Yep. They bought Bioware after Mass Effect. Dragon Age Origins was already late in development, so that was essentially unaffected.
It’s the games that followed where the writing was on the wall. Mass Effect 2 was mostly fine, but it was one of the first games to introduce the model of “Buy new for the complete experience, pay extra if you buy used.”
Dragon Age 2 tried to be more action-y by deviating from what people liked about the first one. It was just fine in retrospect, but I don’t think it was what anyone was looking for.
Mass Effect 3 had one of the most egregious examples of on-disc DLC, coupled with its very controversial ending that was honestly never really fixed, but just carried by the rest of the game. It was also one of the games of that era to jump on the obligatory “shoehorned multiplayer mode” bandwagon.
Dragon Age Inquisition at least won awards, but I think it was boosted by being an early next-gen title in an otherwise slow year, not having to compete with GTA5 the year prior or The Witcher 3 the year after. I just remember a lot of the “singleplayer MMO” discourse when it came out, and I don’t think it managed to top ME3’s numbers.
I stand corrected, looks like EA bought them just 1 month before Mass Effect’s release. But yeah, by that point the game was already being printed on discs, with Microsoft as the initial publisher.
EA bought BioWare in 2007. Sometimes enshittification has a long tail.
Yep. They bought Bioware after Mass Effect. Dragon Age Origins was already late in development, so that was essentially unaffected.
It’s the games that followed where the writing was on the wall. Mass Effect 2 was mostly fine, but it was one of the first games to introduce the model of “Buy new for the complete experience, pay extra if you buy used.”
Dragon Age 2 tried to be more action-y by deviating from what people liked about the first one. It was just fine in retrospect, but I don’t think it was what anyone was looking for.
Mass Effect 3 had one of the most egregious examples of on-disc DLC, coupled with its very controversial ending that was honestly never really fixed, but just carried by the rest of the game. It was also one of the games of that era to jump on the obligatory “shoehorned multiplayer mode” bandwagon.
Dragon Age Inquisition at least won awards, but I think it was boosted by being an early next-gen title in an otherwise slow year, not having to compete with GTA5 the year prior or The Witcher 3 the year after. I just remember a lot of the “singleplayer MMO” discourse when it came out, and I don’t think it managed to top ME3’s numbers.
Every game that follows can speak for itself.
In that case also they were effectively done with the game, but it wasn’t out yet.
I stand corrected, looks like EA bought them just 1 month before Mass Effect’s release. But yeah, by that point the game was already being printed on discs, with Microsoft as the initial publisher.