For me the coffin was made when the acquisition was made because even at the time, people were already seeing these types of acquisitions by EA, like Westwood and see what and how the games developed changed pretty drastically and one of the many reasons why it was voted the worst company in the world by the consumerist in 2012, and damn isn’t that a blast from the hyper fast internet past. The enshitification by being bought by EA was long in the making if you were looking.
Like you said, purchase of the studio was in 2007, DA:O was released shortly afterwards but development happened years before the acquisition and then you had the big ol’ WTF was DA:2 that was rushed out the door and such a huge departure from the original and even then I figured it was because EA leadership was responsible for that crap being made and later was confirmed that yup, that was the case. Right there that was another big indicator that the old Bioware was slowly changing and dying at least to me when I played that junk and really cemented to me at least that the slow agonizing entification of the company had begun. As a fan of their original CRPG’s, I knew that I’d never see that again.
Same for Mass Effect, the development was started before the acquisition and they both enjoyed the culture of independence and taking time to develop and subsequent release you could see the little things that made things feel just a bit cheaper, just a bit off. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the ever loving crap out of Mass Effect 1 - 3 even with the “not my final entification form” that was 3 and its stupid executive leadership driven galactic power system that required multiplayer to not be a shittier single player experience.
When the founders left, that was just the final nail for that coffin and subsequent games being produced kinda proved that out that the magic had been fading and corporate entification was rooted.
That’s why I and probably others say that the acquisition was the beginning of the end.
For me the coffin was made when the acquisition was made because even at the time, people were already seeing these types of acquisitions by EA, like Westwood and see what and how the games developed changed pretty drastically and one of the many reasons why it was voted the worst company in the world by the consumerist in 2012, and damn isn’t that a blast from the hyper fast internet past. The enshitification by being bought by EA was long in the making if you were looking.
Like you said, purchase of the studio was in 2007, DA:O was released shortly afterwards but development happened years before the acquisition and then you had the big ol’ WTF was DA:2 that was rushed out the door and such a huge departure from the original and even then I figured it was because EA leadership was responsible for that crap being made and later was confirmed that yup, that was the case. Right there that was another big indicator that the old Bioware was slowly changing and dying at least to me when I played that junk and really cemented to me at least that the slow agonizing entification of the company had begun. As a fan of their original CRPG’s, I knew that I’d never see that again.
Same for Mass Effect, the development was started before the acquisition and they both enjoyed the culture of independence and taking time to develop and subsequent release you could see the little things that made things feel just a bit cheaper, just a bit off. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the ever loving crap out of Mass Effect 1 - 3 even with the “not my final entification form” that was 3 and its stupid executive leadership driven galactic power system that required multiplayer to not be a shittier single player experience.
When the founders left, that was just the final nail for that coffin and subsequent games being produced kinda proved that out that the magic had been fading and corporate entification was rooted.
That’s why I and probably others say that the acquisition was the beginning of the end.