|
When the news first came over the wire that Electronic Arts had bought out BioWare, the makers of such contemporary RPG classics as the Baldur's Gate series and Knights of the Old Republic, my immediate reaction followed very closely the first four steps of the Kuebler-Ross Grief Cycle: Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression.
One full week later, I'm still not at the fifth stage: Acceptance.
And it doesn't look as if I will ever reach that stage. It's out of the question when I know full well the history surrounding EA's previous acquisitions. Look out in their backyard and you'll see stones engraved with the names of past luminaries such as Origin, Bullfrog and Westwood. Development houses whose creative efforts not only deteriorated under EA's well-known draconian work schedules and propensity for extreme franchise-milking, but houses that EA literally disbanded.
Think this is all in the past? Think again. EA hasn't shown that its behavior as a company has changed, with so many of the games it publishes even today (the Medal of Honor series, Tiger Woods Golf, even Madden) riddled with horrendous bugs and questionable game design all around. MoH is also an example of EA's perennial penchant for milking franchises to the point that it becomes tired. And don't even get me started on that horrendous joke they pulled in the form of Wing Commander Arena just this year.
Which brings me in further detail to the creator of the legendary Wing Commander series, Origin Studios. That gem of the 1980s and early 1990s is also known as the creator of a certain RPG series named Ultima. Now I feel old mentioning the name of that series, but quite frankly, if it weren't for the very first Ultima game, we wouldn't be playing video game RPGs today. Its influence reached Japan, prompting the creation of series such as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
As for the series itself? After a rocky second installment, all it did was carry the torch for Western RPGs for a decade, innovating and evolving each time, especially in the way it created the world of Britannia and the way you both explored and resolved the overlying plots. That name meant guaranteed quality. Myself, I was a latecomer to the series, starting with my first playthrough of Ultima VI when I was 10 years old (in 1992; it had been out for almost two years) and immediately getting hooked, even if I didn't understand all its themes at the time. Backtracking to Ultima III, IV and V soon followed. And when Ultima VII: The Black Gate came out later that year, I had to get it, too.
Ultima V and VII, in particular, remain two of my favorite RPGs of all time to this very day. Only after revisiting Ultima V a couple of years ago – and then soon after that reliving it yet again through the AWESOME Lazarus remake – did I finally get the sense of just how frighteningly REAL that despot-usurped world was. Ultima VII held up equally as well. I chuckle whenever someone mentions Final Fantasy VI (a great game, to be sure) as the moment when "RPGs grew up." When, in reality, two years before FFVI was giving somewhat cursory glances at suicide and teen pregnancy, Ultima VII had already brazenly weaved into its devious tapestry marital infidelity (among government officials, no less); illegal drug trading; labor exploitation (which involved the very distribution and abuse of said drugs); racism; and the hubris, spectacle and hypocrisy of merchants; among many other problems – all setting up a world that, while it had its problems, didn't appear to be threatened by anything earth-shattering, only to later be revealed that something VERY wrong was happening.
As it turned out, Ultima VII was prophetic of the fate of Origin Systems, which is even easier to appreciate if you have played the game (hint: the EA logo back in the early '90s consisted of a tetrahedron, a sphere and a cube). Late in 1992, EA bought out Origin Studios – which was in dire financial straits thanks to a perfect storm of, ironically, unforeseen success and high demand for extra copies of its games, and a financing crisis in Texas. And the effects of that marriage made in hell became evident immediately. In 1993, Serpent Isle, the follow-up to Ultima VII, had the makings of another masterpiece, but suffered from KOTORII syndrome – namely, plot holes galore in the last third and a rather unsatisfying endgame.
That was only the beginning.
While Serpent Isle was able to escape in "flawed masterpiece" status, in 1994, the infamous Ultima VIII came out. And yes, that game is as bad as its reputation suggests, if not worse. Plot holes that made Serpent Isle's look like pin pricks. Clunky real-time combat controls. That's only skimming the surface. Still being young back then, though, and at the time not knowing about the EA buyout, I had hopes for Ultima IX to rebound. Long story short, that didn't happen. Years later, to read the story of how EA shuffled Origin's staff and Richard Garriott's attention between Ultima Online and Ultima IX, and cracked the whip continuously on those projects and rushed them, was especially infuriating.
EA had brought on the first death of the Western RPG. Garriott hasn't been the same since, the EA treatment becoming to him much what Apocalypse Now's production was to Francis Ford Coppola.
Now, what is the point of that nostalgia trip, you may ask? Only that combined with the evidence that EA hasn't changed its whip-cracking, rush-job, bug-filled, developer-buyout, franchise-overmilking habits, BioWare – the very company that resurrected the Western RPG from its first death – could very well be the same story all over again. We could see a second death of the Western RPG. As mentioned before, Origin is far from an isolated incident. Bullfrog and Westwood lie in the grave with Origin. Had Will Wright not been successful pushing The Sims to the EA bigwigs, and had the game itself not been an unforeseen success, Maxis would've joined them.
Like Origin before them, BioWare is famous (some would say infamous) for having a "when it's done" attitude toward releasing a game. And the thing is, this has always resulted in quality – for both development houses. EA and BioWare are, just as EA and Origin were, polar opposites in development philosophy.
History has a way of repeating itself, especially with a company like EA that hasn't shown any signs of learning from it (as if they need to). BioWare as we know them now could become "the next Origin" in every sense of the phrase, good and bad. We could be waxing nostalgic five years from now, asking, "Remember Baldur's Gate II? Remember Knights of the Old Republic? Those were awesome games. They just don't make them like that anymore." And then we'll be hoping for "the next BioWare" to come and make things right again. And thus we come full circle.
The upcoming Mass Effect is safe from EA's influence, as it's already a finished product. But will a Mass Effect sequel (and we know they're coming) become the next Ultima VIII? Hopefully not, but I'm bracing for it.
|
RSS feed
iTunes