Support NeoGAF

[TC McQueen]

This would have been so perfect T_T

Like, yeah, they were going to use all the familiar races but this time most of them would be as enemies and could have opened tons of interesting types of missions.

Oh well.

Can't believe they passed on a First Contact War game. Fuck.

I'm glad they passed on the First Contact War idea. The only way for Mass Effect to move past ME3 was to make a clean break, not make a game that would be rendered utterly irrelevant by the story of the preceding three games.

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.

Most of it was basically handled in the same 18 month period as the rest of development, aside from a lot of the central concepts, and didn't get finished until late in production, which helped exacerbate the animation issues.

 

[Elfstruck]

This all comes down to EA and the GM at Bioware. What's were they thinking by not giving enough resources for the game? ME is not a hot gabbage IP to be treated like this. Lets see if Project Dylan gonna live up to its potential, because if it doesn't, Bioware could be in trouble.

 

[J.W. Stillwater]

Why does EA force Frostbite on their developers? This seems to be the crux of many of the problems.

 

[Diablohead]

Honestly sounds like they would have had a better time porting over the ME3 engine and building off that.

 

[Morts]

This was a really fascinating read. Thanks Jason!

 

[Renekton]

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.

Last I remember, DICE formed a dedicated technology team just for the engine. By right they would have helped build the RPG systems, animations systems, etc for EA's developers.

That Bioware had to build these systems from scratch is baffling to me.

 

[FlaygletheBagel]

Damn. Schreier is at it again! Excellent read.

 

[Robobandit]

Honestly sounds like they would have had a better time porting over the ME3 engine and building off that.

probably.. but they didn't want to pay for the unreal license..

 

[TC McQueen]

Why does EA force Frostbite on their developers? This seems to be the crux of many of the problems.

Developed by one of their studios, so it's "free."

Honestly sounds like they would have had a better time porting over the ME3 engine and building off that.

They would've had to switch to UE4 anyway, but it would've probably been less of a problem than switching to Frostbite.

 

[J_Viper]

Great article, can't wait for Jason's book

BioWare also hired a new director, Gérard Lehiany, who had previously directed the Spiderman games at the Activision-owned studio Beenox.

Jesus man, why would you do this

 

[Gator86]

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.

Great points. This seems to be a death knell for many games. Execs simply can't ward off the most basic fallacious logic and make abominable decisions that employees, the day to day devs, are supposed to carry out and they're doomed from the start. A lot of these companies need to jettison management. Incompetence starts at the top.

 

[RDreamer]

Great read. Honestly it sounds like it's pretty amazing they got out the game they did when they did. I really loved Andromeda for what it was. For me it was better than ME1 and a great starting point for a new era of Mass Effect. I really hope they do somehow continue onward, but after reading about how much they didn't know even going into the final stretch of things I doubt they know much about where they want to go with the series and won't for a long while.

 

[U2NUMB]

Now I know why they did real video for the last NFS cut scenes...

 

[TC McQueen]

Last I remember, DICE formed a dedicated technology team just for the engine. By right they would have helped build the RPG systems, animations systems, etc for EA's developers.

That Bioware had to build these systems from scratch was baffling to me.

I bet you that team didn't exist before MEA's pre-production problems.

BioWare also hired a new director, Gérard Lehiany, who had previously directed the Spiderman games at the Activision-owned studio Beenox.

Jesus man, why would you do this

Hiring someone with a fresh perspective isn't a bad idea. No idea why they picked him though.

Also, didn't one of the Halo 4 writers get hired for this game? It's kind of weird that he doesn't get mentioned at all.

 

[Orca]

What's the idea behind using the same engine if that doesn't simplify the development?

Ideally all the different development teams would pool their knowledge and share systems they'd created, streamlining development for future titles. What happens is hacked-together things have next to no documentation showing how/why they worked, so it's useless for someone who thinks 'let's try their solution for [problem x]'

 

[AaronMT86]

Mind boggling that such high level decisions were made without research and understanding (e.g, selecting Frostbite for RPG)

 

[big fake]

Man to see all those hardworking folk be scaled down because of all these technical and political issues is saddening. This game had such potential but Frostbite and giving a studio limited resources and manpower is just something that BioWare and EA need to keep control of.

Its like taking a gun from a soldier, shooting him and telling him to get steppin'. It's a shame we wont see what this team had to offer, with proper resources and all.

 

[adversarial]

That was a super depressing read.

 

[igordennis]

More and more i get the feeling a lot of studios/pubs should just swallow their pride and just use Unreal Engine or something man. Those Frostbite issues sound awful.

 

[FrontalMonk]

This was an excellent, though tragic, read.

I feel like the mass effect series in general outside of maaaaybe the first game has been a series of happy accidents and rushed schedules. Raycevick's retrospectives on YT really put into perspective the thought process I felt I was having already, that there were tons of cut features and streamlined systems brought to the game for the sole purposes of just getting the game out the door that ended up being happy accidents contributing to a laser focused experience in mass effect 2 and a jumbled, but mostly good mess in mass effect 3. The fact that they've made the games they've made seems less like a bunch of masters crafting these great experiences and more like a bunch of people working themselves to the bone with a rushed schedule regardless of how much time they're working with due to mismanagement and fuzzy goals.

I *love* the mass effect series. I want to see DLC for Andromeda, and I want to see Andromeda 2, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to see either. But most of all, I want to see what Andromeda should have been in the first place.

 

[Diablohead]

probably.. but they didn't want to pay for the unreal license..

Instead they paid with a now dying brand name and lack of sales, it's a shame to see.

 

[LordOfLore]

More and more i get the feeling a lot of studios/pubs should just swallow their pride and just use Unreal Engine or something man. Those Frostbite issues sound awful.

I'm really happy SE switched KH and FFVIIR to UE4 now. Add to that them not seemingly being stressed or pushed too hard and I'm happy.

 

[Antialias]

Frostbite does actually have an animation system out of the box. No it doesn't have stuff like RPG inventory systems built in, but nor does Unreal, and those would have to be different between different games anyway. I feel like some of these opinions about Frostbite come from people who know there were troubles with the engine (which is true) but not what those troubles actually were.

 

[Orca]

More and more i get the feeling a lot of studios/pubs should just swallow their pride and just use Unreal Engine or something man. Those Frostbite issues sound awful.

It's not like UE hasn't had its share of issues as well, from poor documentation to missed milestones during development.

 

[PhantomKnight]

That was a great read, well done Jason.

I don't know much about game development but if they were still deciding if the game was procedural generated or not during production, isn't it the producer job or someone from EA to step in and say not do to procedural?

 

[darkinstinct]

So after three years they realized that procedurally generated content is not fun. Should've given me 10 million, I would have told them before spending 60 million on it.

 

[AJ_Wings]

As usual, fantastic article Jason.

I was expecting to see some Mac Walters bashing but it looks like the game's production problem go much deeper & way back.

So the Mass Effect series is dead for the near future... guess it's time to replay the trilogy again.

 

[Ray Down]

This would have been so perfect T_T

Like, yeah, they were going to use all the familiar races but this time most of them would be as enemies and could have opened tons of interesting types of missions.

Oh well.

Man I really want a ME game like this.

 

[Lime]

“What you see [in the final game] is writing that has been done in the past two years rather than the full five years of writing,” said a developer on the game. “The writing team—writing the characters and everything—was unleashed too late, just because of too many discussions about the high-level direction.”

wow this game was horribly mismanaged. I'm surprised that EA or Bioware's executives didn't step in sooner. I wonder how Montreal hid or got away during project milestone reviews

 

[Nirolak]

Wouldn't that save them money, though? Dev costs are insane right now.

It's actually much more expensive to make your own engine. The Frostbite team is well over 200 full time staff alone these days, and that's not counting any of the engineers on the individual game teams, which could be a notable double digit number for each.

You generally do that because you think it will increase quality at the expensive of raising costs significantly.

Mind, when Mass Effect: Andromeda started, it was a much smaller team, but still quite expensive.

 

[Madness]

Man fuck EA. This is yet another case of them not providing adequate support for their studios, the cash needed, having proper oversight. EA Access for Mass Effect Andromeda was one of the dumbest decisions ever and I guarantee some EA suit thought it was a good idea to get some more EA Access brand awareness and sales if it could get such a big game early. This was a slow burn game that got much better after 10 hours in. Whatever. Series is effectively dead. Fuck EA again if they think I am preordering Dylan or Dragon Age after this shit. They have killed so many series. Sell the IP off to developers who love sci-fi and RPG and would do the established lore justice.

I have no faith in what they are doing for Star Wars either.

 

[akileese]

More and more i get the feeling a lot of studios/pubs should just swallow their pride and just use Unreal Engine or something man. Those Frostbite issues sound awful.

Every engine has issues though. Frostbite was built for shooters and never designed for something as robust and encompassing as a Bioware RPG. As others have said, the solution was bringing in other studios for input on the engine and allowing them to build tools for it from the start.

 

[x-Lundz-x]

I just read the entire article and now I'm sad. I feel bad for all the people who killed themselves to make this happen with what they had to work with.

I still enjoyed the game and put 60 hours into the SP alone, so to me it was not the train wreck a lot of people made it out to be. I hope they can just let the series rest for a few years and then maybe at E3 2020 they give us a look at the next ME game and it blows us away. The ME Universe is too good to not explore.

 

[TransTrender]

TL;DR:

...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.

Brutal, just brutal.

 

[DeadlyParasite]

Despite all the rampant hate for Mac Walters his arrival on the project at least got things relatively out of pre-development hell (according to the article) in the last 18 months.

I personally really liked Andromeda, but I can't say I share that opinion with many. Still holding out hope for a sequel in another 5-7 years. (Just please no more sullying the series with Beats by Dre headphones and 2000's era jersey shore-esque outfits).

 

[Son Of Sparda]

Just finished reading it. Amazing article by Jason.

But man, this made me so sad. Especially these parts:

Although Andromeda's developers knew the game wasn't perfect, they were fine with a score like that. If they hit somewhere between 80 and 85, they could use what they'd built for Andromeda to make the sequel way better, much like Casey Hudson and his team had done from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2.

Andromeda wound up with a 70 (on PS4, where it has the most reviews), far lower than those who had seen the mock reviews expected.

The results were catastrophic for BioWare Montreal. Even as the team kept plugging away on patches to fix bugs, add more romance options, and polish animations, their management informed the Montreal studio that it would be scaled down and that Mass Effect was going to be shelved for a while. All hopes for an Andromeda sequel were immediately dashed.

I love Andromeda. Even with all of its flaws, there is still a very fun game underneath its rough looking surface. Andromeda 2 could've build on that foundation and become something truly amazing

 

[Primethius]

Incredible article and a fascinating read. Explains quite a bit some why the game was marketed the way it was.

 

[Rymuth]

which they gave the code-name Dylan. (That code-name, a source said, came because Hudson and team wanted to make the Bob Dylan of video games—one that would be referenced for years to come.)

I'm dead.

This is amazing, Jason.

 

[Dlink16]

Great read. Feel really bad for the developers that put so much effort into trying to make this game something special.

 

[Gator86]

Despite all the rampant hate for Mac Walters his arrival on the project at least got things relatively out of pre-development hell (according to the article) in the last 18 months.

I personally really liked Andromeda, but I can't say I share that opinion with many. Still holding out hope for a sequel in another 5-7 years. (Just please no more sullying the series with Beats by Dre headphones and 2000's era jersey shore-esque outfits).

No chance. It took 5 years to get Andromeda out and they're nowhere close to even considering another one now. I can't imagine we see one until maybe the end of next gen, if ever really.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Remember how I kept saying that game development wasn't linear and that saying "they made this in five years rarrrr" wasn't accurate...I especially appreciated this part and I saw a LOT of this.

Mass Effect: Andromeda has been criticized for several things, but the images that will be remembered most are the memes—GIFs of gorilla walks, silly faces, and the main character’s eyes darting from side to side like she’s watching a high-speed game of tennis. It’s been subject to a great deal of speculation over the past few months, with theories ranging from naive (EA bought BioWare and now they’re all lazy) to deranged (BioWare made all the characters ugly because they’re SJWs).

Surprising to hear that they spent a huge chunk of development on procedural generation tho. Also explains why it was always a no show at trade shows.

 

[Staf]

The only issue i had with the game was the writing. Uninspiring characters and story told poorly killed it for me. As of now i have zero interest in Mass effect 5.

 

[Psoelberg]

Great work as usual by Jason Schreier.

“The biggest problem with the animations was manpower,” said one of those people. “You use motion capture for in-game stuff, but the actual work of bringing that animation into an engine so it responds to your controls, that’s not something you can motion capture. It takes people and it takes time. They had very few people. They’re actually quite talented people, but if they had ridiculous schedules, then it just makes me sad to see the end result.

This is really sad. All that hard work, dedication and passion falling to the floor. For what it's worth I still had fun with the game. Especially managing the ship and crew.

 

[rhandino]

Fascinating read.

The part about mock reviews telling them that they were going to at least score fairly good for the disaster the game was just to be greeted by all the .gifs, memes and general mess... wow.

 

[A Serious Man]

Brutal, just brutal.

I'm dead.

This is amazing, Jason.

You guys do realize that Dylan is a different, unannounced game right? Edmonton is working on Dylan, Montreal worked on Andromeda.

 

[bigol]

I want to know more about that Dylan game.

 

[olag]

I really dont understand. Given how expensive it was/is to build and develop your own engine, why would EA stubbornly force their own studios to use frostbite? It strikes me as either incredibly incompetent or self-sabotaging on their part.

Excellent read, a nice summation of what went wrong. Hopefully Bioware's next title has clearer vision and the directors actually put a lot more thought into the consequences of some of their design ambitions.

 

[dankir]

I think animation bugs and lack of music ( big no no for me ) I still thoroughly enjoyed the game. The main story missions and the squad loyalty missions were great. Exploration, visuals and gunplay were really well done. And they definitely nailed the exploration theme in my eyes.

solid 7.5-8 / 10 for me.

ME2 > ME3 > ME:A> ME1

For me.

 

[okita]

Nice and sad read , the mock reviews were far off the mark, instead of facing reality over the state of the game , they just went "i hope this works" "they said we will be ok" a silly hope and didn't even care about their consumers expectations ...

Can't believe the mass effect name got involved in this cluster fuck.

 

[Alebrije]

EA gave them few resources, we know what it means :