I do hope that BioWare paid attention to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. They tried to make a party based, pause and play action hybrid twice and I didn’t find either particularly fun to play. Then FF7R came out and, at least in my opinion, showed exactly how to do it.
If they decide to put their own take on that formula, I’m totally down to give them a shot, despite my usual misgivings with their games. While I appreciate a strong story, gameplay is always king for me. As long as the story isn’t isnt atrociously awful I be forgiving on a good enough story.
I’ve not played FF7R so am not going to say it doesn’t do gameplay better, but I really enjoyed combat in ME:A, even though I was initially worried as I tend to avoid games that require good hand-eye coordination and quick response times as I’m frankly rubbish at them. But it felt like a great evolution of gameplay in the first three ME games. Whereas DA:I combat I found extremely disappointing and a big step backwards from both DA:O and DA2, largely due to the over-simplified-to-the-brink-of-nonexistence tactics system.
In short, I don’t personally think there’s a clear pattern of prioritising story over gameplay by the studio. Though it’s clear that there have been many things wrong there that have led to their games not living up to their potential, so perhaps it’s not a bad thing that there’s been some staff turnover. I’m also not sure how much is EA’s fault but I agree it doesn’t seem feasible that all the blame can be laid at their door.
Still, while I think both DA:I and ME:A could have been a lot better, the next episodes in the franchise would need to be far worse before their new entries cease to be auto-buys for me.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
