Was this all because of the animations backlash?

This

For me: HZD is the spiritual successor to both ME and DA. It looks amazing, has a fresh story and (mostly) new or interesting gameplay.

BW should abandon RPG's and let newer Devs take up the mantle.

The game stirs emotions from lots of players. Since emotions are not yet streamlined to be all the same and venting incorrect ones are dangerous as hell, play it safe. Criticising animations was safe and real and best of all (to date) could not be denied.

So that card was played with a vengeance.

I find it slightly amusing how some people create the image of some hater army being able to run an AAA title into the ground. First there's no incentive. Secondly, the failed release of the game, complete with an utterly failed marketing strategy did it all by itself. It should have been clear that early access to a deeply flawed game would create some kind of reaction in this day and age. But no. Obviously promoting Origin Access was more important than a controlled release where press coverage trumps Youtube memes.

The game's characters and storyline are still mediorce without the animation hiccups.....that is the main issue with the game....people still talk s**t about the endings of ME3, but that journey to the ending was incredible.....



Same thing with ME2...i've heard some criticize that game saying "you don't even encounter the Collectors that much in the game...the majority of the game is about recruiting your squad"....and even if that is the case, that whole package of recruiting your squad made for a very enjoyable experience with characters that had their own unique personalities and was interesting.



Andromeda suffered from an uninspired story with uninspired characters. The story felt incredibly boring at some parts, a feeling i've never experienced playing ME2 & 3 (games that i can play multiple times and find enjoyment every time)........the visuals/art direction and design was stunning for the most part tho in Andromeda.

The animation bugs were a huge red flag to me and had a lot to do with why I didn't get MEA. What does it say when you're so close to release and that's the best you can do? It doesn't say much in favor of the other parts of the game.

Sounds like they're already thinking MMO-style - I wonder if that's all we're going to get in future.  Anthem does not attract me.

Thank you everyone for replying, I have really been interested to read your posts.


I've thought about it a lot and read some of the stories now dripping out (apparently MEA sold so badly target donated boxes to good will - this doesn't surprise me as I work at best buy and have never seen it not on sale) and I do think the question of whether dlc was ever even intended deserves legitimate thought. Obviously we can never know for sure, but we do know game development was nothing short of chaotic, and the game basically entirely remapped and recreated in only a year and a half. We know it was delayed frequently. We know Montreal's future as a studio was in doubt long before the game hit the shelves due to the impending merger (which I definitely dont think could have been done without years of planning.) They also clearly did tease something with the quarian ark. I find it very easy to believe that dlc was planned but not in any realistic sense, as they were so desperate to make the game even ready to ship, had to frantically repair the animations for multiple months, all while suffering the backlash that I'm sure lost people their jobs and perhaps even expedited the rate at which Montreal became a support studio again. We know MEA was a financial success, but also that it's sales figures plummeted after the initial few weeks. All of this probably created a perfect storm where dlc was impossible or unlikely in a purely practical sense.

But I do think the vitriolic hate campaign initially - which was not based on a substantiative discussion of the story, which I agree with most of you was poor - severely damaged their prospects to pull off the small miracle that dlc might have been. Without that initial fury and disdain, if the games main reviews were bumped up even slightly to the 80s in metacritic (80 still indicating significant problems as big AAA titles can practically promise themselves 9s at this point) I do think we would be seeing at least one dlc, provided it was financially feasible. It just seems like so dramatic an admission of failiure to me to break with precedent this sharply, and I think they would have tried to save face if the had the ability. After all, dai had huge story and sidequest druggery issues, and they used dlc to respond to that.

So while on an absolute level I think its chaotic development cycle ultimately doomed dlc prospects, I really think we can't underestimate how damming the backlash being very strongly rooted in "this game is so bad it's funny" was. Obviously no one factor holds all the blame but I think those, and dropping sales figures, were all much more significant than the story being poor.

This makes a lot of sense. The case for at least one DLC being inevitable always rested on the idea that a lot of dev time would have been spent on DLC before the reviews and sales figures were in. But if Bio knew some time in advance that the game was going to be released in very bad shape (and it's not like EA's fiscal year wasn't well-known to everyone), it's not crazy to have pulled everyone off of DLC and onto a patching effort. In effect, that turns the first DLC into something like a second DLC, in terms of both timing and economics.

Of course it was planned; they just cancelled everything some time ago; that was almost sure after last EA summit, when someone said MEA was mentioned only 3 times, when other games more than 20 or 30 times...

DAI already failed me hard with the protagonist. I actually like professional Ryder better... but both are pretty bad uncharismatic leaders. I'd tear my arm off for Hawke in DA4.

Anthem is out first, will you be getting that on day 1?

Got any other judgmental pretentious thing to say?