Latest news with #DragonAge:TheVeilguard
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Inside the ‘Dragon Age' debacle that gutted EA's BioWare Studio
In early November, on the eve of the holiday shopping season, staffers at the video game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard,' and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video game publisher Electronic Arts had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' and 'Anthem,' had flopped, and there were rumors that if 'Dragon Age' underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new 'Dragon Age' had reached only 1.5 million players, missing the company's expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, 'EA Sports FC 25,' was also subpar, compounding the problem. As a result of the struggling titles, EA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson said, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA's share price promptly plunged 18%. ''Dragon Age' had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,' Wilson said on an earnings call. 'However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.' Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare's staff at the studio's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire — and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard,' there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one — and then back again — a switch that muddled development and inflated the title's budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA's potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment. The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth $860 million. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, such as 'Madden NFL,' and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released 'Dragon Age: Inquisition,' the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title won the Game of the Year award and sold 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah — a major validation of EA's diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next 'Dragon Age' installment, aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio's focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released 'Mass Effect: Andromeda,' the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft's Casey Hudson, an alumnus of BioWare's early, formative years. Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamored of so-called live-service games, such as 'Destiny' and 'Overwatch,' in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into 'Anthem,' a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whiskey. The next 'Dragon Age' sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. 'I wish that pivot had never occurred,' Darrah would later recount on YouTube. 'EA said, 'Make this a live service.' We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.'' Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of 'Dragon Age' while everyone else helped to finish 'Anthem,' which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a 'pulpy,' more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series. In February 2019, BioWare released 'Anthem.' Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare's second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of 'Dragon Age' continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would experience only once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn't die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of 'Anthem' hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building ''Anthem' with dragons.' Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game's already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare's new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next 'Dragon Age' would no longer be multiplayer. 'We were thinking, 'Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?'' McKay told Bloomberg News. 'No, we need to get back to what we're really great at.' In theory, the reversion back to the series' tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game's fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they'd be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an 'alpha' build of 'Dragon Age' to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game's biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative — historically, a big draw for many BioWare games. But the multiplayer roots of 'Dragon Age' limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game's release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish game, BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next 'Mass Effect.' For decades there'd been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the 'Dragon Age' crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes traveling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the 'Mass Effect' group was called the USS Enterprise, after the 'Star Trek' ship, because commands were issued straight from the top and executed zealously. As the 'Mass Effect' directors took control, they scoffed that the 'Dragon Age' squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the 'Mass Effect' team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating 'Dragon Age' leaders who had been told they didn't have the budget for such big, ambitious swings. 'It always seemed that, when the 'Mass Effect' team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,' said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the 'Dragon Age' franchise who left before development of the new game started. 'But 'Dragon Age' always had to fight against headwinds.' Early testers and 'Mass Effect' leads complained about the game's snarky tone — a style of video game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that 'Dragon Age' could face the same outcome as 'Forspoken' — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors' strike limited the writers' ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next 'Dragon Age' seem more like 'Fortnite' than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn't know how to market the game. When 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' finally premiered on Halloween after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game's new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered. 'The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,' said Caitie, a popular 'Dragon Age' YouTuber. 'Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.' Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is working on the next 'Mass Effect.' After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA's commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than $7 billion in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA's annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits such as 'Cyberpunk 2077,' 'Elden Ring' and 'Baldur's Gate 3.' In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. 'That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised,' Creutz added. 'It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.' Schreier writes for Bloomberg.
NZ Herald
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Inside the ‘Dragon Age' debacle that gutted EA's BioWare studio
In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales
The Star
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Inside the 'Dragon Age' debacle that gutted EA's BioWare studio
In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard , and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem , had flopped, and there were rumors that if Dragon Age underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new Dragon Age had only reached 1.5 million players, missing the company's expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, EA Sports FC 2025 , was also subpar, compounding the problem. As a result of the struggling titles, EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson explained, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA's share price promptly plunged 18%. ' Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,' Wilson later said on an earnings call. 'However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.' Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare's staff at the studio's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire – and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard , there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one – and then back again – a switcheroo that muddled development and inflated the title's budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA's potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment. The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth US$860mil. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, like Madden NFL , and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released Dragon Age: Inquisition , the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title went on to win the much-coveted Game of the Year Award and sell 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah – a major validation of EA's diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next Dragon Age installment – code name: Joplin – aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio's focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda , the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft Inc's Casey Hudson, an alumni of BioWare's early, formative years. Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamoured of so-called live-service games, such as Destiny and Overwatch , in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into Anthem , a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game – a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. 'I wish that pivot had never occurred,' Darrah would later recount on YouTube. 'EA said, 'Make this a live service'. We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over'.' Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of Dragon Age – code name: Morrison – while everyone else helped to finish Anthem , which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a 'pulpy', more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series. In February 2019, BioWare released Anthem . Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare's second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of Dragon Age continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would only experience once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn't die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of Anthem hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building ' Anthem with dragons'. Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game's already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare's new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next Dragon Age would no longer be multiplayer. 'We were thinking, 'Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?'' McKay later told Bloomberg News. 'No, we need to get back to what we're really great at.' In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age 's tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game's fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they'd be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an 'alpha' build of Dragon Age to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game's biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative – historically, a big draw for many BioWare games. But Dragon Age 's multiplayer roots limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game's release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish Dragon Age , BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next Mass Effect game. For decades there'd been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the Dragon Age crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes travelling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the Mass Effect group was called the USS Enterprise, after the Star Trek ship, because commands were issued straight down from the top and executed zealously. As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the Mass Effect team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating Dragon Age leaders who had been told they didn't have the budget for such big, ambitious swings. 'It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,' said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the Dragon Age franchise who left before development of the new game started. 'But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.' Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game's snarky tone – a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken – a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter – BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors strike limited the writers' ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next Dragon Age seem more like Fortnite than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn't know how to market the game. When Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally premiered on Halloween 2024 after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game's new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered. 'The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,' said Caitie, a popular Dragon Age YouTuber. 'Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.' Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is now working on the next Mass Effect . After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA's commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than US$7bil (RM29.70bil) in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA's annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits like Cyberpunk 2077 , Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 . In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. 'That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised,' Creutz added. 'It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.' – Bloomberg
Daily Mirror
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Oblivion Remastered reminds me of when Bethesda were the true RPG masters
If Bethesda wants to be back on top by the time next Elder Scrolls game rolls around, it should take more lessons from Oblivion Remastered than Starfield. Oblivion Remastered demonstrates the kind of inspiring world and storytelling experience any studio worth its RPG weight should be aiming to recapture. For the longest time, the RPG video game arms race was dominated by the two Bs: BioWare and Bethesda. Specialising in creating titles with memorable characters set in incredibly detailed worlds – the kind where you, the player, can make an impact through your own gameplay decisions – it's clear that this style of game, in 2025, has only become harder to make for both studios. As a result, there's a lot less of these 'all-encompassing' style RPG experiences to be found in general, which means when a disappointment of, say, Starfield 's calibre arrives, it's no fun for anyone. Particularly the players and developers who adored the genre-defining experiences of BioWare and Bethesda's heyday. While not a bad game per se, Dragon Age: The Veilguard 's more action-oriented approach caused long-time series fans to wonder why it was even called Dragon Age at all. As for Mass Effect? Time will tell whether BioWare can put lightning back in that bottle. Meanwhile, as for the other big B, I've been dipping in and out of Oblivion Remastered since its release this month. It's showing age in places, true, yet still reminds me of when a Bethesda RPG was something to be savoured. Is it full of jank and barmy voice acting? Yes, but it also nails (as Skyrim also did) the feeling of being transported to another place, a feeling that's further cemented once you gain influence over it through your decisions. Starfield lacked a lot of this texture, by comparison. The difference with Oblivion is that it cuts the clutter. Now, what do I mean by 'clutter'? Part of this is the size of the world, of course. Whereas Starfield was largely sold on the premise of being limitless, what with procedurally generated planets making up a vast solar system that seemed ripe for exploration alongside a few central hubs, Oblivion's Cyrodiil is almost the exact opposite. In a little under 10 minutes, I can run from its capital all the way to the county of Kvatch, where I'm immediately besieged by countless narrative threads to pull on – almost all of them interesting. By nature of being substantially smaller, not only is Oblivion Remastered more manageable, but less intimidating when wanting to become invested in the several stories it presents. Starfield's more procedural approach feels more like a chore. There's an interesting concept at its centre, one involving some sort of ancient prophecy that quickly sees your main mission to hunt down a series of Artefacts as part of Constellation's effort. This narrative throughline quickly gets muddled soon after you've first launched off the starting planet, however, and it isn't helped by the avalanche of continuous load screens as you board, fly, and then exit your shuttle. Oblivion Remastered has absolutely none of these extra trimmings, and therefore very little bloat. You're quickly out there, exploring Cyrodiil at your own pace, meeting all kinds of quirky races and characters. A dying age Funnily enough, where Oblivion Remastered is most like Starfield is in the raft of dungeons I'm encouraged to plunder. Absolutely all of them I've explored so far feel like the same copy-and-paste underground design, only with a slightly different layout and objective. This isn't an issue exclusive to Oblivion, mind you, Skyrim still has a similar sense of repetition. However, it never bothers me too much since you're never forced to spend exorbitant amounts of time in them, meaning it's never too long before you're back out into Cyrodiil's beautiful open scenery – which obviously looks better than ever due to being rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5. These are just a few superficial examples, but as someone who is currently playing Oblivion for the first time via this remaster, the benefits are clear: Bethesda RPGs are best when they cut out any noise and make you the centre of this story cleanly and promptly. It's not perfect, and by nature of being essentially a facelift of a 2006 Xbox 360 title, there's a few niggles I have with combat, pacing, and the minigames. Dear lord, the minigames… That said, I hope Bethesda learns what it did great during this era of RPG development so it can use these lessons to inform the next generation of The Elder Scrolls rather than the less nuanced approach of Starfield. In the end, there's a direct line that can be drawn from Oblivion all the way to Starfield. You see it in its insistence on wanting to make the player feel special, combined with plenty of reasons to poke away at the farthest reaches of the map and, most of all, tell a story in a world that reflects the effects of your specific decision-making right back at you. These kinds of wide-scale RPGs are no longer a walk in the park to make, and so it's not too surprising to see both BioWare and Bethesda stumble a fair bit when wanting to still get it right while making the most of what new advancements in technology offer. Oblivion Remastered, warts and all, has far more texture and allure than most other recent video game worlds. As such, I don't think it's wrong to expect a once great RPG studio like Bethesda to try and get back to that.
Business Mayor
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
Why Even User Video Game Scores Can't Be Trusted Any More – How-To Geek
Review bombing skews ratings with irrelevant negativity, harming a game's reputation and affecting future projects. It's hard to trust negative reviews due to review bombing, which only makes it harder to judge a game. Reviews should focus on gameplay, but outside influences often lead to unfairly low scores and mistrust. Review bombing occurs when a group of people works together to flood online review sites with many negative reviews. This is commonly a retaliatory tactic that's used even if the game itself is good. This practice damages the trust in user review systems by skewing a game's overall rating and shaping how people see it, usually for reasons that have nothing to do with a game's overall quality. Review Bombing Has Become Too Common Marcus Mears III / Review Geek The process of review bombing sees a bunch of people, often driven by outside issues, all post bad reviews at the same time. Many use bots or automated tools to make their attack even bigger. This wave of low scores drowns out real criticism and pulls down the game's average rating, which can hurt sales and even affect whether future projects get made. Many games have been hit by review bombing. Big-name games can face backlash over comments made by those involved in production and receive negative reviews that have nothing to do with how the game played or how well it worked. Other games with controversial characters or storylines have also been targeted, like Dragon Age: The Veilguard , showing how easily review systems can be abused because of social or political disagreements. Related Imagine a world where PC game reviews are just reviews. These attacks aren't always about politics. Sometimes, players organize negative review campaigns because they're unhappy with changes to gameplay, feel like the game pushes too many microtransactions, or believe the developers aren't listening to their complaints. For example, Infinity Nikki was recently review-bombed due to a launcher error. A launch error is a bug that would likely have been fixed by reporting it regularly. Players don't need to go to the review section to get attention when developers build games with bug report systems and have X accounts to receive feedback. Many go overboard just because they want others to see that they are angry. These are calls for attention, not a real reflection on the gameplay or quality of the game itself. Review bombing is an overused tactic to show disdain. If anything, the review bombers look like they're just whining when using this technique to complain over a minor issue or the servers going down for a day. Bad Reviews Lose Their Believability Over Time Jorge Aguilar/Activision The growing problem of review bombing has greatly hurt the trustworthiness of negative user reviews for video games. This issue happens when organized groups overwhelm review platforms with large numbers of extremely negative ratings, often for reasons that have nothing to do with the game's actual quality. As a result, it can cause many to distrust negative reviews more than ever. At first, negative reviews might appear to be honest, showing real disappointment from players. However, these get mixed in with many review bombers who want to vent their frustration over something unrelated to the gameplay itself. This makes it very hard to distinguish between real criticism and planned attacks meant to harm a game's reputation. It's gone so far that you can expect negative reviews even if you know the game is good. Related These games occupy a special place in my mind. When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was released, there was a sudden flood of negative reviews. The game had plenty of issues and a very short campaign. This was expected and warranted because the quality of the game didn't surpass Modern Warfare 2 ; it was more like an expansion pack at full price. When Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 came out, it was a real improvement and did a lot well. However, it faced a similar wave of negativity, where bad reviews at first far outnumbered positive ones, likely because of organized efforts. Even though many of the issues were quickly fixed, players seemed to be focused on bashing a new game in the series for their own personal reasons, not so much on the game's quality. While many people updated their reviews to be more positive, the initial wave of negativity had a lasting effect. This makes you question whether early reviews can be trusted, and reviews matter most when a game first comes out, and there's not much information on them available. Reviews Should Reflect the Game, Not Public Opinion Bioware While it's nice to think reviewers try to stay fair, outside influences often twist how a game's true quality is judged. A review itself is subjective because it's an opinion, so that's okay. What's less than okay is how often reviews lead away from the game itself. Reviews should look at the gameplay, story, visuals, and overall design. However, review bombers often get swayed by the drama around how the game was made or the company's reputation behind it. Sadly, this means the ideal review is often ignored, leading to scores that don't truly show how good or bad a game really is. One big issue is how hard it is to differentiate between professional criticism and public opinion. If people dislike a game's publisher because of issues that aren't directly related to the game itself, like shady business deals or accusations against the developers, such negativity can hurt the reception of a new game. This creates a situation where a well-crafted game gets low scores because people already dislike the company behind it. There are valid reasons not to purchase a game that's embroiled in these sorts of problems, but whether a review score should be reflective of outside drama is another question entirely. Related These action games are hiding some great puzzles. Players' distrust, often fueled by news stories about these controversies, directly shapes how critics see the game. For example, even if a game gets mostly good reviews and has solid gameplay, a title from a company dealing with accusations of ethical issues could still be judged harshly by some players before they even try it, dragging down the final average score. I firmly believe that a publisher should be held to account for unethical and predatory practices. But it's arguably better not to buy the game than to mess with the review system. A lack of sales will kill a great game. Guardians of the Galaxy is a great example of a great game with good reviews that just didn't sell well because of the public's view it had before release. The publisher wasn't trusted, so the game wasn't bought, and the game died—no fake bad reviews needed. Reviews From Individuals Are as Unbelievable as Big Sites Steam The trustworthiness of video game reviews, whether from big review websites or regular players, has become more doubtful over time. Big review sites often give out fairly high scores, often between 7 and 9. This trend makes people worry that issues have been glossed over. I've reviewed and edited reviews of games at professional sites for years. It's not easy to make a real game review, but burning a bridge with a publisher is not smart. I'd say that when it comes to the big review websites, read the review and not the score. Even considering bias or fear of hurting reputation, it's arguable that user review scores can be more untrustworthy than those on big sites. While they seem like they should reflect real player experiences, they can easily be manipulated or influenced by bias. A Minecraft Movie and Five Nights At Freddy's movies are great examples of this. Plenty of regular watchers hated them, but some of that is because they expect Oppenheimer quality from kids' movies. If you go in without the expectation of an adult target audience, you enjoy those movies much more. The growing problem of review bombing has made it much harder to tell the difference between honest criticism and planned, harmful attacks. It makes user reviews less believable and has already hurt the user review system far more than it ever hurt any publishers.
