Ever thought about where RPGs would be w/o Bioware/Bethesda?

Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. If these games didn't exist we would have basically just had the 2nd Witcher game (and that wasn't even on the PS3) and Dragon's Dogma (end of the gen) not counting JRPGs. Do you think other companies wouldn't have filled the void if these companies didn't exist?

I know it's difficult and expensive to make these games, but I wish more companies would try their hand at these types of games.

Yeah..... some place better and with Fewer Stats.... although thats actually Square Eenix's Fault.

Except fallout(1 and 2) I didn't enjoy any of those games. And I am still in the midst of playing witcher 2.

I don't know. There are some many things to look at. Other games were doing the open world one of them could become the big name.

As for Bioware, right now I think they are doing more to hurt RPG than improve them. just look how bad DA:I level system is and worse how boring the combat is..

Then again the game play in many RPG have taken a sharp nose dive in lately. As a general rule little to no stats in RPG get worse off. Right now they push to remove all stats from RPG. They are trying to remove a great part that make RPGs' game play fun and replacing it with less fun game play. I find Skyrim combat to be less fun and the main reason is the lack of stats.

Probably wouldn't have strong roleplaying in RPGs like we do now. Or more well-written stories. Or great narrative-gameplay combos. That or it would take longer to get such games. Basically they made the RPG experience more interactive than before. I still believe Chrono Trigger was more influential in everything I listed, but Bethesda and BioWare keep working to perfect the formula.

No I never thought of that and quite frankly I wouldn't want to. Thank god for Bioware and Bethesda is all I'll say.

I would say I agree with pass Bioware but I think the current Bioware is just hurting RPG.

I loved their past games and I love their current games, to me they're one of the best developers around.

Yeah, we'd still have games that involve real role-playing.

I dislike almost all BioWare games, so if you ask me it wouldn't have been such a pity.

I'm sure other devs would've had room to thrive, namely Piranha Bytes, Larian, Troika etc.

Bioware and Bethesda have been systemically dumbing down RPGs and chasing the lowest common denominator console market since KOTOR and Oblivion.

Bioware might make really shiny games (and Bethesda makes...um...large games), but neither makes particularly great RPGs anymore.

Still, I guess we owe it to Bioware for creating the Infinity and Aurora Engines - leading to the development of Torment and The Witcher.

*edit* Also, we don't owe Bethesda for Fallout. They didn't create the series, and if they hadn't bought the IP, we'd have Kickstarted Van Buren years ago.

I'm excited for Pillars of Eternety and Torment - we're seeing a resurgence in classic Baldur's Gate style cRPGs and that makes me happy. I don't think we owe that to Bethesda/Bioware.

I do appreciate what Bethesda did with Fallout 3 and Oblivion, though - I loved both (Morrowind is still my favorite TES game, though, but I feel like we are discussing more recent titles than that)

I know RPGs would have a lot less glitches.

I agree. It suddenly hit me how different the 7th gen would have been for me without these 4 franchises and their latest installments. Mass Effect and Fallout in particular.

So you don't think what they did with Fallout 3 was impressive?

Without them, I think WRPGs would be stuck within the PC gaming 'niche' similar to where strategy games are now. KOTOR was really the game that started the winds of change to deliver their brand of RPGs to a wide audience.

I'd imagine the JRPGs within the console market would be alot healthier without Beth and BioWare's successes too. As they shifted the competition of RPGs to favor the west with their hefty investments to their RPGs.

Not really, New Vegas was the one that impressed.

I enjoyed the writing and the characters in New Vegas way more, but the game wouldn't have been possible without what Bethesda did with 3.

Was about to rag on you for that thread title, but I see the content being discussed thankfully differs slightly.

Yeah, there'd probably be other games being made, and I would like to see more WRPG's around (preferably without any dumbed down character leveling system).

We'd be in the hands of other RPG makers....

The End

Maybe we would have more games like Fallout and Arcanum, if so then we would be much better off without them.

Yeah, maybe we wouldn't have so many RPG's being made. Certainly wouldn't be a bad thing as there are many other genres to enjoy.

I just find Bioware's leveling system to continue to get worse with each game. At this point they system is about pick the role they want you to play at the start of the game. They are removed the role playing game play from their games.

Also I am getting tired their Zelda plots.

They downgrading of the player control character growth (stats, gear, abilities) and reducing the fun of these game by reducing the amount of role playing you can do in them.

Maybe Square woulda gave us a few more good games instead of wasting time on there mmos

RPGs would have been way better off. RPGs, might actually have been about *gasp* roleplaying.

As with BileWare, maybe we wouldnt have seen the butchering of the dialogue system known as the dialogue wheel. Their only good contributions to the genre were Baldur's Gate 2 and the Infinity Engine as far as I am concerned. With every other game they have been systematically trying to further dumb down the genre to make RPGs appeal to players who really even interested in RPGs, "We have data that shows there are a lot of people that enjoy playing RPGs although they won’t necessarily call them RPGs. They’ll play Fallout, Assassin’s Creed and even Call Of Duty, which have these progression elements – you’re putting points into things – but they don’t necessarily associate that as an RPG. So we think that if we expand that out we’ll attract a much bigger audience."

Regarding bethesda, maybe Fallout would have gone to someone who can actually treat the lore with respect as opposed to the godawful parody they made. Bethesda clearly didnt know what they were doing when designing Fallout 3. And the flaws of New Vegas were all flaws inherited from Fallout 3. Skyrim was the worst thing to happen to RPGs. Now nearly every AAA rpg claims skyrim as an influence and the genre is so much worse off, now we see the genre littered with bloated world rpgs. With world maps far too big for the content in them to actually support.

Not really

You would just see more western developers trying to copy games like Final Fantasy instead.

Considering that the RPGs that were being made and were not inspired by BioWare or Bethesda in the last decade resembled Fallout, Ultima Underworld or actual tabletop RPGs a whole lot more than Final Fantasy, I doubt it.

I don't look at it that way. If it wasn't for Bioware making games they way they do, then some other company named something else will of formed and made games the way they did. It's a gap and it gets filled, just depends on who does it first. If someone hadn't made a film about time traveling robots, someone will eventually.

Or not...

Even BioWare back in the 1990's made some strong role-playing games.

I dont know what people are talking about when kids say RPGs are better off without BioWare Bethesda. Especially with the scope of RPGs of last year and what's to come this year.

If anything, what would have been better off is the JRPG market not being pressured to set out an equal investment. I dont think their involvement has anything to do other than expanding RPGs to a greater audience.

It's like people here complain and reminisce about ye olde days and dont actaully look around to see games like Divinity: OS and Wasteland 2 exist. I thought they're better than these so called classics people are posting pictures of in this thread.

Namecalling in the first sentence... this is already of to a good start. *rolls eyes* Last year in particular was notable because RPGs discarded BioWarian and Bethesda influences, and instead took inspiration from late 80s early 90s RPGs.

Yes, the last year was good. But last year alone does not make up for the Dark Ages that went around for nearly an entire decade. As good as the renaissance is, last year alone does not make up for a decade of crap. The fact is, BioWare and Bethesda held back the industry with their dumbing down.

JRPGs originated copying Wizardry, Final Fantasy evolved from that. The Japanese were the ones copying us to begin with.

Odds are without Bethesda and Bioware WRPGs would be in a much better spot. Morrowind launched on the Xbox and blew up. Bioware followed the next year with Knights of the Old Republic and later Jade Empire. Many PC developers started leaving en masse to start working on the system and we received several shit games as a result (namely Thief 3).

Then the next generation rolls around and we get Oblivion, which was massively cut back from earlier versions and made to accommodate controllers and hardware limitations. Bethesda bought the Fallout IP and fucked it up with Oblivion w/ guns. Bioware released their first game in years, Origins, which was a good (but not great) game on PC, but absolute shit on consoles. Then they tried to fix it and we received the pile of shit that was Dragon Age 2, again shafting the PC players who the first game was aimed at.

It took the Wasteland 2 kickstarter for the mess that those two companies started years ago to fix itself.

Considering that their games are among my all time favorites I'm extremely thankful they exist in the RPG genre.

Blizzard is still among us lol

The type of games that Bioware and Bethesda make are more of a mutation of the old tabletop-based PC RPGs. They're just different animals, and they sell exceedingly well because many people like to buy and play them.

I also think The Witcher 1 & 2 wouldn't have taken the form they have now without Bioware and Betheda's inarguable influence over game development at large.

Your elitism is painful. Every medium changes and evolves. Games made 20 years ago and movies made 50 years ago wouldn't work today. It's just the way it is.

Removal of depth, challenge, replay value and actual roleplaying is hardly what I would consider evolution. Turning RPGs into watered down dating sims and action games is not taking the genre into the right direction.

Starting with Kotor, BioWare's characters have always been two dimensional at best, their plots the same rehashed hamfisted places of power bullshit, their C&C non-existant (I have played porn games with superior C&C), stats constantly getting removed, itemization getting more banal, dialogue getting increasingly restrictive and their attempts to explore deeper themes always cause them to somehow miss the point. The dialogue wheel conceived by Drew Karpyshyn, was copied by several other gaming developers, almost certainly resulting in a mess of a dialogue system. Although it seems like devs are going back to dialogue trees now... thankfully.

With Oblivious and Oblivion with Guns, Bethesda clearly focused on quantity over quality. They built a massive swimming pool indeed, but the large scale of it meant they had little resources left, so sacrifices had to be made. Those sacrifices went in the actual quality, so instead of getting proper water you could actually swim in, they supplied their water right from the sewage. They toned down the scale somewhat with Skyrim, leading to something at least playable, but even that game was still reeked of terrible design choices from bethesda. At least mods can fix the godawful design choices, Requiem is highly recommended, and if Requiem is too "hardcore", Skyrim Redone is good as well.

How exactly have BioWare and Bethesda's influence been positive on the genre?

As for the games made 20 years ago comment. Guess what kind of design RPGs of yesteryear and this year tend to emulate? Divinity: Original Sin was inspired by Ultima 7 released in 1992, Underworld ascendant is inspired by Ultima Underworld released in the same year. And hell, a lot of these highly successful kickstarters are heavily based on games released in the early 90s. A few even inspired by the late 90s. Building on their ideas. Clearly 20 year old game design carries merit today. And I must say, it feels damn good the RPG genre is back on track.