Why is Bioware insulting the Gaming community ?

I have played RPG games for over 25 years. Bioware was always my favourite software house with Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment all being synonymous with excellence

In December 2009, Bioware released Dragon Age Origins. I played it continually throughout the next year. The story, attention to detail and adult humour made this game a joy to play and I wanted more.

However by the sequels were disappointing. Awakening suffered from lack of attention to detail and was released with bugs and design flaws. DA2’s story line and game interface was poor. Nevertheless I hoped that with all the hype, DAI would restore Bioware to its former greatness.

Alas ….. Frankly I am disgusted that Bioware has seen fit to release such a mess of a game as DAI. Underneath there is a good story line– but the PC implementation is utterly disgraceful. Did anyone at Bioware actual play-test the PC controls on this game or was testing only carried out hand-held devices?

I have read the ecstatic reviews from the fanzine websites - many amazingly published just hours after the DAI’s release. I read the ludicrous Bioware forum comments such as “I completed the game in 35 minutes” as well

I regard myself as a serious RPG gamer that has now spent over 20 hours of continual struggle with DAI. It is useless to try to list every area that I believe needs improvement. Apart from the graphics and story line most other game areas need attention with some like the Keyboard Interface being scrapped and redesigned.

Nevertheless here are a few “show-stoppers”. The normal forward looking camera controls don’t allow the Player Character (PC) to look up or down which has resulted with several falls over cliff edges. Trying to position your PC underneath a rift for closure is also tricky. The Tactical camera is equally awful because the only way it can be repositioned to Normal view is by saving the game and then reopening the saved  file. How the hell did that escape any play-testing?

Gathering resources and opening loot objects is ludicrously difficult. The “V” key seems to operate randomly and often ignores items in front of the PC but lights up something that is now behind you but  you weren’t warned was there. Often getting the PC into a position where an object can actually be collected is horrid. It can take several minutes and a large number of attempts to achieve this.

It is apparent that Bioware prefers gamers not to know too much about how things work because the DAI 16 page booklet is of completely useless. At best it provides just the same information the player gets from their OPTION screen. Example: what is meaning for Cassandra’s health bar indicator having grey tyre marks across it? Is it relevant?

On top of failing to allow players to reuse a pre-designed avatar, the Game Save process is crass. I now record 25 saves identically named “Frostback Mountain” which are attached to identical screenshots and 15 similar saves for “The Hinterland”. This is as much use as a *** in a thunderstorm.  How can a player easily find the correct save game to roll back to?

Judging by the massive number and range of faults / problems being recorded in the forum daily , it will take many months before more than a fraction of these can be addressed. I simply don’t believe that Biowarehas the commitment or manpower to deal with all the many serious interface issues that PC gamers are experiencing.

In the last 4-5 years Bioware appears to have systematically destroyed its reputation for excellent game production. Now is games appear to be built to resemble “Diabolo” – rush around, zap everything, collect gems and achieve a high score – totally mindless!

I definitely will not be investing any further cash on game offering s from Bioware / Origin / EA. DAI needed months more work done on it before it was  released to the public – but of course Xmas is round the corner!! There is now only one goal for all these companies – maximise their cash for the minimum of effort.

DAO was a brilliant game and released exactly 5 years later, DAI most certainly is NOT