The Pyjack's Den! The ME News Discussion Thread

FWIW, noticed another hiring call on the EA careers section attributed to BioWare.

Senior Gameplay Animator. We are looking for an experienced Senior Gameplay Animator with a focus on Previsualization of Gameplay Systems for Third-Person Action 3C development (Character, Camera and Controls). You will collaborate with core Gameplay and Narrative leadership groups to create animations that help to establish systems which blur the lines between traditional Gameplay and Narrative experiences.

Did some digging on other hiring websites, and they attribute this hiring call to Mass Effect. There was previously a hiring call for a Level Designer for Mass Effect, which appears to have been fulfilled. Looks like they are slowly but steadily growing their team. This IMO runs a little contrary to the recent Mass Effect Lorecast report that they were operating on basically nothing. "...but I can actually tell you that I've heard from sources who worked on the series that Mass development is likely not going to start until Dragon Age: Dreadwolf releases, because my understanding is, the small core team that the company said was working on Mass Effect is either a couple of people or none at all. Um, and most have been pulled to work on Dragon Age." I don't doubt that it is a very small team still, but it boggles the mind that they'd claim to have a core group working on the game and then... have nobody.

No, not new, but new-to-me since the last time I looked at job listings, and new-to-me as in I don't remember seeing people talking about it here. 

Lorecast, idk much about. They claim they are speaking to an anonymous source(s) from/adjacent to/something BioWare, but can't reveal that source because it is anonymous. Which, fair. I personally don't doubt that he's spoken to people, and everything I'm seeing from BioWare re: DA:D and MEME indicates to me that they wouldn't have the personnel or resources to ramp up to full-scale production speeds until after DA:D is released and the workers on that team are freed up. We were told by the studio themselves that they had to shift some Mass Effect personnel to DA:D to get things to the finish line, but... I've been told by someone else with a degree of insider knowledge that the claim of "a couple to no one" is false. My personal understanding is that we can call it a skeleton crew - they're working, but they need more people before they can scale to the next level of development.

Big shrug.

Three years on from the initial teaser trailer I'd really expect them to be on top of the "big picture" stuff at least. What galaxy are we in? What timeframe are we in? Who's our main protagonist? What's the general direction/story of the game? I'd be surprised if they didn't have a good handle on all of that stuff. I think they could probably tell us most of this right now. The fact they're not suggests that it'll be a while until they can give us the lower level detail so they're having to spin out the overarching stuff instead. I think that was fine last year, but I'm seeing a good amount of frustration online this time around, and if there's a meager update again next N7 day the level of resentment is only going to increase. There's a point where teasing becomes trolling and BW need to realize that before it becomes a big problem for them.

Well that would include me, so possibly. ME3 came out in 2012, it's suggested (although I don't believe it) that the new game will come out in 2029. That would be 17 years since a great ME game (no, I don't count MEA, and MELE isn't really new, it's a polished version of the OT). BW are still living on good will from a good proportion of the fanbase they're hoping will eventually pick a new game up. That won't last forever and it already appears to be waning in lieu of any solid evidence of progress or updates.

Narratively ME3 resolves a good number of storylines that were cornerstones of the entire trilogy; Humanity's place in the galaxy, the Genophage, the Geth/Quarian war, and the wider Reaper threat. The first three were all handled very well. The last one, less so, but it was still fine. 

If it wasn't for the last 10 minutes....ok, and the first 10, then I wouldn't have many complaints about ME3. Even then it wasn't the narrative direction so much as the execution that really let those bookends down.

MEA, I just found INCREDIBLY dull. From the rinse-and-repeat open-world exploration, to the tedious vaults, to the underwhelming world building - a whole new galaxy with 3 new races to interact with?! It also didn't help that the characters were sorely lacking when compared to what had come before in the OT. It's easy to criticize the technical issues that that game encountered but for me that was just the tip of the iceberg.

All that said, it's already been 11 years since ME3. Nearly 12. And there's the prospect of AT LEAST another 3/4 years. And at the end of that we may end up with a game that people don't particularly want. Perhaps that's where the issue is. I'd rather just know enough now to be able to say "No, not interested" and I can stop caring, and not worry about waiting another 3/4 years. 

I agree that people aren't entitled or owed anything creatively, but equally BW aren't entitled to blind faith and endless patience. It's a 2-way street and ME fans aren't exactly well known for holding their tongues when they're not happy.... 

Yeah its not, like, something I can say with any certainty, just that it makes a general sense to how I see it as well.

Yes it did sound to me like 2014(2015) was spinning of wheels. Concepts, testing, etc happening, but not strong content production. The articles released later seemed to depict a game that didn't really start heavy development with a stronger focus until at least 2015.

If we give them even 3 years from 2024-25, not 2, then we have 2027-28, with 26 still being somewhere in possibilities for now. Even now, I don't see Bioware has a studio can wants to or even can do sustained heavy development of a game for 4, 5+ years. The process of Anthem (all that focus and for what) and Dreadwolf (restarted development, life happening over several years) have likely hit morale hard. They really won't be aiming to take til ~2030 to get yet another game out. These are people and they got stuff to do, and frankly, resumes/portfolios to build with provable completed projects.

What I heard a big hurdle between changing the tools from already known to mostly unknown happened also during MEA development. Now this is only a hearsay, but would explain a lot of the problems faced with some animations etc.

Ordinarily I'd agree with you. Completely. However given BW's recent track record on managing expectations and knowing what people want, I'm not particularly convinced that radio silence is the best approach. I doubt there's much disputing that BW desperately need a win with this game. Likely a good win at that. Given that, I'd probably be testing the waters around some of the high-level conceptual stuff before it gets too far down the track, especially considering that the conceptual creatives are probably the only ones working on the game at the moment. 

They won't, of course. This is all moot. We know what to expect from BW, and we can probably all guess how this turns out.