Article: Mass Effect fans feel abandoned by BIoWare after Anthem reveal

No not one bit

Honestly... a little.

I'm a huge Mass Effect fan. I loved the original trilogy. I even enjoyed the ME3 endings. I played the heck out of multiplayer, and have done more play-throughs than I can count. I've gone Renegade, Paragon, Paragade, and "Whatever the F*** I Want". I've killed everything you can kill, saved everything you can save, and banged everything you can bang.

That being said, I very much enjoyed Andromeda. I'm just going to start my second play-through now (because I'm slow, as well as being a full-time graduate student with a full-time job). It was very fun. I love the combat, the story, the characters, the Nomad, the Tempest, all of it. I will say that based on what I thought the game might be, I was a tad disappointed at launch. It wasn't everything I expected it to be, but it was very fun.

However, seeing "Anthem" come out of the same studio (I know Edmonton is different than Montreal, but still Bioware), it is a little shocking how much better the game looks than MEA. I know that according to the Kofucktu article that MEA went through development hell, with a lack of steady direction, shifting focus, and eventually too little time to do what it needed to. So maybe had they started 4 years ago with the Mass Effect Andromeda in mind that we got to play, but with expanded environments, more content, etc, it would have been much more similar to what we see from Anthem. There were hiccups with the Frostbite Engine for RPG's and whatnot, I know, but I think had they not tried to do the procedural-generated planets and had a clear direction from the get-go, Anthem and MEA might look like they actually came from the same studio instead of MEA looking a lot like it came out of Bioware 2012 instead of Bioware 2017.

So yeah, I'm actually kind of excited for Anthem. But I'm a little mad, too. I love Mass Effect. I want more. I want more in Andromeda. I don't begrudge the game we got, but I don't want their focus on this other game to have caused the death of my favorite game series of all time.

In a way I kind of do. It feels like bioware is chasing a different demographic with Anthem as I have no interest in cooperative multiplayer. On top of that they used their C team for what should be their flagship franchise and had the A team work on this new usurper franchise.  As a Mass Effect fan I feel like I have been put out to pasture.  As ME fans we need to speak up and let them know they need to treat this franchise better.  Also DA fans need to speak up so the same thing doesn't happen to their favorite franchise.

The fact that they put the "C" team of Bioware behind Mass Effect: Andromeda. FYI The "B" Team is Bioware Austin as they have put out a money making game in SWTOR and it's still making money. Bioware fails us Mass Effect fans by letting a studio that had never shipped a game make a game using the Crown Jewel of Bioware IP. With a complete lack of oversite and management. You could argue that Montreal was in over its head from the start. You don't give a new studio full control over a huge IP. If anything Montreal should have been the ones working on the New IP. Much lower expectations for a New ip then a Franchise. I put the blame on Bioware as a whole. More than them I Blame EA mainly Patrick Söderlund as the idiot that put the destiny ripoff ahead of ME:A

Unless they improve ME:A and give it new SP content I'm Not supporting Bioware or EA ever again and Anthem looks a long way off of a Single player RPG. I wish for Anthem to die and EA to close down Bioware soon as they have done with many a studio over the years. Seems to be the only good place to get RPG's is CD Projekt Red  

What annoys me is the visual similarities between the two games - the better version of the jet pack alone... Kinda like BioWare Edmonton were holding out on Montreal, and now are just showing them up. I’d probably have preferred if Anthem was something altogether different, not a (presumably) better sci-fi action adventure.

I love this quote.  This is the best thing I've seen in a while.

More vindicated than anything else actually.

Nice read.

No actually.  Back then they were refining the series into what became MEs 2 and 3.  In fact many people (myself included) consider ME 2 the crown jewel of the franchise.  All they did was cut the fat and gave us a refined and focused experience.   When is said and done with it's DLCs included ME 2 gave us dozens of hours of meaningful singleplayer content (my runs usually took about 50 hours) where we traversed a diverse Milky Way kicking ass visiting alien civilizations and uncovering ancient mysteries.  If anything bioware made the mistake of abandoning ME 2s winning formula when they made MEA.  They brought back the fat but in larger heaps to please the "ME 1 was the best" crowd (while not bringing back the things ME 1 did well) and then they started chasing the multiplayer crowd due to the success of ME 3's multiplayer and gutted the class system and replaced them with profiles taking away squad control and the power wheel.  But no they were not chasing a different demographic back then.    Back in 2010 bioware was doing everything right and not just with ME 2 just a couple months prior to ME 2 s release they released DAO and you can't accuse them at all of chasing a different demographic with DAO.

Almost lost that bet, but suikoden got the Anthem doom post in just before midnight.

I don't even blame the guys in Montreal that worked on the game.  Many of them were inexperienced and they were working in the trenches often without direction from upper management.  They did the best with what they had.  To me the blame falls with some suit somewhere (probably at EA) that didn't want to treat the ME franchise with the respect it deserves and they decided to ship the franchise off to a bunch of rookies while they had the experienced and proven developers in Edmonton work on this usurper franchise and design it to be a money maker by having it focus on appealing to the cooperative multiplayer demographic.   I don't know enough about Anthem to judge it fairly but as a Mass Effect fan I don't know if I will ever be capable of judging it fairly.   The Mass Effect trilogy was a passion project and Mass Effect Andromeda was a noble attempt (by the guys in the trenches) that stumbled (I still persoally like Andromeda) but to me Anthem doesn't look like a passion project.

I should have explained clearer I don't Blame Montreal if anything they were thrown to the wolfs and in over their heads from the start. I think Bioware did that on purpose so they would have another studio to blame if the game went south and if it had done well they would have praised them as there great new studio. Built in plausible deniability for EA/Bioware to blame them and not the main team and management      

Yes, I feel a bit abandoned as a Mass Effect fan. This is a beloved franchise. It has such a longstanding, hardcore fandom. If you aren't going to do it right, especially so that your primary team can make a game that's the antithesis of what Mass Effect was, maybe just don't do it at all and let Shepard and co. be the last thing we remember.