Yeah unfortunately it seems like EA is still operating under the directive of “We want the Call of Duty/Fortnite audience,” and DA:V is a game made to appeal to that audience. I’ll never understand why they spend so much time and money to acquire incredible studios like Bioware and Visceral just to tell them “Actually those incredibly good games you made were stupid, you should make games like this.”
It never effects executives or managers though. The whole problem with the current Western games industry is that the idiots who keep thinking up games nobody wants to play are the only ones who don’t get fired when their idea flops.
Have you played much of the rest of the series? DA:V is a perfectly adequate game with incredibly lukewarm themes in a series of pretty good games with dark and interesting themes. I think a lot of people, myself included, were hoping that after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, EA would turn to the studio that made Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and say “I want that, make me a game like that.” Instead, we got a serviceable fantasy RPG. Fine if you really like that kinda thing, but I’ve only so much time for those games, and it’s much better spent on Avowed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
It’s so weird that I feel nothing. I remember being elated when Borderlands 2 was announced, and I was really excited for Borderlands 3. After BL3, the New Tales from the Borderlands, and the Borderlands movie? I don’t wanna touch this franchise with a 12 foot pole.
I don’t think you understand. Rome burning is the distraction. Shit like this is the real goal. The U.S. will be lucky if it hasn’t collapsed to neo-feudalism in the next four years.
The bottom is kinda falling out of the market and investors have dried up, largely because AAA has had too many extremely costly fuck-ups recently. Now the whole sector is looking bad, and it’s been trickling down into impacting the ability for AA studios and indie teams to find funding for their projects.