In 2012, as work on Mass Effect 3 came to a close, a small group of top BioWare employees huddled to talk about the next entry in their epic sci-fi franchise. Their goal, they decided, was to make a game about exploration—one that would dig into the untapped potential of the first three games. Instead of visiting just a few planets, they said, what if you could explore hundreds?
Five years later, it’s hard to find anyone who’s ecstatic with the results. Mass Effect: Andromeda, released in March 2017, disappointed even the biggest fans of BioWare’s longrunning series. Although some people enjoyed the game, it was widely pilloried, with critics slamming its uneven writing, frequent bugs, and meme-worthy animations (our own review was just lukewarm). The PS4 version of Andromeda has a 70% on Metacritic, lower than any BioWare game to date, including the ill-advised Sonic Chronicles.
Almost immediately, fans asked how this happened. Why was Andromeda so much worse than its predecessors? How could the revered RPG studio release such an underwhelming game? And, even if the problems were a little exaggerated by the internet’s strange passion for hating BioWare, how could Andromeda ship with so many animation issues?
I’ve spent the past three months investigating the answers to those questions. From conversations with nearly a dozen people who worked on Mass Effect: Andromeda, all of whom spoke under condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about the game, a consistent picture has emerged. The development of Andromeda was turbulent and troubled, marred by a director change, multiple major re-scopes, an understaffed animation team, technological challenges, communication issues, politics, a compressed timeline, and brutal crunch.
Many games share some of these problems, but to those who worked on it, Andromeda felt unusually difficult. This was a game with ambitious goals but limited resources, and in some ways, it’s miraculous that BioWare shipped it at all. (EA and BioWare declined to comment for this article.)
Mass Effect: Andromeda was in development for five years, but by most accounts, BioWare built the bulk of the game in less than 18 months. This is the story of what happened.
The first Mass Effect, released in 2007, was critically acclaimed but hardly perfect. Fans and critics praised its character design and storytelling, yet many people hated the Mako, a clunky land rover that the player could drive to traverse planets. So BioWare doubled down on what worked—the story, the dialogue, the combat—and ditched the exploration, axing the Mako for subsequent games in the trilogy, Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). Outside of that whole ending kerfuffle, both sequels were widely loved.
It's too long to post the entire thing so here's the link
http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428
Five years later, it’s hard to find anyone who’s ecstatic with the results. Mass Effect: Andromeda, released in March 2017, disappointed even the biggest fans of BioWare’s longrunning series. Although some people enjoyed the game, it was widely pilloried, with critics slamming its uneven writing, frequent bugs, and meme-worthy animations (our own review was just lukewarm). The PS4 version of Andromeda has a 70% on Metacritic, lower than any BioWare game to date, including the ill-advised Sonic Chronicles.
Almost immediately, fans asked how this happened. Why was Andromeda so much worse than its predecessors? How could the revered RPG studio release such an underwhelming game? And, even if the problems were a little exaggerated by the internet’s strange passion for hating BioWare, how could Andromeda ship with so many animation issues?
I’ve spent the past three months investigating the answers to those questions. From conversations with nearly a dozen people who worked on Mass Effect: Andromeda, all of whom spoke under condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about the game, a consistent picture has emerged. The development of Andromeda was turbulent and troubled, marred by a director change, multiple major re-scopes, an understaffed animation team, technological challenges, communication issues, politics, a compressed timeline, and brutal crunch.
Many games share some of these problems, but to those who worked on it, Andromeda felt unusually difficult. This was a game with ambitious goals but limited resources, and in some ways, it’s miraculous that BioWare shipped it at all. (EA and BioWare declined to comment for this article.)
Mass Effect: Andromeda was in development for five years, but by most accounts, BioWare built the bulk of the game in less than 18 months. This is the story of what happened.
The first Mass Effect, released in 2007, was critically acclaimed but hardly perfect. Fans and critics praised its character design and storytelling, yet many people hated the Mako, a clunky land rover that the player could drive to traverse planets. So BioWare doubled down on what worked—the story, the dialogue, the combat—and ditched the exploration, axing the Mako for subsequent games in the trilogy, Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). Outside of that whole ending kerfuffle, both sequels were widely loved.
It's too long to post the entire thing so here's the link
http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428
nowhere near better then mass effect 2 in my opinion
Wasn't better than any of the OG trilogy IMO. I finished all three games multiple times but I only reached half way with this weak ass game.
