How did EA kill off Mass Effect?

An extremely bad year for the giant EA and its bombs. It is even worse, when their competitors such as Sony or Microsoft have both achieved great success. That sad result of EA has been heralded since the beginning of the year, when the card was considered their strategy. Mass Effect: Andromeda failed miserably and painfully.

The story of Mass Effect: Andromeda is a good example of the saying: “greater hope, greater disappointment”. EA had high expectations for this game, and made media moves that matched that expectation. Too many promises, too many beautiful scenarios drawn in front of gamers, plus the success of previous games, have led them to believe that Andromeda will be a masterpiece of the year. As a result, when Andromeda launched, it was that high expectation that immediately killed the game.
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The first failure of the game came from the technical side. From this perspective, Andromeda has made a number of extremely reprehensible mistakes such as animation stiffness or sync problems. With a giant like EA and a big game like Andromeda, these are mistakes that are not allowed to be made. However, they did appear, and it is rumored that the reason for this is because the game’s development process has been pressed on schedule. This rumor was confirmed not long ago, by a member of the game making team. This person also pointed out that there were a few great ideas that were removed from the game to keep up with the progress.

Another mistake that EA made with Mass Effect: Andromeda, was that the game hid its cool stuff too deeply. This is the same mistake they made with Need For Speed: Payback (and this is also a failure of EA, obviously). The game’s combat system is considered to be like a disappointing remake of the system in the old game. Meanwhile, there are quite a few cool things like zero gravity space or ancient bunkers with many nooks and crannies that are hidden and need patience to explore. It’s not a bad idea to hide the good parts for players to discover gradually, but if the things put on the surface of the game are so bad, then no one will waste time playing a bad game until the end. see it well.
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Again, this game is “held” by EA. Andromeda is developed by BioWare Montreal, the “brother” studio of BioWare Edmonton. The problem here, most likely, arises from EA’s request to want Andromeda to use the Frostbite engine. Obviously, switching to a new engine will cause developers a lot of unforeseen difficulties. Perhaps, with more time, BioWare Montreal will be able to bring us a more complete game. However, EA does not want to wait, and the main consequence is the “pressing progress” as written above.

With this compulsion, the potential of the game is immediately limited. The original idea of ​​​​the game was to build a world large enough for the player to explore freely, but ended up being stopped at a certain number of planets. If Mass Effect 2 and 3 were once impressed by a universe full of life, what Andromeda presented was just a dead universe. Some things of that universe are still acceptable, such as design and graphics, but that seems like nothing in the face of an empty and lack of depth system.
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Although the game’s developers have released really serious updates to “patch” technical bugs, it is clear that Andromeda’s problem is not only with a few animation bugs. Too much of the game’s good stuff was “sacrificed” during the chaotic development, and the result was a mess that no gamer could enjoy.

Instead of bringing Mass Effect into a promising new era, Andromeda killed off this traditionally rich series. EA has confirmed that there will be no DLC for the single player mode, which is highly anticipated by fans of the series. Mass Effect has been placed on a waiting list, possibly indefinitely.
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Obviously, the failure of Andromeda comes from the mistakes and carelessness of both the publisher (EA) and the developer (BioWare). However, it seems that, in EA’s perception, the game fails simply because people no longer like games with linear single-player parts, period. Now, BioWare has begun focusing on Anthem, a game that seems more like Destiny than the studio’s failed product.

For EA fans, they are obviously looking forward to the fact that this “big man” will learn from the failures of 2017, for example, pay attention to the core values ​​of the game before implementing. business plans, or treat popular products the way they deserve. Anyway, if this year is a more successful year for EA, it will only be good for the company alone. As for Mass Effect lovers, perhaps the process of waiting for this series to resurrect is still very long.
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