Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

I picked up my paused Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition run again. Actually beating the game took longer than I recall it taking back in the day, though -- I could swear I used to get through it from start to finish over one weekend. Maybe due to not playing it for years I had forgotten the best routes to take for optimal time saving.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Mass Effect to be remastered had been requested by fans for quite some time as I recall, although I think the wish was really more for just a re-release so that playing the game on newer consoles would be easier or even possible -- on PC that was never a problem. EA did eventually jump on the remaster bandwagon and BioWare got to put together Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

I'm including Dragon Age: Inquisition in the list of games I beat last year even though I technically finished it a week into January (after having started it in November). The game is pretty long with all of its DLC in the mix and doing a 100% run took me 154 hours in total, rivaling the time I finished The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

I found the music choice for Mass Effect: Andromeda's launch trailer -- Human by Rag'n'Bone Man -- to be highly amusing. With early access and review copies having already been around awhile to showcase the game's lack of quality, to me the trailer felt like BioWare Montreal saying they had tried their best and apologizing the state Andromeda would come out.

Knights of the Old Republic

I decided to replay Knights of the Old Republic, because, for some reason, I never wrote a post about it even though I'm pretty sure I had this blog when I first played the game. And I needed to refresh my memory before writing about it. I replayed the second game as well, and in this post I will probably compare the two games quite a bit.

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

I get the feeling BioWare was given feedback to make the second expansion to Neverwinter Nights give a more Baldur's Gate 2 -like experience. A talking sword, ability to travel between places via a pocket plane, increased party size, and NPC romances (among other things) certainly hint to this.

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide

The first expansion for Neverwinter Nights adds a new campaign to the game. It is not tied to the original one in any way, though. You start it with a new character (preferably). And it is not even set in the city of Neverwinter but quite a bit inland, to East from The Sword Coast.

Neverwinter Nights

After Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal, BioWare's next Dungeons & Dragons title was Neverwinter Nights, released in 2002. The company developed a new 3D engine for the game, called Aurora, which unfortunately -- unlike the Infinity Engine -- has not endured the test of time very well.

Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age 2 was released last year and it received a bunch of negative criticism. Some even deemed it ol' trusty BioWare's first failure in their impressive line of great RPG titles. I was very skeptical about it, though. I mean, I had seen couple gameplay videos of it on YouTube and wasn't all that impressed. But it did look pretty much like Dragon Age: Origins to me. Where they could've gone so wrong that people found not liking it?

Mass Effect 3

BioWare has been getting a ton of crap thrown at them for Mass Effect 3. People felt like BioWare/Eletronic Arts was selling an incomplete product, and to get the whole game one should also buy From Ashes, a Day 1 DLC. Since the DLC was included in the Digital Deluxe edition, I did not mind all that much. The second issue came up when people finished the game and its ending was not what they thought it should have been. But I will get onto that later in this post.

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 begins with a gripping intro, in which SSV Normandy SR-1 gets destroyed. Commander Shepard is killed, but not before he/she saves the crew. Death is not final, however, at least not when an infamous group, Cerberus (whose existence I had completely forgotten), and its mysterious leader, the Illusive Man, think you are the most important person in the galaxy.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening

While I obviously already knew of the influence A Song of Ice and Fire had had to Dragon Age: Origins, I didn't fully realize how much until playing its expansion, Awakening. Having just read A Game of Thrones might have had something to do with that as well.

Dragon Age: Origins

Describing Dragon Age: Origins as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate is somewhat dubious. Many games could be called that if DA:O is what makes one. But BioWare did that anyway.

Mass Effect

It is so very convenient how all the races of the galaxy happen to speak English. The Canadian RPG makers, the people of BioWare, probably thought so too when making their elevator simulator, which some may know as Mass Effect.

Jade Empire

Jade Empire, a BioWare game set in a world inspired by mythical China, begins at the edge of a realm in a small village called Two Rivers -- just like The Eye of the World, the first book in The Wheel of Time series. The name of the village is hardly very original and thus just a coincidence but it amused me nonetheless.