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Anthem Producer: Mass Effect: Andromeda Never Had a Good Foundation to Support Long-Term Plans.
- Thread starter IbizaPocholo
- Start date
They started moving people from EA Motive right after launch and only kept a small patch team - you don't move people to a new studio over night, that takes months. They ditched any DLC plans before launch.
I treasure every game that is simply released finished. Give me a couple great expansions at most, but this live service week after week tricke out nonsense is doing nothing for me. It just means I will wait until they stopped developing for it and get the complete edition.
That process started by them being too gutless to pick a canon ending, or just simply rebooting. Instead we got a super half baked side story about the least interesting aliens of Mass Effect living on a shitty version of the Citadel, plus an even more generic take on the Protheans.
I commend them for sending a game like Andromeda to die. If they continue to disgrace the franchise with this type of rot, then it's best to kill it off.
It's all sad as a whole. One of my favorite series of all time.
The more they talk, the less enthused I am for Anthem.
First they insinuate that branching storylines and dialogue trees are giving false options to the player, and now it's Andromeda had a poor DLC plan. Look, those branching storylines, dialogue trees, and DLC plans worked wonderfully for the Mass Effect trilogy and Dragon Age series. You weren't complaining about them then. Planning a big expansion months down the road after a game's release isn't a bad thing. It has worked for other games this gen, like The Witcher 3. The problem with Andromeda was the poor direction and massive changes made during production, and that EA canceled the DLC instead of doing what other publishers have done by working on the game to make it better and having faith in your product.
Stop throwing their products and former colleagues under the bus to prop up a game that your own loyal community isn't too excited for, and likely isn't going to get traction with the looter shooter community they are trying to attract.
First they insinuate that branching storylines and dialogue trees are giving false options to the player, and now it's Andromeda had a poor DLC plan. Look, those branching storylines, dialogue trees, and DLC plans worked wonderfully for the Mass Effect trilogy and Dragon Age series. You weren't complaining about them then. Planning a big expansion months down the road after a game's release isn't a bad thing. It has worked for other games this gen, like The Witcher 3. The problem with Andromeda was the poor direction and massive changes made during production, and that EA canceled the DLC instead of doing what other publishers have done by working on the game to make it better and having faith in your product.
Stop throwing their products and former colleagues under the bus to prop up a game that your own loyal community isn't too excited for, and likely isn't going to get traction with the looter shooter community they are trying to attract.
Yeah, I absolutely love the trilogy. Easily my favorite games of the last gen, ME2 is probably my favorite game ever.
There is no way you can do quality, polished, high-calibre content of good storytelling and consistency if you produce it to be released every second month or so unless they do it Telltale Style in seasons and have a lot of the content pre-planned before shipping the vanilla game.
I don't believe in BioWare and I don't think they believe themselves even. This is some EA bullshit asking them to make a Live-Service product to increase revenue and they've been stuck with that concept having to produce it continually since the basis of it took shape 3 years back or so and now they're figuring out they actually can't make it the revenue machine that they wanted, so it's all "free" now.
I don't believe in BioWare and I don't think they believe themselves even. This is some EA bullshit asking them to make a Live-Service product to increase revenue and they've been stuck with that concept having to produce it continually since the basis of it took shape 3 years back or so and now they're figuring out they actually can't make it the revenue machine that they wanted, so it's all "free" now.
Standard EA tactic at this point.
"Yeah that thing sucked didn't it? But boy is this new one better!"
Probably because wasn't actually Bioware that made it. It was an untested c-tier studio with Bioware's branding stamped on it. Bashing it won't make people get less skeptical for Anthem though. What they are doing looks like Destiny with a more fleshed out story and worse gameplay.
Some of the five-months-after-launch DLC they've put out is among their best work, like Citadel for ME3 and Trespasser for DAI. I'd rather wait and have something that blew me away like those two did than weekly released of shitty grindfests. Anthem feels more and more like Bioware is forgetting what people love about their games in the first place :/
They helped on Mass Effect 2 (mostly cutscenes) and on Mass Effect 3 (the entire multiplayer that everyone ended up loving) and they worked on Andromeda for years. Of course it was a BioWare studio. Every studio has to start somewhere.
The project has been in development since before Destiny was announced...
Anthem has had a pretty rocky development the concepts changed quite a bit and they did not start actually developing the game until 2 years ago, so making the argument EA wants in on the destiny market is not as far fetched as you think.
Also the little we have seen just screams Destiny except with iron man and games as a service routine EA is pushing is worrying to me as someone who loved Biowares singleplayer narratives storytelling.
I worked at EA and Bioware during this timeframe and I know its development history. The narrative that "EA" is dictating a direction for Anthem, cynically copy-pasting Destiny/The Division, is wrong. For better or worse Anthem reflects the direction that Bioware (Edmonton) wants to go and they should own those creative and business decisions.
Yep. Bring Down the Sky. Awakening. Lair of the Shadow Broker.
I want to stay positive about Anthem and give it a fair chance, but I really don't see them producing additional content that's anything even close to the quality of those in such short time frames. It's just not going to happen.
Yes and was allegedly floundering for a long time in pre-production, aka they likely didn't know what they were gonna do after Mass Effect for a long time. Casey even said this year that there was a sense of "plateauing". Coming off of the ending controversy it might've made them very insecure about what to do next as well.
This game just sounds worse and worse every time I hear something new about it.
I hope it's good, but goddamn is it boring me so far
I hope it's good, but goddamn is it boring me so far
Reminds me of the Assassins Creed Syndicate marketing, a good lot of it was stating how bad Unity was and how they are rectifying it
You know people will believe whatever they want, especially when it comes to BioWare and it's always the same in Era threads... I've stopped caring, it's no use.
Did you miss their comment how they worked at BioWare during this period and know it's development history? They might know more than you about it...
Interesting but that's what this game seems like the singleplayer story only being in the city but outside it seems like a run of the mill multiplayer pvp gameplay with loot and bulletsponges bosses.
I also question why we have not seen more gameplay from it which has been very little and in heavily edited videos.
Yeah it's just frustrating to see some people assume most everyone working at publishers/certain big studios are acting in bad faith or that the development model is this hilariously dictatorial/top-down thing.
One of the BioWare founders (Zeschuk) once said in an interview "EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself" and I like this quote, it wasn't meant in a bad way, just that they had more freedom at BioWare to do what they wanted but that came with the risk of failing more spectactularly. I don't think it has really changed over the years, on the contrary. This kinda led to Andromeda's development being unfocused, but nobody can deny they had time, and EA also gave them enough time for Anthem and I hope this time it will pay off.
Tricke content is great for Splatoon. And they also had a cool expansion.
If you like the game then the delivery method really won't matter.
The big question is if anyone likes Anthem that much. We'll see.
If you like the game then the delivery method really won't matter.
The big question is if anyone likes Anthem that much. We'll see.
What are the most financially successful games of this generation?
*Citation needed.*
You need to filter everything said by a Bioware employee through the "ERA scope".
Leave logic and reason at the door.
I understand, but not everything needs to be that long. Know when to bow out.
An 6-8 hour game at $60 is considered short in this day and age. Hell, an 8 hour campaign with co-op missions, daily missions, and PVP modes in this day and age could be called short. See, people calling Destiny a short game not worth $60.
Despite the obvious technical issues I thought Andromeda was fine. Nowhere near as good as ME2, but not really any worse than ME3 in any notable way I found.
Yep.
Andromeda could've been the start of something really cool but nooo. Dodgy character animations! Burn the whole thing to ashes!
While those lengths are fine, I'm not talking about that. The interviewee specifisaid months, they want people to stay in games for way too long. But, that's just me.
How odd. Reads like he company dissing another company who competes in same space except it's actually the same company dissing itself. Not a good approach IMHO.
Andromeda disappointed me by being average to good when I wanted it to be excellent but throwing it under the bus isn't the way to convince me to invest in Anthem.
Andromeda disappointed me by being average to good when I wanted it to be excellent but throwing it under the bus isn't the way to convince me to invest in Anthem.
Mike Gamble was on that team, this isn't a diss in any, way, shape or form.
It reads like that though, which is the issue. Whether it was intended or not is irrelevant: perception is what matters and that's how it reads.
Do you have a source or are you as I suspect- full of shit?
If you're going into it with the most cynical intentions like this board always has done with everything relating to this game, sure. It's made very clear in the actual text that what he's saying is that the game wasn't set up to do continuous DLC.