GinoFelino
Member
Schreier killing it once again
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Kotaku: The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development
- Thread starter kulapik
- Start date
bananafactory
Banned
It says in the article the sources are protected because they aren't allowed to talk about the game.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Really fantastic read.
Long and short of it: spent way, way too long in pre-production with impressively lofty dreams and scope that ultimately lacked coherent direction and leadership, alongside numerous toolset issues pertaining to Frostbite 3 that hadn't been resolved in Inquisition. Loss of original director and understaffed areas of development like animation resulted in a lot of cheap outsourcing and excessive crunch as the team attempted to salvage a project that left pre-production into production without a fully functioning vertical slice and numerous over ambitious production issues unresolved. 18 months crunch produced the Andromeda we got today, with a significant bulk of writing, planet, and quest design competed in this window, the most impressive and polished elements like combat and driving the few handovers from its earliest iterations.
Long and short of it: spent way, way too long in pre-production with impressively lofty dreams and scope that ultimately lacked coherent direction and leadership, alongside numerous toolset issues pertaining to Frostbite 3 that hadn't been resolved in Inquisition. Loss of original director and understaffed areas of development like animation resulted in a lot of cheap outsourcing and excessive crunch as the team attempted to salvage a project that left pre-production into production without a fully functioning vertical slice and numerous over ambitious production issues unresolved. 18 months crunch produced the Andromeda we got today, with a significant bulk of writing, planet, and quest design competed in this window, the most impressive and polished elements like combat and driving the few handovers from its earliest iterations.
UE4 has a limited performance budget, it seems.
LordOfLore
Banned
Great article Jason aside from one part:
Spiderman instead of Spider-Man? 
He's not going to out his sources. They would get fired.
Jason isn't gonna give up his sources. Most of the people who spoke about the game spoke anonymously because legally speaking, they can't talk about the development process and would be in breach of contract. That's pretty standard in most industries, not just gaming.
I'm gonna disagree and say it was pulled out of pre-production too soon. They didn't have all the development tools they needed. I mean shit, they didn't even have the scope of the game when it left pre-production, which is unheard of. EA is beholden to their shareholders though and what the shareholders want, they get. This game was the culmination of that. We were all really surprised when we heard it was coming in March and hadn't seen hardly any of it. Now we know why.
LordRaptor
Member
Do you know what people will openly talk about development issues on a project they worked on with their real names attached?
People who don't want to work in the industry any more.
for everyone else, there's "sources close to the project said"
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
It was when the release date was announced for me, the game hadn't even been to an E3.
It says in the article that it was developers who talked to him under guarantee of anonymity.
With access to the Star Wars license​, how Andromeda turned out, the collapse of Edmonton, and the support requirements of Dylan, I can't imagine a scenario where we see ME again.
When a journalist uses anonymous sources (likely because revealing them would get them fired), it is up to you to place your trust in these sources by extension of the journalist. The journalist's track record is key in this scenario, as a good track record makes them and their sources more credible. This also acts as a control on the journalist to not just publish everything they hear but try to corroborate and get lots of sources before publishing.
Jason has broken tons of stories like this before, especially around Destiny. Even with anonymous sources, many people here on GAF and elsewhere trust this piece. If MasterChief34 on GAF cited anonymous sources saying this, then I would dismiss it out of hand.
AcademicSaucer
Member
Ayy
DevilDog
Member
MadLaughter
Member
Give them one more shot. 5 planets. Polish the shit out of them.
Apparently ME isn't the sales giant you'd think it would be given its standing in the industry and achievements of ME1 and 2. Dragon Age is the bigger game.
Why was it used then? Was this the only feasible way for the game to get made?
LordRaptor
Member
Frostbite is fully owned by EA so its 'free' in a way that third party engines are not.
Holundrian
Unconfirmed Member
Great read. One thing I'm curious about is how successful mock reviews are at projecting final assessments vs them diverging like in this case.
It is pretty ridiculous that large companies would make decisions based on an aggregate measure of critical response to their product. Oh wait, it's actually not ridiculous at all.
Frosbite is EA's crown jewel of an engine and they want it in everything. That's the only reason I can think of. Otherwise, they would've just backed off and used UE4 or something and dealt with the limitations.
The problem is the engine Bioware needs to make their games work doesn't exist. It seems that even trying to modify Frostbite to fit their needs was a futile effort so I don't know where they go from here. I imagine they'd have to build a new engine from scratch, but I can't see EA going for that.
Yearsoflurking
Member
so basically frostbite killed the series
IronicSonic
Member
What's the idea behind using the same engine if that doesn't simplify the development?
family_guy
Member
It's a shame they went with the Frostbite engine. Unreal Engine 4 would have been better.
RedlineRonin
Member
Just finished.
God damn. Great work by Jason. Really, really good stuff. It's so important to highlight the human side of game development.
So many people were out with knives for Bioware when ME:A came out and it's very clear they had ambitious ideas that were hampered by tools and staffing issues. It's really unfortunate.
Can't wait to read a book full of this.
God damn. Great work by Jason. Really, really good stuff. It's so important to highlight the human side of game development.
So many people were out with knives for Bioware when ME:A came out and it's very clear they had ambitious ideas that were hampered by tools and staffing issues. It's really unfortunate.
Can't wait to read a book full of this.
bananafactory
Banned
Engines are very expensive to develop so in theory unifying all their games on one engine saves money. But when a game takes 5 years to make on it then I think that concept probably went out the wjndow
Sephiroth503
Member
Warning signs for me was when we never got extended looks at the gameplay loop until very late in the marketing campaign and when we finally did get a "long" gameplay video it showed off the horrible animations, writing and character dialog.
Mock reviews were probably being generous and they should have factored that in.
Mock reviews were probably being generous and they should have factored that in.
Yearsoflurking
Member
it's "free " , so EA rather stick their developers on an inefficient non compatiable engine smh
TemplaerDude
Member
I'm not really seeing how the internets "passion" for hating Bioware is radically different to its passion for hating anything at all, but I'll give it a read.
Basically they fucked around with procedural generation for 18 months before realising it's really hard to do right and has no place in a narrative-heavy AAA action/shooting game. Then they had 18 months to make the real thing, which was 18 months too few due to Frostbite being a bitch.
Ouch.
Ouch.
Mutanthands
Member
From the article, it sounds like most of the problems started before Walters was brought in to head the project. He probably did the best he could to pull the project together and release something, given the problems and external pressures coming the studio's way.
Very sad. Unreal 4 may have saved them some trouble and opened up more resources to where they really needed them.
Marketing/PR
Yea it sounds like Walters wasn't really the problem with this. You can definitely ding him about the dialogue being bad but it was also done in a hurry.
TC McQueen
Member
Honestly, the only way to make an engine all EA games of any genre can run on is to make Frostbite 4 and have DICE and Bioware work on it together from the start. That way the pipelines and toolsets exist from the start and there's no need to jerry-rig stuff at the last second.
The director change is one I wish Jason had more info on, because it sounds like they might have gotten rid of the first guy because he was all big ideas and no way to execute them, while Mac Walters at least knows how to execute stuff, even if he isn't a great ideas guy.
The Last Wizard
Member
Do they talk about the story, writing and lore at all? I feel like a lot of stuff would've been forgiven had the writing and characters been on point.
It's interesting how often this actually happens, and how frequently there are very real consequences for the developers. It sort of reminds me of how Tango was forced to use Id Tech 5 for The Evil Within; an engine first not suited to their needs, lacking probably the requisite support of a more established engine, and in fact counter to their needs in some respects (no dynamic lighting, something they ended up building themselves which in turn tanked their FR, and so on and so forth).
I understand *why* it happens. You blow money on acquiring some team, get their technology in the deal, and then feel compelled to use that same technology -- or you spend a bunch of time creating internal tech and want a one-size fits-all approach; but to actually get your engine technology to a point where you can reasonably say it's "ready" to fit all game needs, I mean, that's a dark road of denial for most if not all tech houses if your name isn't Epic.
You're definitely right on the engine and I'm wondering if that's where it's headed. It's either that, or you cut bioware loose, which I don't see them doing.
family_guy
Member
I guess from a forward thinking perspective, that eventually after all the tweaks and add-ons, future development would be easier and cheaper. You just have to go through the growing pains first.
MadLaughter
Member
They talk about how the changing scope of the game made it pretty tough on the writers, that other teams' issues meant they sort of started too late, and that they felt understaffed.