Mark Darrah discusses "Did MEA get a fair shake"

Already made a general comment about this in the other thread. So I just wanted to focus in on one specific area:
Truer words have never been spoken. Seriously, it's good to hear them say this.

Agreed. My respect for Darrah went up considerably as a result of this conversation. The only counterpoint I can really make is that there are interviews on record where EA leads claimed that they offered Bioware more time on Andromeda (something like six months iirc), and Bio turned them down. Whether there's any truth to that, or if it's just EA throwing them under the bus is up for debate, but I find it difficult to believe that EA would lie about something like that in relation to one of their biggest franchises.

I think I shake my head at the people who made such a big deal out of one comment that a dev needed to go on soap box about it.

but then again, I'm the one who made a thread about the tweet about there no longer being Whore Houses in DA franchise going forward that lasted over 30 pages soooooooooooo.... At least I kept it in my own little niche of the internet?

Yes, and seems to be actually much better on the 2nd run that I'm going through now.

Really? I don't get any sense that devs are happy to have to deliver a buggy game. Where do you get that from?

Sure... if seeming okay about it means you want to still get paid.

It's too easy, in my view, to dismiss the real-world pressures, financial or otherwise on a game that's having 'issues'.
Most people in a difficult work situation will do their best.
Doing their best doesn't mean there aren't things they would change if they could.

I feel like, at the end of the day, these are all problems that could have been avoided with better time/resource management. They could have pre-empted a crowded release window if they had been better prepared.

They wasted literal YEARS on procedural generation technology that went nowhere, when first priority should have been making sure they had a complete core experience. You can always add side content later.

All this does is create more division.

The game did get a fair shake, but clearly this game was not ready to be dropped in March. I still say EA had something to do with it being released because they wanted the game to be included in their fiscal year cycle. They probably figured we can release it, but quickly roll out patches to fix the obvious animation issues, but by the time they did that, the memes all over the internet killed it, but even outside of the animation issues as i've stated all along, Andromeda had character and story issues you just can't fix with patches.


Reviews of the game itself by respected sites all pointed to issues with the story, pacing and un-inspired writing and characters.

Of course they knew why else would they hastily release patches after launch? The fact that he even acknowledge the good parts it had showed me that he just trying to appeal to the people who dislike the game.

That would depend on whether procedural generation technology was actually part of the 'complete core experience' during its development. Lots of things don't make it into a final game for whatever reason, cut characters, cut story, cut mission locales etc.