The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development
For people interested, there is a follow up to the famous Kotaku article: https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428
Forum Discussion
Indeed.
Funny thing is, if you pull away the bugs and the obvious flaws there is actually a bloody good game lurking underneath it all. I only hope Bioware about turn and invest in more MEA titles. It has really good potential as its own franchise. It just needs more time and TLC.
There is a good game there.
The memes and some bugs were distracting, but the wailing exceeded justification in my view.
@adrest4 wrote:There is a good game there.
The memes and some bugs were distracting, but the wailing exceeded justification in my view.
I'll have to agree with you. It's hardly a bad game, and it's definitely above average. It's just not "great" which is I guess generally what you get, and what everybody expects from Bioware. So I can also understand, from a Bioware and Mass Effect fans perspective, the massive concerns and disappointments. And from the devs perspective, I can only imagine how hard it is to work with such a high expectation on their shoulders. Especially with all that happened during the development process.
Thanks OP for posting this article though. Was an interesting read. Really good to have insight of what exactly happened with ME:A.It was a really insightful article. I still think that MEA is a good game. Looks like it could have been an amazing game if a few things happened differently during the development period.
I'm so glad they abandoned the procedurally-generated worlds thing. That doesn't sound fun at all.
@Gilcrist wrote:It was a really insightful article. I still think that MEA is a good game. Looks like it could have been an amazing game if a few things happened differently during the development period.
I'm so glad they abandoned the procedurally-generated worlds thing. That doesn't sound fun at all.
Yeah it didn't do a whole lot of good for No Man's Sky if I remember right and for a rather story driven RPG it would've been destructive I think. It just seems that certain people should not forget to temper their enthusiasm and think for a minute before going wild on such an idea and having to throw it out mid-development. I think SWTOR also had a lot of that going on during their development and taking it outside of the BioWare range, look at games like Guild Wars 2 and Sacred 3 that just had nothing do to with their predecessors anymore upon release.
I get that things can change during development but you don't have to try to get a name for it. In this case though, it's definitely a good thing they dropped the idea. Sadly the game that was made in the end suffered for the loss of time and resources.
Oh well, it's all water under the bridge now. They just need to keep on improving it and add DLC so that in a year or two ME:A will appear in articles like "Who'd have thought that ME:A was going to end up being a gem of game" and such. It's a goal they can still achieve and strive for. There is still a fanbase out there and it'd be crazy to just give up on that.
@adrest4 wrote:There is a good game there.
The memes and some bugs were distracting, but the wailing exceeded justification in my view.
Agreed. Totally. 👍
@adrest4 wrote:There is a good game there.
The memes and some bugs were distracting, but the wailing exceeded justification in my view.
A lot jumped on that bandwagon, based off those few vids and screenshots without even playing the game. Andromeda was wrongly smeared - a lot who would very much enjoy the game are avoiding it now because of that smearing.
If you were more MP-oriented, the MEA experience was much poorer. Campaign is fun, but it just feels like a 10 year old game in many ways. It does not even compare well to Mass Effect 2. Your are correct to be amazed and maybe happy that they put anything out.
See my other posts. I did not have the details, but I pretty much outlined the kinds of problem BioWare had. They are classic "software project gone wrong" problems that lead to a "Death March Project" (Google it). The really sad thing is that there is a ton of published information on how to avoid all of those problems and quite a few consultants who would have helped them turn it around -- if they would have been willing to listen. Would they have release the game on time? No, but sanity would have returned to the process and when the game eventually was released it would have been much better.
So sad. The Devs were heroic and everything fell apart around them because of poor leadership.
Personally I found ME2 to be the weakest of the trilogy in terms of content and playtime. The decision to go "linear" in design and the complete removal of exploration for me was a major detraction.
A lot jumped on that bandwagon, based off those few vids and screenshots without even playing the game. Andromeda was wrongly smeared - a lot who would very much enjoy the game are avoiding it now because of that smearing.
That is very true.
Fred_vdp schrieb:
There's definitely a great game in there somewhere, but with the many flaws it ended up being just a good one. The game has some form of personality disorder where it forgets if it's a corridor shooter or an open world game. When it tries to be linear like Mass Effect 3 it does so really well, but the open world design steps in every trap associated with the sub-genre. Backtracking, fetch quests, you name it.
I also Agree on this, they tried too much. The game is simply too big, the open world quest are too often meaningless.
