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Kotaku: The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development

K

kulapik

Member
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 happy with the results. Mass Effect: Andromeda, released in March 2017, disappointed even the biggest fans of BioWare’s longrunning series. The game was widely pilloried, with critics slamming its uneven writing, frequent bugs, and meme-worthy animations (although 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?
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http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428
 
O

Omitat

Neo Member
TL;DR:

"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.

...Casey Hudson, executive producer on the main trilogy, would start a new team at BioWare Edmonton to work on a brand new type of game, which they gave the code-name Dylan. (Their goal, a source said, was to make the Bob Dylan of video games—one that would be referenced for years to come.) Meanwhile, BioWare Montreal, which was founded in 2009 to develop downloadable content like Mass Effect 3’s Omega expansion, would lead production on the next Mass Effect."
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Acquiescence

Acquiescence

Member
I started hearing alarm bells during that one EA conference at E3 when everyone expected a Mass Effect: Andromeda blow out, and instead all we got was footage of the development team working on the game... A SECOND FUCKING TIME! That's when I knew something was up.

Edit - Would love to get a Scalebound edition of this article someday.
 
L

Lime

Member
"Internal reviews are great!"

Also, regarding Frostbite:

By the time BioWare entered pre-production on Mass Effect: Andromeda, the Dragon Age: Inquisition team had built some of the tools that they'd need to make an RPG, but not all of them. Engineers on Andromeda had to design many of their own features from scratch, including their animation rig. ”Frostbite is wonderful for rendering and lots of things," said a person who worked on the game. ”But one of the key things that makes it really difficult to use is anything related to animation. Because out of the box, it doesn't have an animation system

Whenever you're trying to do something that fits the engine—vehicles, for example—Frostbite handles that extremely well," the developer said. ”But when you're building something that the engine is not made for, this is where it becomes difficult." Designing the large maps of Andromeda's planets became a struggle on Frostbite, where the maximum size of a map was initially 100 by 100 kilometers. The Andromeda team needed their maps to be way bigger than that. Other struggles included the streaming system, the save system, and various action-RPG mechanics that Andromeda needed in order to work.

”It's been painful," said a developer. ”The pain started with Dragon Age: Inquisition and continued on with Andromeda as well."
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L

Lime

Member
Looks like that Glass Door review was correct:

Conflicts emerged between BioWare staffers at the company's two main studios, in Edmonton and Montreal. Developers in Edmonton said they thought the game was floundering in pre-production and didn't have a strong enough vision, while developers in Montreal thought that Edmonton was trying to sabotage them, taking ideas and staff from Montreal for its own projects, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dylan. By the end of 2014 at least a dozen people had left BioWare Montreal for other studios, and it wasn't clear to the remaining staff whether those positions would be replaced. The animation team in particular was understaffed, sources said, and when people left, their positions sometimes weren't refilled.
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dugdug

dugdug

Banned
Not entirely surprised that Frostbite has to do with some of it. Seems a bit of an oversight for EA to tell everyone to use it. I get you want a proprietary engine, but, should make sure it fits everyone's needs first, no?
 
semiconscious

semiconscious

Member
thanks for the link!...

Why was Andromeda so much worse than its predecessors?
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my #1 question while playing the game: why is andromeda so much graphically/technically worse than dragon age: inquisition?...
 
L

LKSmash

Member
Some crazy quotes regarding their issues with Frostbite:

When BioWare first got its hands on Frostbite, the engine wasn’t capable of performing the basic functions you’d expect from a role-playing game, like managing party members or keeping track of a player’s inventory. BioWare’s coders had to build almost everything from scratch.
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“Frostbite,” the developer said, “is a sports car. Not even a sports car, a Formula 1. When it does something well, it does it extremely well. When it doesn’t do something, it really doesn’t do something.”

“Whenever you’re trying to do something that fits the engine—vehicles, for example—Frostbite handles that extremely well,” the developer said. “But when you’re building something that the engine is not made for, this is where it becomes difficult.” Designing the large maps of Andromeda’s planets became a struggle on Frostbite, where the maximum size of a map was initially 100 by 100 kilometers. The Andromeda team needed their maps to be way bigger than that. Other struggles included the streaming system, the save system, and various action-RPG mechanics that Andromeda needed in order to work.

“It’s been painful,” said a developer. “The pain started with Dragon Age: Inquisition and continued on with Andromeda as well.”
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B

bananafactory

Banned
Just finished reading the whole thing. God damn what a tragedy, I feel so bad for everyone who worked so hard on that. Feels like it was doomed from the start :(
 
D

Dangansona

Member
I want to catch up on some of these better Kotaku articles. Besides the load times and game dev is hard, what else should I check out?
 
Complistic

Complistic

Member
Frostbite was obviously the catalyst. But coupled with bioware being very soft in the animation department anyway and their steadily declining ability to write well, and this is what you get.
 
H

Hero

Member
It really sucks to hear that so many people will have spent a significant portion of their career on a game that was sabotaged from almost every angle possible. RIP Mass Effect.
 
A

Admodieus

Member
This is a great read. Some of this stuff was expected, while some of it is eye opening. Facial animations being flagged as a huge risk years ago means some guy somewhere is going "I was right! You should've listened to me!"

Also, has the move to Frostbite for all EA games hurt them more than it's helped them? Seems like it really complicated development for Inquisition and Andromeda. What else uses it?
 
Aangster

Aangster

Member
Good insight, also explains why the interface design was shambolic. It went through three different UI leads (disclosed by a former ME:A playtester in an AMA), some of whom clearly focused on visual aesthetics over UX accessibility.
 
J

Jumeira

Banned
God damn tragedy with what they done to the series, thanks for the post.

Casey Hudson is at MS studios now, my dream E3 announcement would be him revealing a spiritual successor to ME for Scorpio. Dammit.
 
dr_rus

dr_rus

Member
Lime said:
Designing the large maps of Andromeda’s planets became a struggle on Frostbite, where the maximum size of a map was initially 100 by 100 kilometers. The Andromeda team needed their maps to be way bigger than that.
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Were there any maps of such size in Andromeda?..
 
A

akileese

Member
Omitat said:
TL;DR:
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To everyone who hasn't read it yet, there really is no "TLDR" for this. The first massive takeaway for me is that Frostbite doesn't even have an animation system out of the box. It's fantastic work by Jason and really sheds some light on why this game was so disappointing compared to other ME games.

I think this is going to end with Bioware trying to build their own engine in the future for their games, which is why the series was shelved going forward. You can't create a game if you don't have the engine to make it work.
 
Pagusas

Pagusas

Elden Member
I wonder how much better the game would have been on the unreal engine. Probably not much given you cant fix talent issues with technology.
 
B

Blobbers

Member
The Mass Effect: Andromeda team knew they were going to run into major technical barriers with or without procedural generation. Over the past few years, one of BioWare’s biggest obstacles has also become one of EA’s favorite buzzwords: Frostbite, a video game engine.
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fucking Frostbite, man
 
S

Spoo

Member
Just finished reading it. Great article, though it always pains me to see such good ideas go to complete shit as soon as the politics start up.

Their original vision sounds exactly like the kind of game I think a lot of ME players want to see, eventually, but looks like the forced move to Frostbite and serious lack of team cohesion and resources brought everything down. Looking at the amount of time they actually had, I'm kind of surprised it turned out as good as it did.
 
A

Admodieus

Member
Pagusas said:
I wonder how much better the game would have been on the unreal engine. Probably not much given you cant fix talent issues with technology.
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If it was still open world? Probably not that much. If it was more focused like ME2 or 3? Probably a lot better.
 
H

Hero

Member
This definitely does not sound like ME has a future anymore

“At a very high level, even though the game was in development for five years,” said one person who worked on the game, “Mass Effect: Andromeda was just trying to do too much with too few resources.” BioWare aimed for the stars—hundreds and hundreds of procedurally generated stars—but just couldn’t get there. Like Ryder setting off for Andromeda, the studio’s journey ended in nothing but disappointment.
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K

kAmui-

Member
Haven't read the whole thing yet but even from the beginning one thing jumped out:

This was a game with ambitious goals but limited resources
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Like... how? Why on earth wouldn't EA give the team making the new Mass Effect game every resource they needed? That seems beyond incomprehensible to me.
 
L

LKSmash

Member
Admodieus said:
This is a great read. Some of this stuff was expected, while some of it is eye opening. Facial animations being flagged as a huge risk years ago means some guy somewhere is going "I was right! You should've listened to me!"

Also, has the move to Frostbite for all EA games hurt them more than it's helped them? Seems like it really complicated development for Inquisition and Andromeda. What else uses it?
Click to expand...

FIFA is in year 2. Madden will be on it for the first time this year. Battlefield/front obviously are on it.
 
R

RumbleHumble

Banned
Too much ambition, too much scope, not enough focus on the inner details and workings of what they intended to build until it was far too late. A damn shame because, as the article repeatedly points out, the combat was ON POINT.
 
DevilDog

DevilDog

Member
First of all, where are all the sources? Is most of the information anonymous then?

Second, this is just as expected.

Third, said it 100 times before, Ill say it again, fuck frostbite.


Being a videogame dev is rough.
 
D

DNAbro

Member
Reading the portion where part of the game was looking like No Man's Sky and they realized how boring it was makes me laugh.

DevilDog said:
First of all, where are all the sources? Is most of the information anonymous then?

Second, this is just as expected.

Third, said it 100 times before, Ill say it again, fuck frostbite.


Being a videogame dev is rough.
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Jason has sources. He's probably the best actual games journalist in the business when it comes to stuff like this.
 
G

Gator86

Member
Great digging here. I'd say the TL;DR is management issues hamstrung the game, put them far behind schedule, then they cobbled together what was left and shipped it off for full price.

As always, there are tons more moving parts, but this is all exactly what you'd expect from playing the game. I'm like 30 hours in and I'm not sure I'm gonna bother finishing. The combat is fun but there's only a handful of enemies and I don't care about anyone/anything happening in the game.

This whole thing is a real shame.
 
T

Tagavaka

Neo Member
I still cannot fathom why Mac Walters was chosen to be game director after his hand in the Mass Effect 3 ending and the backlash that ensued.

There were multiple problems plaguing this game it is obvious but a better choice in game director might have meant that someone was overseeing the game who had more foresight and ability to right the ship as development went on over the years.

Then there is the very obvious and glaring fact that not many seem to mention. Bioware didn't HAVE to make a new Mass Effect game at this point in time. Shepard's story was done. No one was expecting a new Mass Effect game. If their top tier development teams were busy working on Dragon Age 4 and Dylan, Mass Effect could have waited. They could have made and released a wonderful Mass Effect team a few years down the line that did the franchise justice.

*Editing to add that yes, Bioware needs to release games on a consistent basis to keep EA and shareholders happy but the Dragon Age: Inquisition team could have begun production of Mass Effect: Andromeda as soon as DA:I was out and delayed the production of Dragon Age 4
 
D

Dougieflesh

Member
Besides EA mandating that Frostbite being used for everything, sounds like Bioware was overly ambitious and lacking direction. Bioware as a whole looks to be more at fault than EA.
 
DevilDog

DevilDog

Member
DNAbro said:
Reading the portion where part of the game was looking like No Man's Sky and they realized how boring it was makes me laugh.



Jason has sources. He's probably the best actual games journalist in the business when it comes to stuff like this.
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Where did he post them? I can't seem to find them.
 
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