I'm getting my discussion topic from this clip: Kinda Funny GD

The gist of it is this... Mass Effect: Andromeda and No Man's Sky both released with huge, glaring flaws and were brutally picked apart by critics and gamers. Mass Effect: Andromeda had a lot to live up to after the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle and was meant to redeem the series. It didn't. While No Man's Sky was riding a hype train it never had a chance of delivering on. And angered many, many people.

One year later, No Man's Sky has had 3 serious updates to the point where players returned and even garnished new sales. In my opinion, Hello Games and Sean Murray redeemed themselves and their names. No Man's Sky was a blemish on their resumes, but now it can be a tale of how a company can right the ship after a storm. And the game is VERY close to what people expected it to be a year ago.

Mass Effect, on the other hand, less than half a year later has released a few patches to fix some of the glaring bugs and glitches, but just announced that they are done with the single-player game. The game released to heavy criticism and it seems like the devs just threw up their hands and gave up on the series.

I'm a huge fan of Mass Effect and this depresses me quite a bit. I just started Andromeda a couple weeks ago and it is by no means a bad game (my backlog was huge)—granted, I'm not experiencing the bugs from release. But I have a feeling that Bioware/EA handled this situation incorrectly because the people that were disheartened at release haven't had their opinions changed. The way they feel about Mass Effect as a series is the way they'll always feel about it. Bioware/EA could have done what Hello Games did and produce a finely crafted piece of DLC, maybe even a stand alone story like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, dealing with the last Ark. Make it as good as the Citadel DLC was and maybe they could have gotten people to return and the final taste in their mouths wouldn't be so sour.

But no... they rested the series in a canoe, lit it on fire and pushed it off into the ocean.

My question, after this long, rambling post, is this... is this it for Mass Effect? I think it is. I feel like EA/Bioware just tanked one of their most popular series and there is no path to return to. I can't see Anthem bombing and I can't see any studio wanting to follow Andromeda. Can Mass Effect ever redeem itself and if so, how? What would you like to see Bioware/EA do with the series? Or is Mass Effect forever tainted now? And, for extra credit, do you feel like Hello Games and No Man's Sky actually redeemed themselves?

I think we can at least expect a Mass Effect remaster at some point in the coming years but don't have much hope for any new games in the series.

And that's...okay. To me, Mass Effect is the story of Commander Shepard.

I think there's one major difference. Sean Murray and HG had to do their best to redeem themselves because if they just give up on NMS after launch, no one is buying their next game. EA can afford to cut ties with ME:A as they have a bunch of other games to bank on. They can let ME stay dormant for a few years and reboot it at some point.

Sean Murray and Hello Games have their back against the wall. If they don't redeem themselves their company will probably has no place in this business. EA on the other hand can get away with shit like MA because they're EA, the largest video game publisher in the world. One series fails and they just move on to the next and people will still keep buying their games.

As many issues as ME:A has, a lot of people (not on this site) could have forgiven the writing and MMO quest flaws. But the lack of polish was not only unforgivable to me, but one of the easier things to fix. NPC diversity, better textures, getting facial animation back in on some of the characters. That last one is not so easy, but when the main villain has more facial animation than your protagonist in a 'story-heavy' game, its a critical issue.

And this papers over big issues on quest design, bad dialogue, and uninteresting locales to say the least.

But yeah, all they did was provide a few more character creator options, fix a few bugs, added the skip transition option, and then peace'd the fuck out.

Hello Games? They had every excuse to bail given the hate they received, the status of the game at launch, and their reputation at that point. Hell, not only did people expect them to hightail it, you had people saying it was the prudent move.

Now? Tough decisions and work done and they've gained a reputation of a dev willing to stick and commit to their product. That's good news for users and a glaring hold for the industry itself, evidenced by good ol' Bioware right here.

As for it being it for ME, I doubt it. There's alot of lore and interest developed and that represents a good market to dive into, but it WILL go into the freezer for a while at least.

With NMS in particular, I'm not surprised at all by the amount of players getting into it as more updates come out. I've said it before, but even with that terrible launch, the concept of the game is so intriguing and worthy of awe to many people that if the game ended up turning into something a lot better than it was at launch via updates, a lot of people would jump in. I honestly couldn't imagine the scenario where HG updates the game into awesomeness and everyone still feels too burned/apathetic to ignore it.

jacks81x said:

EA can afford to cut ties with ME:A as they have a bunch of other games to bank on. They can let ME stay dormant for a few years and reboot it at some point.

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Devilgunman said:

EA on the other hand can get away with shit like MA because they're EA, the largest video game publisher in the world. One series fails and they just move on to the next and people will still keep buying their games.

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Which is sad. Mass Effect, as a brand, can still generate profit. I think an HD collection of the original trilogy is their next step—if there is one. But I'd love to see them hand off the series to a smaller studio and make a solid, cohesive $40 AA story to follow up Andromeda. I know it's a pipe dream at this point, but I'm not about to read a novel about the Quarian Ark.

Mass Effect will eventually get a reboot after its forced sleep in the EA decontamination chamber, clean of all Andromeda related stink. Hello Games can only fix the product that exists now and hope people will stop saying mean things about them.