Out of Pod Experience

This, a bunch of retards dug up a five year old quote and used it to launch a barrage of harassment. Not to mention the whole point about a story writer not enjoying games is invalid in the first place.

Her comment was reasonable and may even be accurate and Bioware's support is appropriate, making a charitable donation earns extra props to.

EDIT

Bioware are so bad at PR they decided to go to extra expense and print a double sided cover for all retail boxes, allowing fans to choose the gender on the box is a truly terrible PR move.

Attention stupid people:


You do not have to play, enjoy, or even like video games to write a good story for them. The only concern here is her ability to do her job. She does not have to play video games, or like them, in order to write a story.

Bioware romances have never been an outstanding bastion of literature, as long as I can remember they have been stilted, awkward and even nonsensical on occasion. They are only ever in there as fanservice because its expected by the players.

Jennifer Hepler isn't to blame for every single ****** romance plot.

Having personal opinions =/= having influence.

As a writer she may have personal opinions on the subject, but it's her professional role that matters. She has zero control over gameplay features, and the people who DO have control over those features are not going to be convinced by her random personal opinions unless it's something they also want to do. If it's not a good opinion, the people who get paid to develop good gameplay are simply going to veto it and move on.



How exactly is a "skip combat" button a huge change? Did you miss the part where you don't have to use it if you don't like it? FFS, it's not even a multiplayer game we're talking about. Does it really bother you that much that someone else could "play" the game differently?



Err, just how many hours of gameplay do you think you get from a single-player game these days? I mean, I just finished modern warfare 3 in less than five hours because I was bored tonight*. You're really out of touch with modern gaming if you think that laughably short single-player games are something unique to Bioware.

And even at 40 hours it's still a good deal compared to a lot of other things. 40 hours is way more than the average single-player game, way better hours-per-dollar efficiency than movies, 53x cheaper per hour than renting even the cheapest airplane I can fly, etc.



*Thankfully I did not buy it. However, I do find it amusing that it took me significantly longer to download the game than it did to play it.

When BioWare employees issue public statements in their capacity as BioWare employees, they're acting as representatives of the entire company, regardless of their part in the development process. Public perception is important.

Note that while I dislike Hepler's gameplay ideas, I'm not implying that I think BioWare will implement them. I'm simply stressing that these statements are the reason why she's attracted the ire of some gamers. An optional "skip combat button" in and of itself wouldn't bother me at all, but the button is the tip of an iceberg — an entire mindset of game design that goes in a direction I personally want no part of.

Having said that, the button isn't the main thing for me. The main thing is Hepler's writing, BioWare's endorsement of her writing, and the quality of BioWare's writing in general.

Here's an example of modern BioWare writing in action. It's perhaps not the most representative example, but they signed off on it: http://i.imgur.com/XmBRH.jpg

"Way too many sharp corners and Sithy things lying around." ... "But seriously, no pressure or anything."

Good PR=2 sided covers for a game box???



Never mind, keep it up, you are entertaining

Look how dumb you are, fans have been complaining about the canonisation of Shepard being male and the fact that in the first two games he was the singular poster child.

So yes it is a nice gesture to the fans. Everytime you post I think of this, http://imgur.com/imYw1



The Anvil of the Void quest was actually one of the better ones in DA:O.

http://imgur.com/imYw1 And again, never stop posting.

DA2's problems weren't just those things. The main general problem(outside personal taste issues) was it screamed of halfassed implementation and lack of effort in almost every area of the game. Generic items with no unique pictures just color coding on the same icon, constant recycled environments and dungeons, minimal number of different equipment models, weak and fractured story telling on the main plot, little/no difficulty balancing and enemies in most fights constantly spawned from nothingness to extend the fights and try to give them at least a little tactical depth. It all made the game very unenjoyable for me and that's just the list I remember from the top of my head with personal taste issues kept to a minimum.

The game is simply filled to the brim with all kinds of corner cutting and lazyness. I can't recall the last time I played a game that so clearly showed the lack of effort and caring from the dev team. They did a bad job with the game and frankly it's totally unacceptable from such a high profile game.

Mass Effect 3 - The Prothean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK99_T61alc

Mass Effect 3 - The Prothean

Jamaican man!