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

prag16

Banned
Eh, the directors knew limitations of Frostbite. Procedural was a mistake from the start. If they had started handcrafting stuff year 1, MEA might not be a total shambles of a game.
Lots of hyperbole in this topic. "Total shambles of a game" is ridiculous.
 

JeffZero

Purple Drazi
The Wraith from Stargate Atlantis have more personality, and they're just sadistic space vampires.

I mean, Stargate Atlantis had this guy.

tumblr_inline_nwhq36Dv2G1tejan1_500.gif


And Michael, too. Andromeda needed a kett with this kind of depth, and it never quite happened. But I'll give BioWare credit -- the Archon and his followers are more interesting villains than plenty of video game baddies. Just not really on the level of the better BioWare fare, like Saren and Loghain.
 

jschreier

Member
Excellent read. I really should think about picking up your book Jason. I expect it'll be a fascinating insight into game development.
Yeah, I think anyone who found this story interesting will love my book, which consists of 10 stories like this one, each about a different game ranging from excellent (The Witcher 3) to disastrous (Star Wars 1313). The ME:A story is... DLC.
 

JeffZero

Purple Drazi
Yeah, I think anyone who found this story interesting will love my book, which consists of 10 stories like this one, each about a different game ranging from excellent (The Witcher 3) to disastrous (Star Wars 1313). The ME:A story is... DLC.

I lol'd earlier in the comments thread when someone said you should have saved this one for the book and you told them they're right and we should all avert our eyes.
 

ItsTheNew

I believe any game made before 1997 is "essentially cave man art."
When will the procedural generated content meme end? It only produces soulless bullcrap in 3D games.
 
I mean, Stargate Atlantis had this guy.

tumblr_inline_nwhq36Dv2G1tejan1_500.gif


And Michael, too. Andromeda needed a kett with this kind of depth, and it never quite happened. But I'll give BioWare credit -- the Archon and his followers are more interesting villains than plenty of video game baddies. Just not really on the level of the better BioWare fare, like Saren and Loghain.
Todd's the fucking best. Him and Baal are the top tier Stargate villains.

That said, I really don't get the love for Saren. Sure, he was trying to save everyone in a really dumb way, but for most of the game, he's just a space asshole. Loghain, though, he works a lot better because the player character actually gets to interact with him, so it's easier to bring out the depth in a character.

Honestly, if Bioware actually bothered to either A) give the player and villain time to interact without killing each other (like how Baal and Todd were introduced in Stargate) or B) just went full ham with their villains (like Metal Gear Rising did with Armstrong), they'd feel more interesting across the board.
 
I thought the Kett were such a mediocre threat. Their motivation seems to be exactly the same as the Reapers': "ascending" other species into one of them.
I thought their visual design was awesome, but story-wise, they were severely underplayed. I never respected them as a threat. I couldn't take them seriously, even less so when Liam's loyalty mission was all about mocking them as if they're nothing.

When I received message that a derelict Reaper had been found in Mass Effect 2 and that I was essentially going in to find out why a research team had gone MIA, I was like "Shit, this is going to be good!". The same happened with the Collector Ship.
I never felt this during Andromeda. Not even when finding Meridian, because the last portion of the game was so fucking rushed that I never had the time to develop the desire of FINDING Meridian, it was thrown at me five minutes later.

I really enjoyed Andromeda for its gameplay and combat, which was the best in the series, but its story is average at best. Not a good thing for a Mass Effect game.
 

JeffZero

Purple Drazi
Todd's the fucking best. Him and Baal are the top tier Stargate villains.

Absolutely.

That said, I really don't get the love for Saren. Sure, he was trying to save everyone in a really dumb way, but for most of the game, he's just a space asshole. Loghain, though, he works a lot better because the player character actually gets to interact with him, so it's easier to bring out the depth in a character

I'd say Loghain is the superior of the two, and I'd consider putting the Illusive Man above Saren for similar reasons. I think Saren just capitalizes well on the time he has, and ME1's third act is so good it helps him raise further in the eyes of the fans.

I also really love
convincing him to stop himself at the end.

Honestly, if Bioware actually bothered to either A) give the player and villain time to interact without killing each other (like how Baal and Todd were introduced in Stargate) or B) just went full ham with their villains (like Metal Gear Rising did with Armstrong), they'd feel more interesting across the board.

In my mind, the perfect game has a little bit of both, yeah.

I thought their visual design was awesome, but story-wise, they were severely underplayed. I never respected them as a threat. I couldn't take them seriously, even less so when Liam's loyalty mission was all about mocking them as if they're nothing.

This is kind of a strange recurring element lately -- subpar antagonists who get mocked by the party as a means to "bring a little much-needed levity to a dark threat" but because they're so subpar, it just kind of comes across as inadvertently apt. See: everyone (and especially Sera) mocking the ever-loving heck out of "Coryphyfish" or whatever in Inquisition.
 

Rarius

Member
The Kett might be the most visually boring enemy race I've ever seen, they feel like a compilation of generic pieces of other enemies.
 

megalowho

Member
Great read that helps to clarify the shortcomings of the finished product. The signs of troubled development were there early on and there is plenty of blame to go around, along with plenty of tireless crunch from thankless team members to even bring the game to the state it ended up in.

Found the insight on pre-production dysfunction and the warning signs that were apparent even then particularly enlightening. Same with the admission of regression during the late stages of development instead of seeing everything coming together.

One thing I'm still not clear on is the degree to which Mac Walters helped or hurt the project - on one hand it sounded like it was going nowhere before he was brought in, on the other if his new vision is representative of the writing and tone we got in Andromeda he's a big reason why it left such a bad taste in my mouth. Hard to put it all on his shoulders after reading the article but not sure what BioWare was thinking either, especially with the additional political animosity it introduced between Edmonton and Montreal.
 

Grisby

Member
Crazy to think they spent that long pre-planning with no real vision and then had to rush the game. All that cascading seem to really hurt the things that kind of mattered the most (story, cutscenes, and animation).

I liked MEA alright, but it is definitely more disappointing than the original trilogy. Damn, I hate to see the series go out like this.

Good work on the article Kotaku.
 

Renekton

Member
So I wonder: what is the state of Frostbite as of today?

How is the workflow and learning curve?

Is it now a Frankenstein of disparate duct-taped subsystems from other EA developers?

What is DICE's role in supporting other developers if they need a new gameplay feature?
 
Well, how many of those "mistakes" can be patched?

Story? Not likely...
Animations? Yes.
Bugs? Yes.
Fun? Humm....

The game is fun though because the combat really exceeds despite the less than stellar worlds and situations it puts you in (except the loyalty missions, where the game actually shines). It's basically a FF13 situation where the game is carried by the combat system alone.
 
This is kind of a strange recurring element lately -- subpar antagonists who get mocked by the party as a means to "bring a little much-needed levity to a dark threat" but because they're so subpar, it just kind of comes across as inadvertently apt. See: everyone (and especially Sera) mocking the ever-loving heck out of "Coryphyfish" or whatever in Inquisition.
Oh, God, thankfully I never even started a single conversation with Sera. Thought she was annoying from the get go. BioWare can be great at unexpected humor, but sometimes they miss the mark really bad.
In the case o Corypheus, this was handled better, I think. I mean, I never even got that dialogue from Sera, so mocking the villain wasn't as prominent as an entire loyalty mission like in Andromeda. And Corypheus was a better developed villain than the Kett as well.

Inquisition has another example of mocking an antagonist without making them a joke. After Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, if you end up killing the duchess, you actually get to judge her remains. And sentence her with community service, which results in the War Table operation "The Duchess In a Box Tour". It's easily the most hilarious, tongue-in-cheek part of Inquisition and it doesn't undermine the antagonist because it only happens after you've dealt with her.
 

Kin5290

Member
From the prolonged and directionless preproduction, to bringing on a less than competent company man to push the work into production, the development of Mass Effect Andromeda sounds a lot like the development of Iron Fist.
 

tuxfool

Banned
So I wonder: what is the state of Frostbite as of today?

How is the workflow and learning curve?

Is it now a Frankenstein of disparate duct-taped subsystems from other EA developers?

What is DICE's role in supporting other developers if they need a new gameplay feature?

Short of somebody at EA telling us, nobody knows. Conference presentations don't really give an insight into those workflows. I would say internal tools will be a lot more raw than something like UE4 or Unity, though it may be that they treat their tools etc like a 3rd party would.
 

nynt9

Member
I wouldn't agree, but it would be a far more reasonable statement than things like "total shambles" "train wreck" "broken" "shit" and "garbage". So sure.

I mean, the game was broken in some ways at launch, and the development story makes it sound like it was indeed in total shambles. The writing/story are pretty shit. It's not that inaccurate.
 

dapoktan

Member
shitty animations and naggy bugs are one thing that I think more polish and time would have fixed.

What wouldnt be fixed is the half baked story..

I really was excited at the reveal thinking this would be a focus on exploration, diplomacy, building colonies, making crucial decisions on which planet to try and visit next while measuring risk and resources..

instead we arrived in a fully explored galaxy with yet another evil assimilating enemy and an extinct mysterious race... sigh.
 

AXE

Member
People are usually attracted by crash&burn. I would love to read an in-depth article about a team that wasn't in dire straits, but quite to the contrary.

I will get this game if it becomes around 5 euros.
 

NolbertoS

Member
I got a question. Why didn't EA let Bioware use the Unreal Engine 4?? Is it because EA doesn't mandate using other engines?? Or is there a company mandated memo stating Frostbite or your project gets canned. The first 3 ME were using Unreal Engines and it did great. EA messed with the formula and tried something new and paid for it by downsizing Bioware Montreal. Think its a damn shame that Mass Effect: Andromeda got released all buggy as hell
 
Excellent article. I started getting kind of anxious reading it, thinking about the nightmare that it must have been to show up for work day after day for five years on a project that's just slipping further and further away.

Though I had to laugh at this part:

...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.)

police-reaction-face.jpg


Good luck with that, guys :p
 
I'm not sure the audience for Mass Effect and Star Wars overlaps as much as you might assume..

I somehow think the same could be said about Andromeda and the last gen trilogy... heck, even ME1 vs 2 and 3.


I can't help but imagine that even if production would have went according to plan with Andomeda, we still would have gotten a ME game that nobody really ever wanted to see, some people just wanted some of that magic back and it was never going to be found here.
 

Renekton

Member
I got a question. Why didn't EA let Bioware use the Unreal Engine 4?? Is it because EA doesn't mandate using other engines?? Or is there a company mandated memo stating Frostbite or your project gets canned. The first 3 ME were using Unreal Engines and it did great. EA messed with the formula and tried something new and paid for it by downsizing Bioware Montreal. Think its a damn shame that Mass Effect: Andromeda got released all buggy as hell
From the article, the decisions seem to be Bioware management's rather than any EA strong-arming.

Frostbite sounded good on paper circa 2013.
 

Nokterian

Member
Not finished yet but goddamn EA really doesn't know what there doing also Frostbite? Yeah beautiful engine for sure to think it is even more complex than i thought it would.

Could have been much better if it utilized UE4 by that matter. Still very good stuff from jason..a shame how this game ended up..
 

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
Thanks Jason, that was an excellent piece. I feel so sorry for the staff in those conditions. That crunch just sounds brutal. I have no idea how people mentally make it through a situation like that
 

patapuf

Member
From the article, the decisions seem to be Bioware management's rather than any EA strong-arming.

Frostbite sounded good on paper circa 2013.

TBF, UE 4 likely wouldn't have worked out of the box either. It's been having a really slow adaption and some problems on it's own.

How many big open world games have we seen on UE4 that would suggest it would have been much better than frostbite ?
 

Firenze1

Banned
Wait they blaming frosbite?! Wtf. DICE has no problem using that engine. Plus frostbite was used without issues in Dragon age.

Poor exuses by bioware.
 
Wait they blaming frosbite?! Wtf. DICE has no problem using that engine. Plus frostbite was used without issues in Dragon age.

Poor exuses by bioware.
Please read the article. The engine not having an animation system is pretty bonkers and unthinkable in 2017.

I guess I was in part right when I said that a lot of problems seemed related to the engine, the question is why they still weren't fixed them by DA. Someone HAD to pick up the phone and talk with the engineers by that point, right?
 

Yeul

Member
Lol wtf? Have you seen Battlefront? Excellent graphics and performance.

Not dice fault that bioware sucks.

Frostbite was created specifically for games like Batllefront/Battlefield. The difficulties arose because the games that BioWare creates (RPGs/Action-RPGs) absolutely do not operate the same way that FPS games do. See something like Dragon Age: Inquisition that allows for you to switch between party members and employ a tactical camera, have an RPG-grade inventory and crafting system, etc. Those elements had to be created entirely from scratch.
 

EGOMON

Member
One of my top gaming purchase regret second only to the Elder Scroll Online, and both companies Bethesda and Bioware are never going to have my money again even if they release a great game I will buy it second hand no DLCs or MTs
 

gogosox82

Member
Great article. Its sad that this is how ME is going to be sent off. I think there is a lot of blame to go around but I think this mostly falls on Bioware's upper management. Their scope was way too big for a game like Mass Effect. You don't have to go to every single planet there is, you just need to make the ones we do get to explore interesting and exciting. And it had no focus either. 3 years and they didn't have a focus until Mac Walters came on board. That's just poor management.

I also think EA's insistence that all their games run on Frostbite is hurting Bioware. Their games don't fit in Frostbite. What does EA expect when they are making them use an engine that doesn't have animations in it and Bioware has to build them on their own? Its amazing that DA was well received (though I think they are just lucky that no good AAA games came out that year or that game would've been shit on instead of being praised) and ME even came out or wasn't more busted than it was. I'm now really worried about DA4. I wasn't big on the direction it took and just hearing how limiting Frostbite is makes me feel that DA4 will never reach its potential.

Wait they blaming frosbite?! Wtf. DICE has no problem using that engine. Plus frostbite was used without issues in Dragon age.

Poor exuses by bioware.

Did you read the article? Frostbite doesn't have animations in their engine. Bioware had to build them into the engine from scratch all by themselves. EA forcing them to use Frostbite isn't the main reason why ME:A failed but it sure as hell didn't help.
 

Talax

Member
Yeah, I think anyone who found this story interesting will love my book, which consists of 10 stories like this one, each about a different game ranging from excellent (The Witcher 3) to disastrous (Star Wars 1313). The ME:A story is... DLC.

Does it have FFXV?
Edit: Oh I just saw the cover of the book. No FFXV. But still I'd like to read the whole thig so will definitely buy the book in September. Maybe Part 2 will have FFXV? :p

I think these games should steer clear of procedural generation until they can figure out how to overcome the flaws. Reading the article they pretty much realised the end result that No Man's Sky got eventually.
 

Kuosi

Member
Sure the team would have had easier time if Frostbite had all the features already, then you take a look at numerous of other games that use their own engine and had to build all from scratch, the team simply wasn't competent enough to craft the missing stuff from Frostbite, be it lack of talent,time or funding. Just look at the comparison videos of dialog system from ME:A vs Witcher 3 it's pretty laughable.
 

Rodhull

Member
Lol wtf? Have you seen Battlefront? Excellent graphics and performance.

Not dice fault that bioware sucks.

C'mon at least read the article the threads based on. It goes into detail why the engine isn't suited for this kind of game and caused issues for both Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
 

dr_rus

Member
From the article, the decisions seem to be Bioware management's rather than any EA strong-arming.

Frostbite sounded good on paper circa 2013.

Why would Bioware move from a tried and tested tech which they've used for at least ten years already to a new engine which doesn't provide that many benefits above what's possible in UE?
 
Excellent article. I started getting kind of anxious reading it, thinking about the nightmare that it must have been to show up for work day after day for five years on a project that's just slipping further and further away.

Though I had to laugh at this part:



police-reaction-face.jpg


Good luck with that, guys :p

This is an unpopular opinion, and I love BW, but they always have been up their own ass.

Always.

This isn't a new development. They've always thought they were the King Shit, and internally refer to themselves as the King Shit.
 

darkinstinct

...lacks reading comprehension.
Did you read the article? Frostbite doesn't have animations in their engine. Bioware had to build them into the engine from scratch all by themselves. EA forcing them to use Frostbite isn't the main reason why ME:A failed but it sure as hell didn't help.

The article says that but I find that hard to believe. Battlefield has a lot of animations, so of course Frostbite has support for animations.
 
Why would Bioware move from a tried and tested tech which they've used for at least ten years already to a new engine which doesn't provide that many benefits above what's possible in UE?
Because UE4 wasn't ready and they saw how pretty Battlefield 4 was and thought "this is the one." /s

Seriously though, Frostbite was used for one title that wasn't a shooter until DA:I, which also had a troubled development. Only EA can be blamed for pre-production woes, I'm just surprised they gave Bioware so much time to push out Andromeda.
 

Patryn

Member
Wait they blaming frosbite?! Wtf. DICE has no problem using that engine. Plus frostbite was used without issues in Dragon age.

Poor exuses by bioware.

Without issues in Dragon Age? The DA dev team has famously complained about Frostbite multiple times. Getting Frostbite to work was a massive pain and one of the largest challenges for the Dragon Age team, as the article mentions.

It just looks like the Dragon Age team had better leadership and planning and was able to overcome the challenges in a way that the ME team couldn't.

Please read the article. The engine not having an animation system is pretty bonkers and unthinkable in 2017.

I guess I was in part right when I said that a lot of problems seemed related to the engine, the question is why they still weren't fixed them by DA. Someone HAD to pick up the phone and talk with the engineers by that point, right?

I'm reading between the lines here, but it sounds like in the rivalry between Edmonton and Montreal communication broke down, and some of the solutions that Edmonton found to the Frostbite problems weren't handed over to Montreal.
 

panda-zebra

Member
Very interesting and eye-opening read, it's more understandable why certain aspects of the game are such a step backwards from previous ME games. There's a few parallels with Destiny in some regards. Tempted by the book now, love this kind of insight.
 
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