Up and working and Id thought I peek back into this forum. Ive read about 20 pages of the same stuff I read yesterday. And I have 20 more pages to go.
But the thing here is, regardles of the superzelous fanbois opinons or not.
This is a storydriven franchise. It wasnt hailed as a pew pew. Bioware doesnt have a 10 year and running rep for good pew pews. Bioware has a ten year plus rep for good storydriven adventures. For RPGs. For innovative and interesting games. Most of the Bioware founders and quite a few of the employees have a background in pen and paper RPGs. But for some reason they cant seem to fanthom that the story is that important to us, the regulars who are used to storytelling. They (and their defendors) do no seem to grasp the importance of continuing the focus on their core competance before expanding into the pew pew MP field.
That I do not undestand.
Even aside from the pure "the story is essential in a storydriven game" argument that seems to fall on deaf ears, ignoring or playing down your core competances in a time of fiscal crisis is an extremely crap idea. Ask any first years student in business school. Any entrepeneur.
If this prothean business had been the first slipup from Bioware, then I might have thought;
"Meh... ok... nobody can be perfect all the time... Ill let this slide. No problem".
The lack of attention to the narrative, to the story, has however become more than just a "freak accident / one time only sloppy oversight".
DAO:Had story up the kazoo. It was storydriven and it was genrally very well recieved. DA2 got panned all but universally for having butchered the lore, the dialogue and pretty much all else story and rpg related
Enter the last novel. The last novel publish by del ray was so crap, so inconsistant in its lore, so feeble and unpolished in its character continuation, that it caused people to go basically ape****e. The fans went nuts and Bio/del ray had to go out and promise a "revised" version. It was as if noone from Bioware had even read the novel. As if noone cared. As if the story, so pivotal to the ME franchise, suddenly mattered nothing. You had the games, the wiki, and the previous novels and dlcs to go on as a writer and you STILL managed to churn out something that was as beyond all critique. You STILL managed to let it slip through to the fans, in some blind vain hope that the fanbase that has been following you for more than ten years for your storytelling wouldnt notice you completely disregarded the very same.
And now enter The Prothean. A member of a race that has played a significant, critical plot part. A member of a race thought dead for 50k years. The last survivor of a race thought to be gods, legends, myths and shepards of the galaxy. A guy who, even if he was as hamfisted and lacking finesse as Grunt, would know a hell of alot we do not know about his people. Even the most idiotic, uneducated moron in the western world can name 10 significant places on the planet. Ten cultural hubs. Ten major cities. Ten animals. Ten utensils. Ten entertainments. And this guy survived somehow. If he was in cryogenic stasis, he must have been valuable enough to put in stasis, which would mean he would likely know more. A solder knows about weapons systems, small unit tactics, handsigns, command structure, insignia, the history of his unit, the flag of his region or nation. A scientist would know considerably more. The last member of a critical race in the history of the galaxy. And he is somehow "trivial" or "unimportant" in the lore, to the point of disregarding him completely? Really? Tell me something bioware? Would you have accepted that at a Pen and Paper seesion from your own DM? Would you have just folded, and let your DM skate past that part of the lore? You wouldnt in the least bit have found this guy to be near essential? Really? Did you forget your roots or something? Did someone hit you over the head and cause masive amnesia? What happened? You couldnt see this comming from miles away?
Dont you see this pattern establishes a trend? Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me. Fool me thrice? I dont think so. Im not that stupid. Im not that zealous.
I will be buying ME3. I will be buying all DLC's. And Ill pay through the nose if you ask me. But dont ever expect me again to trust you to make a storydriven game for people who love stories and adventures. Any new IP or continuation of old IP's will be scrutinized and be subjected to intense sceptizism. You have jeopadized your reputation, your very raison d'etre, your fiscal core clientbase for what? 10 bucks per installment of your latest game? Is that worth the blow to the reputation? Is it worth the damage controll overtime from your CS reps? Is it worth alienating a significant part or minority over? Is it worth the PR problems? I wouldnt think so.
Call me a whiner. A "entitleist". Call me whatever. But dont treat me like I dont matter. Dont expect this to have zero impact on your reptuation and your future earnings.
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