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The History of BioWare
It seems somehow appropriate, given the day, to link over to a historical perspective on the developer BioWare. Eurogamer took a look back at the house the doctors built to give us some insight on where the company came from, and where it's going. "The modding community had always rallied around Baldur's Gate, so Neverwinter Nights wisely shipped with the game's toolset available and ready for use by fans. Improved quests were soon blooming all over the internet, like so much role-playing lichen. BioWare also supported the game with their own official expansion packs, and later through smaller downloadable modules, while the game brushed seductively alongside the world of the MMORPG with a hefty multiplayer component that enabled players to join up across the internet to tackle the main story."
As long as Mass Effect sells well, I suspect Bioware will be left more or less intact for a couple of years. I may be wrong, but usually its taken EA at least a couple of years to completely digest and destroy a newly acquired development house.
Indeed. To my mind, C&C3 was the best installment in the series since the ground-breaking original (which wasn't a better game per-se, but did basically introduce the drag-click interface that defines the modern RTS). After the turgid, obsolete-before-it-was-released Red Alert 2 and the why-does-this-even-have-the-C&C-name-on-it Generals, C&C3 was fantastic. Very fast paced and very demanding in terms of both reflexes and tactics, with superb production values (yay FMV cutscenes). I'd been expecting Supreme Commander to be the RTS for me this year, but C&C3 was just so much more fun.
I know that EA-bashing is in vogue right now, but they do still put out some excellent games and there are faint but plausible signs of a change in their attitude towards studios they absorb.
You forgot the annoying EA logo blaring everytime you load up the game... god I hope they include an option to turn the intro movies off. I always thought of Bioware (and Black Isle) as making "gamer's games." They were what people who really were into computer gaming were playing. Now that they have the whole EA thing going, it just seems so mainstream even if the games stay at the level of quality that they're currently at.
I got nothin'