Article explaining the audio/music process in ME:A

Scrap that Foley system. It's BAD.

"With Andromeda, the team took music interactivity to ‘the next level’ by developing a highly flexible system that facilitates a hybrid of traditional music scripting with a completely parametric and contextual procedural system..." F*** you. I can already tell you're full of shit and talking PR garbage to cover up the fact that not enough time was properly spent on getting it right. 

WREX! Send me a dozen Krogan with flamethrowers and Grunt as their commando leader. We have to do some righteous cleansing at EA HQ.

Well, either this system did not work or it has some serious faults. Music was one of the weaker points of the game. I am not sure if it didn't trigger or if the system just chose weird parameters.

I think the upshot should be that the team either has to improve what they got so far, bugfix it (if that was the problem) or otherwise scrap the procedural music handling and return to the traditional track based system where conversations and cinematics have the appropriate music added by hand.

I mean, I am really curious what went wrong. These procedural systems with layering as they describe them can work rather well. I have been playing the Star Citizen Alpha for example and they use a similar way to handle music transitions for different moods and situations. Only there, I actually notice it. When I shoot down a pirate, the music will play a little victory theme, when things get rough and my ship is damaged, the music will become more intense and if I go back to exploring, it will simmer down. It's actually really nice. Only in ME:A it clearly did not work as intended or was constructed badly since most of the time, when I did notice music, I noticed it either being weird or absent.

Seems the sound guys of BW Montreal have their work cut out for them.

I love this stuff. Thank you. 

Given the overall size of the game I can see why they went from scripted to procedural music for most of it. I think that some scenes require scripted music, though, so hopefully they won't phase that out completely in the future.

So my big take away, don't have your rookie teams try to put together new systems. Audio in this game pretty much had 2 settings, combat and silence.

Id rather have constant ambient music than total silence for lengthy stretches of time if this is the alternative.  Both frostbite games by Bioware have had this issue so far. The actual music when it plays isn't bad. It just isn't there far too often.

Thankfully there's third party sci-fi music on e.g spotify like the Stellaris soundtrack I can play and control with keyboard shortcuts, so at least there's that.

I'm generally the type of guy who was overall positive towards ME:A however I do agree here with the general consensus that music was lacking and I'm not even referring to the quality of the soundtrack but how instead we listen very little of it. I'd prefer if they just return to the old scripted system for music selection. I get they want to go for a more nuanced experience but it's not working as really I can barely hear and not even remember most of ME:A soundtracks.