BioWare Shot Themselves in Foot

it's not a reboot, have you played the game? is a new galaxy, new start, after the trilogy

i hope they make a sequel, less open world exploration and less boring fetch quests and more better story, just like the trilogy

we don't know yet if there will be a sequel or what kind of game

They shot themselves in the foot when they gave the series to Montreal.

With an estimated $40 million dollar budget over 5 years, with an already established game engine, I don't think that could be considered "all in" by any stretch of the accounting imagination.

Other than releasing the game unfinished, which is important, I don't see these "f-ups" which bother so many here. I really like this game. The patches have turned it into the excellent game it should've been from day one. I think the hate train got rolling, and many people were eager to climb aboard. Even if the various design choices didn't please everyone, they can hardly be called f-ups. They resulted in a very good game.

Feeling a bit disappointed by the game is reasonable. The vitriolic reactions of many, even here among the so-called "core fans", are ridiculous. I hope their hyperbolic tantrums haven't helped put ME on the shelf for years to come. Some seem to think screaming loudly and obnoxiously will get them a hearing. They don't realize that screaming and hyperbole aren't necessary. It's entirely possible to critique a game without insulting the people who worked so hard for 5 years to make it. Temper tantrums make grown adults look like fools.

This post isn't targeted at anyone in particular, and certainly not at you, Rage. I'm just putting my thoughts in writing. I very much hope that Ryder and the team get a sequel. A future reboot of a series built upon forward progress feels stupid, to me. They need to keep this story going, even if it's another long wait until the next chapter.

youll find the people throwing tantrums will be a very small minority and it'll be the fans with explanations and disappointment along with dropping sales and critically failing being why a game gets shelved, not some group that you people can't ignore and choose to actively engage with even though they clearly bother you.

bioware fans aren't the most toxic out there, try the CoD forums where there's millions more, the toxicity means nothing if a game does well. You're just blaming the fans when it's the wrong way to look at it.

Montreal seems to have bitter off more than they can chew, but I don't think this is a death knell for the franchise or anything that dire - any "hiatus" at this point is probably more due to the fact that a new IP and DA4 are in development, and BioWare, for all their ambitions, recognizes that they can't handle three games in active development.

Honestly, I've always thought that the expectation was that after Andromeda, they'd start the Mass Effect series having rotating protagonists like in Dragon Age. And if that's the case, we can expect that there'll be a few DLCs, and then probably the next Mass Effect game will have a time jump or something to account for Ryder no longer being the protagonist and continue the story from there.

But I think it's premature to call this 'hiatus' the end of Mass Effect or whatever - it was probably always the intention for the series to go dormant for a while and let them put all their attention in the games that they've already got in progress, rather than start yet another one.

$40 million over 5 years is $8 million a year. So they had about 25 people working on it? Figure in healthcare costs, payroll taxes, unforeseen issues, equipment upgrades, voice acting (I wonder how much was blown on this), and PR nonsense that did nothing to stop the hate train before it got on rail and plowed through YouTube. 

EA spent enough to get EA Bucharest working on the cheap to make budget. All in... up our tushes... more like it.

By the way, the nearest Gamestop has so many copies that they're not selling used ones first. If you know anything about Gamestop's practices, then you know "word of mouth" took hold.