In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at all the games that BioWare has ever made (barring a couple that were on mobile devices or made for web browsers), and ranking every single one of them, starting with the worst one, and counting down right to the very best.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

#17. SHATTERED STEEL

Though BioWare is a studio associated with RPGs and storytelling, the first game they ever made was something completely different. Shattered Steel was a mech action title, which took cues from the MechWarrior series, but went for a more accessible and action-oriented style of gameplay (which you can translate to “it had more mindless explosions).

Shattered Steel was a decent enough game, with enjoyable action and a story that, for its time, was at least mildly entertaining. It was, however, a far cry from the kind of games BioWare would build its reputation on and go on to be associated with, and is, as a result, often altogether forgotten.

Before they morphed into WRPGs, cRPGs used to be an entirely different beast. They would adopt the Dungeons and Dragons rulesets for computer games, and prioritize actual role playing with proper RNG and stat management, unlike what RPGs of later days would become. The zenith of this movement of cRPGs is represented by games like Baldur’s Gate 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and Planescape Torment, arguably the greatest cRPG ever made.

Now, all of those, as well as the original Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, will be brought to modern consoles, exposing them to a modern audience for the very first time. Skybound Games and Beamdog announced today that all of these games will be launching on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PS4 in 2019. These will all be “Enhanced Editions”, according to the press release they made, which means they’ll be polished up with unpressed graphics and the like.

No specific release dates were announced, but I hope they come soon. I can’t wait to play them on my Switch.

We are bringing these amazing titles to #XboxOne, #NintendoSwitch, and #PS4! https://t.co/NbbPN8tQFO

— Skybound Games (@skyboundgames) February 7, 2019

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization. 

King of Fighters

At one point, the King of Fighters was set to have a character that resembled Tetsuo from the movie Akira. The character’s voice actor was even hired for the process. It’s hard to not see the similarities but we’re guessing due to copyright issues, this character was changed to Nameless from King of Fighters 2002 onwards.

And when we didn’t get we wanted, when we thought they pulled a fast one on us, we snapped. The internet just erupted in protest – so much so that Bioware had to create an entire director’s cut just to appease people who wanted their ending.

So now that Bioware, a company that reinvigorated the Dungeons & Dragons, and arguably the entire PC RPG market, with it’s Baldur’s Gate series; the company that wanted to bring the table-top D&D experience online with Neverwinter Nights, besides providing gamers with the tools to create their own RPG from scratch; that showed us how a good Star Wars game could be done with Knights of the Old Republic; which brought us a solid, memorable kung-fu experience in Jade Empire; hell, the company that brought us MDK 2, arguably one of the greatest action games of all time; and more than anything else, the company that took a game with a trilogy – something which Silicon Knights, riding off the goodwill of Eternal Darkness and Twin Snakes botched with Too Human’s failure – to it’s completion, and in turn gave us one of the greatest RPG series of all time, not to mention one of the better sci-fi properties this decade has seen; simply put, now that they’ve lost their co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, who bled and sweat for these games, giving up a measure of their lives just so we could escape ours, you have to ask the question.

Are we happy now?

Forget the immeasurable justification of Killzone 2 & 3 – how both games failed to live up to the hype. How about Gran Turismo 5, when it’s competitor Forza Motorsport 4 sped ahead? How about when we reeled over and over and over again at how Call of Duty hasn’t innovated for the better part of the past five years? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of examples.

Maybe those developers just have thicker skin, but no one experienced a backlash that Bioware did with Mass Effect 3’s ending. Not even the game. The ending. Are we naive enough to think that this level of complaining, petitioning, threatening, chiding, snubbing, criticism and attacking really had nothing to do with Muzyka and Zeschuk leaving?

Understandably gamers have invested enough into the trilogy to feel their purchase wasn’t validated. But are naive enough to think it wasn’t fun, or one hell of a ride? Are we naive enough to believe that the entire development team, not just the co-founders, didn’t invest their very souls into this product?

Maybe we are. Maybe we aren’t. Regardless, Bioware wanted to keep us all happy, so it released alternate endings. It wanted gamers to know that it listened to them. You know who else listened to gamers, no matter how petty or whiny their complaints became? Electronic Arts, the publisher – and they didn’t just do it out of love or understanding.

No no, we are their very sales, and if their sales are threatened, they’ll throw as much pressure, and more, to make sure we’re satisfied. Sure, not every publisher does this – a fair share would even defend the developer for what they did – but not even EA could anticipate the backlash against Mass Effect 3’s ending.

Again, not the game. The ending.

Because we didn’t get what we wanted – nay, demanded – two legendary developers decided it wasn’t worth the fuss any more and just upped and retire. They did what they loved the most – heck, Muzyka was even pegged to replace John Riccitello as CEO for EA down the line (how awesome would that have been?). But whether you call it a combination of factors or not, the source is still the same: We bit the hands repeatedly that fed us, because we didn’t like the main course.

And we didn’t like the main course because it didn’t fit into our little world of what we expected from a game ending. We bit the hands repeatedly, called the upper management on them, organised petitions and outright persecuted a company. And for what? Creative freedom? If this mob mentality of forcing change doesn’t piss off any free-thinking individual – Bioware fan or not – because two great developers have been burned from doing what they loved, I don’t know what will.

Are we happy now? Or will we need another director’s cut to help us make that choice too?

Adding to the ever-increasing list of hacked organisations, Bioware have been the recent victim of yet more hacks.

An email was recently sent out to those registered on the Neverwinter Nights forums, saying that hackers had gained access to the servers associated with the forums. Though credit card details were not leaked, information such as user names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, CD keys and birth dates from these forum accounts on the system may have been compromised.

Bioware say that they “immediately took appropriate steps to protect our consumers’ data and [have] launched a thorough ongoing evaluation of the breach.”