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

Exactly, and IMO they even fucked up the best thing they had (combat).

I could forgive all DAI flaws due to writing. All of them, even the ones that annoyed me, even the static open world of theirs, because the writing was enough to sustain the game.  Lore, plot* and characters. The plot by the end was the weakest, but had great moments and was well executed overall.

I greatly prefer scifi over fantasy, but the way I see it, Mass Effect has largely suffered from a lack of proper planning for their overarching plotlines, and the typical DA companion character has more depth than the average of Mass Effect. Mordin and ME2 Legion are probably the only exceptions, in my opinion.  

yeah agreed either as an expansion or s DLC if they make it good they can still come out the other end smiling  that they salvaged the situation somewha tbecause they managed it with DA2 so hopefully they still can with MEA. Fingers crossed anyway.

And I thought both were quite good. 

He is the writer of the article that we are currently discussing.

That reply about the DLC contradicts a lot with DLC being hinted at, so I really don't trust him.

Well, it's not like he was comp,etely wrong about that. ME1 really does set up the series as an organic-synthetic conflict. Though of course, this could have just fizzled in later games if they'd wanted to go that route.

Well, if they are so "minor" I can only wish fervently that DA4 gives me those "minor" things instead of ruining the game for me through thousand paper cuts. The other people would not even notice, right?

I like both games they both had great moments

Disagree.

I can't say that I "hate" Andromeda as that would be far too strong a term, but I was definitely disappointed as hell in it. It could have been a great game, it should have been a great game, I wanted it to be a great game. Unfortunately as the article details it was executed in such a horrible manner, 5 years and a whole lotta money got burned on now what is a sub-standard game. (Certainly compared to it's predecessors.) Author has a good track record so no real reason to doubt him in his article. When playing it for the first time I had severe doubts I was playing something with 5 years development behind it, looks like it turned out to be under half that.

After the fallout from the ending to ME3, anyone with a brain knew the very next Mass Effect game was going to get a much sterner eye put upon it to see if the lessons were learned. It was going to have to be very good in order to stand up to that scrutiny and to have a chance at being a hit. Yet it would seem despite that knowledge, it's development cycle was allowed to drift aimlessly for far too long.

While they did eventually get it up to a certain standard, it was still in no condition to be released without suffering a major backlash, and still needing major work to patch it. They did it anyway, and got what they deserved and more. Part of why that backlash may be more "zealous" is probably from folks sheer disappointment out of all the hope they built up from the gaining hype of Bioware's own PR releases. Probably like me, they were expecting that they surely couldn't make such a huge screw up of Mass Effect for a second time in a row.

As I've said elsewhere, they have made their own bed and are justifiably paying a price for doing so. Is that price "right"? Maybe, maybe not but that is what can happen when you majorly annoy/insult a fanbase of this nature twice running now.

Well they have to do multiplayer dlc

Honestly, the whole organic + synthetic perspective thing that Synthesis is supposed to have a basis in isn't my real problem with its inclusion in the ending so much as it's the relay network suddenly possessing the ability to forcibly augment everything everywhere with the help of the doom-pop and that Shepard has to actually jump into the lousy beam to accomplish this, because of tragically edgy reasons. So the whole thing with SAM I'm fine with in spite of my intense hatred of Synthesis.