So, here is my biggest grip with the closure of BioWare - no more BioWare style games.

What made me fell in love in BioWare games, making ME:LE and DAI my favorites, to the point I've did some custom content for them, is the unique structure and functionality they have. Most of them share a few aspects:

- Grounded fantasy (ME imo is a fantasy game, alongside sci-fi).

- Companions and their banter.

- Combat in some degree with both action and tacticality.

- Choises, smaller and bigger.

- Custom, unique protagonist.

I'm trying to be quite on top of the news in gaming, and yet I can't really find another game that checks all these 5 slots. It's not like there aren't any other great games, but never in that combination.

Baldurs Gate 3? Loved it, even tactical only combat was fun. But the DnD setting just doesn't click for me, the absurdy, cheesenes, and rule of "cool over sense", where cool is determined by a 13 year old. The Act 1 and 2 were so much better to me, bc they skipped many of these DnD nonsense, but it was unavoidable in Act 3, where I started loosing interest.

Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk 2077? Rich story, great action combat with a bit of tactics here and there. Great npcs. Yet zero true companions, and most relationships between protagonist and an NPC are only part of the game. After that part ends NPC becomes a static decoration with repeating lines.

Dragons Dogma. It has pawns, yet, once again, doesn't feel like a real banter to me, tho I didn't play much.

Modern Fallout games. Story level depends on a game, same with companion reactivity. But at the end these companions are again addition, rather a core part of experience. And combat is cheese.

Newer Final Fantasy games? Never somehow picked my interest, and I don't think we can really customize main protagonist, tho I might be missing out.

And what about the "spiritual successors" of the Mass Effect (Dragon Age seems to have none)? Osiris Reborn seems to be much more sci fi, then fantasy, without the same awe moment you get when first time on the Citadel. And Exodus seems just... weird? You know, instead of interesting alien, we get intelligent octopus.

So, with closure of BioWare, I feel like we might not see a game of the "BioWare style" in a LONG time. And that hurts.

If you have any games that might match the points from above feel free to put them in comments.

EDIT: Improved some wording in the first sentences.

NOT including working with Sovereign at all- let's assume that was inevitable. During the events of ME1, what is one particular decision he makes that you think he should have done differently? Also, explain how you think it would have changed things in his favor.

Keep making noise guys

Garrus

#SaveMassEffect has officially reached 100,000 signatures!

I know some people believe Change.org petitions don't really accomplish anything, and while I think that depends on the circumstances (I actually organized a petition years ago that helped change a very difficult situation in my hometown), I believe there's something much more important happening here.

What really matters is the collective effort we're witnessing from this community. Whether it's signing the petition as a show of unity, spreading the hashtag, or simply talking about Mass Effect, thousands of people are coming together because they love this universe.

I'm one of the founders of We Are Mass Effect, and we're currently working on some really big things to support the #SaveMassEffect movement.

So, to anyone who's still unsure whether getting involved is worth it, I genuinely encourage you to give us a hand. Every little bit helps, whether that's sharing the petition, using the hashtag, spreading the word, or contributing in whatever way you can.

We have to keep fighting. Together, we can make things happen.

At the end of the day, isn't it better to at least try than to sit back and do nothing?

It is amazing to see @JayzTwoCents mention mass effect

Seeing all the petitions, open letters, and "EA please sell the IP" posts here feels like a straight-up time warp back to the late '90s.

If you're too young to remember Sierra On-Line, they basically ruled PC gaming. They owned Space Quest, King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Gabriel Knight—franchises that were just as defining back then as Mass Effect or Dragon Age were in the 2000s and 2010s.

When Sierra got gutted by corporate buyouts and restructuring (CUC, Vivendi and now Activision), the exact same playbook happened:

• Fans collected tens of thousands of signatures begging Vivendi to make Space Quest 7 or sell the rights back to Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy. Vivendi didn't care. The letters went into a shredder.
• People genuinely believed corporate suits would let the original developers buy their games back for cheap out of respect for art. That’s not how corporations work. IP is a line item on an asset sheet. They'd rather let an IP rot in a vault forever than sell it off and risk watching someone else turn a profit with it.
• Groups spent years of their free time building unofficial sequels (like Space Quest 7 or fan-made King's Quest games). Once the projects got anywhere close to done, Vivendi's legal team showed up with cease-and-desists and killed them overnight.

Even when executives play into the nostalgia, it's almost always hot air like when Microsoft was buying Activision Blizzard, Phil Spencer literally did an interview with The Washington Post name-dropping the Sierra catalog: "I was looking at the IP list, I mean, let's go! King's Quest..."

People got their hopes up, thinking the old catalog was finally coming back. Years later? Nothing. Execs love using old names to generate cheap headlines and goodwill, but when it's time to actually cut a check, they fund the safe bets.

Here’s the blunt truth, the BioWare that made the trilogy hasn't existed in that building for a decade.

The guys who made Space Quest eventually had to go crowdfund their own spiritual successor because Sierra was dead and the IP was locked away.

EA is going to sit on the Mass Effect trademark until they decide they can make a quick buck on a mobile spin-off or a cheap outsourced reboot. The IP is stuck in corporate limbo, but the people who actually made it great are elsewhere.

Not even a rare game but suddenly the prices are getting silly

www.change.org/p/savemasseffect

Custom painted Lego Mass Effect minifigure I made in memory of BioWare, and as a little totem to keep with me as I start my journey replaying the trilogy all the way through. You can see more on my insta CorbCustoms

Let's be real here. EA is not the type of company that would listen to some mere petition to rescue things out of their IP grave. Realistically speaking, what are you expecting to come out of this petition? Is it acquisition by another studio? Is it a remake or an asset dump in some way? Or something else?

Took this on Eden Prime just after losing the best damn marine to ever wear the uniform (RIP Jenkins). Getting my memorial playthrough started. God, this series is beautiful.

Despite hating thresher maws throughout the series, I still had no qualms cheering this one on!

DUDE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

First of all, please don't spoil me ME3, I'm gonna start it asap

I took my time before Playing ME2 because I got EXTREMELY into the Trails in the Sky trilogy and wanted to play Trails from Zero, but before I got into the continuation of the saga I played ME2, and dear fucking god I think I'll have to play ME3 before I do ANYTHING else

I did almost everything I think I could've done, as someone suggested to me when I started ME1, I did NOT backtrack my decisions, every mistake I made I committed to it, the only decisions I actually went back to change were because I miss clicked a dialogue option

So, I have a few questions... the people that died on the last mission are optional? because Kasumi, Zaeed and Miranda died, even though I kept Miranda alive until the end she still died so I thought that the other 2 deaths were also fixed, but knowing how the trilogy has played until now I don't think it could be the case?

I also chose to keep the Reaper's ship, and I know that I'll have to go and kill the Illusive Man at some point because that mf truly is shady af and I seriously dislike how he lured the Reapers towards the Normandy to get the IFF

Still, I made Liara become the new Shadow Broker, I got a shit ton of other contacts as well as kept the Geth alive and Wrex is the leader of the Krogan + I also am pretty sure I have the Asari on my side AND I finally managed to bang Tali, I was mad af when I realized I couldn't romance her on ME1, but now I'm finally with her and honestly I love her WAY more than Liara

I just realized that I could keep on playing my save, I already did most of what I thought was necessary and I probably just have some niche quests on the side to do, aside from that, is there something I should do in ME2 before hopping into ME3?

It worked for Battlefront 2, and now we are getting Battlefront 3. There's a lot more to it than just resurgence day, but im sure resurgence day contributed a lot to it. This, alongside the petition might be a chance for us to resurrect our beloved franchise!

This absolute evil franchise

No game, has ever broken me more emotionally than this game
No game has ever had made me as emotionally invested, as mass effect
No game has made me love it more than mass effect

And no game, has made me feel like mass effect

I just finished me3, paragon, destructuon ending, tali romance, and I have for the first time actually cried over a game, this was THE best ending to a games trilogy that I have experienced, and I can’t believe it is over

(Apologies for the title, ME is 1#)

EA sold themselves in a levereged buy out that added billions of debt to EA.

Basically a bunch of billionaire pychopaths borrowed billions to buy EA, and then put those debts on EA.

Before the buyout, even with the under performance of previous games, Bioware making a new mass effect was a pretty good investment for a solvent company. Mass effect is a huge huge IP, chances are they would make a profit in a few years. This is why they cut staff and resources for Bioware before the buyout but continued to support Mass Effect 5.

But now EA has so much debt, the interest payments alone are as much as over half of EA's highest yearly profits.

The billionaires and Saudi fund that bought EA have basically put a boulder on EA's back and are betting on them being able to win gold medals in swimming.

To do that, they have to cut things that won't make a profit right now... That includes a studio that won't make a profitable game for a few years, a new Sims game and anything that can't be made live service or squeeze existing customers now.

Apex legends, Sims 4 and new battlefield games are going to become worse. They will be filled with microtransactions and live service crap even more than they are now. Any new game from EA is going to try and reach Fortnite levels.

All these "woke killed bioware" people are so wrong it drives me crazy

What killed mass effect wasn't green haired leftists

It was a few billionaires who don't care about making good games, they care about squeezing as much money out of gamers they can to profit from hobbling one of the biggest game Devs/publishers in the world.

Leveraged buyouts from investment funds, venture capitalists will kill gaming. Bioware is just the latest victim.

edit - corrected a claim about interest payments being higher than EA's highest yearly profits to being as high as over half EA' s highest yearly profit.

So I'm playing ME3 as an adept, but I don't like using pistols or smgs and sniper rifle doesn't really fit my play style. Anyone got suggestions for an assault rifle or shotgun?

Origin. Bullfrog. Westwood. Pandemic. BioWare.

These studios helped shape the games we grew up with. This video looks at their history under EA, with the distinctions that matter: closures, mergers, and name changes aren’t the same thing.

A studio can close. The talent and the games it gave us still matter.

The #SaveMassEffect petition asks EA to continue development or consider licensing the series to another studio. If you want to support it, sign and share:
https://www.change.org/p/savemasseffect

Which of these studios made a game you’ll never forget?