It really is a shame that ME:A was not as great as we all imagined it to be. I adored the original trilogy, so I was rightfully excited for ME:A. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll get another...
It really is a shame that ME:A was not as great as we all imagined it to be. I adored the original trilogy, so I was rightfully excited for ME:A. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll get another chance at ME for a long time thanks to papa EA and stepchild Bioware. And I kind of don't blame EA for that. After seeing what Bioware can push out to the world when revisiting their beloved franchise, I wouldn't trust the current team with the franchise for quite some time.
The 1st bad decision wasn't switching to Frostbite but putting a AAA title in the hands of a team that had only done the DLC for that franchise. BioWare Montreal had never put out a full fledged...
The 1st bad decision wasn't switching to Frostbite but putting a AAA title in the hands of a team that had only done the DLC for that franchise.
BioWare Montreal had never put out a full fledged game, let alone one as ambitious as Andromeda. And if the Kotaku article is to be believed, we can safely assume that BioWare Edmonton was developing the game that became Anthem.
So an inexperienced team using an engine that wasn't in any way, shape, or form designed to create the sort of RPG that Mass Effect is/was to create arguably the biggest ME game, in scope, ever. It was a recipe for disaster. It's really no surprise it failed particularly when viewed through this lens.
I actually enjoyed Andromeda for what it was trying to accomplish. I'm not blind to it's fault. The story didn't feel polished. Almost as if Montreal simply couldn't come up with an antagonist and decided to just rehash The Collectors into a sentient race. I felt that the squadmates were weak overall and hated Liam. I didn't take him anywhere and did his loyalty mission for completions sake. The graphical...mishaps....were less of a concern to me than the weak overall story. Nothing they did in the game looked that much different from what they had done previously. BioWare games have always had graphical, and often amusing, bugs and glitches so I didn't care much about those....but what's always drawn me in to Mass Effect and Dragon Age were the stories. Space Opera and High Fantasy with excellently written characters. I can look past aging graphics and glitches if the story delivers and it just didn't in places.
On the positive, Andromeda had excellent gameplay. The environments were gorgeous, if at times, generic and repetitive. The new Mako was fun. Gunplay was as good as ever. Grandpappy Drack joined the list as a good Krogan character and Vetra was awesome.
I felt about Andromeda the same way I felt about Mass Effect 1.....ME1 is my least favorite of the MEOT, mostly due to the gameplay, but you need the entire trilogy to fully appreciate the journey of the characters and story. I was fully prepared to withhold judgement until at least the 2nd game but who knows now if we'll ever get it.
I really enjoyed Andromeda, more so than Inquisition. And I played it right at launch. Like @Ellimist, I'm not blind to it's faults (I also think Liam is a really poorly realized character), but...
I really enjoyed Andromeda, more so than Inquisition. And I played it right at launch. Like @Ellimist, I'm not blind to it's faults (I also think Liam is a really poorly realized character), but it was pretty much everything I want out of a AAA game. The open world stuff was a little too much for my liking, but it was still fairly contained and allowed for a tighter story to be told. The battle system was pretty fun and the gear system was simple enough.
But I don't recommend it to a lot of people that skipped out on it because of the initial over-reaction to some of the flaws. It's because it's a very incomplete narrative that was definitely relying DLC and/or sequels to finish off the whole thing. There's way too much teasing of what's next after the game built into the narrative itself.
Reading the Kotaku article really shows how the game went off the rails for them. They seemed to buy in way too much to the hype of procedural generation and it basically gave them years of work that produced absolutely nothing that made it into the end product. So that's a huge budget and time frame that was invested by the money people for which the final result couldn't live up to as well.
Overall, it's just a sadness from start to finish. Nobody really got what they wanted out of it, even those of us that did enjoy it don't get to experience the rest of what was promised.
I hate to sound "edgy" but I never played ME: Andromeda because I could tell it was gonna be a awful. I think their biggest mistake was not capitalizing on the fans love for the ME Trilogy...
I hate to sound "edgy" but I never played ME: Andromeda because I could tell it was gonna be a awful. I think their biggest mistake was not capitalizing on the fans love for the ME Trilogy characters.
I know it would've been hard to do because the choices at the end of ME:3 didn't leave a lot of wiggle room to bring Shepard back, but I'm sure they could've thought of something.
I really wouldn't say it was awful. I would call it unpolished and clearly made by an inexperienced studio, but over all I enjoyed the game and I thought it was a good beginning to a new trilogy....
I really wouldn't say it was awful. I would call it unpolished and clearly made by an inexperienced studio, but over all I enjoyed the game and I thought it was a good beginning to a new trilogy.
However, it did have flaws and it was going to be DLC heavy for some key parts (eg the Quarian ark)
It really is a shame that ME:A was not as great as we all imagined it to be. I adored the original trilogy, so I was rightfully excited for ME:A. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll get another chance at ME for a long time thanks to papa EA and stepchild Bioware. And I kind of don't blame EA for that. After seeing what Bioware can push out to the world when revisiting their beloved franchise, I wouldn't trust the current team with the franchise for quite some time.
The 1st bad decision wasn't switching to Frostbite but putting a AAA title in the hands of a team that had only done the DLC for that franchise.
BioWare Montreal had never put out a full fledged game, let alone one as ambitious as Andromeda. And if the Kotaku article is to be believed, we can safely assume that BioWare Edmonton was developing the game that became Anthem.
So an inexperienced team using an engine that wasn't in any way, shape, or form designed to create the sort of RPG that Mass Effect is/was to create arguably the biggest ME game, in scope, ever. It was a recipe for disaster. It's really no surprise it failed particularly when viewed through this lens.
I actually enjoyed Andromeda for what it was trying to accomplish. I'm not blind to it's fault. The story didn't feel polished. Almost as if Montreal simply couldn't come up with an antagonist and decided to just rehash The Collectors into a sentient race. I felt that the squadmates were weak overall and hated Liam. I didn't take him anywhere and did his loyalty mission for completions sake. The graphical...mishaps....were less of a concern to me than the weak overall story. Nothing they did in the game looked that much different from what they had done previously. BioWare games have always had graphical, and often amusing, bugs and glitches so I didn't care much about those....but what's always drawn me in to Mass Effect and Dragon Age were the stories. Space Opera and High Fantasy with excellently written characters. I can look past aging graphics and glitches if the story delivers and it just didn't in places.
On the positive, Andromeda had excellent gameplay. The environments were gorgeous, if at times, generic and repetitive. The new Mako was fun. Gunplay was as good as ever. Grandpappy Drack joined the list as a good Krogan character and Vetra was awesome.
I felt about Andromeda the same way I felt about Mass Effect 1.....ME1 is my least favorite of the MEOT, mostly due to the gameplay, but you need the entire trilogy to fully appreciate the journey of the characters and story. I was fully prepared to withhold judgement until at least the 2nd game but who knows now if we'll ever get it.
I really enjoyed Andromeda, more so than Inquisition. And I played it right at launch. Like @Ellimist, I'm not blind to it's faults (I also think Liam is a really poorly realized character), but it was pretty much everything I want out of a AAA game. The open world stuff was a little too much for my liking, but it was still fairly contained and allowed for a tighter story to be told. The battle system was pretty fun and the gear system was simple enough.
But I don't recommend it to a lot of people that skipped out on it because of the initial over-reaction to some of the flaws. It's because it's a very incomplete narrative that was definitely relying DLC and/or sequels to finish off the whole thing. There's way too much teasing of what's next after the game built into the narrative itself.
Reading the Kotaku article really shows how the game went off the rails for them. They seemed to buy in way too much to the hype of procedural generation and it basically gave them years of work that produced absolutely nothing that made it into the end product. So that's a huge budget and time frame that was invested by the money people for which the final result couldn't live up to as well.
Overall, it's just a sadness from start to finish. Nobody really got what they wanted out of it, even those of us that did enjoy it don't get to experience the rest of what was promised.
I hate to sound "edgy" but I never played ME: Andromeda because I could tell it was gonna be a awful. I think their biggest mistake was not capitalizing on the fans love for the ME Trilogy characters.
I know it would've been hard to do because the choices at the end of ME:3 didn't leave a lot of wiggle room to bring Shepard back, but I'm sure they could've thought of something.
I really wouldn't say it was awful. I would call it unpolished and clearly made by an inexperienced studio, but over all I enjoyed the game and I thought it was a good beginning to a new trilogy.
However, it did have flaws and it was going to be DLC heavy for some key parts (eg the Quarian ark)