Board 8 > Fantastic long read on the troubled development of Mass Effect Andromeda

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428

I’ve spent the past three months investigating the answers to those questions. From conversations with nearly a dozen people who worked on Mass Effect: Andromeda, all of whom spoke under condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about the game, a consistent picture has emerged. The development of Andromeda was turbulent and troubled, marred by a director change, multiple major re-scopes, an understaffed animation team, technological challenges, communication issues, politics, a compressed timeline, and brutal crunch.

Many games share some of these problems, but to those who worked on it, Andromeda felt unusually difficult. This was a game with ambitious goals but limited resources, and in some ways, it’s miraculous that BioWare shipped it at all. (EA and BioWare declined to comment for this article.)

Mass Effect: Andromeda was in development for five years, but by most accounts, BioWare built the bulk of the game in less than 18 months. This is the story of what happened

this is worth reading all the way through
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Oh, awesome. I haven't even clicked yet but this is a Schreier piece, right? Love that man. He said he'd have more soon.
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Nice, thanks

I'm probably going to actually start it this or next week. I hope it's not too shit
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yeah. did he mention what the 'more' is? He mentioned in this article that he talks about Inquisition in his book.
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XIII_rocks posted...

I'm probably going to actually start it this or next week. I hope it's not too shit

it's actually my second favourite mass effect

(i don't think highly of 1 or 3, so "it's fine but has many easily identifiable flaws" is enough to take second place)
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Okay, I've read it and I'll post more detailed thoughts when I'm at the Chromebook later, but -- and not that anyone here should doubt Schreier IMO -- but I can confirm plenty of it. The troubles with Frostbite are, if anything, understated. They were having unreal difficulty with animations for Inquisition, and the stuff Darrah's team went through to get it working at all is legendarily tough.

In fact, when Schreier's book lands, expect him to reveal that the plethora of "off-camera"/free cam material in supplemental conversations back in DAI is a direct result of the tedium of animation. Content like reactive expressions during every chat, which had become a staple of BioWare by 2014, just could not be cranked out on that scale. Montreal had a different solution for Andromeda, from what I watched Leon play of the game, but I don't really know anyone up there so I can't speak to exacts.
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Jeff Zero posted...

and not that anyone here should doubt Schreier IMO

90% of all topics involving a Kotaku article are met with derision here.
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It says something about the quality of the game when I bought it brand new and haven't touched it beyond a few rounds of MP. And I loved ME2 and 3.

Like even if it's still possible to enjoy it, it's gonna be a massive step down.
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Okay, I've got some TV on the queue but before I hop into all that I'll post some thoughts.

Casey Hudson, executive producer on the main trilogy, would start a new team at BioWare Edmonton to work on a brand new intellectual property, which they gave the code-name Dylan. (That new IP’s code-name, a source said, came because Hudson and team wanted to make the Bob Dylan of video games—one that would be referenced for years to come.)

I didn't know about the origins of the codename. That's cute. Unfortunately, this is also kind of a damning thing to get out well before release. As Jason mentions, the internet does have kind of an anti-BioWare aura about itself sometimes, so "[a game] that would be referenced for years to come" is opening the floodgates to some Fyre Festival ridicule.

In early conversations throughout 2012, a team of directors in Montreal brainstormed ways in which to make the next Mass Effect that felt distinct. This group, which included several veteran BioWare employees as well as Hudson, who wanted to help guide the project through its infancy, had lots of fresh ideas for a new Mass Effect. There’d be no Reaper threat, no Commander Shepard. They could pick a brand new area of space and start over. “The goal was to go back to what Mass Effect 1 promised but failed to deliver, which was a game about exploration,” said one person who worked on the game. “Lots of people were like, ‘Hey, we never fully tapped the potential of the first Mass Effect. We figured out the combat, which is awesome. We figured out the narrative. Let’s focus on bringing back exploration.’”

This paragraph feels strangely nostalgic to me because it's what I originally heard, almost word-for-word, back in the days when I had substantial intel and I had to keep quiet about it. There was a downright infectious sense of excitement at the time. The burden of ME3's ending (and the war stories from helping to moderate the official forums back then) was eased because there was some wonderful high-concept chatter and I got to hear some of it through the grapevine. The fanbase was sour but I was looking to the future in awe.

So BioWare changed course, ditching the prequel idea. The word “Contact” stuck, though, and that became the codename for the fourth Mass Effect. (For clarity, we’ll refer to it as Andromeda for the rest of this story.)

Yeah, it was "Mass Effect: Contact" for a long time. I don't remember when the subtitle changed internally. Mid-2015, maybe.

Lehiany, who wanted to lead the game’s narrative team, came up with several ambitious ideas. One of those ideas became the core concept of Andromeda: during the events of the Mass Effect trilogy, the galaxy’s ruling Citadel council had sent a group of colonists out to a new galaxy to find habitable planets, as a contingency plan in case Commander Shepard and crew couldn’t thwart the devastating Reaper attack. You, the player, would take on the role of Pathfinder, leading the quest to rebuild civilization in the Andromeda galaxy.

Interestingly, I heard something separate of Lehiany's initial vision around that time. It's possible something was lost in (pseudo-)translation or the folks I spoke with had outdated info, but I was hearing reports that the expedition would launch post-ME3, as a sort of "Star Trek Five-Year MIssion" clause. Not sure what's up with the discrepancy.
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if bob dylan were a video game i think we can all agree he would be a shared-world multiplayer service game.
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Throughout 2013 and 2014, Andromeda’s developers played with all sorts of ideas that today sound distinctly No Man’s Sky-ish. They built prototypes in which you would pilot a spaceship around the galaxy, then use it to land on planets. From there, you could hop into your Nomad space rover and explore each new world, hunting for habitable terrain. Then you could go back into space and fly around some more. “It was a very ambitious project,” said one source. “We wanted to give the feeling of really exploring space.”

This needs to be highlighted. It's not an exaggeration to say that this was the defining pillar of the game. Seamless space travel with all the bells and whistles of a BioWare RPG -- that's what was sought. The feeling that you're out there with memorable squadmates trying to stop the bad guys, but you're also exploring strange new worlds, new civilizations. You see where I'm coming from.

Developed by the EA-owned studio DICE, Frostbite is capable of rendering gorgeous graphics and visual effects, but when BioWare first started using it, in 2011, it had never been used to make role-playing games. DICE made first-person shooters like Battlefield, and the Frostbite engine was designed solely to develop those games. When BioWare first got its hands on Frostbite, the engine wasn’t capable of performing the basic functions you’d expect from a role-playing game, like managing party members or keeping track of a player’s inventory. BioWare’s coders had to build almost everything from scratch.

(Over the past few months I’ve heard a great deal about Frostbite’s challenges. In August of last year, I went to BioWare Edmonton’s studio and interviewed many of the leads on Dragon Age: Inquisition for my book, which tells the full story of that game. In short, they had a very, very hard time.)

There's the book plug. Darrah's team had a hell of a time getting Frostbite to work and the darn thing still gave Montreal significant grief. I suspect a lack of good communication between Edmonton and Montreal (as illustrated by some of the article's mentions of unhealthy rivalry) is partly to blame. Folks thought Andromeda would be smooth with Frostbite thanks to Inquisition's hardships, but nah, the engine just sucks for this stuff. No built-in animation toolkit.

While describing Frostbite, one top developer on Mass Effect: Andromeda used the analogy of an automobile. Epic’s Unreal Engine, that developer said, is like an SUV, capable of doing lots of things but unable to go at crazy high speeds. The Unity Engine would be a compact car: small, weak, and easy to fit anyplace you’d like. “Frostbite,” the developer said, “is a sports car. Not even a sports car, a Formula 1. When it does something well, it does it extremely well. When it doesn’t do something, it really doesn’t do something.”

...Apt.
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When Walters took over, he brought a new vision to the game.

Okay, we're moving back into the scattered stuff I'd heard about ahead of time. Unsurprisingly, Walters wasn't entirely comfortable with the original vision. He needed to make it his own in some way, and I don't blame him; there were aspects to the tone, balance, rhythm of Andromeda that he disagreed with, so it was back to the drawing board to some extent. Thing is, at this point, the game needed to be moving forward. What you're seeing in 2014 is very much a Square Enix style of ineptitude, but I can't assign blame to anyone in particular. Well, some of the management decisions were rough, or in one case (there's a GlassDoor review floating about that has some interesting tidbits) kind of shady. But basically, make your "Nomura's VISION" joke for Andromeda development circa 2014. It's where the bulk of all tomfrakkery appeared.

That and uh, further on in 2015-16 when key departments were chronically understaffed.

One developer close to the project disputed the characterization that most of the game was developed in the final 18 months, saying that most of the ideas in the final game closely resembled those early visions.

I'd been under the impression that most of the game was being built between from late 2014 onward, but this tracks well enough.

When the mock reviews came in for Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare’s leads were relieved—the Metacritic was expected to be in the low-to-mid-80s, according to two sources. Although Andromeda’s developers knew the game wasn’t perfect, they were fine with a score like that. If they hit somewhere between 80 and 85, they could use what they’d built for Andromeda to make the sequel way better, much like Casey Hudson and his team had done from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2.

Then the GIFs started. EA put Mass Effect: Andromeda out early for EA Access users on March 16, five days before the game came out, which led to a weekend full of memes, anger, and nasty harassment as players shared images and gifs of the game’s many glitches. Combine that with the fact that three of the other games released in March 2017 turned out to be all-time classics (Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Nier: Automata) and you’ve got a recipe for low review scores. When the Metacritic score finally settled, Mass Effect: Andromeda wound up with a 70 (on PS4, where it has the most reviews), far lower than those who had seen the mock reviews expected.

The results were catastrophic for BioWare Montreal. Even as the team kept plugging away on patches to fix bugs, add more romance options, and polish animations, their management informed the Montreal studio that it would be scaled down and that Mass Effect was going to be shelved for a while. All hopes for an Andromeda sequel were immediately dashed. EA moved many of BioWare Montreal’s developers to EA Motive, putting others on support roles for BioWare’s other games, including Dylan and the next Dragon Age (internally referred to as Dragon Age 4).

It’s a tragic ending for a studio that set out to do something ambitious but couldn’t quite deliver.

Finally, I don't really have anything to offer here. It is, like Schreier says, a tragic end.
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Jeff Zero posted...

and not that anyone here should doubt Schreier IMO -- but I can confirm plenty of it.

...what?
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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Jeff Zero posted...

and not that anyone here should doubt Schreier IMO -- but I can confirm plenty of it.

...what?

I've never been especially loud about it, but I've had (genuine) "my dad at Nintendo" contacts through BioWare for six years. Significantly fewer in recent years, as I haven't been involved with the company since early 2013, but yeah.
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Great read.

Why couldn't they just not use Frostbite?
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KamikazePotato posted...

Why couldn't they just not use Frostbite?

EA wanted a unified engine for all its studios. I've always gotten the impression they aren't too bright about the fact that unification isn't always the smartest course.
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God, this article makes me depressed. I honestly can't remember why Hudson even left, but it seems like that was the killing blow.
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That blows. The development obviously had pre-production issues but I'm sure things would have turned out much better if they didnt have that additional weight on their backs.

You have any more info about how difficult Frostbite was for the Dragon Age team? I loved that game and never felt like the animations/RPG aspect were lacking.
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Random question for those who've played the game: How big are the maps, that 100km^2 is too small? That seems absurdly large, unless you're going at km/s-magnitude speeds.
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dowolf posted...

Random question for those who've played the game: How big are the maps, that 100km^2 is too small? That seems absurdly large, unless you're going at km/s-magnitude speeds.

Have you ever played Inquisition? Remember the Hissing Wastes? Andromeda's worlds use negative space in much the same way, but you're given a vehicle that makes each world seem much smaller
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KamikazePotato posted...

You have any more info about how difficult Frostbite was for the Dragon Age team? I loved that game and never felt like the animations/RPG aspect were lacking.

Some of it's out there in the wild already because the team leads are fairly open about the hardship. But essentially, Inquisition's a more impressive piece of software than folks typically realize, because a not-inconsiderable slice of its budget was dedicated to getting the engine up and running for an RPG, including the rigorous development of hundreds and hundreds of animations. The game itself had to be built somewhat parallel to the Frostbite entanglements, because otherwise, we wouldn't have seen it until like 2016 or whatever. So the level of communication across the board had to be stellar or else things would fall apart on a scale that I think even Andromeda's shortcomings can't rival.

Basically, it's just very impressive that the third Dragon Age game isn't a hot mess. It's good, even! Albeit, it features some dire sidequest design and I wish the story were longer.
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Just a heads-up, by the way: Schreier can't say for certain, but he does not believe there will be single-player DLC for Andromeda. Also, we will know more about Dylan "very, very soon" (read: E3?). Both statements courtesy of this article's thread over on NeoGAF.
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I still don't get this stuff at all. I honestly thought Andromeda was a great game. About as good as any in the series, with the only difference being that a lack of familiarity with the cast makes it harder to engage with the characters as much as you did in ME2/3. Significantly better than ME1, which seems like a much more fair comparison given new setting, new characters, new engine, etc.
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SmartMuffin posted...

I still don't get this stuff at all. I honestly thought Andromeda was a great game. About as good as any in the series, with the only difference being that a lack of familiarity with the cast makes it harder to engage with the characters as much as you did in ME2/3. Significantly better than ME1, which seems like a much more fair comparison given new setting, new characters, new engine, etc.

The 70 Metacritic and fanbase reception is a one-two-three punch. 1. The viral GIFs that plagued the net had a very real impact on perception. 2. March 2017 is stacked with three critically well-received games. 3. People get sour on the opening hours but frequently come around by the end stretch -- but the damage is already done.

1 and 2 I just shamelessly stole from the article. 3 is personal conjecture.
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It's all about perception. If I didn't pay critics to like Wonder Woman, people would be bashing it left and right. If I had paid critics to enjoy Andromeda, this would be less of an issue.
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I'm pro any article that calls Ulti "deranged".
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Let's not harass people that are no longer with us.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Let's not harass people that are no longer with us.

Wait did Ulti die?
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Ulti has passed on from Board 8.
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The beginning of Andromeda is atrocious, but it does get better the more you play. I think it's miles ahead of Inquisition (a game only saved by it's incredible cast) because it is just genuinely fun to play. It has a multitude of (big) problems though.
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Jeff Zero posted...

SmartMuffin posted...

I still don't get this stuff at all. I honestly thought Andromeda was a great game. About as good as any in the series, with the only difference being that a lack of familiarity with the cast makes it harder to engage with the characters as much as you did in ME2/3. Significantly better than ME1, which seems like a much more fair comparison given new setting, new characters, new engine, etc.

The 70 Metacritic and fanbase reception is a one-two-three punch. 1. The viral GIFs that plagued the net had a very real impact on perception. 2. March 2017 is stacked with three critically well-received games. 3. People get sour on the opening hours but frequently come around by the end stretch -- but the damage is already done.

1 and 2 I just shamelessly stole from the article. 3 is personal conjecture.

I personally did of enjoy any aspect of the game. From purely a full package perspective I'd say it''s one if the worst games I've ever finished, and only did so out of obligation. I expect public opinion may have effected that feeling subconciously, but even months later I still feel the same way I did when I had just finished.
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I had him blocked, was it some sort of meltdown and account closure?
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He had a bit of a meltdown about not being allowed to play a Board game.
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make an ulti topic if you want to talk about ulti please
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Multi Effulti Andrultia
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The worst thing about my dislike for the game is that a lot of it I can't articulate. It's just how I felt playing it, like...well, like it was a rushed game with no vision.

.....so I guess I feel.....vindicated? Not that I feel happy about it.
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The biggest problem with Andromeda is that it needed a tighter narrative - and had one but the no man's sky philosophy had already done its damage and forced them to horrifically pad it out.

Its a good game weighed down by a philosophy that no longer fit the finished product.

The story wound up being ME1 sized and it took me 3x as long to get through it and miss out Nier and Atelier Firis and Horizon which im not all that happy about.
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LapisLazuli posted...

The worst thing about my dislike for the game is that a lot of it I can't articulate. It's just how I felt playing it, like...well, like it was a rushed game with no vision.

.....so I guess I feel.....vindicated? Not that I feel happy about it.

I totally understand. I feel similarly about MGSV, heh. Well, I can articulate my dislike therein, but vindication not making us feel happy about it just shows we aren't being weirdly spiteful. We wanted to be wrong about worries and love the games.

Eddv posted...

and miss out Nier and Atelier Firis and Horizon which im not all that happy about.

They don't expire!
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Eddv posted...

The biggest problem with Andromeda is that it needed a tighter narrative - and had one but the no man's sky philosophy had already done its damage and forced them to horrifically pad it out.

This is basically the ONE criticism I sort of buy. There was definitely an extent to which they were trying to tell two stories at once and didn't do the best job of meshing them together. One was a story of exploration, colonization, and building a new society - the other was a "chase the villain to the mcguffin to activate the power of a long-lost civilization" sort of plot that we've seen hundreds of times already. I thought they both worked, but I can see how it may have been distracting and/or confusing to some.
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The exploration plot was the better plot - it was also entirely optional and needed some tlc.
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Hey Jeff play Nier. You would appreciate that narrative!
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KamikazePotato posted...

Hey Jeff play Nier. You would appreciate that narrative!

I'm doing Shadow Hearts in the JZLF topics right now, after which I'll either move on to Covenant or hit up another BioWare game replay like the fiend I am. I've got Persona 5 going on, too.
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Nier is better than all of those though

Was actually kind of disappointed by P5. The writing in that game can be very iffy.
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Shadow Hearts is a game @transience spent close to a sixth of his life insisting I play, though, and Mass Effect/Dragon Age is a #WayOfLife for me!

I wasn't really sure how I felt about Automata's marketing, really. But I'm pleased to hear the game's writing is actually pretty excellent.
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Automata's narrative is absolutely fascinating. Over a month later and I'm still thinking about it. One of my favorites of all time. Your current game choices aren't bad though!
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That's awesome. I'll definitely give it a whirl sometime.
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Aw yeah. The power of advertising! You should try to exert whatever sway you have over Leon to get him to play Tales of Berseria too. That game has an amazing story considering it's pedigree (It's also just a great story period).

If I replayed a Bioware game it would be DA1. Even though I've played it 4 times. I have a problem.

P.S. hissing wastes more like hissing wastes of time
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Dragon Age: Origins is a darn fine game, through and through. It's in my top 10, and Inquisition isn't. (And 2 sure as heck ain't.)

The one thing I worry about is basically the same thing I mentioned in your Berseria topic -- Leon dislikes not playing the hero even more than I do. The way you described it, there shouldn't be a problem, but the thing is, he'll really need to feel like he's doing the right thing and not screwing over innocent people and stuff or he won't get as into the game, you know? I think I saw some folks saying the party doesn't care about collateral damage or something. I dunno.

I sure wanna play it, at least!
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Yeah, you're probably right about that. In Berseria you're not a mustache-twirling villain but well...I think I'm actually the person who described it as "what's collateral damage again?" The game world never excuses your actions but they still happen. Leon wouldn't like that too much!

Inquisition I think I played in the 40s in a Top 100 list I did a while back. That's not a bad placement (I love a lot of games) but some things definitely hold it back. I was actually entirely on board with the gameplay until halfway or so through my playthrough, then the environments just because too much of a slog. Soooo much padding. I really liked the theme of building your INQUISITION and the characters though. The story started out good but petered out at the end.

How's Trespasser? I've heard good things about it.
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Oh and DA1 is just so good. The writing in that game is top notch and you can create your character in so many different ways personality-wise. I mean I almost always make a City Elf because that origin story is badass as hell but still. Gameplay is surprisingly fun too!
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