ай фак йор буллщит щит

"Things at Bio felt like they were at their height when the Doctors (Ray & Greg, the founders) were still there. We made RPG's, full stop. We made them well. Sure, there were some shitty parts... some which I didn't realize HOW shitty they were until after I left, but I'd never worked anywhere else." [x] "To me, things like the bone-numbing crunch and the mis-management were simply how things were done. I was insulated from a lot of it, too, I think. On the DA team, I had my writers (and we were a crack unit) and I had managers who supported and empowered me. Or indulged me. I'm not sure which, tbh." [x] "It's funny that Mike Laidlaw becoming Creative Director was one of the best working experiences I had there, as initially it was one of the Shitty Things. You see, when Brent Knowles left in 2009, I felt like I was ready to replace him. This was kinda MY project, after all, and who else was there?" [x]

"Well, it turned out this coincided with the Jade Empire 2 team being shut down, and their staff was being shuffled to the other teams. Mike had already been tapped to replace Brent... Mike, a writer. Who I'd helped train. There wasn't even a conversation. When I complained, the reaction? Surprise." [x] "It was the first indication that Bio's upper management just didn't think of me in That Way. That Lead Writer was as far as I was ever getting in that company, and there was a way of Doing Things which involved buddy politics that... I guess I just never quite keyed into. I was bitter, I admit it." [x] "But, like I said, this turned out well. Mike WAS the right pick, damn it. He had charisma and drive, and he even won me over. We worked together well, and I think DA benefited for it. I think I'd still be at Bio, or have stayed a lot longer, but then I made my first big mistake: leaving Dragon Age." [x]

"See, we'd finished DAI in 2014 and I was beginning to feel the burn out coming on. DAI had been a grueling project, and I really felt like there was only so long I could keep writing stories about demons and elves and mages before it started to become rote for me and thus a detriment to the project." [x] "Plus, for the first time I had in Trick Weekes someone with the experience and willingness they could replace me. So I told Mike I thought it was time I moved onto something else... and he sadly let me go. So, for a time, the question became which of the other two BioWare teams I'd move onto." [x] "Both needed a Lead Writer. Mass Effect Andromeda was just gearing up, and while I liked everyone out in Montreal I didn't really want to move. So I joined the new project that the former Mass Effect team in Edmonton was cooking up - the one that became Anthem but, at the time, was code-named Dylan." [x]

"That was a mistake. You see, the thing you need to know about BioWare is that for a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team. Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios. And they didn't get along." [x] "The company was aware of the friction and attempts to fix it had been ongoing for years, mainly by shuffling staff between the teams more often. Yet this didn't really solve things, and I had no idea until I got to the Dylan team. The team didn't want me there. At all." [x] "Worse, until this point Dylan had been concepted as kind of a "beer & cigarettes" hard sci-fi setting (a la Aliens), and I'd been given instructions to turn it into something more science fantasy (a la Star Wars). Yet I don't think anyone told the team this. So they thought this change was MY doing." [x]

"I kept getting feedback about how it was "too Dragon Age" and how everything I wrote or planned was "too Dragon Age"... the implication being that *anything* like Dragon Age was bad. And yet this was a team where I was required to accept and act on all feedback, so I ended up iterating CONSTANTLY." [x] "I won't go into detail about the problems except to say it became clear this was a team that didn't want to make an RPG. Were very anti-RPG, in fact. Yet they wanted me to wave my magic writing wand and create a BioWare quality story without giving me any of the tools I'd need to actually do that." [x] "I saw the writing on the wall. This wasn't going to work. So I called up my boss and said that I'd stick it out and try my best, but only if there was SOMETHING waiting on the other side, where I could have more say as Creative Director. I wanted to move up. I was turned down flat, no hesitation." [x]

"That... said a lot. Even more when I was told that, while I could leave the company if I wanted to, I wouldn't have any success outside of BioWare. But in blunter words. So I quit." [x] "Was it easy? Hell no. I thought I'd end up buried under a cornerstone at Bio, honestly. I LIKE security. Sure, I'd dreamed of maybe starting my own studio, but that was a scary idea and I'd never pursued it. I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do, but I wanted OUT." [x] "Which led to me at home after my last day, literally having a nervous breakdown, wondering what kind of idiot gives up a "good job". How was a writer, of all things, with no real interest in business supposed to start his own studio? It felt apocalyptic. Within a year, however, I was on my way." [x]

[original thread, following thread]

Follow-up Q&A Bluesky posts:

User: "Were David Gaider still at Bioware, I am certain you would have showed us exactly how Mythal was transferred to Morrigan. You would have paid off on all those years of growth since DAO" David Gaider: "You can be certain I would have *wanted* to, for sure. Whether I'd have been able to is something not even I can be certain of. During my time at BioWare, I had to settle for less-than-ideal results lots of times - that's just how it goes, when it comes to making games." [x]

User: "jesus fuck that is a revolting way to treat any employee" DG: "The thing that got to me most was the apparent assumption that I needed "success". That this was the most important thing to me, to work on projects that sold millions of copies. I like that, sure, who wouldn't? But he obviously didn't know me at all." [x]

User: "Could you elaborate on the anti-RPG sentiment? Was it like the team didn't want narrative choices or game mechanics that affected dialogue? Did they even want dialogue choices?" DG: "There has always been an element within Bio that quietly resented the idea we could never quite get away from being a studio that "just" made RPG's and that our writing was more celebrated than our action. So, yes: more action, less story, less cinematics, and less dialogue all around." [x]

User: "I mean, that's the team (Ship of Theseus!) that made ME2, right? ME2, which was like ME1 if you added more loyalty quests, more romance options, and made the good ending more dependent on doing the loyalty quests?" DG: "When I say an "element within BioWare", I don't mean the entire team... we're talking about a group of devs, many of which worked on ME2 yes, who gained traction because their views likely aligned with what EA also wanted. Speculation on my part, largely, because I wasn't on that team until Dylan." [x]

User: "Gods that is some really shitty corporate culture to say 'You'll ammount to nothing outside of Bioware!'." DG: "From some perspectives, I haven't. I make indie games that sell thousands of copies, and from a triple-A perspective that's... basically nothing. But I'm happy, I enjoy what I'm doing, and I feel creatively fulfilled. Not everyone thinks those things equate with success, though." [x]

User: "Hold up. Jade Empire was gonna get a sequel? How did that not happen?" DG: "The team worked on it for quite a while. First it was Jade Empire 2, and then they rebooted it as a different game altogether which was kind of "modern Jade Empire but minus anything Asian"... and then they cancelled it. Happens a lot to projects as they spin up." [x]

User: "What do you think began the conflict between the Dragon Age and Mass Effect team?" DG: "I honestly have no idea. Competition for resources, I suppose? One team's plans were always being cut short because the other team suddenly needed all their team members for an upcoming release." [x] User: "That makes sense. I can't imagine how it must feel to have your project side lined or reduced because of another team. Do you think the ME team were more entitled because they perceived their franchise as having a bigger cultural impact?" DG: "I never got that sense, though I was never in the meetings where these things were hashed out. They tended to always get what they needed, however, because EA always expected that each ME game had way more *potential* for huge sales than DA did." [x]

User: "Wow.... this makes so much awful, shifty sense. It has seemed to me, from the outside, that there has been a preference for ME over DA. The launch of DATV and the residual layoffs seemed more of a hit job from inside than just a troll problem." DG: "While I was at BioWare, EA *always* preferred Mass Effect, straight up Their Marketing team liked it more. It was modern. It had action. They never quite knew what to do with DA, and whenever DA outperformed ME, ME got the excuses. If you ask me, it was always just shy of the axe since DA Origins." [x] User: "Can I ask a follow-up question ? Is them not knowing what to do with DA the reason why every DA game was different ? While I love all the games I've always wondered where that originated from" DG: "Maybe in part? I'd say the biggest reason was that, while I was there, the BioWare teams were bad at overreaction. They'd take the feedback/criticism to heart - both our own and the fans' - and generally fixed that but also overcorrected. And then there was EA's influence on top of that, yes." [x]

User: "Is that why DA games never got a remaster/remake?" DG: "There's a lot more that goes into such a question, I'd say, though I honestly have no idea. I can't imagine it helped." [x] User: "Do you feel EA will perhaps sell off DA to another developer like Larian (Baulders Gate) or Playground (Fable)? Considering the reception of Inquisition and Veilguard?" DG: "I suppose anything is possible, but to me it seems unlikely if EA thinks there's any chance they might just sit on the IP until they can reboot it later on." [x]

User: "I've always gotten that vibe from the games department, yet I also saw Dragon Age getting a LOT more attention than Mass Effect when it came to the peripheral material like books, comics, lore books, etc. Do you know why?" DG: "I don’t think that was ever true? ME was so much easier with logo branding, and the N7 hoodie was ACE. 😅" [x]

User: "Was there ever any pressure put on the DA team to move away from RPGs?" DG: "Not initially. Initially Ray & Greg said they were fine with having two different styles of RPGs. After they left, there was pressure to emulate ME more and more because, again, it was the “future”." [x]

User: "May I ask for timeframe? Did you work on Joplin at all, or did you move before it even entered planning stage?" DG: "Joplin wasn’t really being worked on while I was still there. The DA team was finishing the last of the DAI DLCs." [x]

User: "i don't think it was just EA, was it? i recall several instances of ray muzyka praising mass effect in interviews or open letters but i don't recall once him doing it for dragon age." DG: "I can’t say. Ray was a big fantasy fan, so I doubt it." [x]

DG: "In terms of the remasters, I suspect the major difference between the two wasn’t favouritism but rather the engine. All three ME games were made in Unreal." [x]

User: "If you stayed, would you be able to persuade BioWare/EA to push DA4 on the success of DAI or would it be cancelled/delayed like Veilguard did?" DG: "I was a sub-lead, not even a senior lead. I would have had as much influence as I did when I was there, which is to say very little." [x]

User: "Anytime I see ex-BioWare people talk about Anthem, I can’t help but wonder if that game should have been axed early on - it never felt much like a BioWare game, even in the marketing. Or would you say that the game itself could have been fine, but it was the management of the IP that was the issue?" DG: "The initial version I worked on still had some RPG in it, but you could see where the winds were blowing. I think the team leads just convinced themselves it was good and would all work out somehow. Through “BioWare magic”, I guess." [x]

User: "Every time I hear about this or see it, it always sounds like the ME team were just a-holes. No great way but to say it bluntly. Nothing to be done." DG: "I wouldn’t say that. Most of them were lovely. We were always competing for very finite resources, however." [x]

欺神弄鬼 (Tricks of Gods and Ghosts) Link on steam

This is literally the first game that came up in my mind from the provided description XD

Firstly, beautiful art. Secondly, ancient Chinese theme but the society is matriarchal. I've played demo for a bit and decided to leave it till it's more fleshed out (but the game is already big!). It checks out that criteria of swinging sword like a badass and smooching your pookies (A LOT OF POOKIES...), besides kicking ass there are also skill checks via dice rolls and some minigames (fishing, for example)

I know some Chinese and played with the help of phone camera translator, so it's fairly manageable to play.

I also heard the game has mpreg, but i think it's optional? I did not play too far so I can't say for sure

怪物的王座 Throne of Monsters Link on steam

Another Chinese indie! (they be cooking fr), but this time the combat is card-based and it has that oldschool JRPG feel! I did not try it out yet, saved it for later, but I will still put it on the list, since it fits the criteria!

Honorable mention (the games that have fighting and romance and I finished them, also have English translation, but rarely included in the space): My Time series and Sultan's Game 1) My Time at Sandrock (Portia, Evershine - the latest I recommend the most, but it's not out yet) - cutesy artstyle, but still has romance and fighting that's ingrained into the plot, with building+commission mechanic, so it's less tedious than regular farming

When it comes to Medusa, there are 2 problems : the first one is people lumping her story as recorded in Metamorphosis book 4 as a greek source

The second one is claiming she was a priestess of Athena or Minerva.

Let's adress the first one. While it's not uncommon in greek myth to have stories of SA, there are few regarding Athena punishing someone that I am aware of. There are countless about Hera, there are some about Artemis although she didn't punished anyone but banished them, but for Athena, there's only one I have ever heard of : and it's the sack of Troy.

According to this story, Cassandra had taken refuge in a temple of Athena during the sack of Troy after the Achaeans invaded the city. She was then abducted, brutalized and eventually assaulted by Ajax the lesser while begging for Athena's rescue and clinging unto her statue. The story doesn't say she punished Cassandra, but Ajax the Lesser, and with the help of Poseidon of all people.

While it's not uncommon for myths to straight up contradict each other, it doesn't really make sense that Athena punishes a priestess of hers for being assaulted when she took the revenge of someone who was also assaulted in her temple and wasn't a priestess.

And it's because, people are mixing up Ovid with greek authors. Unlike what some belief, Greek and Roman mythology aren't copy pasta, the Roman did adopt greek deities and fused some of their own gods or gods of the Etruscan pantheon with greek deities, such is the case with Athena and Minerva, but they are still more or less distinct.

In the case of Ovid, his poems weren't sacred text but they had a sacred theme. So they weren't religious text, simply poems about legends that he wrote basing himself on Hesiode and Apollodore.

In neither sources is Medusa a priestess of Athena, she seems to have already been a monster from the start.

In Hesiode, there is no mention of Athena being responsible for Medusa being turned into a monster, it simply states that she had a relationship with Poseidon without any implication of assault. In my formation, I had learned how to read and translate both ancient greek and latin. And I don't recall Hesiode portraying it as an assault, in fact, he described it as something rather tender, taking place in "soft meadow among springs flowers". Apollodore also mentions this relationship when talking about Pegasus and Chrysaor's springing from her neck.

Neither record implies or suggest that it was a result of assault nor that Athena punished Medusa because of this. She isn't even mentioned at all in Hesiode's story. And Apollodore doesn't seem to suggest that Athena turned Medusa into a monster, rather, he says that other records of the myth tells that Athena slayed Medusa herself because she compared her beauty to hers, but she is refered to as the Gorgon, which could suggest that Medusa was already a monster at that point.

Ovid isn't interested in simply recording legends or establishing a giant genealogical tree, the point of the metamorphosis was to explore the idea of transition from one form to another. In reality, his version might be the first one where Medusa's appearance as the result of a transformation. There is still the version attributed to Apollodore that states Medusa was turned into a monster as punishement for claiming to be more beautiful than Athena, but it's not what the actual library text says, merely saying that Athena killed her as a punishement for that.

So, did Ovid made her into a prietess of Minerva ? No.

Then where does it comes from ? Here is how the english page of Wikipedia describes Medusa in a section about Minerva :

Medusa was once a beautiful human girl with magnificent hair, she was also a priestess of Minerva. One day Neptune was watching her pray in the Temple of Minerva and decided to act upon his lustful obsession. He forced himself on Medusa but she was not strong enough to fight him off. 

Here is what the latin text says :

Clarissima forma multorumque fuit spes inuidiosa procorum illa, neque in tota conspectior ulla capillis pars fuit ; inueni, qui se uidisse referret. Hanc pelagi rector templo uitiasse Mineruae dicitur

Here is a translation of the first half

She (Medusa) shone by her beauty, awakening envious hope within many suitors, and there was no greater beauty within her than her glorious locks. I met with someone who reported having seeing her.

Context : Perseus is telling his adventures during a banquet after rescuing Andromeda. He is sharing hearsays about Medusa, notably that she was very beautiful, had beautiful hair and that he heard it from someone who met her.

He doesn't mention once her being a priestess of Minerva. Likewise, the english page says that Neptune became obsessed with her after seeing her pray one day : THERE IS NONE OF THIS IN THE LATIN TEXT

The text makes no mention of 1) Neptune becoming obsessed with her while he watched her pray 2) it being an obsession 3) That Medusa wasn't strong enough to fight him off.

My gathering is that it is all developped from ONE simple line

Hanc pelagi rector templo uitiasse Mineruae dicitur

This is the passage refering to Neptune. Pelagi rector is refering to Neptune, literaly "the master of ocean" or the "ruler of the oceans". Dicitur means "It is said" or "They say" which, in context, is refering to Perseus sharing hearsays about what happened in a temple of Minvea (templo Mineruae).

There is no indicating on how Neptune meet with Medusa, it is simply stated that she was in a temple when he assaulted her. What was he doing there ? What was she doing there ? No one knows because the text doesn't explain it.

To make matter more confusing, there are actually 2 translations of this passage from my knowledge.

The first one read as such

They say that the Master of the oceans violated her in a temple of Minerva.

The second one read as such

They say that she and the master of the oceans defiled a temple of Minerva

The latin verb uitiasse is the perfect active infinitive form of the verb vitio which means to violate, to defile, to corrupt. The first translation considers that "hanc" refers to Medusa and is the DOC of the verb, whereas templo is treated as an ablatif that indicates where this took place.

The second one however considers that it's the temple that was uitiasse, not Medusa, but that this action was accomplished with her.

Either translation do not confirm that Medusa was a priestess of Minerva at any point. Nor do they precise in which circumstances Neptune meet her, it only mentions that it took place in a temple of Minerva.

Now in case you wonder why there are two translations, that's simple. Hanc is an accusative, while templo is a dative. The meaning of the sentence depends on which you consider the object of uitiasse.

Regardless, it's not an exageration to say that whoever wrote this page greatly exagerated Ovid's records.

So there is nothing about any legend of Medusa that says she was a priestess of Minerva, it just says that Minerva punished her because of something that took place in her temple as it constituted an offence of her sanctuary.

The only point where Ovid might have strayed away from the sources was making Medusa a once beautiful woman. Note that the latin text doesn't even specificy if she was human or a nymph, only that she was beautiful, notably her hair. In the version of the myth that I had heard which was attributed to Apollodore, it was said that Medusa was bragging about her beauty, notably her beautiful hair, to proclaim that she was more beautiful than Athena. It didn't said she was a priestess or that it took place in a temple of hers nor that she was even human to begin, just that her snake hair was a punishement from Athena and that she was the only mortal in this trio of sisters.

So this element of the myth isn't even present in Ovid's story at all. Likewise, in reality Ovid didn't specify if she was human turned monster. In fact, a few lines above, Perseus is asked why out of the three Gorgons sister, Medusa was the only one with snake hair... which implies that she wasn't human to begin with, she just didn't had snake hair !

excipit unus ex numero procerum quaerens, cur sola sororum gesserit alternis inmixtos crinibus angues.

One of the nobles asked why she (Medusa) was the only one of the sisters to have snakes intertwined with her hair

When telling the episode, Ovid only mentioned Minerva changing Medusa's hair.

neve hoc inpune fuisset, Gorgoneum crinem turpes mutavit in hydros

To not let this offense go unpunished, she turned the Gorgon's locks into repulsive snakes

Medusa is called a Gorgon here, meaning that she already was one before the punishement. So she was already considered not of human race, which again, makes sense since Ovid is following Apollodore and Hesiode who both claim that she was a daughter of two sea deities, Phorcys and Ceto.

Since when does two gods = one human daughter ???

As for her ability to turn people into stone, Ovid never, not even once, attributes this as a result of this punishment.

This means that according to Ovid's version, there is nothing that states that Minerva gave Medusa this ability, be it as punishement or protection for the people who still believe in this despite the text making it clear was only focused on punishing her temple being defiled. It isn't impossible that people are mixing this up with the story of Caenis in book 12 of the Metamorphosis : according to this story, Caenis was a beautiful maiden who had been assaulted by Neptune. He offered to grant her a wish and she asked to be turned into a man so that she would never have to go through this again.

Case in point, if Ovid had intended to explain Medusa's power to turn people into stone as a result of a desire for protection, he would have done it. Likewise, if he wanted to portray this as a result of Medusa's punishement, he would have said it.

So, nowhere in Ovid's text does it say that Medusa was a priestess of Minerva/Athena nor that she used to be human nor that her ability to turn people into stone was part of the punishement inflicted upon her by Minerva.

What it says is just that Medusa was one of the Gorgon sisters, that she used to be of great beauty, that at some point, she had been assaulted in a temple of Minerva by Neptune, constituting a profanation of Minerva's temple and that it resulted in Minerva turning her hair into snakes, making her the only sisters to have such. There is no information about how Neptune came into contact with her, there is no information about why they were in this temple in the first place.

As I explained above, I think Ovid was simply trying to mix the different elements of Medusa's story compiled by his different sources without caring about giving more details, but Medusa had always been of non human race since in greek mythology, sea deities either birth other gods or monsters, and Ovid's text makes it clear that Medusa was still a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, who are often presented as the parents of sea monsters like the sirens and Echidna. In greek sources, all Gorgons had the power to turn people into stone, but Ovid doesn't mention anything about this nor does he present this as a unique thing in Medusa, he only talked about her hair instead.

See what some minutes of research and actually check the latin text can do ?