My first WRPG experience was late 2014...maybe Nvember. It was Dragon Age Origins. I then played DA2. I then moved onto the Mass Effect Trilogy. From there I believe it was KOTOR 1 and 2. Finally I moved over and played Fallout 3, New Vegas, Morrowind and Skyrim.

The peculiar thing is...even though I invested hours upon hours into the TES games, and had lots of fun, I never finished either. For Morrowind it was part the gameplay getting stale and part I screwed up the quests by killing an Ashlander. It wasn't my fault! I was stuck on a table or something in a tent and hadn't saved in forever and I was jamming every button I could to get off and I punched some random person. This screwed over the MQ because I couldn't get all the tribes to agree I was the...whatever .Navarim or something like that. For Skyrim I just had invested 150+ hours. I was done.

The odd thing here is I love TES lore. Like, a lot. As in, I spent much of my Morrowind and Skyrim runs just reading books I found. I pretty much ignore the DA Codexes. I glance at them from time to time but that's about it. The fact is, a BW story is so much more..."involving" than a Bethesda one that the lore is kind of the real meat of a TES game's story. The lore in DA just gets in the way. I want to talk to Zevran or Merrill or Cass, not waste time learning about the Ages.

Both BioWare and Bethesda take vastly different approaches to your PC's as well. A person I know once likened roleplaying in a Betheda game to playing make believe with a doll house. It's all in your head, really. You are offered very little substantive characterization in the form of dialogue or the like. With BW though, huge emphasis is put on dialogue trees and now their patented dialogue wheel. There's very little ways to express yourself in a Bethesda game when compared to BioWare.

Then again, BW can be pretty bad at this. I'm looking at you Mass Effect 3 and your crappy forced characterization of Shepard.

In terms of gameplay, it varies. I hated the battle system in Inquisition, was meh about the one in Origins and liked 2's. With Mass Effect, the battle system only got better each game. Also BioWare games are way harder in my experience. I died infinitely more in Mass Effect than I ever did in Fallout 3 or Skyrim and that was on Casual whereas I played the Bethesda games on Normal or above. Granted, ME3 Casual was TOO esy so I did switch up to Normal there.

So which series has better writing? It be unfair to say Bethesda can't write good characters. People love Dagoth Ur for a reason. I love the Skyrim Dark Brotherhood for a reason. I've also heard good things about some of the Oblivion guilds. There's also an NPC in Fallout 3 that I adore called Bittercup. I named my current Hawke after her. And while FO3's companions had minimal characterization, Clover was interesting and you can kind of see an "evolution" of her character in FO4's Cait, who I love.

But it's clear that isn't where Bethesda's focus lies. It's a secondary concern to building a big world full of lore and info. Are they better worldbuilders than BioWare? I dunno. Just because I don't read the Codexes doesn't mean I don't care. I think the Qunari are possibly the most fascinating faction I've seen in an RPG.

It's important to note however BW is not much better at main plots than Bethesda. BioWare is all about Generic Forces of Evil Threatens Us All. The one time they tried something different, Dragon Age II, they got endless trout for it so you can trust they won't try that again any time soon. I suspect DA4 will start off about Tevinter, maybe trying to reform it into something less awful, but devolve into a Save the World story after a while.

So...who do I like more? Well Mass Effect 2 is possibly the greatest video game I've ever played. However, I love playing Skyrim and Fallout 3. It really is apples and oranges.