Yeah, Fenris was an enormous surprise. I genuinely discounted him on my first play-through, but going back as a mage-Hawke and generally showing a lot of disdain for him (or rather, I suppose, tough love) I was surprised to find a complex and interesting romance written for just such an eventuality, including awkward, angry, mage-hate sex.

I can see potentially some of Anders development from Awakening to DA2, and I certainly was okay with him in Awakening, but he was used purely as a plot-driving tool in DA2, yoked into being the writers’ instrument for ‘OH LOOK HOW BAD THIS ALL IS’.

So yeah, cautiously optimistic for Inquisition, but Bioware games of the last decade or so have brought a lot of bad with a bit of the excellent.

Fenris made for a very strong companion in large part due to his romance. I’m not one to generally support Bioware’s often-creepy, fan-servicey romance subquests, but the complicated relationship between Fenris and (my) Hawke genuinely added to the proceedings.

Anders was problematic, but I replayed Awakenings after DA2 and I can see how his largely flippant pessimism could’ve evolved into outright bitterness by DA2. But it’s not established well enough in Awakenings as a real possibility, and so the various shit he was put through–especially Ser Pounce!–comes off as mean-spirited anti-fanservice.

I am cautiously excited for Inquisition; I’m not married to Origins’ combat–it was often too balanced for its own good, making characters feel weak and boring–and I thought DA2 was a step up in terms of personality and characters. Hopefully they’ve learned enough lessons to at least put out something interesting.

But Anders? ANDERS? Guilty of being awful in almost every way, and also of fitting a role in the plot that to this day makes me upset for how Bioware made all the crappy storytelling decisions in one lump. And then they made much the same mistakes with a lot of ME3′s plot (e.g. Kai Leng, the magical plot villain sue).

Sorry, had to get that out of my system. But yeah, you’re right – for all of DA2′s many many failings it did introduce some of Bioware’s better characterwork. Unfortunately, while they may have good writers, they have poor story/creative direction and control it seems. Not necessarily easily solvable on the company/game scale they’re dealing with though.

Speaking of sequels improving or failing to improve on things, have you tried Endless Legend? It just got out of Early Access and I’m giving it a whirl and finding it quite intriguing. Certainly a step up over Endless Space in the personality department, and offering up some interesting fantasy races (Spider Men! Ghost Knights! Robot Cultists!).

This is why I still think the original Mass Effect is the best of the bunch despite being far more mechanically obtuse and missing a lot with what it tries to accomplish – it at least is thinking outside of the box.

Anyway, I’m deeply sceptical about Bioware’s future output. ME 3 multiplayer aside they haven’t made a game that I would unreservedly call “good” since 2009. Dragon Age 3 may yet pull their bacon out of the fire, but I’m not holding my breath.

Likewise, I think there is a good way to do explorable planets. They possibly even tried and found that it would take lots of resources to get there. Why they thought we’d prefer to scan the planets in ME2, I just don’t know!

I hear you. You’re right. But it’s rather obvious that just dropping those features instead of making them work was a step back into making Mass Effect more… well, mainstream. Simplified KotOR with combat system slapped on top. Explorable planets created sense of scale, ME2 and 3 returned the game into a realm of corridors with nice backgrounds.

(Haven’t Wasteland 2 yet. Playing Beyond Divinity now. Crafting system is sort of evil fuff. I have hundreds of useless items. There are many stats and skills but there’s not much choice to make there cause the actual difference is made by skills you get from books.)

ME3, although it scaled down opponents to 3 groups, created interesting distinction and variety within them and overhauled the combat to be tactical, engaging, fast.

Having replayed ME1 recently, although I enjoyed it, and despite the fact that I love old-school RPGs and whatnot, I found a lot of stuff a drag. Walking physically out of the Normandy and into the docks was cool to do again exactly twice. Every time after that it was just a time-waster. No joy. The big enormous planets were fun exactly twice, because after that it was just a hell of a lot of driving (it was fun done in-missions. A little bit) to points and not much else. The skill system was superfluous – it was interesting enough to plan out, and I was ok with that and would be okay again, but every upgrade in ME3 is meaningful – there are no duds – every time you spend points, you get something more than a teeny % increase in abilities.

The reputation score in ME3 made more sense in-game – you did stuff, and you became more famous – the proportion of renegade to paragon then also determined what advantage you could press. Yes, it was a more basic system – but it also gelled more with the game.

On the other hand – ME3 did some rubbish things with the plot and some characters. None of the 3 games are perfect, and they all have flaws, but I think that a lot of the stuff they streamlined was to good effect – they let me eventually focus on the ‘guns and conversation’ style that fits nicely.

I’d expect only a fraction of the pressure to have come from any consumer feedback – it’s much more likely that the project designers and directors wanted to make these refinements to make a more fun and enjoyable game. It just went in the direction of action and keeping pace rather than stats and faff.

(I like faff – I like a lot of the faff in Wasteland 2 for example, but bloody hell, will they give it up with making me painstakingly select a character and a skill for every disarm/lockpick/etc.? 99% of the time I want my best person on the job. Why can’t this be automated? Also, another quest had me run across 2 entire maps THREE TIMES. Cleared, no enemies. Just running. Yes, I guess represents what I had to do but… bloody hell – drained all the fun out of the the quest.)

ME2 destroyed all of it and became vastly more popular. They’ve even killed fantastic feature of coming out of Normandy right into a dock so that it all feels connected. It all became segmented. No more big landscapes. No more different enemies. By ME3 you only have Reapers and Cerberus with rare additions like those zergs.

And people love it. People love the fact there’s no more skill system. ME3 doesn’t even has minigames. Or dialog skills. You just get persuasion skill for doing anything at all. In ME2 you at least had to stick to Renegade or Paragon mindset. So there was a challenge in consistently selecting blue or red option. But it was too complex. It was ditched.

Why? How? Should Bioware work under some sort of benevolent dictatorship so that they don’t have to adapt to market? Had people really wanted ME1 to degrade instead of developing? What happened?

(This actually worked in Fable’s favour, since when I got to the Steam checkout page it ensured that all that was at the forefront of my brain was a general impression of vague enjoyment and nothing else.)