Sad state of affairs for future plans for ME series

[GazzaGarratt 11,056]

Sources have said that Bioware Montreal developer site may be shut down after developers moving away from this series due to the continuing issues and poor entry into the gaming market. We may not see another game until post 2019.

 

Not a huge surprise, they seemed to focus on the wrong content for an RPG to be successful. The fundamentals of the game controls for me are so clunky and action seems unnatural.

 

Don't get me wrong, the lore and story I think they've done well on. Yes, they messed up the animations but you can see through that a decent amount of back story and lore. Still, if its boring and feels like a chore to the next step then you can lose interest quickly.

 

If Bioware looks at Guerilla Games, they could salvage themselves but it will take time. After the flop of Killzone, 4 years later they made the near perfect HZD. However, HZD was 7 years in the making. Heres hoping for their sake they have some decent draft games in early stages that could follow the same pattern.

[J4MES OX4D 10,039]

I wouldn't be too disappointed to see Mass Effect done with for good. Perhaps a trilogy remaster for the current gen but in terms of new games in the brand; I hope to god there isn't any more. A lot of the key staff have long left BioWare after Mass Effect 3 and after the truly terrible Dragons Age: Inquisition; it's clear the remaining staff aren't up to the standard and if anything, all they will do is further taint the iconic brand. Same shit happened with the new Infinity Ward team on COD with MW3, Ghosts and Infinite Warfare and when Halo was retained by 343 for the poor Halo 4, deeply broken MCC and mediocre 5.

 

I can't even defend Andromeda - they had 5 full years and a $40m budget which didn't include staff wages and the end result was very disappointing in terms of a game but the pathetic animations is inexcusable. People are blaming EA for not giving them enough time or resources but for once that's not fair on EA. BioWare would never get that level of finance or timeframe under any other AAA publisher. They had everything they'd need to make a successful game including brand framework on a plate yet just like DA:I, they failed miserably and are taininting brands with their lackluster games. 

 

It's been a PR disaster for EA and BioWare will now have to spend the next year fixing the game. Highly embarrassing all round really.

[cyberninja2601 1,106]

 

A few things here

 

1) the Quebec Government was in the habit of providing tax incentives in order to develop the industry and the cost of living in Montreal is pretty cheap compared to high-tech power house locations. So  EA went cheap and got sub-standard talent to some degree. Most people don't want to work in Montreal unless they are from Quebec. The language and political issues are huge deterrent to outsiders

2) I don't think EA is blameless. Remember Battlefield 4? That was quite the shit show. Furthermore ME was made to use the Frosebite engine 

3) The studio fucked up ME3 when they killed Sheppard. This series is a different series and people don't really care about the new characters much. i know I don't. I don't care about the story either. I got to the space station thing. Couldn't give a shit about what happens next. Bored. 

4) Co-op, they changed it around. Progression and the characters are not quite as interesting. The 7 waves instead of 10 limited the action on some ways. Again, boring. 

 

They should all be fired and start over. When given something like that game was and you make such a mess of it, you don't deserve to keep your job

[J4MES OX4D 10,039]

1 hour ago, cyberninja2601 said:

2) I don't think EA is blameless. Remember Battlefield 4? That was quite the shit show. Furthermore ME was made to use the Frosebite engine 

 

They should all be fired and start over. When given something like that game was and you make such a mess of it, you don't deserve to keep your job

EA definitely not blameless but what they are being blamed for by the community is the development budget and timescale which is not why the game is terrible. BioWare were the ones that wanted to do everything including the writing and animations in-house and that's the two most significant problems with the product. Fans also accused EA of rushing the devs to get the game out but 5 years is a bloody long time to put out an AAA game nowadays. 

 

Trouble is EA probably can't fire the studio as it would cost too much money to lay the staff off, so like they usually do in situations like these; they simply move staff around studios which means a few will work on patching the game and the rest will go and 'help' on games like Battlefield, Battlefront and whatever other Battleshit EA have on their books. Just hope other games don't suffer for it. 

[GazzaGarratt 11,056]

I think all games franchises need to really understand when they have finished their road map. After ME3 they should've realised this and took the best bits into a greater new style game that isn't called ME. I think they just banked enough people would buy it alone and lost their focus very badly.

 

Who knows though. Half-full Lee says look at Bethesda with Prey. It shows there is a way. But realistic Lee says start the road map again on a new journey not called Mass Effect.

[Diddums 4,346]

Let's be honest, loads of companies have made some extremely good games only to be bought out by EA who very promptly go "hay guise, welcome aboard, here are your budget restrictions and god help you if you go past x date" which is why they fuck everything up. Devs need to tell EA to fuck off and continue developing what they want, at their own pace, and fuck the publishers. If the game is good, the people will come. Look at Minecraft. One of the biggest selling games ever, killed by Microsoft.

[tronic44 3,642]

The problem with the blame game is that it rolls down hill, it starts from the top and picks up speed and bulk into it hits the people that are actually doing the work. That's what will happen in places like this but I've seen some clips form ME and tbh it's shocking that they've released something that looks like that, especially when it's put up against some games that are out currently.

 

Release dates have always been an issue for me, why say a year in advance when you're going to release it? How the fuck are you meant to know that it's going to be full ready by then? I get that when they set a date for release everything is taken into account, the money you have to spend, the number of people you have to work on it, other games coming out at that time, issues that may arise.....etc etc. Absolutely everything is taken into account, or at least it should be. The main problem with release dates is that generally they're not moving, the amount of work that would have to go into changing a release date is shocking and pointless in my eyes. This is why so many games gets released in the state that they are in because people are put under too much pressure most the time, pressure's good but it shouldn't start effecting peoples health or anything like that. 

 

In terms of taking a step back and starting a fresh on something new, i think that's a great idea but i have a feeling HZD will, not be a one off, but there won't be too many games like that coming out (hope i'm wrong) It's too easy to turn a game around from start to finish and it's even easier when you can release it half finished. People are always looking at how to make money and not the product they are releasing.

 

I've never played ME before but is this game similar to the first two? 

[cyberninja2601 1,106]

 

I don't think release dates are an unreasonable expectation. Every product has them. Computer chips, CPUs. operating systems, Phones, tablets. Whatever. If video game engineers can't work to a spec and a schedule. they should be fired.  I work on stuff far more difficult than video games and I am expected to get it done. Would you want the processor that goes into your MRI system to not be fully featured? 

 

The problem is that the industry has been allowed to release garbage, mostly due to pre-sales. Just look at how we behave like a bunch of lemmings buy Cod, BF whatever before even seeing a proper demo or review. 

Look at this case, people aren't buy this garbage so they have to replan.

 

As far as HZD, has much as it's a great game and I like it. If you played Far Cry 3, you basically played HZD with a chick that's much more attractive that the dude in Far Cry.

You kill shit, you craft stuff, you clear camps and you climb Robot giraffes instead of towers. Far Cry 3 also had a coop and multiplayer mode

 

The were 3 ME

 

The 2nd is probably one of the best single player I ever player

The 3rd's story was lackluster for me, however the coop was awesome

 

This one's coop is so so. I don't find the characters and abilities as enjoyable as I did ME3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[phil bottle 9,769]

I'm actually enjoying Andromeda, yeah the male pathfinder is a bit of a dick but I have to admit the game is quite enjoyable and some of the planets are simply gorgeous graphically.

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[tronic44 3,642]

9 hours ago, cyberninja2601 said:

 

I don't think release dates are an unreasonable expectation. Every product has them. Computer chips, CPUs. operating systems, Phones, tablets. Whatever. If video game engineers can't work to a spec and a schedule. they should be fired.  I work on stuff far more difficult than video games and I am expected to get it done. Would you want the processor that goes into your MRI system to not be fully featured? 

 

The problem is that the industry has been allowed to release garbage, mostly due to pre-sales. Just look at how we behave like a bunch of lemmings buy Cod, BF whatever before even seeing a proper demo or review. 

Look at this case, people aren't buy this garbage so they have to replan.

 

As far as HZD, has much as it's a great game and I like it. If you played Far Cry 3, you basically played HZD with a chick that's much more attractive that the dude in Far Cry.

You kill shit, you craft stuff, you clear camps and you climb Robot giraffes instead of towers. Far Cry 3 also had a coop and multiplayer mode

 

The were 3 ME

 

The 2nd is probably one of the best single player I ever player

The 3rd's story was lackluster for me, however the coop was awesome

 

This one's coop is so so. I don't find the characters and abilities as enjoyable as I did ME3

 

Release dates wouldn't be an issue for me, if most games worked when they were first released. The amounts of issues when games are first released is appalling, not always but the bigger titles always seem to have issues. I'd rather a company came out and said, it's not ready yet, we'll only release it when it's ready. I know "when it's ready" could mean all sorts of things but i don't believe that we should suffer for a few months just because someones decided to set a release date. 

 

Obviously there are some games where even a release date doesn't matter and it was just going to be a crap game anyway.

 

I completely agree about pre sales, people got hooked on cod as being the greatest thing ever and when you're pre ordering cod Advanced Warfare, you got know there's issues. I honestly think that a lot of people pre order in hope that the game will be decent, "if i pre order, it's gota be good." Then people almost force themselves to like it, by constantly playing a game they're not enjoying. If people stopped pre ordering and just said no, we want to see how the game plays before we spend money on it, then i think it would change things. I see that as a completely understandable thing to do but the gaming community would never do that......would they?

 

I also agree that if people can't work to a date, then they should be fired. The problem that i see with games are the amount of companies that will work on a game, there'll be companies that you won't even hear about that will have worked on it, like outsourcing the work. This is where i feel the main issues lie but then when you're working to a date and slipping behind, you have to outsource. Too many cooks who aren't working to the same recipe. 

 

We've also seen the opposite, what happens if people go it alone.....No Mans Lie is what you get. I know that was a group of about 7 people and i think a lot of people liked their ideas and wanted to play that game. What they should of done is said sorry but it's not ready yet instead of twisting things and making things up and basically releasing a game that wasn't even a game.

 

I have to post this video because it's one of my favourite of all time.

Spoiler

 

Sorry going slightly off topic on this thread.

 

 

[The3rdWalker 1,271]

 

The problem is that the industry has been allowed to release garbage, mostly due to pre-sales.
 

That's why after Destiny I vowed to never pre order a game again. We have set the standard that companies will release 70% of a game knowing people will buy it regardless; it's just not smart on the consumers end.

I'm not going to pay full price for a house half built.


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