Bioware games are become less and less like games. They're really just grinds, there's very little skill involved, just time invested. Bioware enhance the UI of each game to the point where you realise that much of what you were doing was 'busy work', repeatedly running through the same levels, or killing the same group of bad guys. I still enjoyed Mass Effect 1 and 2 (haven't touched 3 as I'm not touching EA any more), they were very slick and I enjoyed the story.. but each time I play a Bioware game I notice that the actual gameplay is very bland, and I'm really just watching a movie (all be it one with multiple endings) that I have to put a bit of work in to see the next cutscene.
Sadly the less skill required to play a game the more popular it seems to become, people don't want games they can fail at, they want games that they will get through, bit by bit, piece by piece.
Add to that EA and Bioware were too bare faced cheeky with DLC for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age : Origins that I vowed never to buy another Bioware game until they did a repackaged version with all DLC included... I paid full price for the deluxe edition of Mass Effect 2, and for Dragon Age : Origins, and I bought all the DLC. Yet a year later once they'd patched the bugs away they cut the price right back. It's fine for them to do it, it's their choice.. but I'm quite happy to wait 18 months and pay £20 rather than pay £80 for an overall worse experience. I don't imagine I'm alone in that either.
And to top it all off.. I could, if I wanted, spend thousands each year on games. They just don't give me the desire to do so.
I guess EA have become the equivalent of mainstream pop music. Nice and bland and inoffensive, marketed and hyped beyond reality and anyone can pick it up casually... but ultimately not deeply satisfying and no real class to it.
My only worry if that's the case is if EA borg up everything else and there's literally nothing left to compete with EA. I don't think that's going to happen. I think we just need to look at EA games as a brand we want to avoid.
It is very sad though to look at what started as Knights of the Old Republic.... Bioware decided to drop the Star Wars franchise and write their own universe, and we have Mass Effect 3... if you look back at KotoR1 you can see it's the same basic type of game, and Mass Effect 3 is certainly more polished.. but they've lost a great deal along the way.
You have to look back further to see where Dragon Age comes from... it goes way way back to Baldur's Gate... then Neverwinter Nights, and again Bioware dropped the franchise in favour of their own backstory... and again the gameplay is better in the originals, but the polish and UI is better in the later ones.
