Love how EA insists on crunch time for months at a time, then when the game comes out they’re like “Huh, I wonder why this game is so bad. I mean, it can’t be OUR fault.”
To be fair, I don't think it's so much EA that insists on crunch time, as much as they are hands off to the extent that they will happily let a studio jump off a bridge.
Error 52 I don’t get the impression that EA is particularly hands-off. They’re also very quick to just completely shut down studios that produce bad or underperforming games.
"hey I know you are making a game, but you have to use this engine now. Also I won't give you the training to be capable to use it at a minimum level... Also, you have to keep working on the game, even if you still don't know Jack shit about the engine"
Working for a medical animation studio years ago, I had the misfortune of having to work under a manager that had just previously worked at EA. He took everyone off hourly and forced them to work salaried, plus mandated 55 hour work weeks as the standard without pay increase. Wouldn't respond to my emails, then publicly excoriated me when I fell behind and blamed my lack of communication. Forced us to use Maya even though I was out performing all the Maya guys with ease using 3ds Max, and eventually fired me when I couldn't reach the same proficiency I had had with Max. Fourteen years at that company, down the tubes. EA attracts and breeds human garbage.
@@jeremyshepherd1700 Mostly for medical device companies that want to market to surgeons and hospitals. So it's a lot of shiny metal parts rotating in space for a few seconds, then being inserted into the body in various ways. Boring, but it pays the bills. And the work/life balance is soooo much better than working in the entertainment industry!
@Ninja Crackpot They can make their own engine, but the people in charge sure as hell don't know much about it if this and their other attempt with Dragon Age Inquisition are anything to go by. Besides EA also has many dev studios in their graveyard too.
@Ninja Crackpot I never said it was a bad engine, just that the company heads didn't know much about it. The engine is great for games like Battlefield and Anthem, but it clearly is not meant for anything else without serious time-consuming modifications to the code. Which is why I said that they didn't know much about it. If they did then they wouldn't have forced it on the development team in the middle of development. Maybe if they did it in the beginning it would have went better. Also why are you bring up visuals? I was referring to the stability and mechanics of those games I mentioned, what makes you think I was talking about its visuals?
"Let's make lots of procedurally generated worlds." "Cool, but what's the game about?" "Yup. Tons of world to explore." "But what's the story?" "Soooo many worlds."
"Why EA thought this (using Frostbite) was a good idea... I honestly don't have an answer..." Oh dear Matt, it's all so simple. They own the Frostbite Engine. It's their intellectual property by way of DiCE. They wouldn't have to pay anyone else a dime to use it. Using something more robust like Unreal would have meant they would have to pay royalties, and if there's anything EA hates it's paying money. So they cut the middleman - and made a whole mess of things. And, you know, developing a whole new game engine would cost a lot of money, and nobody (at EA, that is) wants to spend that much.
And look where that got them... I mean, I'm all for making money, but the higher ups at EA are seriously incompetent (at making money). They come on profit every year just because people are stupid and buy their shit games but once they will stop heads will roll. I fucking hate incompetent idiots in charge.
According to my friend who works at DICE, there's currently 150-250 ish people working on the Frostbite engine all over the world. That's a lot of salaries and other expense to pay for. So for EA to decide that all of their companies has to use Frostbite is not a cheaper short term solution, but a good long term one. Among many things, when they encounter issues with the engine, it's easer to get a fix since it's within the company, and not outside of it. It makes a lot of sense. Not defending EA. I think they're scum. The timing for switching engines was perhaps one of the worst times to do so, but it makes a lot of sense.
saving money in and of itself is not always a bad thing…all they had to do was make that choice at the start of pre production, not after production had started. same goes for swapping the 3D software that messed up the animation. it’s less the choice made and more the timing of the choice: idiots
@@onemorechris Some random reason it really feels like they where stuck 15 years in the past. As a current PS2 owner, I could recognize the uncanny animations and lack of depth in the faces might have been something that PS2 owners where indifferent towards back in the early 2000's.
Props to the editor for that transition on "Vertical Slice" and for actually taking the time to make a custom smash match with players named after 2 Bioware studios for the sake of 2 seconds of footage
Hey now, stop being mean! The two white guys they have left animating, and the Indian guy who codes 18 hours a day, while being locked in the basement tried their best! It's not their fault that the rainbow haired ladies don't do anything but use social media all day!
They did indeed plan for DLC, it was supposed to be based around the quarian ship you hear sending an SOS to you right at the very end. I believe they ended up turning it into a comic instead.
The way to was to make good dlc with the quarians then redeemed bioware by making a good andromeda 2! But no like anthem bioware spills on the faces of all their fans.... Awesome writing like outer world give some hope for the future, a future with no bioware
Yup, and at the same time told everyone they would only give support for the multiplayer aspect of the game for a few short months after (it could be longer, I just flat out forget as I bought it on pre-order for the Campaign and was pissed as hell)
The dumb part about making it a comic book is if they meet the other Pathfinders then it makes whichever Ryder it is the canon choice. Scott or Sara? Raeka or Hayjer? Sarissa or Vaderia? Who's the Heleus ambassador? Who's running Kadara? Are the krogan friends or foe? If all they do is to make stupid comics answering those questions that's setting a canon for a series in which the players always had a choice.
"the game just wasn't fun" Couldn't agree more with that, it was my first ME and i played it for the first time in 2020 so those huge bugs wasn't really a problem for me, but the game's pace... oh boy... I'm current playing the remakes and i'm loving it, is like a completely diferent world, so sad to see a company like Bioware like this, i just hope things change with the next Dragon Age and ME...
@Landon Taylor If you didn't change your face in ME2 then you didn't get a face code, ME3 couldn't import correctly because it was looking for something that wasn't there. Bioware did patch it but since they removed options from the character creator faces still didn't look right.
True, incompetent parent companies, why do they feel the need to force their in house engines on devs when the games they make won't work with the engine in any good way? Because they don't know shit about the ins of game development, I guess.
I was a huge fan of Mass Effect but everyone here knows that the day EA purchased BioWare, it was only a matter of time before the franchise was killed off by a buggy mess.
Even without the bugs Andromeda was lackluster. The new combat and class system was good but the open world and small scale shootouts left little space to put it to use. Having only 2 new races and mostly empty worlds was a poor approach to a new galaxy after how fleshed out the original trilogy was from the start. Throw in the state it released in and they essentially released a corpse.
That's the case for every company. It's why when micro-transactions first started showing up and got criticized there were some companies advertising that they didn't have them just because they thought it could give them more sales. And now almost no company doesn't try and find a way to incorporate loot boxes into their game and many of the few who don't still mostly seem to do it just to use that for their advertising. EA is just way more obvious about it than every other company.
@@SOMEGUY7893 You're right, and making money is a business. But the problem with EA is that they put money before quality (which, okay) to the point where the money-making machine crumbles to bits. They don't have pride in their business, they just come by every month to pick up the check. Which naturally results in a scandalized fanbase
@@sarahpsuedonym714 true. EA and their investors really only care about getting as much money as they can at all cost, at the expense of harming the quality of their products
Maaan, I remember the years when this game was coming out, my hype just slowly withered out and was completely dead once the game came out. Mass Effect was one of my favorite series, so it makes me sad that it's gotten to this point.
Andromeda killed my hype for game forever, I've never been so dissapointed on a game before. The franchise that I played over and over again on XBOX only to go out with the most pathethic of whimper
I was never big on mass effect when I was younger (im 23 now) and I remember seeing andromeda and thinking maybe I'll give MF a try again and man I was disappointed:( I need to go back and play the others for sure.
Imagine how Elder Scrolls and Fallout fans feel... That said, I thoroughly enjoyed ME: 1 and 2. Midway through 3, I had lost interest as my decisions in 1 and 2 had little to no effect on 3 and the ending both made little sense and was underwhelming at best. I played ME: 1 and loved it. I was excited for ME: 2 and when I played it, I loved it. I was excited for ME: 3 and.... was thoroughly disappointed. By the time ME: A was announced, I didn't even care and was glad I hadn't bought it when it came out.
i cant feel bad for bioware its part of EA at the end of the day they are there to make money whether or not they respect the community or dont is another story. Being part of EA comes with a stigma a rotten to the core stigma and it continues to fester. We as gamers need to make a stand but we will not Anthem is proof of that. The sport titles all show you we will buy there trash wich is sad cause Mass Effect 1-3 were good dat ending tho... but yeah im sorry if your part of EA and continue to be part of EA at the end of the day you are there for a paycheck Fans Be damned and Fans be fucked cause we need the money not the love or passion project.
Looming Death EA wasnt that bad in the early to mid 2000s when they bought BioWare. Around 2010 when they discovered that multi-player games with micro transactions made them boatloat of money for little effort, that’s where they went full greed mode. BioWare back then couldn’t really predict how EA would be the end of their studio.
@@Aliens1337 Dude, no. The long list of EA casualties that they've casually left in their wake should give any studio red flags about working for them. All it takes is one big enough flop and you're done. On top of that, every time EA buys a studio, the behind the scenes talent begins to leave, creating a self fulfilling prophecy about that flop. People need to stop being EA apologists.
The biggest insult is that the game was like a piece of fish that could food poison you. They knew it was ufc (unfit for consumption) and sold it for full price anyway.
Yea and after the free dlc that added an actual bit of an ending it’s nowhere near as horrific a pull to swallow. Not great but not the sin against god that the original ending was.
@@justafox5356 Yeah, the dlc ending inproved it quite a bit, also leaving room for players to imagine some things, it wasn't that great but it was good
@@justafox5356 It's even more acceptable with mods. My preferred one removes the final choice completely (along with the damn kid ai), going with just destroy while also removing the (stupid and illogical) bit about the Geth/EDI being destroyed too. Then it puts the Citadel DLC after the credits (because Shepard lives in destroy) as an epilogue which works perfectly as the payoff to all your crewmates talk of having a party or hitting the bar.
@@Geassguy360 The JAM mod for the pc version of ME3 is the canon ending in my mind - with the destroy ending that doesn't wipe out all the tech/synths. Nothing can change my opinion on this. If Bioware changes the ending in the remaster for the better, which is unlikely, I guess maybe then my mind might change. Add in some other mods: like changing tali's photo so it's not just a tweaked stockphoto, citadel epilogue, and other minor things and the trilogy is nearly perfect. Although, I do prefer to do the citadel dlc prior to the final battle as a last hurrah before the end.
EA: All level up rewards and in game item drops replaced by loot boxes that award one random skill point or piece of gear, respectively. You can earn a maximum of three boxes per week, or purchase more with premium currency. It’s all about player choice and building that sense of pride and accomplishment.
Ville Tågefelt the only interesting lore was ME1-3. MEA absolutely shattered, utterly decimated ME lore. MEA should have taken place after ME3. Yes I know it’s 600 years later but the Arks leave before the reaper are destroyed. Don’t you think the reapers would know this and follow? Fucking bull shit.
As someone with Maya experience from majoring in game development I'd like to add something(for whoever cares enough to read the comment). Just kind of a further reason switching to Maya towards the end of development was an awful idea. What I have learned about Maya is that it is a decent software. If you start and end in it. Maya also has some lovely animation features that make it wonderful to work with if you learn your way around. Here's the thing, MAYA IS NOTORIOUSLY BROKEN. Sometimes it just doesn't like your hardware for a day and will fix itself later, or sometimes it just doesn't want to read files correctly for a few hours or a couple attempts, or sometimes it just corrupts your preferences for no reason, or decides to save a file somewhere you didn't even know existed on your computer. Don't get me wrong, it is some amazing software, if you use it right you get Destiny and Destiny 2 which were modelled in Maya and look gorgeous, other times you get this schlock. If anyone read this far I appreciate it, but I figured I had some random insight I could add to a small portion in the video that may have been too off-topic to elaborate on in it, so I would toss it in the comments.
"All new story" an alien species taking other species and assimilating them and producing combined version of themselves threatening to do the same to the entire galaxy? hmmmm where have I heard that before?
Unforgettable? I played this in 2018 and already forgot the plot and all the characters name. Meanwhile I still remember Garrus, Tali, Wrex, Liara, Mordin etc from original trilogy.
Watching this makes me so sad. Even in its broken state, the game had promise. The final moments of the game offered a lot of interesting mysteries that could've led to something amazing. But thanks to poor management, something that has become a staple with modern-day BioWare, we'll likely never know what could've been.
These are great videos, very well edited and fun to watch many times over. I'm not sure why really but your vaporwave outro makes me like them even more (the part that advertises Patreon and other vids). Thank you Matt, and everyone involved!
Agreed. They could've used Unreal Engine 3 used in in Mass Effect 1 - 3, but with better textures and lighting (the easiest path), or tried Unreal Engine 4.
Unreal Engine requires paying a licensing fee to Epic for use. EA hoped to avoid any royalties by using their own proprietary engine, Frostbite. Clearly forcing an engine meant for first-person shooters into an RPG was not prudent.
I tried Andromeda out for the first time this past spring. 2 years from launch and it's a decent title. Still a bit janky at points but I had fun with it. Honestly, I'd be up for Bioware taking another stab at it, especially since they can now focus more on the game and less on getting Frostbite to play nice with the RPG elements of the game.
I just got the game a few days ago to see if it was as bad as people said it was. Honestly, this game is one of the worst games i've ever played. It's just another ME3, it was very poorly written. Iv'e been trying to find something to like about it and so far it's only the abilities that I can enjoy about it. I hate how the game has platforming from time to time and the shooting feels like something out of a mobile game. The characters are another thing I don't like, they're annoying to talk to. The Nomad speaks for itself, no one liked the mako why bring it back without a gun? Then the protagonist is about the worst part of the game, your character is so childish no matter what dialogue option you choose. I get a saints row (a game that doesn't take itself serious) vibe whenever he/she talks. I'm glad I only spent 15 bucks on this garbage.
I got on my ps4 like 3 years ago played it for a bit later sold my ps4. I can't remember anything or anyone in the game I got the final version it had stable performance no bugs. I can't remember any memories of the game just shows how terrible the writing was
13:15 To be fair, in development circles, that's usually caused by an absence of automated tests and a codebase that's just too tightly coupled (and untestable in the first place)... EDIT: If you value your QA team's sanity that is... at least use regression tests to reproduce the bugs and confirm they're fixed...
The game itself is solid and has only gotten better over time. Clearly after everyone smelt EAs shit grabbing stank and put up a fuss they backed off and let the devs actually make a real game out of their lootbox simulator. But for real I encourage people to check out the game, it still has good developer support and regular updates... though I understand people's trepidation as it took me well over a year to believe that it was anything but a shitfest.
Also lootboxes are almost entirely gone, the only exceptions being a few tied to ingame achievements with none being purchaseable, and characters are all free(as they should have been in the start) with the star cards being something that you earn through playing the characters and classes, not buy(again as they should have been from the beginning).
Thank you for this very clear and concise explanation, Muscles. It was very insightful. You presented the overall story and just the right amount of detailed information.
I've recently discovered that procedural generation was planned even in ME1, but Bioware soon gave up on the idea because it was impossible to make back in that time.
I'm replaying it now on PC in 2019 and the vast majority of the bugs are fixed. That doesn't justify the game's state at release, but it did become some fun in the end.
@Johnny Nunya Yeah, I think they were going for the holy grail of space games: a 'No Man's Sky/Star Citizen' multi world, open universe; but they ran out of steam after five planets. Going a million lightyears wide gets you only an inch deep.
I remember there even being a huge contest for a bunch of money that just... kinda didn't go anywhere. Also Tommy Tallarico did sound for the game and was super proud of it.
@@HypnoLama Whoever is running Sega and calling the shots are incompetent fools. Makes wish Nintendo would buy the IP they would do a hell of a lot better than Sega.
Sonic Forces was a Triple A game developed by a bunch of newbies. None of them actually developed a Sonic game before, and if they did I bet the developers were more busy developing the engine for the game. How does a game that spent 4 years in development turn out so... bad?
@@AxisChurchDevotee I don't know. Sega made one hell of an F Zero game! They just need to settle on either reforming Sonic Team or outright replace them.
i knew you were a tester as soon as i heard you mention "sku", not many people know that out of testing. I myself was a game tester for a while until i jumped ship to start programming
I actually liked Jaal well enough. He was the only squadmate to really embody the series going somewhere new, exploring a new alien race and culture through a character arc that evolved throughout the main story. Just a shame that the rest of the game didn't have the time to go further with that concept.
I actually really like andromeda... I liked the characters and story, but granted I got the game in June 2018, loooooong after many of the patches and animation fixes
What blew me away right out of the gate was the fact that it was impossible to make a fair skinned character. Look I’ll admit I’m pale enough to probably serve as an extra in Twilight without too much makeup so I tend to make pale characters in RPGs(unless there’s non-human options then I always go for fantasy/alien races) and the default character creator literally didn’t have a fair skinned option. I actually had to find a mod to let me make a pale character. Let me just reiterate, I needed a mod to have access to a completely natural skin tone for a human in an RPG that known for touting how important YOUR character and his/her choices are to the story. That’s damn near unacceptable.
I hope they can make another ME game. Weird glitches aside, Andromeda left a lot of unanswered questions with the Angara and it has potential for an interesting story.
Given how much anti-hype there was for this game when I played it around launch I was completely and utterly just whelmed. Given how low my expectations were and the fact that a lot of what I had heard happening I was surprised the game actually came out mostly playable. I do love most of the characters... Except Lima who really tanked the early game experience with his shitty jokes like "that one seems angry. Maybe because I shot it in the face." I was hopeful for a squeal to help smooth out the wrinkles, much like how ME2 was a vast improvement over ME1's engine and animations, but that's never going to happen now. A little sad for those people who wanted to do something so ambitious but kept getting blind sided by EA
17:23 Look at all these companies that EA buried in their underbelly on their lust for money. Rest in Peace. Your games will be played not by our hands and mind alone, but in our hearts.
Thankfully, two years later, we have a quality remaster of the original trilogy with stuff backported from Andromeda *AND* a confirmed fourth/fifth game on the horizon, so all is not lost for the Systems Alliance. Also apparently after patches Andromeda might actually be playable now.
When i see people talk about this game I feel like I played an entirely different game. I got ME:A on launch day on pc and had 0 animation or gameplay bugs. I was a little irritated because I felt like the characters were ugly, not in a graphical way but in an aesthetic one, but otherwise I was pretty happy. I guess I am the one guy that this game was made for lol.
I had a similar experience. I played it at launch and 100%ed it and I think it crashed like two or three times in 80 hours of play time. Never had any of the graphic issues everyone was talking about despite the fact that I think my PC was slightly below the minimum specs when I got it. Aside from a bit of open world burnout by the end I enjoyed it a fair bit though I do still have complaints about it. I felt a lot like people were just bandwagoning at the time to shame EA/Bioware I always felt like I couldn't have been the only one who had a decent experience with it.
same here.But my setup is lucky this way, also played arkham knight on release with no trouble. Andromeda got really unlucky with all the negative memes and hype, and EA being the usual greedy overlord. Well,at least this world will leave trough fan fiction for some time still.
Yeah same I am so confused when people talk about the glitches because both me and my dad played it with no glitches besides maybe a crash every now and then it was a fun albeit kind of ugly game
Sorry if it's already been covered, but I would love to see something on Telltale. Wolf Among Us was one of my favorite games. I found this channel through the Mother's Basement video and I'm loving it so far!
Breaks that break multiple things usually means tight coupling - how do you develop a project of this size with tight coupling? Poor turn around for bug fixes - how do you develop a project of this size without unit tests? Well when you have tight coupling you can't unit test. Massive amounts of time lost to using an engine not meant for the type of game you're making - use the right tool. You can hammer a nail in with a wrench but you can save yourself some time and headaches by just using a hammer. Practice inversion of control / dependency injection / unit testing if you don't want these two problems that often spell doom for any large project. Jeesh. Rookie mistakes Bioware
I played Andromeda for the first time a couple months ago. Most of the terrible bugs have been stamped out by now (or I just got really lucky). But even then I still could smell the stench of it being a rushed project. Even then, some of the side missions were really good. Not all of them, and the main story’s pretty bland, but I think that if they made Andromeda 2: Not Wasting Hundreds of Hours This Time, it could have potential, and be much better than the first. But this is EA, and we all know where this tragedy ends. RIP
I feel really sorry for these devs, as someone who picked up the game far later (at least a year after release) I think the game is really fun and all those glitches were patched. Even when the game was basically cancelled me and a few friends actually sent in bugs and problems for them to help balance weapons and the like as we frequently played multiplayer and all of the issues we sent in were fixed. Along with many thank yous from the basically skeleton crew that was still patching the game for being so supportive of the game.
NGL I Loved Andromeda for what it was. It was an expansion on the ME universe. I really wanna see a sequel and what happens with the Ryder clan and so on.
It's so funny watching this now knowing that EA recently announced that they will no longer be forcing staff to use Frostbite because they cannot hire new programmers because their experience with other engines like Unity & Unreal does not translate and is costing them hundreds of thousands to bring new hires up to speed. Who knew forcing your staff to use a proprietary game engine so they can't take a better paying and fairer job at another company with the experience they gain at your studio would backfire like this??? *cough 343, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer, Blizzard, Bethesda, Zenimax, Bungie, Arkane, Rocksteady, Ubisoft Montreal, Crystal Dynamics, Game Freak, Warner Montreal cough*
What's interesting to think about is Andromeda is very similar to the first Mass Effect. Plenty of bugs, largely empty worlds to explore, relatively heavy RPG elements. Mass Effect has a better story and characters but Andromeda has waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better combat and driving. Pound for pound they are pretty even in terms of quality. But you have to take into account that Mass Effect came out 10 years earlier, which makes Andromeda look pretty bad in comparison. That being said, I enjoyed Andromeda and am still waiting for a story expansion. >.
ME1 was *dripping* in interesting worldbuilding, music, visual design and writing. Most of the writing for Andromeda was worse than what *I* could do. And I write fanfics.
ME2 was definitely the high point for the series. I freaking love that game. ME3 was really fun to play although the actual story wasn't nearly as good. I actually sunk many many hours into the multiplayer, which surprised me as I hate it when games (all EA games) tack multiplayer on for no good reason.
Same here. I bought it for $10 after all the patches had come out and had a good time. Not as much as 1, 2, and the first 99% of 3 but for $10 it was pretty good.
I also enjoyed it. Enough that I was surprisingly excited for the Quarian Arc DLC that was teased at the end of the game. Only for development to cease and the studio to shut down. :(
I've been playing it on EA access and so far I'm loving it, I'm sure on launch the bugs were a pain but tbh, the story is alright. At launch I remember a large part of the criticism boiled down to "this asari isn't as fuckable as the last asari".
I'm not a Mass Effect fan and I picked up Andromeda awhile after it came out and most of the bugs were patched, but I enjoyed the game when I played it. Knowing the story behind the scenes- the overarching theme of the game about trying to rebuild from the ruins of a bad start and being unsure if it was going to work out seems almost personal to the devs.
Love how EA insists on crunch time for months at a time, then when the game comes out they’re like “Huh, I wonder why this game is so bad. I mean, it can’t be OUR fault.”
"Am I out of touch? No, it is the customers who are wrong."
To be fair, I don't think it's so much EA that insists on crunch time, as much as they are hands off to the extent that they will happily let a studio jump off a bridge.
Error 52 I don’t get the impression that EA is particularly hands-off. They’re also very quick to just completely shut down studios that produce bad or underperforming games.
"hey I know you are making a game, but you have to use this engine now. Also I won't give you the training to be capable to use it at a minimum level... Also, you have to keep working on the game, even if you still don't know Jack shit about the engine"
"It must be these lazy untalented studios! Shut them down immediately!"
Working for a medical animation studio years ago, I had the misfortune of having to work under a manager that had just previously worked at EA. He took everyone off hourly and forced them to work salaried, plus mandated 55 hour work weeks as the standard without pay increase. Wouldn't respond to my emails, then publicly excoriated me when I fell behind and blamed my lack of communication. Forced us to use Maya even though I was out performing all the Maya guys with ease using 3ds Max, and eventually fired me when I couldn't reach the same proficiency I had had with Max. Fourteen years at that company, down the tubes. EA attracts and breeds human garbage.
I have to ask, what does medical animation entail? Like for hospitals or something?
@@jeremyshepherd1700 Mostly for medical device companies that want to market to surgeons and hospitals. So it's a lot of shiny metal parts rotating in space for a few seconds, then being inserted into the body in various ways. Boring, but it pays the bills. And the work/life balance is soooo much better than working in the entertainment industry!
I hope that guy ceases to exist
Yeah. Thats the effect o a bad cultural enviroment. Companys like EA will always atract people like that.
Sorry you had to go through that. Hope things are better now!
The reason why they changed to frostbite was because EA fully owns it so they don't need to pay royalties to other engines.
In short, money.
Cheap bastards, aren't they?
What's funny is it cost them in the long run
@Ninja Crackpot They can make their own engine, but the people in charge sure as hell don't know much about it if this and their other attempt with Dragon Age Inquisition are anything to go by.
Besides EA also has many dev studios in their graveyard too.
@Ninja Crackpot I never said it was a bad engine, just that the company heads didn't know much about it. The engine is great for games like Battlefield and Anthem, but it clearly is not meant for anything else without serious time-consuming modifications to the code.
Which is why I said that they didn't know much about it. If they did then they wouldn't have forced it on the development team in the middle of development. Maybe if they did it in the beginning it would have went better.
Also why are you bring up visuals? I was referring to the stability and mechanics of those games I mentioned, what makes you think I was talking about its visuals?
@Ninja Crackpot amazing for what it is designed to do. For shooters. Everything else nope. EA had the money to make several engines but don't
"Let's make lots of procedurally generated worlds."
"Cool, but what's the game about?"
"Yup. Tons of world to explore."
"But what's the story?"
"Soooo many worlds."
Basically No Man's Sky at launch
That's the whole problem with this open world fad.
Reminds me of a screen rant pitch meeting.
Haha the pr meeting in a nutshell
Wdf u even talking about? No procedurally geberated worlds and no justice warrior bs ib the stiry fukin sheep play the gane then talk
"Why EA thought this (using Frostbite) was a good idea... I honestly don't have an answer..."
Oh dear Matt, it's all so simple. They own the Frostbite Engine. It's their intellectual property by way of DiCE. They wouldn't have to pay anyone else a dime to use it. Using something more robust like Unreal would have meant they would have to pay royalties, and if there's anything EA hates it's paying money. So they cut the middleman - and made a whole mess of things. And, you know, developing a whole new game engine would cost a lot of money, and nobody (at EA, that is) wants to spend that much.
And look where that got them... I mean, I'm all for making money, but the higher ups at EA are seriously incompetent (at making money). They come on profit every year just because people are stupid and buy their shit games but once they will stop heads will roll. I fucking hate incompetent idiots in charge.
According to my friend who works at DICE, there's currently 150-250 ish people working on the Frostbite engine all over the world. That's a lot of salaries and other expense to pay for. So for EA to decide that all of their companies has to use Frostbite is not a cheaper short term solution, but a good long term one. Among many things, when they encounter issues with the engine, it's easer to get a fix since it's within the company, and not outside of it. It makes a lot of sense.
Not defending EA. I think they're scum. The timing for switching engines was perhaps one of the worst times to do so, but it makes a lot of sense.
saving money in and of itself is not always a bad thing…all they had to do was make that choice at the start of pre production, not after production had started. same goes for swapping the 3D software that messed up the animation. it’s less the choice made and more the timing of the choice: idiots
@@zebbr0s maybe, but the Frostbite engine wasn't made to accommodate RPGs, just fps games.
@@onemorechris Some random reason it really feels like they where stuck 15 years in the past. As a current PS2 owner, I could recognize the uncanny animations and lack of depth in the faces might have been something that PS2 owners where indifferent towards back in the early 2000's.
Props to the editor for that transition on "Vertical Slice" and for actually taking the time to make a custom smash match with players named after 2 Bioware studios for the sake of 2 seconds of footage
My face is tired from seeing everybody commenting about how their faces are tired from dealing with...everything.
My face is tired from dealing with the fact that Epstein didn't kill himself
Hey now, stop being mean! The two white guys they have left animating, and the Indian guy who codes 18 hours a day, while being locked in the basement tried their best! It's not their fault that the rainbow haired ladies don't do anything but use social media all day!
It’s not funny anymore
That’s my favorite line from the game 😂
Sorry, my face is tired.
They did indeed plan for DLC, it was supposed to be based around the quarian ship you hear sending an SOS to you right at the very end. I believe they ended up turning it into a comic instead.
The way to was to make good dlc with the quarians then redeemed bioware by making a good andromeda 2!
But no like anthem bioware spills on the faces of all their fans....
Awesome writing like outer world give some hope for the future, a future with no bioware
Yup, and at the same time told everyone they would only give support for the multiplayer aspect of the game for a few short months after (it could be longer, I just flat out forget as I bought it on pre-order for the Campaign and was pissed as hell)
Lame they do it in a damn comic book. It needs to be it's own mission
That story arc was actually turned into a novel. In my opinion, it was better than this game.
The dumb part about making it a comic book is if they meet the other Pathfinders then it makes whichever Ryder it is the canon choice. Scott or Sara? Raeka or Hayjer? Sarissa or Vaderia? Who's the Heleus ambassador? Who's running Kadara? Are the krogan friends or foe?
If all they do is to make stupid comics answering those questions that's setting a canon for a series in which the players always had a choice.
9:06
"Yeah but your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
"the game just wasn't fun"
Couldn't agree more with that, it was my first ME and i played it for the first time in 2020 so those huge bugs wasn't really a problem for me, but the game's pace... oh boy... I'm current playing the remakes and i'm loving it, is like a completely diferent world, so sad to see a company like Bioware like this, i just hope things change with the next Dragon Age and ME...
Report to the ship as soon as possible. We'll BANG okay?
I'll have you know there's no PUSSSIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE
steak liara... i fucking love steak
All of the ME games have custom faces, that was one of the major things about it, you could transfer your character between games
@@lobstrosity7163 bro but the second one is the best.
@Landon Taylor If you didn't change your face in ME2 then you didn't get a face code, ME3 couldn't import correctly because it was looking for something that wasn't there.
Bioware did patch it but since they removed options from the character creator faces still didn't look right.
@@lobstrosity7163 he never said the other games didn't have that, just that it further broke the already patched together Andromeda on the new engine
"It's in the game."
-Homer Simpson
EA "it's in the game.._ later
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
"It takes 2 to lie... 1 to lie, 1 to listen." ~ Homer Simpson
@@redherronrecords "I wasn't lying. I was telling fiction with my mouth." -Homer Simpson
I can hear Homer's voice.
I like how most of the videos come down to parent companies ruining things.
Mainly EA....
almost like there's an inherent problem with quality when labour is subservient to a profit motive…
@@soupalex Yes I'm sure we would have many great games if there was no motive for profit...
Seriously this socialist nonsense needs to stop.
True, incompetent parent companies, why do they feel the need to force their in house engines on devs when the games they make won't work with the engine in any good way? Because they don't know shit about the ins of game development, I guess.
@@soupalexco-ops won't fix this lmao
Do people actually not like Seth Green in those games?
I thought he did a good job.
Yeah, I've never heard that complaint before.
Matt's jealous because Seth got to bang a robot woman first
i fucking hate seth green and never want to see him in anything
Joker was awesome. I found myself invested in his and EDI's relationship more than I did most of the other characters' stories.
Looks like we got one person in the comment chain.
We just need a Wha Happun for EA itself at this point, sure it would be likely to be hours long but it deserves it.
I was a huge fan of Mass Effect but everyone here knows that the day EA purchased BioWare, it was only a matter of time before the franchise was killed off by a buggy mess.
Even without the bugs Andromeda was lackluster. The new combat and class system was good but the open world and small scale shootouts left little space to put it to use. Having only 2 new races and mostly empty worlds was a poor approach to a new galaxy after how fleshed out the original trilogy was from the start. Throw in the state it released in and they essentially released a corpse.
EA did good with me2 with the extra support they helped the studio get but afterwards👎🏾
@@John_shepard Yeah, you know how it goes - make a deal with the devil, and eventually he's gonna come to collect.
@@BabysitterSky driven to that state by EA, most of the original crew was gone by the time of anthem
@@zeroattentiongaming820 Yeah, this. Also they had to do a quasi-reboot because of the trash fire Bioware chose to end the original trilogy with.
16:10 EA busting through the door wielding an axe: "It's in the game"
Me: "Ahhhhhhhh!"
Yeah, that sums up my feelings about EA perfectly.
15:59
I'm still blown away by the scene where she holds the pistol backwards and shoots it. How could you let something that obvious slip by?
"We'll patch that later."
Laziness and Arrogance.
damn edit
Because the people behind this game were shooting themselves, metaphorically speaking
that's actually the AI becoming sentient and trying to commit suicide. I mean, I'd do the same if I was trapped in a shit game too.
"Why EA thought this was a good idea I honestly don't have an answer"
Money. Money is always the answer at EA.
That's the case for every company. It's why when micro-transactions first started showing up and got criticized there were some companies advertising that they didn't have them just because they thought it could give them more sales. And now almost no company doesn't try and find a way to incorporate loot boxes into their game and many of the few who don't still mostly seem to do it just to use that for their advertising. EA is just way more obvious about it than every other company.
@@SOMEGUY7893 You're right, and making money is a business. But the problem with EA is that they put money before quality (which, okay) to the point where the money-making machine crumbles to bits. They don't have pride in their business, they just come by every month to pick up the check. Which naturally results in a scandalized fanbase
@@sarahpsuedonym714 true. EA and their investors really only care about getting as much money as they can at all cost, at the expense of harming the quality of their products
Maaan, I remember the years when this game was coming out, my hype just slowly withered out and was completely dead once the game came out. Mass Effect was one of my favorite series, so it makes me sad that it's gotten to this point.
Andromeda killed my hype for game forever, I've never been so dissapointed on a game before. The franchise that I played over and over again on XBOX only to go out with the most pathethic of whimper
I was never big on mass effect when I was younger (im 23 now) and I remember seeing andromeda and thinking maybe I'll give MF a try again and man I was disappointed:( I need to go back and play the others for sure.
Picked it up for $20. It wasnt worth it.
@@fugitiveunknown7806 I picked it up from a friend for free cause he didnt like it and I quickly found out why lol
Imagine how Elder Scrolls and Fallout fans feel...
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed ME: 1 and 2. Midway through 3, I had lost interest as my decisions in 1 and 2 had little to no effect on 3 and the ending both made little sense and was underwhelming at best.
I played ME: 1 and loved it.
I was excited for ME: 2 and when I played it, I loved it.
I was excited for ME: 3 and.... was thoroughly disappointed.
By the time ME: A was announced, I didn't even care and was glad I hadn't bought it when it came out.
"imagine no mans sky with bioware graphics and story?"
is that a threat?
My face is tired...
But seriously, glad you covered this Matt, I feel so bad for Bioware and how they've fallen.
i cant feel bad for bioware its part of EA at the end of the day they are there to make money whether or not they respect the community or dont is another story. Being part of EA comes with a stigma a rotten to the core stigma and it continues to fester. We as gamers need to make a stand but we will not Anthem is proof of that. The sport titles all show you we will buy there trash wich is sad cause Mass Effect 1-3 were good dat ending tho... but yeah im sorry if your part of EA and continue to be part of EA at the end of the day you are there for a paycheck Fans Be damned and Fans be fucked cause we need the money not the love or passion project.
Looming Death EA wasnt that bad in the early to mid 2000s when they bought BioWare. Around 2010 when they discovered that multi-player games with micro transactions made them boatloat of money for little effort, that’s where they went full greed mode. BioWare back then couldn’t really predict how EA would be the end of their studio.
@@kyotheman69 Matt's already done Anthem...and the video became outdated immediately after because of the expose Jason S. wrote 🤣
Firetrigger2110 this is why you don’t shake hands with the devil...
@@Aliens1337 Dude, no. The long list of EA casualties that they've casually left in their wake should give any studio red flags about working for them. All it takes is one big enough flop and you're done. On top of that, every time EA buys a studio, the behind the scenes talent begins to leave, creating a self fulfilling prophecy about that flop. People need to stop being EA apologists.
13:58 Every entry in the original Mass Effect trilogy had character creation.
I feel like wwe 2k20 will get it's time in the sun soon
@@unicorntomboy9736
It's about as shit as it looks, trust me
They need to get away from 2K Games. Far, far away.
The biggest insult is that the game was like a piece of fish that could food poison you. They knew it was ufc (unfit for consumption) and sold it for full price anyway.
It's the NBA Elite of wrestling games.
@@ZeroBeat1 the best version is the unpatched original. just change the year to 19 & its the best game ever made
I loved the whole Mass effect trilogy minus the last 10 minutes, and honestly, i was fine with that
Yea and after the free dlc that added an actual bit of an ending it’s nowhere near as horrific a pull to swallow. Not great but not the sin against god that the original ending was.
@@justafox5356 Yeah, the dlc ending inproved it quite a bit, also leaving room for players to imagine some things, it wasn't that great but it was good
@@justafox5356 It's even more acceptable with mods. My preferred one removes the final choice completely (along with the damn kid ai), going with just destroy while also removing the (stupid and illogical) bit about the Geth/EDI being destroyed too. Then it puts the Citadel DLC after the credits (because Shepard lives in destroy) as an epilogue which works perfectly as the payoff to all your crewmates talk of having a party or hitting the bar.
@@Geassguy360 The JAM mod for the pc version of ME3 is the canon ending in my mind - with the destroy ending that doesn't wipe out all the tech/synths. Nothing can change my opinion on this. If Bioware changes the ending in the remaster for the better, which is unlikely, I guess maybe then my mind might change. Add in some other mods: like changing tali's photo so it's not just a tweaked stockphoto, citadel epilogue, and other minor things and the trilogy is nearly perfect. Although, I do prefer to do the citadel dlc prior to the final battle as a last hurrah before the end.
I’d say they should remaster the original trilogy but they’d find a way to muck that up too.
There is some rumors that that's whats going to happen
Mackson edinis will find out Thursday on n7 day is my bet
EA: All level up rewards and in game item drops replaced by loot boxes that award one random skill point or piece of gear, respectively. You can earn a maximum of three boxes per week, or purchase more with premium currency. It’s all about player choice and building that sense of pride and accomplishment.
I would pay a stupid amount for a trilogy remaster. Especially if it increases the multiplayer pool even a little.
@fenrif is ME1 or ME2 the good one
All of that beautiful world building, interesting lore and amazing characters just thrown out the window. I got no anger left for this, only sadness
Ville Tågefelt the only interesting lore was ME1-3. MEA absolutely shattered, utterly decimated ME lore. MEA should have taken place after ME3. Yes I know it’s 600 years later but the Arks leave before the reaper are destroyed. Don’t you think the reapers would know this and follow? Fucking bull shit.
0:31
Honestly, this game might as well be considered to be “Planet Sheen - The Video Game”
"WINNING"
@@bdawgschnarr6623 wrong Sheen
@@Pagemaster22193 meme still stands
EA to Bioware: You're discharged
Planet sheen was the shit back in the Nickelodeon days
Me: The earlier a bug is fixed in development, the cheaper it is to fix.
EA: Let's change the core engine mid production!
'facepalms'
Changing 3D software so late into development makes me feel physically ill, how could anyone think that wasn't a horrible plan?
As someone with Maya experience from majoring in game development I'd like to add something(for whoever cares enough to read the comment). Just kind of a further reason switching to Maya towards the end of development was an awful idea. What I have learned about Maya is that it is a decent software. If you start and end in it. Maya also has some lovely animation features that make it wonderful to work with if you learn your way around. Here's the thing, MAYA IS NOTORIOUSLY BROKEN. Sometimes it just doesn't like your hardware for a day and will fix itself later, or sometimes it just doesn't want to read files correctly for a few hours or a couple attempts, or sometimes it just corrupts your preferences for no reason, or decides to save a file somewhere you didn't even know existed on your computer. Don't get me wrong, it is some amazing software, if you use it right you get Destiny and Destiny 2 which were modelled in Maya and look gorgeous, other times you get this schlock.
If anyone read this far I appreciate it, but I figured I had some random insight I could add to a small portion in the video that may have been too off-topic to elaborate on in it, so I would toss it in the comments.
Very surprised the writing and dialogue wasn't mentioned in this
Unfortunately the lackluster writing and dialogue seems to be less a matter of crunch and technical difficulties. More a matter of incompetence.
"All new story" an alien species taking other species and assimilating them and producing combined version of themselves threatening to do the same to the entire galaxy? hmmmm where have I heard that before?
"But the list of their casualties is even longer"
*Sees Bullfrog and Westwood*
Mah hart, Mah soul
It's so interesting to me how this game is still talked about to this day. It may not have been great, but it certainly wasn't forgettable...
That's due to the trilogy, and how bad the successor to it was.
Unforgettable? I played this in 2018 and already forgot the plot and all the characters name. Meanwhile I still remember Garrus, Tali, Wrex, Liara, Mordin etc from original trilogy.
I mean if you play it now it's actually playable and it's... It's fine I guess. Probably about as good as the worst parts of ME3
The whole series is pretty forgettable.
But it isn't memorable for the right reasons...
Man, this was such a sad way to see one of my favorite franchises die
Alexa, play Leaving Earth
BWWWOOOOOOOOOOM
It's not dead. I refuse. There's money in ME still. Even EA's brain addled selves will follow the money.
@@E-Man5805 How's Dead Space?
@@Brandonious15987 very unalive
@@E-Man5805 yeah I hear disco might make a comeback too!
Watching this makes me so sad. Even in its broken state, the game had promise. The final moments of the game offered a lot of interesting mysteries that could've led to something amazing. But thanks to poor management, something that has become a staple with modern-day BioWare, we'll likely never know what could've been.
These are great videos, very well edited and fun to watch many times over. I'm not sure why really but your vaporwave outro makes me like them even more (the part that advertises Patreon and other vids). Thank you Matt, and everyone involved!
Mass Effect started with Unreal Engine, should have stayed that way.
Agreed. They could've used Unreal Engine 3 used in in Mass Effect 1 - 3, but with better textures and lighting (the easiest path), or tried Unreal Engine 4.
Should've=should have. Not "should of"
Unreal Engine requires paying a licensing fee to Epic for use. EA hoped to avoid any royalties by using their own proprietary engine, Frostbite. Clearly forcing an engine meant for first-person shooters into an RPG was not prudent.
Also the fact that you still couldn't romance a Krogan is BULLSHIT and makes this game even more depressing.
Wait, people actually want that? I had no idea.
I'm not against it, just had no idea anyone wanted that.
@@slowmoe1686 Maybe some gays want it, but certanly not people)
@@ПетрВрангель-т8п Why gays? Female krogans exist. Eve from ME3 was a pretty damn nice lass. Smart too.
Петр Врангель I’m really hoping that’s just broken English.
I never had any issue aside from enemies glitching here and there. My issue is they bailed on it for the crappy Anthem.
I tried Andromeda out for the first time this past spring. 2 years from launch and it's a decent title. Still a bit janky at points but I had fun with it. Honestly, I'd be up for Bioware taking another stab at it, especially since they can now focus more on the game and less on getting Frostbite to play nice with the RPG elements of the game.
Just get us out of Andromeda and take us back to the milky way and ya got a deal lol
I just got the game a few days ago to see if it was as bad as people said it was. Honestly, this game is one of the worst games i've ever played. It's just another ME3, it was very poorly written. Iv'e been trying to find something to like about it and so far it's only the abilities that I can enjoy about it. I hate how the game has platforming from time to time and the shooting feels like something out of a mobile game. The characters are another thing I don't like, they're annoying to talk to. The Nomad speaks for itself, no one liked the mako why bring it back without a gun? Then the protagonist is about the worst part of the game, your character is so childish no matter what dialogue option you choose. I get a saints row (a game that doesn't take itself serious) vibe whenever he/she talks. I'm glad I only spent 15 bucks on this garbage.
I got on my ps4 like 3 years ago played it for a bit later sold my ps4. I can't remember anything or anyone in the game I got the final version it had stable performance no bugs. I can't remember any memories of the game just shows how terrible the writing was
13:15 To be fair, in development circles, that's usually caused by an absence of automated tests and a codebase that's just too tightly coupled (and untestable in the first place)...
EDIT: If you value your QA team's sanity that is... at least use regression tests to reproduce the bugs and confirm they're fixed...
I would love to see a episode focused on Star Wars Battlefront 2.
One word: Lootboxes.
The game itself is solid and has only gotten better over time. Clearly after everyone smelt EAs shit grabbing stank and put up a fuss they backed off and let the devs actually make a real game out of their lootbox simulator.
But for real I encourage people to check out the game, it still has good developer support and regular updates... though I understand people's trepidation as it took me well over a year to believe that it was anything but a shitfest.
Also lootboxes are almost entirely gone, the only exceptions being a few tied to ingame achievements with none being purchaseable, and characters are all free(as they should have been in the start) with the star cards being something that you earn through playing the characters and classes, not buy(again as they should have been from the beginning).
@@sgtsmith501 oh god i forgot about that, I was so happy to see instant action after all these years that it slipped my mind!
Thank you for this very clear and concise explanation, Muscles. It was very insightful. You presented the overall story and just the right amount of detailed information.
Wait... what's wrong with Seth Green?
He's Seth Green
Joker is one of the best parts of the trilogy. I'm a bit confused.
Broccoli Senpai honestly wasn’t such a big fan of the character.
This series is really well done Matt.
3:30 that episode of SpongeBob where he says "actors"
I've recently discovered that procedural generation was planned even in ME1, but Bioware soon gave up on the idea because it was impossible to make back in that time.
I would definitely be interested in a Wha Happun for Spyro Enter The Dragonfly!
I didn't realize Andromeda and Horizon Zero Dawn came out at almost the same time. Ouch!
Love the use of the Va-11 Hall A soundtrack at the end!
I'm replaying it now on PC in 2019 and the vast majority of the bugs are fixed. That doesn't justify the game's state at release, but it did become some fun in the end.
@Johnny Nunya Yeah, I think they were going for the holy grail of space games: a 'No Man's Sky/Star Citizen' multi world, open universe; but they ran out of steam after five planets. Going a million lightyears wide gets you only an inch deep.
Advent Rising! I personally thought it had so much potential, and I still remember it so well to this day....including all the game breaking bugs.
I remember there even being a huge contest for a bunch of money that just... kinda didn't go anywhere.
Also Tommy Tallarico did sound for the game and was super proud of it.
I suspect that the game's story being written by Orson Scott Card and all the controversy surrounding him, didn't help matters
Advent Rising, the game that focused more on having different walking sounds depending on what you're walking on than actually making the game good.
Jesus, ya didn't warn me about the snu snu scenes. I'm watching this on my laptop in school. In other words, R.I.P me.
It’s time for SONIC to FORCE his way into this show again
I do wonder what the hell happened behind the scenes so many things were wrong with the story.
@@HypnoLama Whoever is running Sega and calling the shots are incompetent fools.
Makes wish Nintendo would buy the IP they would do a hell of a lot better than Sega.
Sonic Forces was a Triple A game developed by a bunch of newbies. None of them actually developed a Sonic game before, and if they did I bet the developers were more busy developing the engine for the game.
How does a game that spent 4 years in development turn out so... bad?
Sonic Forces His Chilidog Inside My Rectum
@@AxisChurchDevotee I don't know. Sega made one hell of an F Zero game! They just need to settle on either reforming Sonic Team or outright replace them.
i knew you were a tester as soon as i heard you mention "sku", not many people know that out of testing. I myself was a game tester for a while until i jumped ship to start programming
That's also a retail thing
Can't help but recognize that Steins;Gate music
Man of cuture i see
waah my metal vending machine toy
Moral of the story:
Never negotiate with EA
I missed Tali, Garrus and Liara. I don't even remember any of the characters names from Andromeda.
Same!!! The characters were so bland.
I actually liked Jaal well enough. He was the only squadmate to really embody the series going somewhere new, exploring a new alien race and culture through a character arc that evolved throughout the main story. Just a shame that the rest of the game didn't have the time to go further with that concept.
YorkJonhson See, I cant even remember who that is 😿
yea the only characters name i remember is vetra
linux_74 Harpo who is Vetra? Aight, I’m out. 🥺
I actually really like andromeda... I liked the characters and story, but granted I got the game in June 2018, loooooong after many of the patches and animation fixes
@@SageOfLimitlessHands lol
What blew me away right out of the gate was the fact that it was impossible to make a fair skinned character. Look I’ll admit I’m pale enough to probably serve as an extra in Twilight without too much makeup so I tend to make pale characters in RPGs(unless there’s non-human options then I always go for fantasy/alien races) and the default character creator literally didn’t have a fair skinned option. I actually had to find a mod to let me make a pale character. Let me just reiterate, I needed a mod to have access to a completely natural skin tone for a human in an RPG that known for touting how important YOUR character and his/her choices are to the story. That’s damn near unacceptable.
Always good to watch again
Love that Swtor cantina music at the beginning!
These videos are the greatest. Homer Simpson pulling a the shining then saying "it's in the game" had me rolling.
Oh man, the glitches in this one still crack me up every time.
I hope they can make another ME game. Weird glitches aside, Andromeda left a lot of unanswered questions with the Angara and it has potential for an interesting story.
Given how much anti-hype there was for this game when I played it around launch I was completely and utterly just whelmed. Given how low my expectations were and the fact that a lot of what I had heard happening I was surprised the game actually came out mostly playable. I do love most of the characters... Except Lima who really tanked the early game experience with his shitty jokes like "that one seems angry. Maybe because I shot it in the face."
I was hopeful for a squeal to help smooth out the wrinkles, much like how ME2 was a vast improvement over ME1's engine and animations, but that's never going to happen now. A little sad for those people who wanted to do something so ambitious but kept getting blind sided by EA
That 11:35 Cpt Crunch throwback. (Scrambles for old cds box) still got it
3:13
That's gotta be a mod...
That's what I was thinking.
Either that or it's SFM Hentai
17:10 Dude. That was like a graveyard of my childhood.
17:23
Look at all these companies that EA buried in their underbelly on their lust for money. Rest in Peace. Your games will be played not by our hands and mind alone, but in our hearts.
Thankfully, two years later, we have a quality remaster of the original trilogy with stuff backported from Andromeda *AND* a confirmed fourth/fifth game on the horizon, so all is not lost for the Systems Alliance.
Also apparently after patches Andromeda might actually be playable now.
Frostbite not having proper tools for animation is probably why all those things are prerendered in the bf games, not even sure if in engine.
such a great video! I was waiting for you to cover this.
When i see people talk about this game I feel like I played an entirely different game. I got ME:A on launch day on pc and had 0 animation or gameplay bugs. I was a little irritated because I felt like the characters were ugly, not in a graphical way but in an aesthetic one, but otherwise I was pretty happy. I guess I am the one guy that this game was made for lol.
I had a similar experience. I played it at launch and 100%ed it and I think it crashed like two or three times in 80 hours of play time. Never had any of the graphic issues everyone was talking about despite the fact that I think my PC was slightly below the minimum specs when I got it. Aside from a bit of open world burnout by the end I enjoyed it a fair bit though I do still have complaints about it. I felt a lot like people were just bandwagoning at the time to shame EA/Bioware I always felt like I couldn't have been the only one who had a decent experience with it.
same here.But my setup is lucky this way, also played arkham knight on release with no trouble.
Andromeda got really unlucky with all the negative memes and hype, and EA being the usual greedy overlord.
Well,at least this world will leave trough fan fiction for some time still.
Yeah same I am so confused when people talk about the glitches because both me and my dad played it with no glitches besides maybe a crash every now and then it was a fun albeit kind of ugly game
Sorry if it's already been covered, but I would love to see something on Telltale. Wolf Among Us was one of my favorite games.
I found this channel through the Mother's Basement video and I'm loving it so far!
Ahhhhh I’ll still never forgive that EA killed Visceral Studios and by extension Dead Space.
Damn shame. I just replayed it today on patch 1.10 and it was great.
Breaks that break multiple things usually means tight coupling - how do you develop a project of this size with tight coupling?
Poor turn around for bug fixes - how do you develop a project of this size without unit tests? Well when you have tight coupling you can't unit test.
Massive amounts of time lost to using an engine not meant for the type of game you're making - use the right tool. You can hammer a nail in with a wrench but you can save yourself some time and headaches by just using a hammer.
Practice inversion of control / dependency injection / unit testing if you don't want these two problems that often spell doom for any large project. Jeesh. Rookie mistakes Bioware
Ooooooffff that reference to Dead Space 3 earned you your like.
I played Andromeda for the first time a couple months ago. Most of the terrible bugs have been stamped out by now (or I just got really lucky). But even then I still could smell the stench of it being a rushed project. Even then, some of the side missions were really good. Not all of them, and the main story’s pretty bland, but I think that if they made Andromeda 2: Not Wasting Hundreds of Hours This Time, it could have potential, and be much better than the first. But this is EA, and we all know where this tragedy ends. RIP
I feel really sorry for these devs, as someone who picked up the game far later (at least a year after release) I think the game is really fun and all those glitches were patched. Even when the game was basically cancelled me and a few friends actually sent in bugs and problems for them to help balance weapons and the like as we frequently played multiplayer and all of the issues we sent in were fixed. Along with many thank yous from the basically skeleton crew that was still patching the game for being so supportive of the game.
I would love for Ea to sell bioware. Please let them live and create gems
NGL I Loved Andromeda for what it was. It was an expansion on the ME universe. I really wanna see a sequel and what happens with the Ryder clan and so on.
Do Spore, that mess has an interesting story to it from what I remember.
After that recent starfield trailer, announcing 400 planets, I’m expecting the same shit
Ahem it's 1000 planets not 400. Have a little faith Godd Howard has a plan
Mass Effect Andromeda: The only game to make me stop playing out of Sheer. Fucking. Boredom.
Can hardly wait for the inevitable Wha Happun on Star Citizen, but that's a gift that keeps on giving.
Do Metroid Other M next. Or Star Fox Zero. Or the Virtual Boy. Literally anything Nintendo, it’s high time they got an episode.
200k subs! Congratulations Matt
Would love to see a FFXV “Wha Happun?” I love that game, but it would make a perfect episode!
Honestly FFXIII and XV would probably require multiple episodes due to everything that happened.
It's so funny watching this now knowing that EA recently announced that they will no longer be forcing staff to use Frostbite because they cannot hire new programmers because their experience with other engines like Unity & Unreal does not translate and is costing them hundreds of thousands to bring new hires up to speed. Who knew forcing your staff to use a proprietary game engine so they can't take a better paying and fairer job at another company with the experience they gain at your studio would backfire like this??? *cough 343, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer, Blizzard, Bethesda, Zenimax, Bungie, Arkane, Rocksteady, Ubisoft Montreal, Crystal Dynamics, Game Freak, Warner Montreal cough*
What's interesting to think about is Andromeda is very similar to the first Mass Effect. Plenty of bugs, largely empty worlds to explore, relatively heavy RPG elements. Mass Effect has a better story and characters but Andromeda has waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better combat and driving. Pound for pound they are pretty even in terms of quality. But you have to take into account that Mass Effect came out 10 years earlier, which makes Andromeda look pretty bad in comparison.
That being said, I enjoyed Andromeda and am still waiting for a story expansion. >.
ME1 was *dripping* in interesting worldbuilding, music, visual design and writing. Most of the writing for Andromeda was worse than what *I* could do.
And I write fanfics.
ME2 was definitely the high point for the series. I freaking love that game. ME3 was really fun to play although the actual story wasn't nearly as good. I actually sunk many many hours into the multiplayer, which surprised me as I hate it when games (all EA games) tack multiplayer on for no good reason.
I was looking forward to this from the moment I discovered these videos.
Even though this game is seen as the worst mass effect game, I quite enjoyed my time with it
Same here. I bought it for $10 after all the patches had come out and had a good time. Not as much as 1, 2, and the first 99% of 3 but for $10 it was pretty good.
I also enjoyed it. Enough that I was surprisingly excited for the Quarian Arc DLC that was teased at the end of the game. Only for development to cease and the studio to shut down. :(
I've been playing it on EA access and so far I'm loving it, I'm sure on launch the bugs were a pain but tbh, the story is alright. At launch I remember a large part of the criticism boiled down to "this asari isn't as fuckable as the last asari".
Rip Westwood studios...you were taken from us far too soon
this should be "What happened to games under EA?". lol
I'm not a Mass Effect fan and I picked up Andromeda awhile after it came out and most of the bugs were patched, but I enjoyed the game when I played it. Knowing the story behind the scenes- the overarching theme of the game about trying to rebuild from the ruins of a bad start and being unsure if it was going to work out seems almost personal to the devs.