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

They're masters of speculation, not hard journalism. Anyway, if only half the article is actually fact, then there's plenty of reasons to never preorder a title from BioWare again. Unbelievable. If even a 1/3 of that article is right, then why haven't they ejected all those dummies in leadership positions? If even a 1/4 of the story is right, BioWare should find a way to sack EA's HR, Marketing and PR for doing such a pitiful job of protecting BioWare's reputation. Unbelievable. If this was any industry (any damn industry...), most of that garbage personnel would've been trashed a long time ago and way before release of Andromeda. I feel sorry for the lower-level folks. If I was one of them, I'd seriously distance myself from Andromeda and find work elsewhere. They say these forums are toxic? Hahaha... I can only imagine what it's like for the disenchanted employees at Montreal, Austin and Edmonton. 

Seriously, if this story has any truth then Mass Effect is indeed dead. There is no point pouring money into a franchise that is devoid of passion and soul. And EA, you're the enemy.

I think they said they were not doing any multiplayer DLCs this time around, adding characters though patches instead.

Romantic outfit? 

Yeah using Kotoku as a legit source is like relying on a rag mag. Some of this could be true, how much however...

Actually, if you believe that it only took 18 months to pull together the bulk of Andromeda, I want them to adopt a strategy to push a game out of the gates every 18 months. Since critical reception is a pure lottery, and fans are going to whine no matter what they do, I just want shorter games more often. Bring back the JE setting too, give me a 20-30 hours game every year and a half, and if I don't like one or another title, who cares. There is nothing else I like anyway.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is the "Mass Effect Series" version of Dragon Age 2

A year prior to the controversy BioWare experienced with the Mass Effect 3 endings, Dragon Age 2 was released to mixed results as well. It started with the playable demo that allowed you to experience the first sequence of the game. The more people played the more started to notice "dull" environments, a more simplified combat in comparison to "Origins", and Human-only protagonist. After it was released, additional criticism included re-used environmental assets and enemies spawning out of thin air. Further scrutiny revealed that its quick development time (less than 2 years) meant that some areas had to be streamlined and simplified to allow to be ready in time for its 03/2011 release.

Despite all its warts, though, Dragon Age 2 turned out to be an enjoyable game with some pretty damn good dialogue as "Snarky Hawke", an interesting "rise-from-nothing" storyline, and some memorable companions and antagonists, especially the Arishok. I see a lot of parallels between Dragon Age 2's release and ME:A's as, with ME:A, you got an actual development time under 2 years (per the article), some obvious missteps at release (animations, mission bugs) and a much-criticized demo (EA Access). Question then becomes what do you do at this point?

I don't think BioWare kills the franchise as has been implied in certain places as its a brand that has been developed and cultivated for over a decade and even the older games are still getting content created for it in the Bioware store.

At this point, I believe they will go the "Dragon Age Inquisition" route and step back, reassess, and refocus where they want the franchise to go, including dedicating the necessary personnel and resources. They had a chance to let Dragon Age die quietly after DA2 was released and criticized but they released two good DLCs and spent an additional year in development to allow for different playable races for DA:I.

What they need to do is get it back in the hands of the Edmonton team where it originated, work out where they want to go from the beginning and stick with it. No matter where ME:A started, it was obvious that, by the end, it shared resources with Dragon Age Inquisition in order to get a framework for a game that would be playable within less than 2 years.

The forward stations (camps), the AVP (DAI perks), planet maps (regions), Nomad (Mount), etc all were comparable to DA:I but, in my opinion, managed to do some things better.

The next Dragon Age game will have the benefit of Dragon Age Inquisition development and release feedback, and ME:A's conceptional errors, to create a stellar DA4 - there is really no excuse at this point. Same with ME:A 2...

What's the difference, besides the launch date of the mission? You need the impossible tech either way. And remember, people were complaining about the Citadel races having a plan B back before we knew that the mission launched before the Reaper attack. (I was on the other side of that argument, but it was a serious argument.)

Because without the Reaper threat as a motivating factor and with 99% of our own galaxy unexplored the mission to Andromeda doesn't really make any sense.  

So you're going to jump me every time I say something you don't agree with. Ok fine. Yes I read it ands it's chock full of speculation and rumor. Some of it is true the rest is as I said speculation and rumor.

OMG. If that's the development cycle EA banks on, then yes... you're so right. Make the vanilla game as complete as possible and then add expansions to keep the game in the customer's hands. Keep that dripline running while other teams focus on another franchise. It's so incredibly convoluted that only EA can make a mess this big and still come out and say we're not charging enough. 

Well... let's hope for Dylan and DA4. In the meantime, I've got my friend's PS4 again and I'm not firing up Andromeda. I'm also going to play Jade Empire. 

The more I dwell on it, the more I see EA just doing enough to make sure they can sell the IP and make a quick dollar.

I know there are people that are going to say the opposite, but you don't treat your most respected IPs like EA has done. Whether the blame is on BioWare or EA is irrelevant. They set themselves up for failure and followed the road off the cliff on March 17th. Nice job EA. Nice Job Flynn. Nice job Walters. Nice job HR. Nice job PR. Nice job Marketing. You all failed... MISERABLY.

True. However, the first DLC would likely be fairly far along in the pipeline already. The sales projections would have to be really awful for the projected revenue to be less than the cost of finishing it.

Read the article. A lot of it makes sense... with that said. The game is still good in spite of the turmoil. Maybe with lessons learned MEA2 (or whatever ME IP comes next) will be very good...

All that said, it was funny to see the combat and MP being the item they had to worry about least... As that is something this game does well.