EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I hope the trailers continue to use Johnny Cash.
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Mass Effect: Andromeda - Some small updates (voice casting has started, combat, etc)
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
I hope the trailers continue to use Johnny Cash.
why is always EA, isn't BIOWARE the studio? Are they without money, can't they make own decisions?
GlamFM
Banned
Yeah, I talked to someone not long ago who would know and was told the remaster isn´t happening.
This can always change of course.
I was also shown some ME Andromeda footage. If everything I´ve seen makes it into the game we will all be very happy.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
BioWare is owned by EA, so while they would have some degree of autonomy in projects ultimately funding and publishing would be dictated by the parent company. So if EA does not see the financial investment of a trilogy port as viable, given the required manpower and funds, it wouldn't happen.
Rap2thaMoon
Member
And Mass Effect is coming out at the end of next year, supposedly, wish is a year away and was announced almost half a year ago.
Yup. I got that feeling in my plums too.
Bioware is still owned by EA. Bioware's stated they have an interest in doing it, but EA is the one with the money and they've gone on record saying they're against remasters and remakes (but FIFA, you might say... *cough*).
Never say never, of course. They know there is a high demand for it, but EA also can be very stubborn. Honestly, it really is easy money they're leaving on the table.
They also seem to be under some strange misconception that Bioware themselves personally have to do the remaster, instead of a studio like, say, Bluepoint, which specializes in remasters. They think Bioware spending time on a remaster will take time away from Andromeda, which is an argument no other remaster has used (Uncharted Collection certainly didn't take any time or manpower away from Uncharted 4...)
But Bioware can't call all the shots. They want a remaster released, they'll need their publisher's help doing so.
Generally, in a studio/publisher relationship, it's the publisher that has the majority of the power. Even moreso when the studio is wholly owned by the publisher.
They have the money that EA gives them. That money is generally earmarked to specific projects.
For smaller things? Probably. For what games they want to make? Not in the least. EA has to approve everything because they wholly fund it.
Not really. Indies tend to die on a single failed game. They rarely get to work on AAA titles, and when they do they almost never get to own the IP, which means rather than continuing to profit from a game they instead get lump sums from the publisher.
Shogun1337
Junior Member
Well, adapipika,
Bioware most likely has the option to show their logo and branding instead of EA's (because they are EA), I'm sure. But they don't, because no game developer company nowadays wants to risk anything with their super large fanbase. If anything goes wrong with this new Mass Effect, all the hatred, death-letter emails, and public outry will go towards EA, not Bioware (again, Bioware IS EA). This is a little factoid of how corporate branding works.
It works the other way around as well. Eidos Montreal IS Square-Enix now, but a lot of the time SE will just let Eidos do their branding, to mitigate backlash towards SE itself.
Without publishers, the console industry would collapse. AAA games would all but cease to exist.
AAA game cost a lot of money, and when a company is fronting that much money they naturally would want to make sure that they're in the best position to see a return on their investment.
There are two main factors here:
1.) On teams of 400+, there's a lot of title inflation. You frequently have multiple Senior Designers on a game working on various things. Even "Creative Director" is no longer the most senior design role (excluding Game Director, or as they're called at EA due to merging with a production role, Executive Producer, as there are employees such as Preston Watamaniuk who are Senior Creative Directors, not to mention the Senior Director, Creative Development, BioWare Edmonton & Montreal who would be overseeing them.
2.) It's not that uncommon to sign Senior Designers in the more traditional sense later in the process for a relatively big game as well. While the fundamentals are in place, there's a whole ton of tuning and tweaking to be done, DLC and multiplayer update work, and of course work on future iterations of the franchise. It can be caused by people moving on/getting promoted, or simply wanting more designers overseeing a growing design team. Dragon Age Inquisition had some huge combat design team alone IIRC that worked on the game until very close to release, so within a group like that, you'd have multiple senior designers.
And we can see this in looking at the job description:
They want someone who sits around tweaking combat, cover, and shooting mechanics throughout the development cycle.
Kralamoonard
Member
Wait, what about Bioware Montreal? I thought they were the primary team working on the game. From Wiki:
"BioWare Montreal. Formed in March 2009 to assist the Edmonton studio as necessary, it is, as of November 2013, working on the fourth Mass Effect title."
GlamFM
Banned
Thanks for replies guys.....
But how can we as fans send voice to anyone EA/BIOWARE that we would like ME TRILGOY REMASTERED PS4?
They know.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I figure most of the senior/lead roles are based in Montreal, given that was the original plan and what the studio was built for. But the work has probably spread out all over the place now. I dunno. Vibe/grapevine/leaks give me the feeling Andromeda is a pretty fucking huge project.
All three studios are building the game. From the E3 reveal where they named the game Andromeda: http://blog.bioware.com/2015/06/15/introducing-mass-effect-andromeda/
That would make sense if they do intend to put it out next year.
Okay, I pulled the list of people who were gameplay, systems, and level related designers for Inquisition: http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/dragon-age-inquisition/credits
There's also the following "additional design" staff that weren't explicitly listed as cinematic designers, narrative designers, or editors, though some of them are:
This is excluding the creative director and executive producer.
There's also the following "additional design" staff that weren't explicitly listed as cinematic designers, narrative designers, or editors, though some of them are:
This is excluding the creative director and executive producer.
Thanks for replies guys.....
But how can we as fans send voice to anyone EA/BIOWARE that we would like ME TRILGOY REMASTERED PS4?
They know, but if you want to add your voice to the chorus, they recommend posting in the official forums (I did, but they're not as lively as you imagine), but also you can Contact them directly.
Bioware Contact Info
I've called and sent them an email about it. Feel free to join the club.
I suppose what we need to know is how the role is defined for Bioware. It's clear that just knowing what a person's title is doesn't mean much, because the meaning of a title differs from company to company.
So all we really know is that they're looking for a mid to senior level person, and further confirmation that they've really adopted the Ubi model of development, wherein one site leads the early development of a title, at which point all the studios are brought in to actually implement it.
Is that a fair summation of the facts?
So all we really know is that they're looking for a mid to senior level person, and further confirmation that they've really adopted the Ubi model of development, wherein one site leads the early development of a title, at which point all the studios are brought in to actually implement it.
Is that a fair summation of the facts?
Kralamoonard
Member
I hope they're only now hiring a new senior game designer because they needed to replace someone else.
But in all honesty, I see it as further proof that they're approaching it like DA:I, or any Ubisoft game. There's a basic template and now it needs to be filled with tons of inane acquisition and crafting padding that has nothing to do with the actual main game, which is just a barebones framework.
But in all honesty, I see it as further proof that they're approaching it like DA:I, or any Ubisoft game. There's a basic template and now it needs to be filled with tons of inane acquisition and crafting padding that has nothing to do with the actual main game, which is just a barebones framework.
Yes. That's why I led off posting it by noting they seem to have dropped the silo'ed studio idea.
This has happened across a number of developers to note. To use a couple of bigger examples, Rockstar officially switched near the end of Max Payne 3's development cycle (this is why we see so few games from them now comparatively), and Eidos Montreal, once a three team studio, now has 300-400 people on just Deus Ex with most of the rest assisting Tomb Raider. CD Projekt also had to shove everyone on Witcher 3 to get it done which pushed by Cyberpunk several years.
It's also why we have decidedly few AAA games in general.
That said, for BioWare, this switch appears to have went into effect somewhere during Dragon Age Inquisition's development cycle (though they were already cannibalizing Dragon Age staff to get SWTOR out the door), which pushed Mass Effect way back to Fall 2016.
Turin Turambar
Member
I wonder, what's going to the first (non-mmo, just in case) game with more than 1000 devs working for most of the development schedule.
GlamFM
Banned
GTA VI?
We're pretty much there already: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/90...eed-iv-black-flag-says-director/1100-6415599/
mumbles365
Banned
pls be good pls be good pls be good pls be good.
Mass Effect has a huge bar to climb. After the disappointment that was ME3 and Dragon Inquisition along with Witcher 3 swaggering its way to the scene .... This game has to pull out all the stops to even reach the level of Witcher 3.
Mass Effect has a huge bar to climb. After the disappointment that was ME3 and Dragon Inquisition along with Witcher 3 swaggering its way to the scene .... This game has to pull out all the stops to even reach the level of Witcher 3.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Turns out modern AAA games require a fuck ton of people.
But yeah, going by BioWare's titling a 'senior gameplay designer' could be working on anything. I mean, if we take the survey leak as a list of gameplay components, you've got a whole bunch of gameplay types and encounter states that could, in theory, have their own leads.
I'm generally opposed to this method of game design as it tends to results in a homogeneous of incoherent, forgettable, paint-by-numbers junk. But like Nirolak said Wild Hunt was made a similar way. It was all hands on deck.
Who am I kidding; I'll buy and enjoy it no matter what turd it is.
Read the survey link. If that sounds good, then you'll like it.
But yeah, going by BioWare's titling a 'senior gameplay designer' could be working on anything. I mean, if we take the survey leak as a list of gameplay components, you've got a whole bunch of gameplay types and encounter states that could, in theory, have their own leads.
I'm generally opposed to this method of game design as it tends to results in a homogeneous of incoherent, forgettable, paint-by-numbers junk. But like Nirolak said Wild Hunt was made a similar way. It was all hands on deck.
Who am I kidding; I'll buy and enjoy it no matter what turd it is.
Read the survey link. If that sounds good, then you'll like it.
cartographer
Member
I'm not sure if it's quite at the Ubi level, but that seems to be the direction somewhat. The Montreal office was opened to eventually head down this road, and as far as I know, it's still under the same management as the Edmonton office.
The weird part is the inclusion of the Austin studio, which is organized separately (unless that's changed) but if we didn't already know was helping on some aspect of ME:A, it was a pretty safe assumption after their work on DA:I DLC was over and with only a SWTOR content pack to launch. And since it seems unlikely that Austin will be handed another project to manage on its own, they have to be doing something. I do wonder if they would even bother with the studio if they didn't have SWTOR to manage.
That is because tooling is not improving at the same rate as complexity.
Granted, I would not want to go back to tools circa 2005, but the relative leap in consumer expectations has been much bigger than tooling capabilities.
I don't believe that will change soon, because no one wants to reinvent the wheel, a costly and risky endeavor. Tools will continue to improve in bite-size increments and large-budget games will become larger-budget.
This is why it's a great time to be an indie developer (if you're good).
ROUGE_BLOCK
Member
Man it's a year away, and almost 3 years since they announced they were working on a sequel
Given the rushed nature of Mass Effect 3, I'll take a longer development cycle for this.
All it needs to do to reach Witcher 3 is launch with tons of broken quests and bad controls and take months to fix stuff. Plus Inquisition was great.
ROUGE_BLOCK
Member
I agree there I am just impatient for more Mass Effect.
Every time I "overheard you talking about this quest" in Mass Effect 3, I try and imagine what it would have been like if it had been like ME1 and ME2 with an actual conversation going on, instead of creepy eavesdropping.
... Even a remaster feels like asking for the moon at this point, but I'd be lying if I said I haven't imagined an ME3 modded to have actual conversations with random NPCs again.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Correct, though like you I don't believe the situation will change too soon. Some stuff inevitably costs a lot in terms of production, particularly the abundance of voice work and associate characters scripting. As does making a huge single player game full of assets alongside a multiplayer component.
I wonder if they've hit some engine snags too. Going by the grapevine and survey leaks, there's a lot of seamless transition stuff, which no released iteration of Frostbite 3 currently does. Mirror's Edge will be a good starting point to see how well Frostbite 3 handles open world-ish environments, and if that's rough around the edges I can imagine Andromeda is facing similar issues.
Alex_Mexico
Member
Quick and simple question: Is it called Mass Effect Andromeda because it'll happen in another galaxy altogether or will it still go down in the Milky Way in a (I assume) different time period?
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
What we know officially: It's called Mass Effect: Andromeda because it's set in the Andromeda galaxy. And, according to BioWare, it is far distant in both "time and space" from the events of the trilogy.
The general consensus among fans is that it'll be set exclusively in the Andromeda galaxy as a means of ditching trilogy baggage associated with the Milky Way setting.
Alex_Mexico
Member
Aww dammit
One thing I dug from ME that I never got from Star Wars was that sense of "familiarity" that all of these events were happening in our own cosmic backyard where even our Solar System was something we could visit!
Oh well.
SamuelSupreme
Banned
If it takes place in another galaxy...how are we going to see familar races?
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Aww dammit
One thing I dug from ME that I never got from Star Wars was that sense of "familiarity" that all of these events were happening in our own cosmic backyard where even our Solar System was something we could visit!
Oh well.
A lot of fans feel the same way, myself included. My first choice was for them to pick a canon, or construct an amalgamation of the endings plus new ideas into a new one, and just use that going forward.
But I can also appreciate the shitting position they're in and their reservations to lock anything down. They're caught between the rock and a hard place of not wanting to set any canon on the trilogy's events, but also move forward with their own story free of trilogy baggage. They probably didn't want to do a prequel, and they may have felt trying to do a story alongside the trilogy events would bring associate baggage and always have the overhanging "Reaper threat" even if not part of the story.
Fan theory is the Ark, given "ARKCON" and "PATHFINDER" have been referenced by Andromeda staff. General idea is that sometime during the trilogy's events an Ark of sorts is constructed with the aim of sending a crew to populate the Andromeda galaxy. How and why are questionable: cold sleep long travel or wormhole? Just to explore, or maybe as a back-up plan B should the Reapers win?
Either way, Ark crew gets to Andromeda and colonises it, but they're so far away from the Milky Way that the tech doesn't exist to make contact feasible, and it allows Andromeda to be set technically canonically after the trilogy, yet star a cast that has no idea how the Reaper war was concluded, and unable to find out.
I don't expect all species to return. I figure those fiddly and technical to the trilogy arc, like the Geth, won't get a ship invite.
GlamFM
Banned
Wow they are even earlier in development than I thought they were...
This doesnt look like its going to hit stores even during 2017...
They were already way further along in development than it seemed when they revealed it.
2016 is still entirely possible.
But I dont know, hearing that they still havent casted anyone makes me think this is not as far in development for a 2016 release.
I am not claiming I know how each team handles their development cycle, but just for the sake of an example, I remember Uncharted 4 (that certainly doesnt have the amount of voice acting that a ME is required to have) has completed mocap and voice acting stuff almost 6 months ago according to Neil Druckman's tweet.
Perhaps Bioware does things differently, I dont know. All I know is I want this game in my life...
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Naughty Dog puts most of their performers in the mo-cap roles, hence why the production is a bit more personal and requires more time. BioWare don't. Performers do VA work in a studio and that's about it, AFAIK.