Most of Mass Effect: Andromeda Was Developed in Just 18 Months

[Megalith]

A story behind Mass Effect: Andromeda’s troubled five-year development has revealed that the game was actually made in a year and a half. Some of the drama involved the Frostbite engine, which is described as being extremely powerful but lacking and difficult for creating an RPG: BioWare had to build almost everything from scratch, and this included the animation system, which kind of explains some things (although it is still no excuse). Shifting of original key franchise members also led to huge changes deep into production. And last but not least, the team could not get some of the more radical ideas, such as procedurally generated planets, to work properly. Ultimately, BioWare Montreal needed a lot more manpower to meet their ambition.

...most of Mass Effect: Andromeda was developed in the final year-and-a-half of its cycle, between the end of 2015 and its release in March 2017. "It really wasn’t until Mac Walters came on board—and that was very much a reaction to the state of the critical path—he was really brought on board to give it direction and get it into shape,” one said. "Before that it was quite rudderless." One developer interviewed for the report disputed that claim, saying that the final release was not too far off from early concepts, but multiple others stated that the crunch cycle was the worst they'd ever endured, and the usual time spent on polish prior to release just wasn't available.

 

[SomeoneElse]

Ha that would explain how painful the launch was......

 

[Madoc]

They put an incomplete game up for sale. That's the bottom line, as far as I can tell.

 

[Jim Kim]

So that means there's hope for Start Citizen.

 

[Dan_D]

If true, that explains allot and it's a wonder the game is as good as it is. Frankly, the game gets more hate than it deserves.

 

[gamerk2]

Kotoku posted something similar yesterday. It basically sounds like the project was mis-managed from the start, especially in terms of not nailing down scope until VERY late in development.

 

[gamerk2]

If true, that explains allot and it's a wonder the game is as good as it is. Frankly, the game gets more hate than it deserves.

The root issue is people were expecting something of similar quality to the first three games. And the fact that some parts of the game were inferior to even ME1 was seen (and is) unacceptable.

Part of the problem is EA forcing Frostbite down everyone's throats, even when it isn't the proper solution.

 

[SeymourGore]

Too bad they couldn't have absorbed the No Man's Sky team (or just the tech) into their game. No Man's Sky needed a compelling universe/character to care for, and ME: Andromeda needed a proper engine for their original aspirations.

Heck, they could've went with a standard Mass Effect-style experience for the main storyline, but use the randomly generated stuff for its endgame/multiplayer content.

Exploring a shared universe fighting against other player factions would've been a cool component.

 

[RogueTadhg]

They tried to do the NMS with procedual worlds - the problem with 'Procedural' creatiion is quality control... you can get some real messed up creatures.

This would explain why they wanted the game to bake more in development before being released.

 

[Armenius]

If they didn't chase away most of the good talent half way through the project they wouldn't have faced a lot of these issues.

 

[Krixon]

As someone who quite enjoyed the game, I often felt that many aspects of Andromeda seemed rushed. Forget the animations (which honestly didn't bother me all that much), it was the structure and quality of the narrative that I took issue with. While it is a good game, in its own right, it had a monumental standard set by the original trilogy. Whether Andromeda lived up to that is subjective, but I beleive most would agree that it did not for numerous reasons that may or may not have been fixed had the game been in development a while longer.

I just hope that we get some sort of DLC or sequel for it, but it might be a while before we see either. I pray we get some insight into the future of Mass Effect at the EA Play event on Saturday - I'll be in attendance and am holding out the smallest glimmer of hope that Mass Effect is on the docket.

 

[Sovereign]

Windows Vista: The Game

(Development started, restarted, drama, etc.)

I enjoyed ME:A. But seeing this crap explains most of my gripes with it--one does not simply rush an AAA title in 18 months and expect pristine results.

 

[Shmee]

Windows Vista: The Game

(Development started, restarted, drama, etc.)

I enjoyed ME:A. But seeing this crap explains most of my gripes with it--one does not simply rush an AAA title in 18 months and expect pristine results.

I liked it too. It wasn't perfect, and it was easy to see that it was rushed, but there was enough Mass Effect in there to keep me happy.

 

[Miikun]

The root issue is people were expecting something of similar quality to the first three games. And the fact that some parts of the game were inferior to even ME1 was seen (and is) unacceptable.

Part of the problem is EA forcing Frostbite down everyone's throats, even when it isn't the proper solution.

The odd thing about this is that DA was developed at the same time, came out first, and seemed to have fewer problems. I would imagine that many of the issues (like the missing RPG features in the engine) would have been addressed by the DA team by the time ME:A got into serious development, unless the two teams really worked in complete silos. That game was shipped in 2014 so those tools would have presumably existed in 2012, or at least been pretty far along. Seems like some lost opportunities for collaboration, or DA hacked the features in a way that wasn't reusable which is sad to see either way. I guess it's safe to say that if Bioware were still independent, they would have stuck with Unreal and we'd all be much happier.

 

[lilbabycat]

incoming flame material:
diverse team of SJW's fail to create delusional perfect-fantasy-star-trek game of finding/building new-eden using top of the line engine for 3.5 years... straight white male (who doesn't speak french) sent in to fix their bullshit.

in all seriousness the original idea sounded nice but probably would have suffered from samey-gameplay making the procedural planet thing meh overall.

A relaxing simcity-mass effect type setup sounds neat though

 

[wizdum]

Andromeda was a decent game, it just wasn't a good Mass Effect game. This explains why I kept feeling like I was playing three different games during my play-through though. There were parts that felt distinctly Mass Effect-like, but mostly it was just a mess.

 

[MacLeod]

My only gripe with the game is the characters especially Ryder. The male looks and acts like some college hipster that works at the local coffee shop right down to the patchy "beard". The female looks like a mousy little librarian. Neither look or act like anybody that I'd follow thru hell and back and believe they're the HMFIC and they are painfully embarrassing when they do try to act "in charge". The story is confusing and kinda convoluted but the combat is pretty fun and it's overall a good game but it's the milk toast characters that keep it from being great and a worthy successor to the Mass Effect name.

 

[krotch]

My only gripe with the game is the characters especially Ryder. The male looks and acts like some college hipster that works at the local coffee shop right down to the patchy "beard". The female looks like a mousy little librarian. Neither look or act like anybody that I'd follow thru hell and back and believe they're the HMFIC and they are painfully embarrassing when they do try to act "in charge". The story is confusing and kinda convoluted but the combat is pretty fun and it's overall a good game but it's the milk toast characters that keep it from being great and a worthy successor to the Mass Effect name.

The main story isn't all that confusing or convoluted. It's pretty easy to follow. Go to new universe, fix planets that were terraformed by ancient technology. Kill bad guys, who are genetically altered sentient life that was already in that universe. If you're talking all that side story stuff, ya. That can get confusing.

The game is extremely short. I wouldn't be surprised if you can finish the main story quest in a day, if not less. This is one of the first RPGs that I've played that I felt the need to do all the side quests just to expand the length of time that I was playing the game.

I also felt a lot of things added to the game, just feel useless. All these different kinds of armor, all the exact same. Aside from the ability increases. They could have tried making them a bit more worthwhile, aside from just cosmetic. Like a winter type armor where you can walk around the ice planet without worry about life support, but give it like less agility or lower jump jets or something.

 

[M76]

My only gripe with the game is the characters especially Ryder. The male looks and acts like some college hipster that works at the local coffee shop right down to the patchy "beard". The female looks like a mousy little librarian. Neither look or act like anybody that I'd follow thru hell and back and believe they're the HMFIC and they are painfully embarrassing when they do try to act "in charge". The story is confusing and kinda convoluted but the combat is pretty fun and it's overall a good game but it's the milk toast characters that keep it from being great and a worthy successor to the Mass Effect name.

That's why you play custom. The characters only get depth midway trough the game, which is 40-50 hours in, so good luck with that. The game definitely has pacing issues.

 

[Dan_D]

The root issue is people were expecting something of similar quality to the first three games. And the fact that some parts of the game were inferior to even ME1 was seen (and is) unacceptable.

Part of the problem is EA forcing Frostbite down everyone's throats, even when it isn't the proper solution.

I'm tired of people talking about the quality of the first three games. Those games are in many ways worse than Andromeda is in terms of quality. Sure the story, pacing, and fun factor of the games is better, but they've got a laundry list of problems starting with animation errors, reused assets, procedurally generated landscapes, some bad game mechanics and sub-par combat when compared to newer iterations of the franchise. There is also terribly written dialog, bad voice acting and other offenses that people seem to ignore through their nostalgic vision of the series they played once or twice back in the day. I've played these games for hundreds and hundreds of hours. I've modded them, and created mods for them. Almost anything wrong with Andromeda, you will find in the other three games if you aren't looking at it through rose tinted glasses.

 

[twonunpackmule]

Sometimes you make games for the fun, others for the GIFs. The GIFs were worth it.

 

[SeymourGore]

I've modded them, and created mods for them.

Hook me up with a X-rated Wrex lovescene mod?

 

[SmokeRngs]

I'm tired of people talking about the quality of the first three games. Those games are in many ways worse than Andromeda is in terms of quality. Sure the story, pacing, and fun factor of the games is better, but they've got a laundry list of problems starting with animation errors, reused assets, procedurally generated landscapes, some bad game mechanics and sub-par combat when compared to newer iterations of the franchise. There is also terribly written dialog, bad voice acting and other offenses that people seem to ignore through their nostalgic vision of the series they played once or twice back in the day. I've played these games for hundreds and hundreds of hours. I've modded them, and created mods for them. Almost anything wrong with Andromeda, you will find in the other three games if you aren't looking at it through rose tinted glasses.

I have not played Andromeda yet and I don't expect I will for quite a long time for various reasons. My comments are regarding ME 1-3.

I recently played through all three games, as in the last month or so recently. ME1 definitely had its issues and there are two which I would point out as major although in context at the time one of them wasn't absolutely horrible. My two biggest issues with ME1 were the Mako exploration and the combat. I always hated the Mako exploration for the simple fact that almost every planet in the galaxy was nothing but massive mountains and gorges. Having to spend 90% of the time in the Mako climbing a damn mountain was tedious, annoying and time consuming. The combat itself definitely wasn't the best even without comparing it to the newer games but it was tolerable. The cooldowns on powers were definitely too long and the weapon restrictions for some classes were stupid. The weapon and armor selection was just annoying as hell since almost all of the stuff was next to useless. That said, ME1 was the game with the best story and I think the best story pacing. Going by Steam's played time (which is showing low as at times I played a decent amount while in "offline mode) I have about 250 hours in the game. I would definitely say I've put quite a bit of time in the game through many playthroughs. I will admit that I hold this game in high regard because it was the first ME game and introduced us to the ME universe which I absolutely love.

ME2 is a somewhat mixed bag. It's a nice graphical upgrade, the removal of the shitty Mako missions is definitely a positive, the combat was improved by a huge amount and the crappy gun/armor inventory was gone. On the negative side the removal of armor and gun mods was annoying although being able to get some different pieces of armor with different stats offsets that part some. The changes they made to weapons were definitely a large step forward. The options for leveling was definitely a major step back in my opinion. "Scanning" for resources as a replacement for the time consuming Mako missions was not a positive. While the scanning is nowhere near as bad as the Mako missions in my opinion, it's still a negative. There are definite graphical issues and animation issues (the creepy ass eyes) here and there but usually not a constant barrage of them. This game, however, suffers from horrible story pacing issues and a flat out lack of much story. Way too much of the game is recruiting companions and doesn't move the story along at all except for a couple of mechanics during the final mission. The small amount of story the game does have is damn good and done well but it's such a small part of the game overall. I have almost 350 hours into this game based on Steam's counter and that's probably accurate.

ME3 is another mixed bag. I found the most graphical and animation issues out of all three games here. Dialogue in parts of the game is also an abomination. I'm not even sure anyone even looked over some of the conversations as they were written before having the voice actors record the lines. Statements/questions and replies in some cases don't even remotely match up and in a lot of cases the voice acting is extremely stilted. For some really bad examples you need look no farther than the conversations with either Miranda or Jacob. I'm pretty sure fingernails on a chalkboard would be music to my ears compared to any dialogue between my character and Jacob. I cringe even thinking about it and keep the dialogue to the absolute minimum possible. Story pacing is quite good overall and like ME1, you're picking up your crew in most cases by going through the story instead of having the story being picking up your crew. ME3 definitely has the best combat system of the three games and the additional choices while leveling is an improvement over ME2. Additional options for armor is a big improvement, the large variety of weapons is definitely good as well as having mods for the weapons again. Sadly, there are a ton of inconsistencies throughout the game. Dialogue and such is all over the place with regards to the timescale between the games. There are references to it being three years since the beginning of ME1 and sometimes four years. There are various issues with the timeline as well. Some dialogue doesn't match at all with previous references to timelines. There's also a lot of non-critical dialogue and cutscenes you can't skip through and in some cases it almost seems random. In some conversations the beginning dialogue can't be skipped but some later dialogue can be but then it goes back to non-skippable again. I understand this happens when there's an activated paragon or renegade option but most of the time that isn't the case. I think this game also has the worst issues with lip sync. ME1 and ME2 are by no means perfect about it but at least those games have the excuse that they are older. I won't even go into the ending as that's not really the subject here.

The reason I typed out this essay is to illustrate the fact that I'm very well acquainted with all three of these games. While I have not played Andromeda I can understand the frustration people have with the issues described. ME 1-3 are by no means perfect and have many of the same issues as Andromeda but that's not the point. Those are older games. It's generally expected that games get better as the series progresses. I've seen some of the clips of animation and graphical issues and they are at least as bad or worse (those creepy ass eyes from hell) than ME 1-3. Just because previous games had similar or the same issues does not mean that the newer game gets a free pass on those issues. That is the very type of thing which should have been improved upon or removed as an issue when possible. I'm not looking through rose colored glasses when it comes to ME 1-3 and believe many of the issues Andromeda has are perfectly valid.

 

[Dan_D]

Andromeda certainly has it's issues, I won't deny that. I'm not saying it gets a pass for a lot of its shit either. In many ways though, it's better executed than the original trilogy was. Clipping and collision detection in Andromeda is vastly improved over the trilogy. There are far fewer scenes of Ryder and company having weapons in cut scenes that you simply don't have, or can't even use in game. Eyes and mouth animations are a bit worse, but the patches have been a huge help in this area. There is no excuse for the state of the game at launch, but by now it's definitely among the best executed in the franchise. Now, story pacing, characters, voice acting, dialog etc. are another matter. On that front, the trilogy is no doubt better. Although I've never felt the soul crushing disappointment of ME3's ending at any point in Andromeda. In a lot of ways, Andromeda gets a lot of shit right that earlier games fucked up while creating new issues of it's own.

 

[Derangel]

Andromeda certainly has it's issues, I won't deny that. I'm not saying it gets a pass for a lot of its shit either. In many ways though, it's better executed than the original trilogy was. Clipping and collision detection in Andromeda is vastly improved over the trilogy. There are far fewer scenes of Ryder and company having weapons in cut scenes that you simply don't have, or can't even use in game. Eyes and mouth animations are a bit worse, but the patches have been a huge help in this area. There is no excuse for the state of the game at launch, but by now it's definitely among the best executed in the franchise. Now, story pacing, characters, voice acting, dialog etc. are another matter. On that front, the trilogy is no doubt better. Although I've never felt the soul crushing disappointment of ME3's ending at any point in Andromeda. In a lot of ways, Andromeda gets a lot of shit right that earlier games fucked up while creating new issues of it's own.

I agree with all of this. Animations are still a bit wonky, especially running, but faces are so much better. All of the game's major problems at this point are really in terms of writing. There's nothing as bad as ME3's last like 20-30 minutes, but also nothing as good a the better parts of the trilogy. The story feels like it was written in 18 months, which is was. Everything about the game lacks polish, its all broad concept and first draft. ME: A is easily the best playing game Bioware has ever made, but the elements that make Bioware Bioware are missing. Jaal is cool, both Vetra and Drack are awesome, everyone else is just there. Cora had potential, but she's not developed enough. Same with Liam. Peebee is just a disaster. The side characters are all like Cora and Liam. Some potentially really interesting concepts, but never developed.

 

[skiddierow]

Bought a 1080 Ti to prep for Andromeda. Then it killed my enthusiasm for gaming. lol

Haven't played anything since, and likely won't consider AAA titles except CDPR stuff.

I just don't have patience anymore for the bullshit smoke & mirrors, and $60 betas.


Loved the OG trilogy, flaws and all. It had character. ME3 ending hurt, but up to that point it was a ride.

I found every character in ME:A to be unlikable, and the game is just horrendous now that I've had a a few months to stew on it.