Ian Frazier speaks to IBTimes UK (April 15, 2017)

Interesting read, thanks for the share.

I admit that If I was Ian, I might fall into depression quite easily, working 5 years on a game and yet seeing being trahed upon...

I loved MEA and I am still enjoying it, but my god would it had gotten a better reception if it was just delayed a bit more to fix more bugs and solve facial animation.

That would have been better not just for players and customer but also for the developper of Bioware Montreal.

The exploration of mass effect andromeda is better done than in the first, I love discovering all of the worlds I have encontered, its not like the reused planets of the first ME. these beautiful world are wonderful.

While there is some bad quest in MEA like scanning minerals or bodies (these kind of quests needs to disapear from ANY story driven RPG), there is a lot of good one like the hacker quests that are anti AI, the mob war between sloane kelly and the collective, meeting the leader of the angaran religion etc. 


Its certainly better than the many bad side quests we had in the first mass effect, whenever you got outside of the citadel, noveria or feros (and even some of them were badly made like scanning the robots), all these quest on the random planets with repititive envinronments and the ending of the quests were written in a square of texts instead of being shown  .

Andromeda fullfilled some promise, it improves on the exploration mechanic that should have been improved in the sequels instead of being removed like in the second or the third mass effect, unfortunately MEA did not always suceed on other aspects but some of them could be improved.


-the navigation between planet needs to be done better, in just a few click we should be able to fast travel from one planet to an other, just like in dragon age inquisition where a few clicks allowed you to go from map to an other map. By the way that includes being able to reach the badlands of kadara from the tempest, not having to go to port kadara from the tempest with a loading screen, then reaching the part where you can go to the badlands from port kadara and wait for an other loading screen.

-we should be able to change our equipments on the field, not having to return to a station just to change it.

- And well there is the bugs and facial animation that really should not be a surprise, the game should have been delayed for at least a few months, I know a game this big without any bugs is quite impossible but there is a bit too much here.

I know you can fixed this with patches Bioware, and I am encouraging to do it because I am enjoying this game A LOT I think MEA is a good game but I know it can be even better.

I understand for the purposes of the interview a developer has to act all shocked that people complained about something.  I can't imagine though BW looked at any of MEA's big issues (like the animations) the day before release and said "yeah that looks great".  They know before the game goes out if something is bad/unfinished. At least I really hope they do, otherwise they need some new blood in there.

Well, don't tell me Bioware thought it was okay to release the game in that state.
Actually, forget about it, they did think that.

What surprises me the most is that it came out like that after their own team suffered that huge backlash last time (for different reasons, of course, but they still saw their reputation deteriorate). People would obviously be vocal as hell next time, and this is exactly what happened.

I'm still waiting for the CC patch to actually get into it.

Yep !

I am pretty sure this has been hard for the dev team, but the public uproar is just an aggravating factor, not the cause itself. There is 0% chance they were not aware of the problems of the game by just playing it themselves, and the problem to me is simply that by the time they can see the result of what they have achieved, it was too late for a deep change and they had to go with it. The schedule was here, and they released the game in the best shape they could (basically still unfinished, just look at the 1.05 patch, the change in the eyes shader was quite basic and no doubt it was planned for a long time)
As much as video games can be considered as art pieces, there is a very big difference with painters or other artists, they have a timeline and budget, there is little to no room for do over if they end up dissatisfied.

Interrestingly, all those infos we find here and there now show a bit the trouble the team has had along the line. Like trying procedural planet design (ala "no man's sky")... on their 5 years, how much time and budget has been lost before they changed their mind on what clearly is a core change?
At the end, compared to TW3 (as it is the example we find everywhere), it really seems BW Montreal team has been spending a looottt of time soul searching.

Citadel=Nexus
Normandy=Tempest
Shepard's Armour=N7 set
Yup, originality right there.

Yeah, sure, them "tones" really made my character unique. I guess on my next PT i'll be a total asshole....



This is just sad. Nothing else to add.

And yet he came here and asked for feedback anyway...

Have you seen the Bethesda and blizzard forums?

I don't know why their forum was canceled - suspect it was an EA decision, not BioWare. Look at EA's support forums - from my experience, it's mostly users helping other users, not EA. Historically, before the EA buyout, BioWare always had people monitoring and participating in the forums, including devs.

Where you on the official forums near the end? There was no constructive criticism coming out of there anymore. It had devolved into a cesspool of hate and bile. Much better to nuke that disaster than try to get any reasonable criticism from it.

I didn't know anyone from BW read this forum, just assumed they didn't I guess.

Without knowing what they were asking about still doesn't really change my opinion.  Shutting down your own forums isn't exactly a sign you want feedback. /shrug