It all comes down to a fundamentally different approach to making games. Red's Witcher series treats the player as an adult, which the average gamer is. Their games deal with difficult choices and then force you to live with the consequences of doing so. They don't shy away from adult themes appropriate to their game settings, such as the horrors of war - plague, rape, famine, murder. Bioware, on the other hand, tend to sanitize their games, shielding the player from the negatives of their game settings.
One of the biggest lessons Bioware needs to learn is to ditch their simplistic, black and white morality system they use in each game. The whole concept of 'Paragon' or 'Renegade' has worn out its welcome, especially when other games like the Witcher deal in shades of grey which is what life is. For example, there's a mission on SWTOR where you have a choice between letting someone go after they've been screened for carrying a virus and taking them into custody in order to be questioned about a terrorist they were employed by. The first choice you get light side points, the second choice you get dark side points. It's completely arbitrary and carries no consequence regardless of what choice you make. Every decision you make in Andromeda should have a consequence to it, even if you don't see that consequence until further down the line.
That being said, The Witcher 3 is far from a perfect game. It's generally agreed on the official forums that Red messed up the second and third acts with the writing falling off a cliff in the final third, long established characters acting entirely out of character, an antagonist who is criminally underdeveloped and an ending that is arguably worse than Mass Effect 3's since it has only the most tenuous connection to the main plot, with life or death decisions being made without the player being aware they're making life or death decisions (having a snowball fight is apparently life or death decision in CDPR's mind). It's romance system is also inferior to Bioware games with an awful and deeply unpopular lock in mechanic and the romance writing is unbalanced, being heavily biased towards one of the potential partners.
Nonetheless, if we look at the core concept then yes, The Witcher 3 must be a starting point for Bioware in making Andromeda. It's a far superior game in many ways to Inquisition and has swept the board with awards. Bioware have to look at the market, look at their past games and look at their competition and raise the bar for RPGs once more. Simply churning out another 'safe' game, I feel, will be the final nail in their coffin as a developer with many people.
Retour en haut
