VG247 Article - How Bioware is losing its heart

I guess Fallout 4 had better polish... maybe?
I think the bottomline is that Andromeda is completely unimpressive for pretty much failing what it's trying to feature as its main draw: the story and interactive fiction and using open-world stuff as a component to that. Fallout knows what it is even if the standard quest formula in Fallout 4 was boring, but it still knew what it was about and most people liked it just fine. Andromeda doesn't fully tap the potential of any feature and it has a ton of embarrassing technical issues on top of that. The presentation is shockingly bad and so is the writing and voice acting in many places.

Slightly off topic but has there been any news about the next patch?

we already know what bioware would do with a slashed budget. It's called Mass Effect Andromeda. I mean this is the reason i think the bioware just follows trends argument is dubious...at best...because they could have easily given us a trendy game to go with the budget they had. Instead they tried something deeply ambitious and something that learned from their own experiences and also from other games on the market.

I'll take buggy glitchy messes for a quality RPG experience.

Alpha Protocol is still my RPG of the Decade.

<---proud backer of both Pillars of Eternity games

ME:A was not slashed by any stretch of the imagination. It had 5 years development time. That's huge in this day and age.

ME1 had 3 years and in that time not only did they have to make a game they had to create the entire ME universe including all the aliens races, technology, lore etc.. (In five years the ME:A team managed a staggering 3 new aliens races)

5 years is longer than the dev time of ME2 & 3 put together!

your point? We know Andromeda had a comparatively tiny budget then most of its contemporaries in the industry. And the fact the game had such a shitty budget and it was still stretched over five years is even more damning.

How many more articles on how bioware "lost their heart" do we need to see?

"Ryder it appears there are several more bodies to scan before I can make an analysis". FIND BODIES 1/6
Deeply ambitious.

Go to a new galaxy? Two new races. Both look like fanart.
Deeply ambitious.

Go to a new galaxy via Ark ships? FIGHT EEEEVIIILL BAD GUYS
Deeply ambitious.

Cases 2 and 3 seem to have more explanatory power.

To be honest  half of the game is spent finding Triss and helping her while she's making googley eyes at you. Then Skellige it's Yennefer. Both incredibly attractive women interested on a white haired, wrinkled, heavily scarred mutant.

Before that it's the dalliance with Keira. Keira also ends up in a romance with the turtle faced, balding, scarred Lambert despite being a fairly attractive sorceress herself with ambitions.

After that it's the dalliance with Shani. If you sleep with Keira or Shani it doesn't even affect your romance with Triss or Yennefer. Neither is sleeping around with the whores.
Women in the game are virtually throwing themselves at you and you're always this anti-hero who's savior of beautiful women.

Not that the lore of Witcher 3 or its beautiful open world isn't amazing, but Geralt and The Witcher is about as fanservice as it gets yet nobody complains because it's all about the straight male perspective and no cumbersome female protagonists or gay/bi romances.

Yeah. In fact they might be so small that they're just arenas in an online MMO shooter with "likeable characters (TM)". Gotta chase the Overwatch fad next!

I think you are very much missing the point.

It seems that every half decent looking woman in the game wants to fuck Geralt. Geralt, the scary, ugly, mutant. Almost irregardless of what he does to boot.

That's not depth. That's shallow.