by synthetic » Sat Jul 18, 15 7:48 am
Well, I can only see one title in the DA series thats even worth mentioning in the comparison, the other two represent some kind of alien genres that should compete against their own kind, whatever those may be. DA1 brought something fresh to the gamer, whereas ME2 simply expanded upon the first and the third represented some sort of dlc. If one is to look at ME2 and 3 separately as video games and compare them to DA1.. then I would have to absolutely disagree. ME3 is likely one of the least memorable games in the history on its own right, whereas DA1 could've even called revolutionary for the newer generation of gamers. It should be noted, though, that almost everything DA1 did well or not so well, Witcher 2 perfected.
As for ME4.. right now CDPR showed Bioware how it is done, and it is certain that they will make some kind of conclusions from it, especially if they really have even a faint hope of reviving KOTOR series. If nothing else, they could just do kotor2 on me4 and kotor3 and give the games to actually talented developers ie obsidian once more. I am not actually expecting that to happen, but.. they've done it before. If they come to a solid conclusion that they simply don't have the talent to create critically acclaimed games anymore. In terms of gaming experience and impact, I'd rate the broken kotor2 above any ME title or DA1. Its story and dialogue were simply so amazing that for me it even started filling the content holes.
ME4 does well to distance itself from Shepard story after the player feedback and questionable plot decisions, and from what I've read on the interwebs I don't think I'm the only one that thinks that they've so far done it successfully. DA series however would absolutely have to do a hard reset on their entire franchise, if not discontinue it altogether.
On a different note, I wonder if our opinions even bear any weight for the developers, though. Logically, the quality of written, audible, visible and now tangible art can be collectively determined by the audience to a sufficient degree, but we also see that low quality teen flicks, bedside stories and extremely superficial games sell very well. While Bioware can rate their titles with triple A in terms of costs, it is not possible for them to create a blockbuster (appeals to vast numbers) nor critically acclaimed title (high quality) unless they seriously re-evaluate their standards and production cycle. Perhaps the gaming industry has become India with dominant Bollywood spam that sells sufficiently well for the owners. In the light of that, I'd rate ME4 future just as bad as that of practically any other non-indie title coming.