been strengthened, and the feel of playing is much stronger than that of the first generation, and at the same time, due to the improvement of the picture effect, the game's plot animation is also more vivid, and the sense of substitution is stronger. In Mass Effect 3, the game's combat system has been further strengthened, and if you have played the Vanguard class back then, you must know that the combat experience is not much different from many action games.
Although each of the three generations of games has a different style, they do maintain a consistently high level of the game's most important story, and the entire series uses three games to tell a heart-wrenching history of galactic struggle. The most amazing thing is that these 3 games can also inherit the ending of the previous generation of games, which means that the choices made by players in the original game can eventually affect the final ending of the 3rd generation.
It is precisely because of the excellent quality of the Mass Effect trilogy that the reputation of "Mass Effect: Andromeda", which can be called good, is very poor among the player group, in fact, Andromeda is not bad when viewed alone, but its predecessors are too good. The Waterloo of Andromeda's reputation was also the beginning of Bioware's fall from the altar, and in 2019, the thunderstorm of "Anthem" became the last straw that broke the camel's back, and since then, the former master of RPG games has slowly faded out of the player's field of vision.
summary
I have a special affection for Bioware, a game company, because it is the Mass Effect series that gives me a taste of the charm of triple-A games, no matter how many famous games I play later, I will never forget the shock when I first played Mass Effect 3 and saw the fleet in the universe against each other, so I was also very disappointed to see this famous game company in decline step by step. Fortunately, now Bioware has also confirmed that it is working on a sequel to Dragon Age and Mass Effect, hoping that after years of precipitation, it will once again allow RPG players to shout the slogan of "Bioware must be a high-quality product".