Two years on, time for a reappraisal?

The more linear story missions and the fortress assaults were the best parts of the game the rest was more or less bland filler. Eos set the stage for the open world and it was in Bioware tradition a map that just couldn't let go of artificial gating. It rarely felt like a believable place - maybe the later section with the wind turbines.
Havarl I disliked with the vegetation all over the place. The toxic planet was interesting at the hotspots, but not in between. the turian broken world was a good mix in the offer. Elladen was excellent. The ice planet had good ideas of really alien places. Open world was a lot of PoI exclamation mark hunting. Open worlds just work better in populated environments I guess. Visiting lifeless planets is OK when exploring the universe in Elite Dangerous - for the screenshots. For story-driven gameplay not so much - and for a hiking RPG like Fallout or Skyrim the pacing just doesn't work out.
Remnant vaults hmja, OK. There was quite a lot of it. We didn't learn much about the remnant though. I kinda doubt we will ever. The story outset going to Andromeda as contingency I found good. Looking for settlement spots too. Remant vault terraforming was magic but OK plot device to make worlds liveable. Angara I found not very convincing and the Kett neither. The villain - meh. Of the companions most vere average, the Krogan resonated best with me, with Asari teenage Pipi being the probably most despised by me (at least I could kill Zevran). The initiative stuff wasn't very convincing either.
The gameplay with power and shooting was actually good, apart from some bullet sponge problems. It kinda got overshadowed by the piss poor handling of the MP after launch.
All in all I guees we can consider ourselves lucky it got finished at all with a DAI blueprint used but I expected better.

And those sold well. So the "EA Bandwagon" definitely didn't harm Bioware sales, if it did hurt sales, didn't do so noticeably enough. It is safe to assume that the "EA Bandwagon" was negligible to the damage and probably compensated by market growth, general economic growth, community good will, brand health and brand recognition.


Why? I think we need to examine the reasons why this happened, because if we accept that there are outside factors that killed the game the first time, there is no reason these won't kill the game a second time. If anything, there's a guarantee they will kill Andromeda a second time. We have an established precedent.


I can't see the far right's political investment in the failing of Andromeda. What is there to gain? If it were political, why didn't the left support Andromeda? How did the far right mobilize and damage the Mass Effect/Bioware brand so effectively, to make it non viable? I find it very hard to believe.


I also find it hard to believe that people just decided to collectively hate on this specific game for no reason whatsoever. I don't think people wake up and say "I hope every person has a good day. Except SirSourpuss, fuck that guy". It just doesn't happen.


According to the Schreier article, EA dropped Andromeda, before the memes even struck. The game had just released, Montreal expected to get the green light to move on to Andromeda 2 and they got shit canned, instead. It doesn't look like the memes canceled Andromeda, but they certainly made Andromeda 2 a lot harder to sell.

Why did the right? I don't see the political affiliation. I don't understand why politics would cancel a video game and I don't see how, if right wing activists tried something, left wing activists wouldn't take any notice of it and let it fly completely under their radar, internationally. Because Mass Effect has fans, regardless of political affiliation or geographical position. I find it very hard to believe that the motives of the public lie with right wing political activists, at least in this specific occasion. If it is, this is some real 4D chess shit going on, that I couldn't possibly hope to understand the political game being played behind achieving this specific game's cancellation. Not only that, but why wasn't any previous Bioware game canceled before it? Why wasn't Anthem? I just don't see it.


I don't know of any game that promotes that. Well, I mean, I guess 4X games could use such economical-political systems, but that's just because there are many such systems that can work, in a setting and including them isn't the same as promoting them. I mean, they do exist. Omitting them isn't doing anyone any favours.


I mean, Andromeda is an ass pull, at the very least.


It's called brand damage. It's a verified phenomenon. It has real world repercussions. For example, TLJ caused massive brand damage to Star Wars, which the franchise still hasn't recovered from.


Brand damage does exactly what the name implies. The biggest problem with Brand Damage is that the user base that was created, is no longer there. It may, even, actively work to discredit you. But the biggest loss is that of your otherwise guaranteed user base, no longer following you. As evident by Andromeda, the loss of that user base was vital to the game's market failure. If Andromeda didn't survive because of Bioware's misstep and mishandling of a past situation, the problem doesn't lie with the user base, but with Bioware. In the end of the day, if Bioware's games fail, it's Bioware's problem to solve, especially if they know the reason is also of their own making. Trying to side step it hasn't helped them in 8 years now. I doubt further ignoring it will help them tomorrow.


I don't remember it being that directly, although it might? I don't know the specifics, unfortunately, of when EA sacked the studio and how fast the memes came out. All I got was that initial sales where disappointing and EA effectively shut the studio down not long after.

I don't think the UAE, Iran, China or Russia went out of their way to cancel Andromeda.

Andromeda was banned in multiple countries due to the same-sex content.  The sad thing is I think the left was more upset at BioWare because they weren't inclusive enough with the same-sex relationships because they took out a piece of paper and counted each relationship in the game and since one type of relationship (m/m) was one short they were angry.  Its why I wish BioWare would just drop the sexual encounters from the game, its become a checklist item instead of meaning anything.  Just go for the friendships and rapport between squad members.

I like the romances. Jack has one of my favourite romance arcs in any medium. It's what won me over. Those mascara bleeding eyes. I can't say no! I can't say no.

Just built a new PC and decided to give Andromeda another try, since I can now run it on ultra settings without setting my system on fire or something  I'm not too far in yet. Eos is at 70-something percent viability and Jaal just joined us. Some things that struck me:

• The kett and the angara still pull me out of the story. They look and act too familiar to believably be from another galaxy. I would have hoped to see some very different forms of life there.
• The combat isn't bad. Even the three power limit doesn't annoy me as much as it did the first time, though I still hope BioWare doesn't stick with it. The jump jets are a nice addition.
• The side quests are still better than DAI's for the most part. I think it's because many of them feel like something the Pathfinder's team should be doing, at least when compared with expecting the Inquisitor to find someone's lost ring, for instance.
• The first vault is actually even more tedious than I remember it being. I found a movement mod that may help get through them faster, but I still haven't decided how many more of them I'm going to do. Maybe put myself in Ryder's shoes and only do the ones for planets that look the most promising.
• Cora complaining about Alec passing on the Pathfinder role to Sara (or Scott) is annoying me more than it did the first time. Complaining about his decisions to someone who just lost her father is so incredibly selfish. 
• The asari clone army is still a big problem. Lexi's face model looks too unique to show up on every NPC asari without being immediately noticeable. I don't mind NPCs sharing facial structure and just having different scale patterns or markings, but it should have been a very average face that the brain wouldn't immediately pinpoint as Dr. Lexi.
• The knees of the turians, krogan, salarians, and angara still look ridiculous. Could that not have been fixed in a patch?

Yea hi tdidn't deserve half the hate it got tbh. Playing through the trilogy again atm but I'm certainly thinking of going through MEA again in the not too distant future after OI've finished the trilogy buut notto much after.

I still haven't completed the game. Not even once. I always start another playthrough attempt, then get bored rather quickly or something starts to annoy me too much and I can't continue. I started another playthrough yesterday, am currently at the Nexus and already feel bored. I really would like to complete the game at least once. For me the constant autodialogue, lack of player agency and uninteresting story is what ultimately kills the game. If the writing was on the same level as it was in previous Bioware games I wouldn't care so much about the empty planets, repetitive combat encounters or weird NPC design, etc. So that still hasn't changed for me.

If they make MEA2 I hope it takes place at least 100 years after the first one.

I think so, too.