Yeah thats where I'm at too unfortunately.
The BioWare we knew and loved are pretty much dead these days, and their EA-ification is pretty much complete. Andromeda made me suspect as much, and Anthem pretty much confirmed it. Which is a shame considering the Mass Effect trilogy, KOTOR, NWN and DAO are amongst my favourite ever games.
It's become a case study in how to destroy an excellent, creative developer.
Out of curiosity, where would you say the decline started? My history with Bioware began at Mass Effect 1, and then DA:O which remain two of my favourite games of all time. In the mid 2010s I went back and played KOTOR, also amazing. All three are games that prioritized great story, great characters and combat emphasizing tactical depth.
Mass Effect 2 was brilliant, and in many ways the best of the trilogy. But I also feel that it's the first game where "streamlining" became a big thing, and so weirdly I think the first seeds of Bioware's fall were sown with what many consider to be their best game.
Dragon Age 2 very clearly continued that trend and was the first game from Bioware I could consider "bad", even though it did a lot of things very well (story with its time periods, characters, interesting moral dilemmas). Combat was entirely dumbed down from DA:O and the less said about the recycled dungeon areas, the better.
Mass Effect 3 showed even more "streamlining" and introduced a multiplayer mode that was surprisingly good, but also utterly unnecessary and took away resources from the single player story, which is all prior Bioware games had focused on. The integration of that multiplayer into the main story was obnoxious as feck. And the Prothean squadmate being an add on, extra charge DLC was simply reprehensible for anyone who understood the story implications of a Prothean character. While I don't hate Mass Effect 3 and think it's a pretty great game for the first 80%, I think it's also the game that makes abundantly clear to anyone still not convinced that Bioware were accelerating down a path that leads to ruin.
Dragon Age: Inquisition just furthered the trend. Massive world with a bunch of collectathon bs, incredibly bare bones main story (again, what Bioware were known for). Combat looked cool but wasn't fun, and all semblance of tactical gameplay had gone entirely out the window. This is also the game where it seems Bioware started believing that their core audience cares about which party members can be fecked more than whether those characters are interesting or relevant to the plot. It's something that still plagues RPGs today (see some of the reception to BG3). Romance in games is great and has come a long way, but I'm trying to play an epic adventure, not a dating simulator. Again, this wasn't necessarily a bad game (I think it garnered some GOTY awards or nominations etc, which is just shocking to me), but it was soulless and further evidenced Bioware's now rather apparent decline.
I never played Andromeda or Anthem and don't feel I need to in order to say that Bioware is dead, in the sense that the studio has long departed from everything (in particular story, characters and combat depth) that made them so beloved in the 00s.
/end rant
