Exactly, I was expecting a Skyrim quality game that would go on to become an instant classic let alone become the undisputed GOTY, and all i got was an interesting but flawed game. Something that shouldve never left the peer review stage. A producer from MS or someone from the first party leadership with gaming experience wouldve seen that immediately.
Hell, even
Gaiff
listed problems with the game that were apparent within the first 6 hours when he posted his thread the other day. Id say gaffers instantly knew there was something off with the game, and while I can understand bethesda not catching on to it because they were too close to the development, Microsoft wasnt. They must have a first party team that oversees development on these games. Shu Yoshida himself went to play games at crucial design stages. Why couldnt Matt Booty do that 3 years ago? 2-3 hours in of constant fast travel, barren open worlds, and disjointed feeling quest design wouldve stuck out immediately to ANY experienced gamer, let alone a professional incharge of overseeing game development.
I wanted MS team to turn up and say,
ok lets implement better streaming so there isnt constant loading in the game. We have some solutions that take advantage of the new SSDs and IO in our new console. Direct storage, SFS, whatever. Let us help you build a better more cohesive game. We have engineering teams at the ready to help mitigate any developmental delays. Welcome to a trillion dollar company.
P.S Jason Schrier's expose on Mass Effect Andromeda indicated that the dev team spent 3 years prototype procedurally generated worlds a la Starfield and No Mans Sky, but ended up abandoning the concept because it simply didnt come together. They ended up shipping five massive handcrafted planets that you could explore, and while the game was blasted in the reviews for bugs, id say it had more rewarding exploration, and more cohesive mission structure than Starfield due to that decision to gut procedural generation of planets. So someone either at Bioware or EA forced them to throw 3 years of dev work because it wasnt working. When EA has better producers than Microsoft, maybe its time to make a change.