@Shango4 @texasgoldrush Please stop comparing ME to Gears of War because it has cover mechanics. Cover mechanics are no longer exclusive to GOW and it's been that way for a while. All the combat mechanics that were in ME1 and ME2 were in ME3.
The more of David Cage's work I play, and the more I hear about his opinions on gaming and where it should go, the more I'm convinced that the man wanted to be a film-maker but never quite made the cut so he decided to go into game development instead.
Don't get me wrong, I thought Heavy Rain was all well and good and I'm looking forward to Beyond: Two Souls, but I just can't help but worry that this might be a symptom of where gaming in general is going, with Hollywood actors and showings at film festivals... I dunno, something about it just rubs me the wrong way. It's like games can't be a respectable art form unless they get closer and closer to being films, when really they should just blossom into their own thing.
@infinity_ I'm not religious at all, but it bugs me when people say people need to choose between science and religion, when there's no real need for one to circumvent the other. Let's say tomorrow I get diagnosed with cancer. I'll go to a hospital for treatment, but why does that mean I can't go to a church for comfort?
EA can view gamers as an exploitable commodity all they want, just so long as they remember that they are a *thinking* commodity. Trying to appeal to as many people as possible and price gouging your customers with mirco-transactions and charging them for extra content that was blatantly cut from the finished product may be profitable for now, but I doubt that it's a sustainable business model. One thing that EA never really seems to take into consideration is their own credibility and the credibility of their franchises, which is quickly going down the drain, I think, and I think there will come a breaking point where people won't be willing to go along with it anymore.
What I'm getting at here is that I hope one day EA gets a CEO who thinks that, yes, it's our job to be as profitable as possible, but keeping the credibility of our games is an important aspect of ensuring that our customers will keep coming back.
BioWare used to be a company where money was a means to make games. They got bought up by a company where games are a means to make money. Regardless of how talented or how well-intentioned the boys and girls working at BioWare are (and even after all that's happened I do still think there's lots of talent working there) it doesn't really matter. They can't make the kind of products they used to. Not because of a lack of talent and not because of some evil executive at EA twirling his mustache and laughing maniacally as he counts all his money, it's just the nature of the larger machine that they've become a small part of.
@Kravyn81 The very fact that it does exist proves that there are evolutionary benefits from it. Any property which causes a 100% reproductive failure should have been weeded out of the population long ago if it wasn't balanced by something beneficial. We see it occur in animals all the time, be it for reproductive balance of social cohesion, it has an inherent purpose and is here to stay.
It seems BioWare is trying their damndest to try to re-recreate the major success of Dragon Age: Origins... It really shouldn't be that hard. Just go back and play Dragon Age: Origins, then make a game like it.
@Suikogaiden No one's asking for a revolutionary game, we're asking for a game in the same vein as games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape. It's not too hard or expensive to make.
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