Andromeda - The End...

[DexGames]

https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/19/16174510/mass-effect-andromeda-no-dlc-last-update

https://twitter.com/masseffect/status/899030727089569792

 

Sad day in the Milky Way,

This looks like a little death for the Franchise. The critical disappointment at launch, regarding the Game's Issues, seems to have led to this.

I wonder what can we expect for the Future of this IP. I personaly don't want the so-called "highly awaited" Anthem to replace this Franchise.

 

Maybe it's time for Obsidian to save another IP !

(I know this will probably never happen but... Never Say Never)

 

Seriously though, it's really sad for Mass Effect to end like this... 

[Darkpriest]

Every game studio under EA ends like this. Biowarejust had some luck with starting out with strong 2 titles Dragon Age and Mass Effect.  Mass Effect is dead now, and I'm fairly sure Dragon Age is not much better.

 

The new title will be a nail in the coffin once it crashes on its face

[MortyTheGobbo]

The original Mass Effect setting was unsustainable beyond the original trilogy and Shepard's story. It was never going to grow beyond that.  The franchise's future relied on Andromeda opening up a new setting, and its reception was what it was. So, yeah, the franchise is kind of over, unless they remaster Mass Effect 1.

 

Anthem looks to be yet another massively-multiplayer shooter, so I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Edited August 20, 2017 by MortyTheGobbo

[Blarghagh]

Moved to Computer & Console.

[Hawke64]

Unfortunate, but ending support for ME:A doesn't mean that the sequel is out of the question. I guess, there will be something after Anthem and DA4.

Hudson and Gamble seem to be quite optimistic (as possible in this situation).

 

https://twitter.com/CaseyDHudson/status/899094294589341696
https://twitter.com/GambleMike/status/899096870835765249

[the_dog_days]

If they ever go back to Mass Effect I pray they pretend that Andromeda never happened.

[Orogun01]

The game sold well despite its troubles, the way that this whole thing has been handled does smell of corporate ****ery and lends credence to the claims that BW Edmonton was out to sabotage the project.

[GhostofAnakin]

The game sold well despite its troubles, the way that this whole thing has been handled does smell of corporate ****ery and lends credence to the claims that BW Edmonton was out to sabotage the project.

 

I wonder how much of its sales were due to name recognition (ie. fans of the previous trilogy bought it regardless of ratings/reviews), but it didn't generate the type of new sales that Bio/EA expected beyond the already existing fans.

[Malcador]

Maybe it'll go on a sufficiently deep sale now.

[Bokishi]

It had its 10 years; onto the new

[the_dog_days]

The game sold well despite its troubles, the way that this whole thing has been handled does smell of corporate ****ery and lends credence to the claims that BW Edmonton was out to sabotage the project.

 

I doubt there was any corporate sabotage. EA offered to let BioWare push back the release date six months, but they declined. More than anything, I see this as combination of recognizing that ME:A was a stinker and distancing themselves from it as quickly as possible, and just wanting to reallocate personnel to work on Anthem. (Remember, BioWare Montreal was originally EA Montreal, and EA loaned the staff out to BioWare to make (under BioWare supervision) ME:A.)

[Zoraptor]

EA gave them plenty of time and (it seems at least) plenty of freedom to do MEA, can't really see anyone to blame other than Bioware for the project not being well run. Only thing you can blame EA for perhaps is deciding Battleborn 2.0 Anthem should be a thing in precedence to anything else, the sensible approach may have been to have the Montreal team do that (since they did ME3 MP) and have the Edmonton team do Andromeda. Then again if Anthem works it'll make a lot of money, if it works.

 

Only good thing for Mass Effect as a whole is that at least Andromeda is discrete, if they want to do another game it can basically be ignored or used as much or as little as they want.

[Keyrock]

Pfft, all y'all crying that there may never be a fifth Mass Effect will get no sympathy from me; I've been waiting 12 years (and counting) for a second Jade Empire.

 

Mass Effect maybe should have just stayed as a trilogy, not everything needs to become a 247 game long franchise like AC and CoD.  It was a 3 part story and it wrapped up with a definitive conclusion, even if that conclusion was complete hogwash and about as satisfying as biting into a head of iceberg lettuce.

 

One big problem with Andromeda is that by taking this game out of the Milky Way they essentially removed some of the more interesting and entertaining races like the Elcor and Volus (who were woefully underutilized in the original trilogy as is) and they weren't replaced with anything of real interest.  Then there's the issue of the game starting off at a snails pace and really dragging in the beginning before they let you loose on the galaxy.  In fairness, the first Mass Effect basically followed the same formula, except that the Citadel was infinitely a more interesting and enjoyable place to explore and traverse while you did mundane tasks than the Nexus.

[marelooke]

 

The game sold well despite its troubles, the way that this whole thing has been handled does smell of corporate ****ery and lends credence to the claims that BW Edmonton was out to sabotage the project.

 

I doubt there was any corporate sabotage. EA offered to let BioWare push back the release date six months, but they declined. More than anything, I see this as combination of recognizing that ME:A was a stinker and distancing themselves from it as quickly as possible, and just wanting to reallocate personnel to work on Anthem. (Remember, BioWare Montreal was originally EA Montreal, and EA loaned the staff out to BioWare to make (under BioWare supervision) ME:A.)

 

 

We don't know the terms attached to "pushing the release date back six months", they might very well have been deemed unacceptable.

[MortyTheGobbo]

Pfft, all y'all crying that there may never be a fifth Mass Effect will get no sympathy from me; I've been waiting 12 years (and counting) for a second Jade Empire.

 

Mass Effect maybe should have just stayed as a trilogy, not everything needs to become a 247 game long franchise like AC and CoD.  It was a 3 part story and it wrapped up with a definitive conclusion, even if that conclusion was complete hogwash and about as satisfying as biting into a head of iceberg lettuce.

 

One big problem with Andromeda is that by taking this game out of the Milky Way they essentially removed some of the more interesting and entertaining races like the Elcor and Volus (who were woefully underutilized in the original trilogy as is) and they weren't replaced with anything of real interest.  Then there's the issue of the game starting off at a snails pace and really dragging in the beginning before they let you loose on the galaxy.  In fairness, the first Mass Effect basically followed the same formula, except that the Citadel was infinitely a more interesting and enjoyable place to explore and traverse while you did mundane tasks than the Nexus.

 

Maybe it should have stayed a trilogy. The original games created a paradox, in that they introduced this super fun space opera setting that people wanted to engage with... but then their story was laser-focused on Commander Shepard fighting the Reapers, with everything feeding into that. Once that was over, there was very little room to continue.

Edited August 21, 2017 by MortyTheGobbo

[Oerwinde]

I liked Andromeda, unfortunately it was like a DC movie. It was too busy setting up future games and not worrying enough about the game itself. I hope it gets a sequel because I want to see more of Kett society and see who the mysterious backer is and such.

[213374U]

Yeah. To no one's surprise, their "significant contributor to revenue", and whose performance they were satisfied with has been dropped like a bad habit. Gotta love corp-speak.

 

Clearly this has been a managerial cluster****, and it's not even the first time. I wonder how many flagship projects have to crash and burn at biower before they realize who can and who cannot be let at the helm?

 

Anyone who may be inclined to defend EA here haven't been keeping up with their practices regarding MP monetisation, btw.

 

Rest in pieces.

[FlintlockJazz]

ME3 stuck the ME franchise in a position it couldn't easily get out of plot wise, and I'm not just talking the ending here but the whole plotline.  It stuck it in a position where any more stories from other characters just wouldn't make sense or fit.  And worst of all, it did all that while not being very good.  I wasn't expecting Shakespear or Asimov level of writing (seriously, Bioware was never a beacon of literature), but even I could have come up with something better than that...

 

I got ME:A on PS4 (ain't gonna let that stuff contaminate my PC) for my girlfriend, who is very specifically a Mass Effect Fangirl (she didn't even know about the Dragon Age games until I told her its that specific).  She ditched it after a couple of sessions in favour of starting yet another Mass Effect playthrough of the original trilogy.  I watched her play some of it, tried it a bit after she ditched it, then ditched it myself in favour of a new Witcher 3 playthrough.  Gameplay is bland, the plotline is just dire ****, the new races were just mind-numbingly obnoxious, the Milky Way races were just kinda 'there', and so many other problems.

 

ME:A is like the second and third Matrix films, unneeded and dire additions to what was a self-contained film.  Comparing the original Matrix movie to the original Mass Effect trilogy is an insult to the Matrix, especially with how the third one went, I just mean in regards to their offshoots.

[the_dog_days]

I liked Andromeda, unfortunately it was like a DC movie. It was too busy setting up future games and not worrying enough about the game itself.

This and being indecisive about wanting to be either a continuation or a reboot are the biggest problems with the writing.

Edited August 21, 2017 by the_dog_days

[rjshae]

I suppose Mass Effect: Endromeda belongs to the modding community now. Lets hope they do good work.

[ShadySands]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2017/08/21/bioware-is-making-a-huge-mistake-by-not-releasing-mass-effect-andromeda-story-dlc/

[Zoraptor]

Shame Forbes is such a pain with its anti ad blocker (and such a bigger pain if you turn your ad blocker off) since Erik Kain is always an interesting read.

 

(Google cache version)

 

Anyone who may be inclined to defend EA here haven't been keeping up with their practices regarding MP monetisation, btw.

 

I'd see MP monetisation as a separate issue. I also fundamentally don't care about it, since I don't play it.

 

But by and large I wouldn't defend anyone's MP policies, I was even mildly annoyed by something as trivial as Larian having the MP rps minigame in SP DivinityOS, and stuff like the 'forced' MP in ME3 to get war score was obnoxious- but it was only 'forced' since I never did it. In Andromeda's case I'd need a fair bit of convincing that MP or EA's policy towards it was the reason the game failed, and BiowareM knew the requirement for it before development started. It's also, in the end, the player's collective fault that such focuses on MP happen, if nobody bought premier packs and loot boxes and game currency and trivial skins etc etc etc then the companies would not do them. Can't generally say the same for a poor SP game though there are examples (Fallout 4).

Edited August 21, 2017 by Zoraptor

[Orogun01]

 

The game sold well despite its troubles, the way that this whole thing has been handled does smell of corporate ****ery and lends credence to the claims that BW Edmonton was out to sabotage the project.

 

I wonder how much of its sales were due to name recognition (ie. fans of the previous trilogy bought it regardless of ratings/reviews), but it didn't generate the type of new sales that Bio/EA expected beyond the already existing fans.

 

There were other reasons as to why the game was messy but they claim that office politics between Edmonton and Montreal hindered the game. Skip to around 4:28 if you only interested in that

[Keyrock]

^ "The Bob Dylan of Video Games" (I'm assuming this refers to Anthem?) just about broke my Pretentiousness Meter.

[Malcador]

Eh, who knows what their naming convention is for code names for projects (frankly I'd steal stuff from Rogue Spear, imagine working on Project Pandora Trigger) , might not be pretentious and them just taking them the next off the list.