I don't know what parts of the internet you frequent, but the gaming boards I read are normally all too quick to dismiss or tear down any game for internet cool points. Seeing people bitch and moan about minor details of a video game is not fun to read and it's even less fun to talk about. Painting yourself as a lone voice of reason in a giant sea of complacency is laughably melodramatic, as is comparing your plight to institutionalized sexism, especially since we're talking about video games on the internet. Is it too much to ask to discuss the parts of a video game you actually like?
I am! I'd rather not call anybody stupid for liking Bioware games (like I said, I like them plenty myself) but it seems that in general people don't seem to be as comfortable as I am with criticism of the games. I don't know if it sounds like I despise them, but I don't and I never really have.
Furthermore, if you want to talk about the uninspired central plotting of Bioware games post-KOTOR, that's one thing. But using a character who takes up a grand total of a minute of screen time to make a broad, sweeping generalization of the quality of Bioware's writing is extremely reductionist. Are most games badly written by the standards of film or television? Sure, but if you can only enjoy games with 'actually good' writing then you become one of those insufferable jackoffs who talk about how they replay BG2, Torment, and the first two Fallouts constantly. Maybe they'll throw in Bloodlines or Mask of the Betrayer if they're particularly open-minded.
It was kind of a flippant comment. And all of the games you listed have their niggling problems - BG2's romances are all gross violations of the therapist / patient arrangement, Torment is really extremely wordy and intentionally confusing, and Fallout 2 had Modoc.
As for the whole "games as art" thing, I consider that to be an entirely different discussion. First of all, it depends on your criteria for what the minimum threshold for something to be "art" are. I think the artistic design of Super Mario Galaxy is absolutely unparalleled, but is that enough to make it 'artistic'? I think that's for everyone to decide on their own. There are some games that I think pose interesting artistic experiments, but they are by far in the minority, and I think games are such a commercialized industry that's extremely difficult for the creative people involved to make that kind of effort. Do I think Mass Effect is one of those games? Not really, unless you consider creating an enjoyable, well-contextualized ode to 80s science fiction to be artistic. But that doesn't prevent it from being wholly enjoyable on its own terms. The vast majority of film doesn't attempt to be any kind of high art either, it's just the way society works. I think games have a lot of potential as an artistic and storytelling medium, but the added element of interactivity makes things very difficult and even the most creative people in the industry are still figuring it out.
Really the whole "art" argument thing is just the only way I can comprehend why anyone would get so up in arms about the games that they love being criticized. I think it's just indicative of a larger issue of defensiveness within the community of gamers, who are still trying to prove that games aren't just kids' play. It's understandable I think, but I'd rather give my entire opinion and weather the outrage than hold off. I love games, I love playing them and I love analyzing them, and I wouldn't have any fun if I couldn't talk about them.
I also think that link that LTK posted is reductionist to the point of absurdity. If you're going to tell me that Morrigan and Bastila, Tali and Leliana, and especially HK-47 and Wrex are indistinguishable characters, I'm going to call you an idiot. Was Obsidian's plotting and characters more original in KOTOR 2? Definitely, but if we want to discuss Obsidian's merits and failings there's plenty to talk about there as well. Maybe Chris Avellone will set an incredible new standard for video game writing with Alpha Protocol, like he did with Torment. I frankly doubt it, but I'm hoping and definitely willing to be surprised.
I wouldn't agree with some of the particular parallels in the articles, but it should be blindingly obvious to anyone that Bioware uses familiar tropes as templates for many of their characters. The drunken berserker
has shown up in more than one Bioware game (Black Whirlwind and Oghren are basically the same character, except Oghren has an added level of tragedy with his wife and all). There's the "Lancer" character who has suffered a personal loss to be overcome (Carth Onassi, Jaheira, Ashley / Kaidan, Allistair, several characters from Jade Empire including Dawn Star, Sagacious Zu and Sky) and the ambiguously evil, proud sorceress type (Viconia, Morrigan) Canderous Ordo and Wrex are both morally neutral mercenaries who come from dying cultures.
But really all of that's fine, because by and large Bioware makes their characters different enough to be interesting on their own, as you said. I don't follow David Gaider very closely but I'm willing to give thought to the idea that all this coming back to the same wells for character templates is less laziness than it is good old-fashioned auteur-ism. Like I said earlier, what frustrates me about Bioware is the more recent repetition of overall narrative arcs, with the ancient evil awakening (Elder Race / The Reapers / The Blight) and the "herald" standing in the way of ending the threat (Aribeth, Saren, Loghain) I've always felt that adventure stories like the ones in games are only as good as their villains and this "Ancient evil" template has yet to produce a villain that's been interesting to me. Aribeth, Loghain and Saren all could have been interesting but they were never the real focus of the game, and so they died before you faced the Big Bad, who's always pretty boring.
As for Obsidian / Chris Avellone, they do the same things and they have similar problems, actually. Khelgar from NWN2 is a berserker character, Ammon Jerro is a male Morrigan, etc. Chris Avellone actually does have the auteur thing going on, as he has his own tropes and his own thematic obsessions that show up in every game he helms - There's always blind antagonist / mentor with maternal feelings of love toward the PC (Ravel in PS:T, Kreia in KOTOR2) or, as in Mask of the Betrayer, towards a party member. Avellone also has a fascination with codes and oaths (Dakk'on in PS:T, The Jedi and Echani codes in KOTOR2, the oaths to the Betrayer in MotB) and how they affect those who bind themselves to them in ways they can't predict. The main problems with Avellone's approach is that he can be excessively wordy, and he's had the habit since Fallout 2 of telegraphing his villains from very early in the story when they would have been more effective as mysteries.
And as far as Alpha Protocol goes, the "suave" dialogue path is going to be much stronger cheese than anything yet done by Bioware. I've already heard one double-entendre involving a gun. I'm more interested in seeing how he's going to adapt his pet obsessions for a modern real-world setting, if he does at all.