Good enough is the mantra of the game industry these days once your company hits a big size. I just had a save file go bad on me, luckily the game autosaved a lot so i'm only about 2 minutes from where i was. Honestly both gamers and game companies seem to be moving backwards in evolution. The problem is there's tons of gamers who are okay with broken games because in their eyes the companies do no wrong and then you have the gamers who demand quality only to be insulted by other gamers. What's getting me is EA was actually not the bad guy for once in this. Then again that's what they get for having Mac as their shill in Bioware. Meanwhile Guerilla games, who were known for generic games, sold 2.5 million copies of Zero Dawn in 2 weeks to the point they decided they would make story DLC for the game after all.
Plus that game is a new IP + female lead + open world.
And it's not like gamers who believe a gaming company can do no wrong isn't an unfounded principle. Nintendo for as long as I can remember have been the pinnacle of high quality games that are both great looking, fun to play and almost entirely bug free. Well, bugs that distract you from the game. There are bugs in Nintendo games but you really have to look for them. Now I don't think that as a company they can 'do no wrong'. They have done a lot of things wrong. "Mario doesn't need a story", Link must always be a guy, if you post ANYTHING on youtube you have to follow our rules in doing so, Fair Use be darned. ect. It's maddening, but when it comes to their games, it delivers.
But BioWare? I watched a video a while ago where a guy talks about Mass Effect 3 after it's been out for five years. He covers a lot of familiar territory but the one point he brings up that really sets up the video perfectly is that none of the Mass Effect games ever really reached a level of greatness that some other properties can look back on and say "That was the one where everyone aspired to be like it". Mass Effect 1 had a very dragging pace with it's elevators, weak side quests, horrendous game interface and laughable DLC. But it still gave players something that they wanted to experience which was a character they could create and shape. Mass Effect 2, while certainly helping in the interface department and speeding up the pace a bit still fell short in the story telling department and BioWare's forward thinking take on romances. Seriously, no gay characters at all? Get lost. Mass Effect 3 stuck with what ME2 had done, but wound up with that ending. And now with Andromeda, a game that promised us a whole new galaxy, is coming off as mediocre and stale and buggy as all heck. When fans look back and talk about what the quintessential Mass Effect experience is, I highly doubt anyone will bring up Andromeda. It just doesn't do anything new despite the much advertised new galaxy. When you play a Mass Effect soundtrack, are you going to listen to something iconic like Vigil, or....
"I'm only human after all. I'm only human after all. I'm only human after all. Don't put the blame on meeeee."
Fudge...