EA: Mass Effect Was Unfairly Criticized, Franchise Could Return

Megalith

Megalith

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The Andromeda drama continues: in an interview with GameReactor, EA's Executive Vice President Patrick Soderlund suggests that the latest Mass Effect game was treated unfairly. While some things could have gone better, he believes that it is a great game and sees no reason why the franchise shouldn’t get another shot.

"What we need to be careful though of is, whenever we bring Mass Effect back again, we have to make sure that we bring it back in a really [relevant] way, and in a fresh, exciting place. That' my job, and that's Casey's [Hudson] job, and BioWare and the Mass Effect team's job, to figure out what that looks like, and that we don't know yet, but we will."
 
Once they cleared up the majority of the animation issues, it wasn't bad. The social commentary was a bit heavy-handed and didn't add anything to the story, but it wasn't terrible once you got past the NPCs that needed to tell you inappropriate details about themselves. :p
 
All you have to do is put passion into developing the game while respecting the foundation that made the franchise great. That's all I ask for. Kicking the ball down the field and giving the game to plan B never inspired confidence and the results speak for themselves. It may be a decent or even good game, but it wasn't a good Mass Effect game.
 
If EA brings back ME, Andromeda should be treated like it never happened. It was just a long, terrible dream.
 
cvinh said:
They let the SJWs take over character design and that's what fucking happens. Pink hair and horrible makeup on human characters.
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Your axe is sharp enough, stop grinding it already. SJWs had nothing to do with the launch problems of Andromeda. The game was criticized for lifeless animations and facial expressions, not too much whacky diversity or "SJW themes"
 
I honestly don't believe anything from EA personnel at this point when it comes to this.
Armenius said:
All you have to do is put passion into developing the game while respecting the foundation that made the franchise great. That's all I ask for. Kicking the ball down the field and giving the game to plan B never inspired confidence and the results speak for themselves. It may be a decent or even good game, but it wasn't a good Mass Effect game.
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Co-signed.

Everything about Andromeda's development cycle reeked of grudge job, afterthought, and get it out of the way. Having the revolving door with various personnel didn't help and the whole first year of development was shot trying to pull of a No Man's Sky type concept.

I honestly can't recall the last time I saw a major AAA title and franchise handled in such a cluster@#$% fashion as this was from start to finish.
 
I thought the animations were horid the character models were horid. Much of the dialog was odd as heck but atleast advanced the story along. The underlying story and events were interesting but didn't particularly seem new. It seemed kinda like a re-hash of stuff from the old mass effect story. Except with the most ugly cast of characters ever. You will never find a Mass Effect Andromeda poster on a kids wall. Just Fugly crap. However, the vehicles and planets and ships and environments looked very good. I even liked the semi puzzle nature to part of it. I didn't find the gameplay all that bad. I was into it. I was abit annoyed I couldn't complete the entire game due to bugs but hey no story DLC or actual sequel so this one is dead.
 
Why don't EA just take Bioware out to the back shed already and put it out of it's misery, just like all the other once great studios they bought then systematically destroyed.
 
zehoo said:
Why don't EA just take Bioware out to the back shed already and put it out of it's misery, just like all the other once great studios they bought then systematically destroyed.
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Because despite all that has happened since EA acquired them the Bioware name still generates buzz and sells games.
 
Casey Hudson is back in charge of the series. He did 1 and 2 which I enjoyed the shit out of. Good. He can steer that ship in the direction that is required. No more of farming this series out the lowest shittiest studio.
 
Arh, why do really good franchises get axed over way less and complete cluster fucks like this pile of crap get excused and continued upon?
 
True the animation was cringe worthy & made for a ton of MEMEs at the start, however I believe what annoyed long time fans far more than that was...

The massive plethora of bugs at launch & still in game today -- To be fair there are still a few game breaking bugs in ME:2 as well.
Game balancing... weapons/armor/shielding/powers etc, that and instead of enemies becoming more difficult to deal with at higher levels & higher difficulty levels they just turned into "Bullet Sponges"
Broken promises... Relationships being more fluid haha yeah no, it was same ole same ole. Having to dig for info on the Quarian Ark, yeah no, you basically trip over the info & get smacked in the face with a trout at the end of the game with a teaser of where they were.
Inconsistent writing... some places were award winning others were middle school B- work.

There were a bunch of other little things as well
 
TrailRunner said:
"No game, in the history of mankind, has ever been treated so unfairly by the gaming press…"
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sounds like President Trump ... just saying

Regarding Casey, nice to hear he will be at the helm.

EA deserves a second chance on MEA. I enjoy playing their other games and their phone tech support is very good - what other game maker has that? With Steam, you have to post your problem then wait 2-3 days for a reply in the forum and hope the info works for you and I have never ever received a followup email from Steam but EA does send them.
 
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Personally, I found the game very good and enjoyed every second of it. Yes, some of the animations were much better when fixed but the bugs prior to that didn't ruin the game for me. I believe that a lot of the anger from ME:3's ending carried over into Andromeda along with the high expectations people have for Mass Effect titles to begin with. Was it brilliant? No. Was it worth the money? IMO, absolutely. It wasn't 500-1000 hours of playthroughs good but it was certainly worth 2-3 playthroughs for me.
 
I mostly agree with him. I think it's a vastly better game than ME1 and it's better than 2 and 3 in a lot of ways.
I'm still trying to figure out where the SJW stuff is coming from? What about this game is different than the others and how in the world does having an unfinished/rushed final product (which is common) related to it? I sometimes wonder if people even know what they're actually mad about.
The game is repetitious...but then again, that's nothing new to the series. #1 is about as tedious as they come with all of the Mako nonsense. Tedious planet scanning and fetch quests are nothing new.
I'm not saying the game is an A+ or even better than a B, but had I not played it I'd swear it must be akin to Big Rigs or Superman 64. It's still better than the vast majority of big releases this year that go no attention at all.
 
I'm honestly waiting for the admission from EA execs that I honestly don't believe will ever happen: that they rushed the game out the door to meet some corporate performance goal in a playable but unpolished state.


[I did beat the game before the first patch, and can confirm that there were only a few quests bugged, and none that affected the main story arc or the side arcs, so the game was better than reviews made it look]
 
Well, I'd say the criticism at the point the game was released was very much fair. On the upside, a variety of very funny glitch compilation videos hit youtube and provided more than a few laughs. For instance (and probably NSFW):



Haven't bought the game yet, but I'm sure the patches have (hopefully) cleaned things up quite a bit since then.
 
Bigdady92 said:
Casey Hudson is back in charge of the series. He did 1 and 2 which I enjoyed the shit out of. Good. He can steer that ship in the direction that is required. No more of farming this series out the lowest shittiest studio.
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You have to wonder why they didn't keep him in charge of the franchise as well other devs from the the previous games. The top brass at EA are idiots.
 
John721 said:
Well, I'd say the criticism at the point the game was released was very much fair. On the upside, a variety of very funny glitch compilation videos hit youtube and provided more than a few laughs. For instance (and probably NSFW):



Haven't bought the game yet, but I'm sure the patches have (hopefully) cleaned things up quite a bit since then.
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No, it wasn't fair. The game has issues and no one including EA would deny that. However, many of those animation videos were based off the 10 hour trial version which was based on an earlier build of the game. Yes, the final version still had problems but they weren't as bad as those encountered in the trial. The critisicms of the art style are valid, but people tolerate games like Minecraft, Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, and others which came out with lackluster graphics respective to the times they were released. People bitched because it was Mass Effect. People are way too emotionally invested in the series and they look at the previous games through rose colored glasses. Many of the issues, and more are present in the earlier games in the series. Those always get a pass. This game, I felt didn't get a pass simply because it was a new story and didn't have as much nostalgia to build on. It's fair to say that the game didn't stand as well on it's own as it could have. Pacing issues and other problems are directly responsible for that. While those criticisms are fair as well, I feel that the game is better than people give it credit for, especially after the fixes.
 
That's good to hear. I'm still planning on picking the game up during a sale at some point, and it's good EA is keeping the option of more Mass Effect games open. It's a good franchise.
 
Armenius said:
All you have to do is put passion into developing the game while respecting the foundation that made the franchise great. That's all I ask for. Kicking the ball down the field and giving the game to plan B never inspired confidence and the results speak for themselves. It may be a decent or even good game, but it wasn't a good Mass Effect game.
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I felt the same way about Diablo3, I loved D2 and I was so completely disappointed with D3 that I quit playing it and shelved it within a month. I just couldn't stand it anymore, not even the single-player aspect which is what I was playing.

They made some changes, my kid tried to talk me back into playing it, I gave it another shot and it still was a no go for me. I simply was too different of a game for me to ever like it cause I could not let go of what I wanted it to be. And that means it really wasn't Diablo anymore, it was something else dressed up as Diablo, but it wasn't Diablo. So there ya go.
 
I played it through to the end, if it had been as bad as some said, I would have given up earlier. It wasn't as good as the earlier games though.
 
Chebsy said:
I played it through to the end, if it had been as bad as some said, I would have given up earlier. It wasn't as good as the earlier games though.
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And that's a fair assessment. It's a good game and worth picking up for the right price. It isn't as good as the previous games and I can't imagine many people arguing the point. That said, the ending is FAR better than ME3's is. :)
 
It was treated unfairly, but not by the press specifically, at least the reviews I saw from major sites were fair, it was treated unfairly by the wannabes, who think because they can make a let's play they're game journalists.
It was better compared to some well received games released around that time, like prey. But It was still crap compared to what mass effect had been before.

And BTW fuck EA, this is textbook PR bullshit. The news that they're abandoning ME:A came a few days ago, and now this is putting out the fires.

Well I don't care, if it's coming back. You lost me as a customer and a fan. Fool me once shame on you, and you're not fooling me twice.
 
kllrnohj said:
The game was criticized for lifeless animations and facial expressions, not too much whacky diversity or "SJW themes"
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No, no, of course not. That would be ridiculous. It's not like they hired a cosplayer, in the name of diversity, to work on facial animations.

DIsclaimer: I pre-ordered this game and even recorded 10 hours of video pre-release in the trial. I beat it and mostly enjoyed it. I just think it's naive to believe that a SJW/pro-diversity mindset wasn't a significant factor in this title's failure.
 
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maxius said:
the only way this would even be possible is with commander Shepard.
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Well, OK. I admit there is one way they can win me back. If they announce a sequel to ME3 that picks up the story right after the battle and establishes the IT as canon.
 
Infamy is almost as good a fame. There's value in the name recognition of the franchise in part because of the fiascoes. Kind of like Trump.
 
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