The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development

It is an interesting read and if it's a true reflection of what happened it does explain a lot. It doesn't explain everything like the change in face for the Sara Ryder default upon release, but all in all it seems that there hasn't been a clear vision that was translated in to realistic work packages.

On the one hand you could say it's amazing what they accomplished all things considered but on the other hand you have to wonder how BioWare allowed this to go wrong as far as it did and particularly as long as it did. It just seems they didn't have a clear vision to begin with, just a collection of some cool ideas that were just thrown in a hat and shuffled around.

What surprised me most I guess is the situation with the Frostbite engine. It really does shed a light on how clunkcy the UI stuff is in DA:I and ME:A and why even DA:O which is ancient by now, still has a better UI set up. It just seems that with EA at the helm BioWare just goes from one unfinished engine to another. I mean BioWare were always somewhat sloppy with their coding and admittedly the games are very complex so some measure of tolerance should be allowed there, but seeing how Frostbite was really just not set up for RPG style games, of course it was going to be a nightmare.

But yeah, it's really a shame that Mass Effect as a whole got a big dent in its reputation from ME:A and it seems the resuts of the game do not reflect the work that has been put in. I do feel for the developers who worked hard and saw things fall apart around them as they tried to go along. I just really hope that when they get around to a sequel they really do some good lessons learned analysis because clearly if it had been lead properly this game would've been a legendary game and now it will be remembered as the horrid animation game. The game is better than that but it could and should've been better than what it was. I still enjoy the game as such and it is getting better with the patches, but it's still a game in need of stabilizing and some basic fixes are still waiting to be done (think of the many audio issues for example). 

I just hope that over time and with more improvements the game will be remembered more fondly than when it was released.