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[Golgo 13]

The only reason, on an empirical level:

None of the people who composed BioWare in the Mass Effect 1 and 2 days are still at the company.

I believe a recent analysis indicated that %99 of the employees from that time have left the company, including but not limited to key creative personnel such as writers, game directors, programmers, leadership, and more. It’s literally only the “same” studio in name. The talent has dispersed and moved on and it’s a subpar operation currently that’s horrifically mismanaged.

/thread

 

[Ascend]

I think fundamentally it's just the cycle of life. Bioware started off and developed and saw its first real spurt of brilliance with the release of Baldur's Gate in 1998, then was in full bloom between 2000 and 2012 and afterwards it rapidly declined until it became a corpse (officially once Andromeda released). After that it's been propping up a dead company of which nothing remains that made it what we loved it for. People get confused because the name is the same, but it's not the same. Bioware is dead. It makes me sad because they made my favourite game of all time, and a few others that could well fight for that title also, but it's not coming back.

Not to worry though, others will take its place. That is part of the cycle too.

I'd love to see a modern Jade Empire equivalent game.

 

[Halo is Back]

Andromeda is a better game than Mass Effect 3.

 

[TheMay30thMan]

Just for confirmation;

 

[royox]

Explain.

When creating a game like Mass Effect your efforts and time should be invested on story, characters and gameplay not to make the game inclusive to pander every snowflake and SJW as they did with Andromeda. I still that NPC "HEY I'M TRANS!!!".

Also Bioware started hiring by "inclusion standards and equality" instead of by quality. When instead of hiring THE BESTS you hire people based on sex and color of skin you get shitty results.

 

[meech]

Mass Effect 2 is hilariously overrated.Also did everyone forget retarded dialog like "heavy risk, but the price"? Or the dumb lines of Harbringer?

 

[Cliff Underside]

I wouldn't say ME3 was decent. At the time people mostly focused on the ending controversy, and then Andromeda came along and was so bad it sort of vindicated 3 in the eyes of many, but imao it was a mess on the technical side too: zero polish, corners cut everywhere, pitiful side content. A game so clearly rushed It makes Cyberpunk 2077 look like RDR2.

Nothing bad to say about the first 2 though, they were pretty awesome, but I've no interest in the series anymore.

 

[Captain Toad]

Mass Effect 2 is hilariously overrated.Also did everyone forget retarded dialog like "heavy risk, but the price"? Or the dumb lines of Harbringer?

I don't know if Mass Effect 2 is overrated or Mass Effect 1 and 3 are underrated. I loved the trilogy, but 2 was the weakest part to me. The whole game is almost exclusively character side missions. Definitely a step back from the great story pacing of part one.

 

[worldwithpyramids]

It’s clear that the staff at BioWare now is just an entirely different group of people than the people who worked on Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR and Mass Effect. They went from having the best writing in video games to some of the worst. Just absolutely fucking unbearable. It’s really something to behold, honestly.

It’s why I find it hilarious that they’re still announcing games with just teasers that have no gameplay or any info at all. Like, you’re no longer on that level BioWare. You have lost the privilege of excitement on name alone. Studio is an embarrassment now.

 

[Spokker]

Of course this shit is the first post vs the actual guiding hands having retired and the veterans long gone it’s definitely all “diversities” fault that the equivalent of the Rare exodus happened at the studio.

Yeah, no one else knows how to make video games but those veterans who left Bioware. I'd modify the statement slightly to say it was forced diversity. Obviously there are plenty of women and non-whites who know how to make games. They didn't hire them. Bioware wanted the demograhics first, and the talent second.

 

[EverydayBeast]

They earned their big paycheck through EA and died that’s exactly what happened.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

"EA"

 

[The Cockatrice]

Despite its obvious issues, Andromeda, personally, has the best combat of all series. The stuff you could combine and the verticality of the combat was really amazing. If Mass Effect trilogy remaster gets a similar treatment, hell even if it doesn't I will still buy it because we still have not received a sci-fi opera as good as this particular franchise. It really is the only one and I'm shocked that no one is trying to surpass it.

 

[flibbertyjibbert]

people still bought this en masse just from the 'mass effect' name, so really proving EAs strategy correct lol

same thing happens with Cyberpunk 2077. The internet is *full* of people who are complaining/laughing about how shitty it is, but clearly still bought it. I remember the same thing happened with Andromeda. CP77 sold 13 million 'cause everyone pre-orders based on hype. The company doesn't give a crap if you dislike the game once you already bought it

Looks like Joe Public is the real culprit here.

 

[Fox Mulder]

EA.

I haven’t enjoyed anything they made in a generation, and they thoroughly destroyed promising franchises and the studios behind them. BioWare isn’t the same company that made Mass Effect anymore.

 

[Concern]

E A

 

[evanft]

Andromeda is a better game than Mass Effect 3.

From a gameplay perspective, I completely agree, especially if you play it on PC with mods.

 

[Hudo]

I think it's a result of multiple shitstorms coming together.

We first have Frostbite, which was (and still might be) unsuited for the games Bioware wants to make.

We then have the project delegated to a support studio, which had only done DLC for Mass Effect before.

We then have no involvement from Casey Hudson, the driving force behind Mass Effect, because he left the company.

We then have EA's mismanagement in how to place the game within their product line (i.e. "include some GaaS shit somehow or some microtransactions or whatever").

We then have the mess that the Mass Effect 3 dev team left behind for the new team. I mean, how do you continue from Mass Effect 3 while still trying to keep all the cool elements of Mass Effect (the characters etc.)? Andromeda was probably the least worst solution that they could come up with.

We then have (reportedly) development issues and direction issues within the team itself, where a lot of dev time was wasted because there was no clear direction/focus given by the directors.


I strongly believe that under these circumstances, the game that the new team have put out isn't actually that bad. The combat is certainly the best out of all Mass Effect games, IMHO. But it just doesn't reach the heights of the predecessors.

 

[zcaa0g]

I'm still traumatized by the turning while running animation in Andromeda. That was the worst I have seen in any 3rd person game ever.

 

[Decontamination Silo]

There's an image out there of the OG Bungie team and the 343i team side by side. It tells a story that words cannot. I think the same lesson can be applied here.

 

[Forsythia]

The downward spiral started with ME2 (classic sci-fi space opera > edgy bro shooter). But the games were still fun to play. Andromeda really is a piece of shit, haven't even finished it and every time I convince myself to plow through I still cannot do it. The combat is fun, but that's all there is. The game had so much potential with them going to Andromeda, but the first alien you see is another humanoid. None of the characters are fun either, they're just cringy. I didn't like Jack or that meathead from ME3, but they at least had personality. The story was incredibly boring as well.

BioWare really needs to scrap Andromeda from canon.

 

[KiteGr]

Watch this!