Originally Posted by Abits
People seem to forget that CD project's first project wasn't the Witcher, but actually the translation of BG into polish. I really don't see how can you deny the connection between the Witcher series and Bioware. Sure, somewhere along the way the apprentice became the master (I think the differences between DAI and Witcher 3, two games with very similar goals, proves it), but that's the greatness of cd project. There is a learning curve in every game they make, and you can see it quite clearly. While Bioware kinda stayed in a sort of weird stagnation that eventually lead to major deterioration, they innovated with each new entry.

About gameplay Vs story - I don't see how Kotor 2 or fallout New Vegas are any less RPGs than pillars of eternity. Sure the combat is super different, but think about what you actually do in the game outside of it and tell me it's not an RPG.

...and this is the problem with this kind of conversation, the highly subjective nature of what makes a game "good". I can barely sit down and play TW 3, I own it, own the two that came before as well, on PC and XBox, caveat, I don't have The Witcher on XBox, I don't think it's available, or I just never found it, but I've never been able to finish any of them. I have multiple finishes on DA I. The BSN blew up around release of DA 2 and how bad it was, bad enough that I took it at face value, and didn't get DA 2 for a year. When I finally did get it, due to burn out on everything else I was playing, I was disappointed with myself for taking a forum at face value. It was, very definitely different, but it wasn't really all that bad. I had some of the same complaints, reused environments, wave combat, etc., but overall, it wasn't that it was "bad" that was the problem, it was that it wasn't "The Warden", from people that are "expert" writers, complaining that the Warden couldn't be in two places at the same time, and refusing to acknowledge that "The Warden" could, in fact, die. The irony? This same group of strong writers condemning DA 2 were singing it's praises as the best thing since sliced bread during the development of DA I.

We had the "but the Inquisitor is the "Old God Baby", has to be" discussion every Friday, how it had to be the Warden every Wednesday, and how the first games were going to be infinitely better, no matter what, because they weren't planning to do one or the other, or both, of those options. For all the lamenting that Hawke was a generic character throughout DA 2's cycle, suddenly Hawke was a unique and special character come Inquisition. This, along with things like "you have to accept the NPCs for who they are" when someone was bashing Zevran for being bisexual, as they download the "make Alistair gay" mod, or the "but I'm not looking for a happy ending to ME 3", as they download the MeHeM mod. What does that mean? Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod. The hour and a half long Andromeda review on YouTube, that, 45 minutes claims "Mass Effect is Shepard's story, and nothing else will qualify as Mass Effect". Gee, could have given me that at the beginning of the review, so that if I decided to watch it anyway, I'd at least be informed that your opinions are colored by that position.

For all that, with the exception of facial animations, Andromeda wasn't all that bad. It was colored by "not Shepard", deja vu to "not the Warden", eh? Some of the hilarious glitches I saw on YouTube I could never recreate, despite spending hours trying. But as far as some of the other complaints? "They left a lot of threads hanging"? Of course they did, there were supposed to be more games, unfortunately they shot themselves in the foot with how they handled development, and that may, or may not be a thing, they're currently pulling a Skyrim, and re-releasing the original trilogy for every conceivable platform... I, for one, would very much like to see where they were going to go, but...

Damn, that's a lot to say "personal tastes vary, and barring some really buggy crap, on a full release, instead of an EA situation, where that's to be expected, good or bad can be very subjective".