I don't think I've ever seen a company miss the point as completely as today's BioWare. Look, guys- I'm not interested in your open-world Skyrim-clone idea of what Dragon Age 3 should be; when I want that sort of thing, I look to Bethesda. I'm not interested in an action-focused ME4; there are plenty of other companies that I could buy a better shooter from, and very few that will spend time on the worldbuilding I enjoyed in the first Mass Effect.

You people have the resources to be the best at what you do. Why do you keep trying so hard to be generic instead?

(Yes, yes, I know. EA. Sigh.)

Someone needs to remind EA that April Fool's Day is, you know, in April.

If they wanted us to consider this game a piece of art, then its creators should have had the artistic integrity to follow through on what they had crafted so far. At this point, it's like throwing a can of orange paint over "Water Lilies" just because you know people will be shocked- it debases the work itself, and it says something very uncomplimentary about the sophistication of the creators. Just my two cents, as an artist.

I actually don't mind ways to skip combat in a game as long as it doesn't feel like a cheat. That's why RPGs have dialogue skills- sometimes it's just more fun to outwit your way out of a situation (or at least, more fun than slogging through another level of boom boom hack slash). It's so weird that this became such a desperate issue for some people, especially since most of the forums I'm on complain that BioWare is starting to shortchange story so they can pack in more combat. I don't agree that you should have a "skip combat" button available- I mean, the point is that you don't know whether you're going to win a fight until you try, and if it's just a matter of wading through waves of easily killable mooks, that's poor design in the first place- but I hate how stuff like this drowns out any "genuine criticism" that the audience might actually have to offer.