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

Mod maker after mod maker disagrees with you, including the designer of the Civil War mod. It's also been part of many folks experience. I'll never agree with you on this, it's simply false. 

My point is that it was crucified even before it was released... and then doubly crucified based on a few short "previews" of an early build... then the writing was crucified long before anyone had a chance to play anything but a small fraction of the game.  They ran across one line they failed to like (ie.  My face is tired.) and jumped all over it like piranha.  Personally, I think the writing of that line is excellent... She's referring to being tired of having to put on a brave face it public...  Yes, the reference is strange... but we are supposed to be immersed in an unfamiliar circumstance.

The reviewers continually badgered Bioware about not releasing information, griped about them not responding directly to every tweeted question... and now they complain that they didn't take enough time to polish the game (but when were their fans giving them the time to do anything but respond to prematurely irate fans) and every tidbit that came out resulted in a flood of negativity from the "press."  Long before the game's release, the intentions of the media were very clear... it was highly unlikely that, unless the game was absolutely perfect in every way, the reviewers were going to give it a fair review.  The article this refers to is more of the same continued badgering on things... many of which have been essentially fixed.  Other things were never as bad as the reviewers made them out to be.  The CC for instance... despite it being pummeled as being shear crap... I've seen so many very good looking Ryders and varied looking Ryders come out from it.  I myself, who couldn't make a decent looking Shepard to save my life, was able to make a very decent looking set of twins on my first attempt with that CC (even before 1.08 dropped).

It's a better game than it is still being made out to be.  I have been paying attention... and the reviewers have well earned my disrespect.

I feel like it's far worse than what it's made out to be. 7/10 is far too generous. 1/10 is also ridiculous. 4/10 feels juuussst right.

Sorry, but including the designer of the Civil War mod does not make it any more credible. 

You can uninstall (*) any mod (**) and load a save game made before this mod was installed. That won't show the warning message, and the game should play on as if the mod was never installed. You don't have to start a new game every time you uninstall a mod.

(*) Manually or with a robust mod organizing tool. NMM does not count in this aspect.

(**) does not extend to SKSE pluging that would write files to your disk bypassing the game engine, or something.

Since you didn't bother to read the entirety of my post, I won't bother to read the entirety of yours. 

71 was too high a score for the game I played at release, seeing the bugs and technical issues I was having with the game. I think the first thread here asking people to score it I said it was a 5, which would be 50 on Metacritic. After reading the article I don't see how anyone in those focus groups could have gotten they game I did and said the game was low to mid 80s. They must have lucked out on the bugs and tech issues.

The game isn't outstanding to begin with, but given the bugs and tech issues, the animations, and just the overall experience I don't think 71 is too low at all.

But I'm a person who rates every AAA game by the same standards. I remember when DA:2 came out people we saying well it's not that bad considering it only had 18 months development. 18 months or 5 years, I'm gonna judge it by the same standards.

First, you don't know the recommendations that came with the judgment. And secondly, I'm pretty sure the same rules apply to these focus groups as for the media. It's a privilege to belong to these groups and they certainly aim to please and not to discourage if they can help it. In order to stay in that group.

I also would also say, the bugs at release - I had double Jaal and Drack also, but nothing game breaking - never influenced what I thought of this game. I was confident that this would be fixed in time. My judgment of the 70 being justified is based on the game itself. How it presents itself as compared to previous Bioware titles, how much I could immerse myself in it and how much I liked the ride I was taken for.

Considering the media fell over itself to present perfect score after perfect score to Breath of the Wild, despite getting hit by the sane flaws (and worse), the media had no credibility to blow. If BotW is a 97, then Andromeda is pretty much perfect.

Perfectly adequate? Perfectly mediocre? Your hate for great games like TW3 and BOTW make my dislike of Andromeda look like constructive criticism lol

Sounds like a complete shitshow of a development cycle, which isn't surprising when you consider that a game with a 5 year development time feels rushed in many regards. That's pretty much the prime hallmark of a troubled development cycle.

Still it's a shame they couldn't get the original vision of the game working properly. I'd have loved to see that version of the game being described where exploration was a much bigger element than what we got in the game and there was a lot more planets to explore with spaceflight being a thing.

From what this article says it sounds like the crux of the issue was management. No project lead should have let development run on for 3 years before realizing "oh shit, this isn't going to work". The shift in direction should have happened well before the end of 2015 which would have given them more than 18 months to create the bulk of the game that we did get(meaning crunch time could have been used for polish like it should have been rather than trying to finish everything up and hold it all together).

I'm not gonna give them a free pass because of this but all things considered if there is truth to the article then it's kind of impressive that we even got what we did.

Thanks to the developers that hung on. They made it happen. Not... anyone... else.

Stop right there. There is no such thing as Andromeda/Inquisition. I still love Inquisition and sure as hell will do another playthrough. After more than a dozen already. I'm not so sure doing another PT with Andromeda. I had my fun with that game but in my opinion it doesn't hold a candle to Inquisition. The characters alone make sure of that.

I never played TW3 because having a fixed lead bores me. So I can't judge the game but going by what I hear from others, it seems to be quite good. Same goes for Zelda. I certainly won't buy Nintendo gear to play that game. But again, going by what I heard and what reviewers who's judgment I trust said about it, it seems to be a good game.