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

NO shits given. Mac's direction was a ball and chain on this game when it was already struggling. Here's why, and I know Mac's tendencies enough to know what he's probably responsible for, especially when the article reaffirms it!

The Nomad is better than the horse, but structurally, that's exactly how Inquisition worked. Zones with self-contained storylines and exploration.
Again, still structurally indifferent than Inquisition, and I'd argue the quality to crap quest ratio still isn't all that great.
Literally every BioWare game since Mass Effect has been fully voiced. How is this even a feature?
Kinda? That's still exactly how it works in Inquisition
It's spelled crashed, and anecdotes aren't evidence. I've heard far more reports of serious bugs for Andromeda than I have for Inquisition.
Still has nothing to do with structure, and no, on companions alone Inquisition has a more visually pleasing cast, but even the secondary and auto-generated characters look pretty universally better. Hell, before the patch, many people's eyes in Andromeda looked flat out disturbing.
What? The romance system works exactly the same between these two games. That Andromeda conveniently had a romance that appealed specifically to you doesn't have any bearing on the formula. But once again, no, the romances in Inquisition were almost uniformly superior with more nuance (albeit slightly) and relationship hitches than those in Andromeda.
Let me reiterate: you implied that Andromeda is less formulaic than Inquisition. You've yet to show how Andromeda's formula, no matter how well (or poorly as the case may be) it was executed, is significantly different than Inquisition.

I vehemently disagree with your opinion of Andromeda, but regardless of your subjective assessment of the game, your objective understanding of it's formula is factually incorrect.

"When the mock reviews came in for Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare’s leads were relieved—the Metacritic was expected to be in the low-to-mid-80s, according to two sources. Although Andromeda’s developers knew the game wasn’t perfect, they were fine with a score like that."

I'm shocked the focus groups came back with a score that high for the original version of the game.  If someone would have had a tough conversation with them back then perhaps things would have been different.

All obvious stuff to vets. But good to hear it confirmed. By the time Casey left this thing was on a path to destruction, glad to see they didnt shy away from telling people that the hardcore fans were not impressed. They usually try to act like thats not the case.

Great article.

I think the greater the area of explorable anything is just that many times more likely to dilute the core story.  This is one of the reasons why I am really not a fan of open world.  

Core storylines tend to put a feeling of "omg we have to take care of this crisis right now!" and yet we get sidetracked with  a delivery quest that has us traveling thousands of miles to to another planet to talk to an NPC for 5 sentences that could have been done over the holo in the gathering room in the Tempest the same way we were doing when talking to Moshae or Addison.  

ZIP NO

Since back in 2016, anonymous sources have been getting used and abused as a way for people to push whatever bullshit they want to sell. These last few years have shamed journalistic integrity beyond what I ever thought was possible. Basically, any idiot now can say whatever the hell they want and cite an anonymous source. It's the new go to. Years ago, when journalists wanted to write quality stories that made a difference in the world things were different. Now? If there is click bait involved, I don't even begin to believe it. There is a huge difference between Woodward and  Benrstein and this garbage which is not even particularly newsworthy except to a bunch of very bored gamers. 

So many grains of salt sprinkling down from the sky on this one.