I enjoy the new Bioware games mostly because I don't buy into their claim that the stories are written by award winning novelists. I had a similar argument with one of their fans over SWTOR. While I agree the stories are competent and tend to be a step above the rest of the gaming industry in general, they're not exactly... award winning material.  Seriously, remember how the gaming industry pretty much bragged that the writers' strike wouldn't effect them becuase they don't use writers.... yeah most of us can tell writers aren't being used. Anyway, I told him I could see the traps and betrayals coming, and he pretty much called me paranoid and a liar. The thing is... I read books and watch movies so these plot tools they are using combined with visual representations of the characters (bad guys generally look bad), makes the stories predictable. I don't mind that too much. It's another reason I can enjoy mainstream movies, like Avatar. I did not go to see Avatar to see stellar acting and tight, well done scripts. I watched Avatar for the visuals, and as long as everything else was at least competent, I enjoyed it.

I didn't play Dragon Age to get original ideas but to see ideas weaved together in a way that is enjoyable to play. That worked for me. I also don't think you are going far enough back if you are trying to give credit to people who have similar ideas found in DA. Especially in the fantasy arena, authors have been borrowing from dead authors and trying to claim originality for years now. Don't even get me started in the amount of plots taken/stolen from anime and manga and potrayed in "the west" as original.

I have never subscribed to the idea that in order for something to be good, it has to be original. I just don't believe that. I think it's in the presentation and the style and a lot of things but it doesn't really matter to me if someone takes the concept of a vampire and makes it their own so long as they don't try and claim they invented the vampire (some of the authors do try this, drives me nuts Rowlings!).

To answer your questions I am 100% sure you are not the only one who can't stand Bioware, I am just not one of those individuals. And I am sure you can take any game, compnay, product, series, movie, novel, person and find people who hate or like them.

The only thing that bothers me about bioware as a whole is they havent changed the formula at all, and I’d like to see something fresh from them. I’m not sure its fair to criticise their fantasy stories as derivative, since virtually all fantasy is. But I can certainly see your point. I still really enjoyed dragon age, because I thought the gameplay was fun. Story was meh. The opposite for ME2, where I thought the characters were fantastic and the story was fun (if not inspired) but the gameplay was horrid and the RP elements significantly dumbed down.

Imo the best RPGs these days are coming out of Europe- gothic series + risen, divinity 2, STALKER etc.

I feel the same about Mass Effect 2 (Mordin is freakin awesome, btw).  Some of my favorite games come from Bioware, but I do worry that EA's going to turn them into a third rate developer as they did Maxis.  In a way it feels like we've already started seeing that with ME2.  Despite enjoying my play-through I'm finding it hard to go back for another round, after having played ME1 more than I'd like to admit.

Later,
LAR

The original mass effect was pretty cool, not as great as Kotor, and the rest have been starting to slide down hill. Funny how no one mentioned their sonic RPG though.

Personally, I like Bioware's story telling.

That said, not much is new anymore. See "Reality TV", sex, violence, etc. to be "new" and "edgy". It is bum fighting and porn.

A tried and true formula can make a solid story. While there were some good ideas, George Lucas painted himself into many a corner. That said, he used this concept to make Star Wars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

and Campbell (not Earl, sorry Oiler fans) wrote it to explain the concepts of myth/story telling. I prefer that to modern "reality" even if it is a bit naive (or Evian spelled backwards)

I love Mass Effect 2 companions, some of the best cast of characters and stories I have ever seen. ME1 was nice in his own way, and ME2 is nice in a different way. But I think Bioware continue to do top-notch games.

EA destroys games over time. The want to get maximum profits and the pressure on developers rise significant.

F.e. The addins: Some cost 7 dollars and i need just around 20 mins to go trought. Thats just a problem.

If the developers dont get the time to make games good, they will just recycle his old ones. f.e. BF2/bf2142, COD-Series.

Fifa....

Those 15$ was probably just to scare you away from second hand games. Or is there any new copy without stone prisoner?

The Overlord DLC for ME2 is pretty good

Dragon Age, good epic story with nice dialogue, like rebooted NWN without multiplayer. Which was one of NWNs strong points btw.

ME1, good story and good characters, very poor gameplay. On harder difficulties I just walked past the non-vital enemies instead of fighting them.

ME2, odder story but better dialogue. Best dialogue I've seen in a game. Gameplay was arcade -ized (new word I think) so that it was actually more fun. The characters were worse than ME1 imo and the story so so.

And despite all their rambling of moral choices in all three of the games I still find it very lacking. I like how in Dragon Age you could select choices that gave you permanent abilities, even if they were few. Things that lasted, which most "choice based" games lack. Killing the character or sparing him gives you a few points and a little bag of gold at most, whereas in DA:O there were a few places where you could get money/stats/loyalty etc. The loyalty missions in ME2 had a good rp feel as well, even if they sometimes were redundant.

My favourite game of all time is actually for the GBA and it had a choice system that blew my mind and has maybe raised my standards above what Bioware can do. There were only A and B options and it never said what happened, not for the long run anyway, and could drastically alter the game. One choice results in your friends betraying you some 10 gaming hours after you made the choice.* KotOR has the best story in any game I have seen btw.

*Interesting thing to note is that in Tactics Ogre:TKoL, is that there is an "award" for completing the game in 25 hours. In Resident Evil 5 there is an award for doing it in 3 hours. TATKoL is for GBA, RE5 is for Ps3, I hope I won't have to explain the hardware differences. It makes me sad to see what is happening to games.

I like Bioware (but I am a bit biased having met many of them and done work for them), but I do think that their games over time are becoming more generic. I personally blame that on the consoles because console gamers seem to favour a much faster/simpler format of game. Once a company goes for cross-platform games, they seem to favour more mainstream productions, which I personally find less involved. Baldur's Gate was a phenomenal game. Neverwinter Nights was also an amazing game, especially for modding, though the original game didn't actually make use of all it's potential, especially storywise. Dragon Age on the other hand was decent, but felt a bit bland, and I blame that on an uninteresting combat mechanic. The Witcher for me was a far better game of a similar style, just because the combat was so much more entertaining (though the translation and editing sucked big time on the original release).

Bioware have yet to let me down (apart from DRM, aand even there they've usually been able to persuade EA to pursue a slightly less draconian DRM system than would otherwise have been used). Every game of theirs that I've purchased has been brilliant and soaked up countless hours of my time. They're one of the few companies I could pre-order a game for and not be really worried whether it'd turn out to be a flop.

BG2, NWN, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Dragon age - all have been (IMO) at the 'top of their class'. Not perfect of course (e.g. NWN single player), but still very good. For dragon age I thought it had a good story with noticeably different 'paths' you could take through it, great voice acting, graphics+general immersion, good gameplay, plenty of customisation options, and enough content for it to soak up a good amount of time. The only criticisms I could make of it was the lack of multiplayer and the much more complex toolset (compared with NWN).

Haven't played mass effect yet but I've no doubt I'll continue to be impressed by them when I do.

While their newer games aren't as good as Baldur's Gate and some of the others you mentioned they are still among the best in the genre.  Mass Effect is a very light RPG and is really a different animal, especially #2.  It is fine for what it is but isn't anything I would even try to compare to Baldur's Gate.  Dragon Age on the other hand is much more in line with the older games.  It's definitely a good game in my opinion.  It was a little lack-luster in some areas but overall it was a very good product, definitely the best RPG in my opinion of the last few years (but I missed a few such as Risen and the Gothics).  The setting and story were solid but not spectacular, great characters and nice party based combat (which is hard to find in modern games).  My main problems with it were the underlying systems which were too restrictive and unbalanced.  That and some really stupid decisions such as no storage and not being able to craft in your camp with other party members.  That didn't ruin the game for me though.  Not as good as the older games but closer than anything I've seen in a AAA product in a long time.

With that said though Mass Effect 2 and the teasers for Dragon Age 2 really scared me.  They seem to be heading in a much more cinematic and casual direction which isn't for me at all.  If they continue this path they will eventually lose me as a customer.  Mass Effect 3 is already a buy when it is drastically on sale kind of product.  Wasn't impressed by #2 at all.  It wasn't bad necessarily, just not my cup of tea.