Here's an update from international game retail chain Game in Sweden: they recently sent out an offer to all subscribers to their email news channel to buyback the game at very near the original retail price from anyone who feels like they've already had enough of it. If that's not a clear statement and warning to Bioware, and IMO even more, EA, to stop ****ing around and get their **** together, I don't know what is.
Indeed, I consider Electronic Arts, much more than Bioware, to be the main culprit in this drama. I have seen many smaller game development studios that used to possess a strong creative vision and to put pride in their work, after being acquired by EA, suddenly starting to churn out nothing but bull**** excuses for games on a regular basis. A long-time fan of the old Ultima series of RPGs, I remember with particular bile EA:s acquisition of Origin Systems (the development studio that made the Ultima games) which eventually led to the death of the company and the franchise, and it wasn't a pretty demise either. What has Bioware produced since switching to EA as publisher? ME2 (good, although certainly designed to cater to a much larger audience than the original ME), DA2 (rushed, with a forced style of gameplay and ending, also designed to cater to action-oriented gamers as much as hardcore roleplayers, unlike its predecessor), SWToR (can't really comment on the quality of this product as I've not tried it nor intend to as things currently stand), and now ME3 (no comment needed). It seems obvious to me that EA has a very unfortunate (and, in the long term certainly nonprofitable) habit of forcing several practices on the game studios they deal with, the 2 most fatal being:
1. Design to cater to as large an audience within the global gaming community as possible, even at the cost of selling out a franchise's very soul and everything that defined it. In every single instance I have witnessed where EA suddenly takes over an existing franchise this pattern has been painfully obvious. Hardcore RPG:s become more action-oriented at the expense of roleplaying elements. This happened to the Ultima series upon EA:s acquisition of Origin Systems, and it happened to the Mass Effect franchise beginning with ME2 (which although admittedly being an excellent game, was noticeably more FPS and less RPG than the original Mass Effect).
2. Rushing in order to satisfy fiscal bookkeeping, once again at the expense of quality and even the possible cost of selling out the very soul of franchises. Once again I recognize the pattern from DA2 and ME3 in the case of the Ultima series, most notably the concluding chapter of that series, Ultima IX. In this case, EA forced Origin to release an underdeveloped, bug-ridden mess of a game that in the end was such an unworthy conclusion to the franchise that the protests resulting from the release were initially comparable to the RetakeME3 in force. Lacking the coherence and efficient communication that we now have access to, however, the protests quickly lost momentum in that instance, allowing EA to get away cleanly to pull the same ****ing **** all over again on other companies and their fans. They are in my eyes mostly reminiscent of a locust swarm that takes over companies, consumes their very soul and leave them empty husks. They have now gotten to the Mass Effect franchise and are attempting to pull their **** all over again. I have to wonder, though, if they will get away with it this time, for the first time faced with such vocal, coordinated and massive opposition. Indeed, the parallells one might draw to the Reapers vs. the Galactic Alliance of Mass Effect are numerous. I have to wonder if we will allow EA:s tyrannizing of and preying on the games industry to continue or if we will
hold the line
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