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
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.
@lexandro_Albion wrote: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.
Agree that ME2 has one of the shorter playtime but the quality is there, the story telling the build up... It was the game that put ME and this genre on the map for me(I used to play only D&D hack and slash RPGs like baldurs gate/neverwinters night, elder scroll series). I played ME much later so ME1 combat and graphics were dated. ME3 was the best game for me minus the last 15mins or so. So on my personal scale of Mass Effect games for me: ME3 is first, ME2 second, MEA third, ME1 is the least enjoyable but can be excused as its made a decade ago and I respect it for being the first and the pioneer for such an awesome franchise.
@VladVonCastein, and don't forget that ME2 had Miranda and Jack. I found them to be pretty much the most memorable and enjoyable characters in any of the ME Games. Damn, now I need to replay ME2. ;-)
@angrybunnie wrote:@VladVonCastein, and don't forget that ME2 had Miranda and Jack. I found them to be pretty much the most memorable and enjoyable characters in any of the ME Games. Damn, now I need to replay ME2. ;-)
..Jack the badass * super biotic that found that she had something in Common with Shepard and banged him on the table in his Apartment after the citadel party...I miss Jack...
@lexandro_Albion wrote:
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.
I actually liked how this was handled in ME2. The planet anomalies that led to side missions were like an egg hunt. In contrast, ME3 gave you those on a platter. I also prefer it over ME1 where the bunkers/caves on uncharted planets were copy/pasted and MEA where the exploration led to mostly uninteresting fetch quests.
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