Kotaku: The Story Behind ME:A's Troubled Five-Year Development

I think it's because a few people where saying they would love to see a Bioware game like NMS. Like I remember Angry Joe saying it in his NMS review. 

As late as November, this dev was saying we would have a lot more than just 5 to 7 worlds to explore - makes me wonder how much unused assets are lying around.

www.gameinformer.com/themes/blogs/generic/post.aspx?WeblogApp=features&y=2016&m=11&d=23&WeblogPostName=six-fun-activities-to-pursue-in-mass-effect-andromeda&GroupKeys=

He said
"Other planets are smaller and won’t require getting the Nomad packed up. Planets house a bevy of different discoveries, as you’ll find colonies, hidden dungeons, minerals, and other secrets to unlock on your journey. “This is the biggest we’ve ever gone, in terms of the number of pieces of content,” Gamble says. “Although we have a lot of different areas to go to, we want to make it so whenever you go to those areas, you remember them.” Some planets are on the critical path; others are completely optional. BioWare is providing a lot to do when you’re out exploring, but wants to keep a fair amount optional so the player can choose how much they want to invest in the experience. "

Given that 3 of the 5 worlds are virtually identical to each  other as deserts . .  . it seems a last minute panic change of course ensued.

I do like the game, it's much better after patch 1.05, but these kinds of interviews show just how great a game this could have been if all 5 years had been good, not just 2.

And if you like I could make a long list of games which were nearly unplayable at launch and/or were broken by the patching system, but I have never seen a shitstorm like the one that hit ME:A. Indeed, this game is far from perfect, but it's also far from being so bad. All in all I would rate it  7/10, which in my scale of values means "decent".
 
The more I read forums, articles and blogs the more I believe that there are other reasons behind this hate, or to say better, that people really wanted a reason for hating it, therefore, considering that the perfect game will never exist it was obvious that people would find that reason that they needed.

What "hate" are we talking about here? You mean user scores? Those are par for the course for games in general. If people had high hopes for a game and are disappointed, then they'll throw 1s and 0s at it faster than you can say binary. I, personally, never "hate" a game, but I can find it disappointing, and this article explains some of the reasons why Andromeda didn't live up to its full potential.

I think it's pretty easy to figure out what happened.

EA made yet another mistake with an IP and development studio that it acquired, something it's already famous for (even in the ME series with how they rushed ME3). They dropped a huge IP in the lap of an inexperienced, untested development team without strong leadership to guide them and said "have at it." It's like sending new recruits into a heavy combat situation without someone experienced to direct them- it just leads to pure chaos.

It's really telling when they spent 3 and 1/2 of the 5 years stuck in the pre-planning stage until Mac Walters came in and took over. Bioware may have screwed things up a bit, but I feel most of the blame lies squarely on EA.

It will be a sh**storm, no doubt about that, but if it will turn out to be a good game it wiil be embraced as one. No matter how many youtube clowns will make clickbait videos about it. And if it won't... well... Bioware will be pretty much done for then.

It will mean downsizing at the least. We'll probably see Dragon Age 4 before complete shutdown, its already in production. All Dylan needs to beat its competitors is a good single player experience. Destiny and The Division failed that aspect, hard.

The rumor is that Bethesda is releasing a new game this year. A Sci-Fi RPG named Starfield. We'll see at E3, if Todd Howard shows up you can bet Bethesda has a new game coming out late this year, or early next year.

Because the market isn't saturated with shooters at all.  

Seriously, Bioware needs to look at their past successes, their current failures, and figure out what went wrong.

Meanwhile, I'll be tossing money at the Kingmaker Kickstarter.

Not really. For all its faults, ME3 was not as bad as DA2 was in many aspects, such as level design, visuals, and narrative, to mention a few. Plus, people had had two (previous) games to grow attached to Shepard and his crew, unlike DA2 which chose to tell a completely new story rather than follow Origins. This gave ME3 an edge that DA2 didn't have. However, precisely because DA2 was markedly inferior, the transition to Inquisition was all the more welcome. The new Frostbite engine was able to render beautiful and expansive (actually, that had to be modded into the engine) landscapes, fixing the repetitive, bland, locations of DA2; customization was brought back and expanded to include a crafting system; the Inquisitor felt a bit (or a lot) more useful than Hawke; etc. These factors combined contributed to people reviewing the game more favourably, ignoring perhaps some of the issues Inquisition shares with Andromeda. For better or worse, Andromeda didn't just have to live up to ME3 (that would've been hard enough to my mind), but the Mass Effect Trilogy as a whole and, to a certain extent, Inquisition as well. After all, they could no longer count on dazzling people with beautiful landscapes, as Inquisition had done that previously so it was now to be expected. Andromeda was also expected to deliver on the promises of exploration of the first Mass Effect game while reconciling a story about defeating some ultimate evil. Fair or not, everything about this game was going to be scrutinized and so it was. To be fair though, and like I mentioned before, Andromeda shares many of the same issues I had with Inquisition. This however, doesn't excuse Andromeda, as one would think newer games are supposed to improve upon the weaknesses of previous ones (I know it's a different franchise and all, but isn't knowledge shared in BioWare?).

At the end of the day I still think Andromeda's a good game, just not as great as it could've been, buckling under the weight of everything it hoped to accomplish and, as the article points out, fighting an uphill battle during the development process. If you feel like reading another long piece of analysis on the game, I'll throw mine into the ring: Analyzing Mass Effect: Andromeda

DAI was far more polished on release and felt like a well-rounded game with more characters, more maps, a better dialogue system, better CC with multiple races and voices etc.

It should have been raked over the coals for the combat system though. I don't understand why so many RPGs get away with shitty combat.

Rumor is Bethesda is making a new scifi RPG similar to Fallout and Elder Scrolls and it's might be shown at E3.