Mass Effect: Andromeda

I'm disappointed in the novel. Andromeda wasn't a bad game,didn't feel like it had much direction. The other thing I noticed though.... the Kett are basically a palette lift of the Grineer from War Frame...

Anyway, they could've done a really horror style DLC with the Quarian Ark too.

Hell, the FRANCHISE has some great potential. If they aren't keen on a core single player game, they could still do a weird horde mode hybrid - some mix of F 2 P - (build a crew of collectible allies which you can put in your squad and do repeat missions as a merc crew - A la warframe - or some "strikes" -A la Destiny)

Heck, the squadmates alone would fit right in with their monetisation model.

I still think they gave up too quickly on it. But EA relaunching a major SF brand right after the yink the Star Wars IP? Yeah they are clearly only going to focus on the guaranteed money-spinner.

To play the Devil's advocate... I think EA is more likely risk-adverse towards games that seem to be in danger of entering development hell, as of recently.

Granted, my stance makes little sense because of how EA themselves made a public announcement about their newfound focus towards multiplayer cash-machines, but I have a hunch that might've been to save face with investors. After all, EA is a company on the stock market, and needs to generate shares: any sort of news that makes it sound like they're gonna be raking in more cash is good news as far as they're concerned, whereas news that they're gonna be supporting an ailing project means a loss of interest and confidence. Remember: investors only give a crap about the bottom line of money, they don't care about actual quality or what the gaming community really wants.

There was an article released by Kotaku which interviewed several former staff members of EA Visceral shortly after the news broke about their game's cancellation and studio closure. While virtually nobody wanted to release their names publicly, there was consensus on one point: their project was in trouble. Several of Visceral's design team realized their project was in jeopardy for more than a couple of years, mainly due to being stretched too thin after dealing with Battlefield: Hardline, being too costly to maintain (they were housed in San Francisco, a notoriously expensive city to live in), bleeding crucial staff members, and having managerial friction from within. Even worse, the staff admitted that the project was probably too ambitious in regards to how complex the AI partners were, and had little to show in terms of actual gameplay or design, aside from being "Uncharted in SPACE!"

And guess what other title in EA's roster had some major development issues? Mass Effect: Andromeda. That project went through a ton of managerial changes, revisions, changes in staff, and other chaos, and that's only the stuff we know. I'm absolutely certain there's more drama we never got to hear about behind the scenes with Andromeda.

This also happened with the canceled FPS title Tiberium: EA felt the game wasn't coming together, and also felt the development team was acting amateurish, wasting time on stuff like a boardgame based on Tiberium in which nobody would ever play (it was an in-house creation). Hell, even some of the die-hard C&C fans who had a sneak-peak at the game's plot disliked it, because it was clearly taking it's own weird direction from the series and changed (or ignored) a bunch of crucial details in the canon.

So basically, EA might not actually have it out for singleplayer experiences as badly as some people believe. It just might be more due to pragmatic business decisions to kill projects that just aren't going to pan out.

edited 30th Oct '17 7:54:56 AM by SgtRicko

Good points. Whilst we do normally take the side of the Dev, it is clear that some of these teams have toxic or poor cultures that don't gel well. And just because you're a ger doesn't make you a good leader or project manager.

It's a shame, but I think you're right that they are trying to manage a business and you can't indulge poor activities that don't generate anything. They don't have that luxury. Admittedly some of their leadership may be too far removed from the stories, fan culture and things to understand crafting a game, the devs are also likewise removed from the day to day of having to run a business, pay salaries, cover operational costs, rent office space etc.

It's why the upper echelons of major publishers rarely do something groundbreaking or interesting with franchises; and likewise smaller creatives are find it harder execute interesting visions. A lot of gaming now is just incremental iteration on formula (not always bad) because of how limiting a lot of gameplay is. How many recent games are massive boring sandboxes now? Do they need to be? (And I say that as someone who used to want every game to be open world...)

Arguably these dev teams need a very very focused brief at the start and then a stricter project timetable to stick to. But that requires a VERY clear idea of what you want to achieve at the end. Which is sometimes only realised halfway through a project. ME: A sounded far too grand in scope.

EA provides that management, and I think that underestimates the extent to which their high-level directives ultimately hurt companies that weren't really built to take on the particular design challenges being asked of them, ie. the company that made Dead Space being asked to make an Uncharted-killer while splitting their time on a Battlefield game using an unfamiliar engine— again, making that assumption that all companies should work the same way and forcing the issue without concern for the existing skillsets and workflows of the companies involved, then blaming the company for being unable to adapt and laying them off. Visceral Montreal was only founded to act as support specifically because bringing in a larger team in San Francisco would have been too expensive.

Similarly, Bioware Montreal allowed EA to draw on resources they already had in Montreal without having to lure anyone to the less desirable Edmonton. And the Montreal branch did have a lot of resources and time put into them, but they were mismanaged and the team was inexperienced at this kind of development, because this wasn't like they'd transplanted a significant number of Bioware veterans. A lot of these were devs who might have wanted to work on this kind of game but never actually had, but this isn't the kind of game development where you can just draft and redraft and work it all out later. There's a certain amount of apprenticeship to it, if you want the finished product to reflect the name behind it.

It's something that only comes through time, and time is unfortunately the one thing EA isn't about to give out any more of: they want these development cycles to get shorter from game to game, not longer. I don't think Bioware was ever going to be the moneymaker they wanted— I don't think that single-player RP Gs ever could've been. It's just a shame.

tl;dr The devs aren't perfect, but EA saddling them with new engines and harsh deadlines didn't help any.

MEA was definitely far too unfocused early on and went through a number of major overhauls, including the project lead being shuffled out (twice I think), and a large part of the game as written wasn't finalized until the last year of development. That's partly on the company, but also partly on EA for thinking you can just build that kind of talent in a day, that kind of environment, the level of coordination and understanding you need. Opening a studio and slapping Bioware above the door does not another Bioware make.

edited 30th Oct '17 5:28:01 PM by Unsung

Apparently book was to be a thing well in advance, so kind of seems like EA was never planning to release DLC for Andromeda <_<

Eh, not really. Bioware always does tie-in books, and I suspect the book was originally going to set up the the DLC but not resolve it.

It's far easier to re-write a book within a short timespan than a game. It's just pages and words, after all, whereas a game will need to be re-tooled and overhauled in so many different ways. So it's not impractical to imagine that the books were merely part of the contract from the beginning and never actually intended to be the conclusion of Andromeda.

edited 31st Oct '17 5:32:43 PM by SgtRicko

If Bioware does close, who's currently left that could found a successful indie game studio? I mean, David Gaider is gone and doesn't seem to be interested in making video games anymore and Mike Laidlaw seems to be taking up a new career as a streamer. I can't really think of anyone in the company who's really responsible for Bioware Model of game play or storytelling.

Regardless if Anthem kills DA 4 (either by being a huge success causing EA to cancel any non-multiplayer Bioware games or failing spectacularly causing EA to shut Bioware down) I hope that we can at least get a conclusion the major story arcs of the games through novels. Mass Effects death, sad as it is, at least leaves very little in terms of big, sweeping plot arcs behind in its wake. Dragon Age basically has the whole history of its world left to tell.

At this point, Bioware is mostly a brand name used only to grab the community's attention more than anything else. So we're not really losing anything as of now, except the type of AAA funding and support that a corporation like EA can provide.

A good example: you know C&C Generals 2? The original name for the development studio was Bioware Victory in 2012. And that was supposed to be an RTS development studio making a F 2 P online-only game, with the campaign being a secondary concern.

edited 1st Nov '17 12:18:52 AM by SgtRicko

It's a shame - I hope the re-energise ME. But the trilogy was a good self contained story on the whole. Trying to bottle that lightning was always going to be difficult. Yeah the ending shot them in the foot a wee bit, but they could've found a way to work around it.

Instead we got Organic Reapers with religion and nail in the dev coffin. But I agree the "spirit" of Bioware seems to have gone. Same as with Bullfrog and Westwood. EA are a powerhouse but they don't seem to "get" what makes a culture. I work for a major corporation and I see it repeated here - lots of talk about how they "appreciate" diverse teams... but when push comes to shove they chop and change to push work through, damn the consequences.

And that stems from short term thinking and immediate results, overlaid with the only long term view being profitability...

"That culture wouldn't be that great if you were for sale...", pretty much.

I do think its kind of telling that all of Bioware's main staff seem to retire from game development altogether

Dunno if anyone posted this, but Steven Gilmore, Lead Animator for Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Anthem left the company.

See what I mean? At this point, Bioware is just a title, nothing more. The original senior crew have mostly departed.

Well Technically Casey Hudson did return in july this year.

Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen

Well, I don't suppose anyone here knows what the next best game studio is when it comes story-based computer RP Gs? It looks like Bioware is beginning to die.

Western ones? Nothing really.

On the Japanese side Falcom is probably the best right now and also the oldest, all their stuff is hitting PC now, with Square Enix and Bamco following behind them.

edited 5th Nov '17 11:32:56 AM by Memers

CD Projekt Red? Obsidian? Larian? I mean, it's not like there's a lack of talented people making RP Gs.

Yeah, CD Projekt RED and Obsidian were the first ones to immediately pop into my head. Although, of course, neither of those make games in the exact "Bio Ware" style; CD Projekt probably aren't going to switch to doing party-based RP Gs, and Obsidian are currently all-in on more traditional, throwback isometric games. But I guess things all come to end eventually, whatever course Bio Ware goes in the future. We'll always have Jade Empire, no?

edited 5th Nov '17 11:47:12 AM by Lavaeolus

Well we haven't seen Cyberpunk much yet, but usually it's a team game

That's true, but it's still a big open-world game from what I've heard. You could try to do 'BioWare-style' companions — e.g. Fallout 4, despite itself, probably owes a lot to BioWare — but I think it's very likely that'll it end up with differences to Bio Ware's kind of companion design.

edited 5th Nov '17 12:05:55 PM by Lavaeolus

I do like Obsidian games, though since Pillars of Eternity their games have become pretty hard. Do you guys know of any guide that will make playing Pillars more understandable for someone like me who's grown up with Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Kotor?

edited 5th Nov '17 12:01:08 PM by Ludlow

I mean Dragon Age might survive, but it does seem like Mass Effect is pretty much dead in the water.

I don't know if I want to necessarily say that any series is gone for good, or even that Bio Ware is going to disappear in the upcoming years. Mass Effect still, after all, has some name recognition, and for all the mocking Andromeda received it wasn't a complete and utter disaster; and all of Edmonton's games have been received positively, even if the later ones haven't been as regarded as classics as in their heyday.

But you look at the staff leaving, and you look at something like Anthem, and the truth is that maybe the Bio Ware coming up won't be the 'Bio Ware' we know today. And obviously that's not always inherently bad, change happens and individual good new games may come out, but it's hard not to get that sense that Bio Ware's proverbial Golden Age has long passed.

edited 5th Nov '17 12:57:35 PM by Lavaeolus