An Avoidable Disaster - The Tragedy of Mass Effect Andromeda 

you'd think of all races the one that has lost their homeworld and is living out of a spaceship fleet would want to find a new homeworld in another galaxy right?

One guess is with Tali's popularity they decided to save them for paid DLC possibly under EA orders. But given that in the story all the minor races were sharing the Ark carrying the Quarians they might have decided to do it themselves to buy time for the accompanying species to be animated.

I think it's even more bizarre they didn't make really any new insane, crazy alien species for an entirely different galaxy... such wasted potential

@@roguerifter9724 tali'zorah vas normandy best waifu!

@@VentDw3Ler bro her interactions during the citadel dlc fucking cute. Happy I decided to make her main bitch

Not to mention people were already shitting on Anthem after it's reveal trailer, because it looked like a blatant ripoff of Destiny...

@@numberyellow shhh you'll anger the anthem spirits

@@numberyellow It's what EA wanted a Destiny clone to have constant income like Destiny but it didn't work out. They used a company who had no idea how to make a looter shooter/RPG and the frostbite engine is a FPS engine only not a 3rd person shooter

@@dnakatomiuk Frostbite is fine, it's just not ideal for what they were trying to do with it...kinda like with ME:A

@@cmdraftbrn lol, challenge accepted.

I disagree with that part i think the planets were great well maybe they werent that different from milky way planets but the context of it being dif galaxy was enough for me to make em intresting the problem was the story being lame no intresting conflict

I disagree, I literally had no feels whatsoever that we were in wolrd similar to the trilogy. The only time I kinda felt that was when you are on the tempest.

To be fair, its evolutionarily beneficial for intelligent species to be "human shaped" because bipedal locomotion saves energy allowing the species to stay awake longer, avoid predators with more energy and frees the hands for the use of tools. That being said, the Milky Way proved that non bipedal or even grasper limbless species could not only evolve but accomplish fucking space travel raised the bar only to have Andromeda have two sapient species that are essentially just a bony or curvy version of the same type.

The underground structures were basically copy-pastes of each other, none of them felt particularly unique, and all of them felt increasingly frustrating to go through as the story progressed, in an annoying sense, rather than a real challenge.

I hate Mass Effect: Andromeda... It's stupid and it isn't what funs asked! I bet that if given a choice between Andromeda and a prequel game about the first contact war today, vast majority will choose the prequel. But even so, Bioware was short sighted, you could simply give us a sequel of ME3 this time in a more apocalyptic Milk Way Galaxy, as it's possible that this is precisly the plot of the next Mass Effect. Mass Effect: Andromeda gets almost everything right in the gameplay department, but this wasn't ever the focus of ME universe, Mass Effect is the top of Bioware, it is their Magnus opus, to be given to a second tier team, and with a premise so dumb that makes me embarassed only to think about. Andromeda doesn't deserve a second chance, it shouldn't even exist, both in our world as a game neither as a plot in the Mass Effect universe. In our world because it is the point were Bioware didn't actually listened the fans, no one wanted this, and in game simply because not only Andromeda undermines the whole plot of the original trilogy by creating a Massive inconsistence, but also because for techinical reasons it shouldn't be possible to travel to Andromeda they way they did, wich implies a technology so advanced that could might as well be used to defeat the Reapers in the first place. How an organization like the Initiative managed to amass the amount of resources to create all the technology to travel 2 MILLION light years in 600 hundread years? What kind of resources would be necessary to make a fleet of arks and the citatel 2.0? how this could be hidden on the MOON from all places? Didn't the Alliance or Cerberus even noticed such thing? The whole concept was stupid from the start. And also many people point this out before, but i think i know what was going wrong with Andromeda... They used the plot that they probably did for a prequel about the First Contact War. Some folks said this, is like Bioware took someone else story and used as a Mass Effect story, and my believe is that the plot was a plot for FCW. It's the only explanation for how dumb and inconsistent is the plot in Andromeda, it would make sense, for FCW plot, but not for Andromeda.

Drack the Krogan is pretty cool. ... That's it.

"My face is tired"😁

Maybe that was the plan all along send all the idiots away so they couldn't make things worse

Yep, Liam is the worst of them, i avoid him and i wich was possible to throw him in the airlock. Saddly the game doesn't give us this option. Also, one thing folks don't usually talk about is how massive of an incosistence is the whole premise of the ME: Andromeda. The technology to make all those arks, is beyond even what the Reapers have. The amount of resources necessary to build everything that went to Andromeda was staggering, you can simply make all that in a spam of a few years even more so because of rumors of apocalypitc event that may not even happen. And what is even the point to go to Andromeda for us? Most people don't realize but most of the places in the Mass Effect trilogy are actually located in REAL stars, that map has a true meaning for anyone who likes astronomy. What Andromeda has besides the galaxy itself? When they say that folks want that the franchise move on, i don't think anyone would want that ME should move on to ANOTHER GALAXY. Given a choice i belive vast majority of people would prefer a prequel about the First Contact War than Andromeda, and honestly the plot seems almost like was exactly what was supposed to be... Instead of the relics, we would be finding prothean ruins, instead of facing the Kett in war, we would be facing the Turians, and the angarans would possibly be some other aliens or even renegade turians. It seems to me that this was the initial idea, and was scraped and reporposed as Andromeda.

@@efxnews4776 yeah but come on man they had a mYsTeRiOuS bEnEfAcToR who had enough stacks of infinite credits that they got it done! I'm joking but I agree if they weren't going to go all out with a new galaxies' worth of alien designs, why not just do the prequel? So much potential for "eW what's a hooomin?" moments as we make... *D R U M R O L L* . . _First Contact_ 😐

i dread what monstrosity they'll turn mass effect 4 into. they'll ruin the whole legacy of the original trilogy

A lot of the original beloved talent at BioWare has recently(ish) reformed under Archetype Studios. Included is Drew Karpyshyn which has my hopes up that the narrative side of things is in very good hands.

Yep, and even though they are still working on free DLC and patches for Cyberpunk 2077 it still isn't anywhere it's original vision making it obvious that it needed 2 or 3 more years for next gen only.... Making it multiplatform limited the technology to the PS4's now outdated hardware.... And thus they hand to downgrade the heck out of it, but also optimize it properly which clearly they didn't do hence the game being broken as hell on launch.

@@Dragonk116 I don't know, Cyberpunk looks like a never ending project, they announced it back when last-gen was next-gen, CDPR got crazy trying to improve it graphically, but their main problem was the story, pretty generic in my opinion and only focused on you spending time with Keanu Reeves.

I knew I wasn’t going crazy about the Asari. They are literally all the same.

It's pretty much the same story across all established studios, Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Obsidian etc., i'd say even CD Projekt Red since a lot of key people who made TWC3 have since left. Those legendary company names are nothing but skin suits at this point.

The writing was on the wall when they sold out to EA it was just a matter of time.

@@misanthropicattackhelicopt4148 While I agree EA sucks they are not necessarily the problem. The problem is that people eventually move on veteran game devs often leave to form their own companies.

@@charmingpeasant9834 what is TWC3?

@@FexxarTV The Witcher 3

Damn, that had to be disappointing. Any interesting stories from the Andromeda QA desk, or is it all under NDA?

@@jackcole8604 I'm not working for EA at the moment, haven't for quite a long while so I'm not sure if NDA still apllies. Nonetheless, I can't see any harm in sharing a few funny instances :D Needless to say the facial animation bugs were aplenty and quite hilarious, if you think they look bad now, they were even worse, they just couldn't do any better unfortunately, it wasn't due to lack of skill either, time and budget constraints were the culprit, as usual. Ragdoll effects would, in classic frostbite fashion, would stretch across the screen, sometimes even crashing the game outright There were quite a few cutscenes where your party members would aimlessly do stuff in the background, walk around, stand in front of whoever it was that you were taking to. Had a few instances where female Rider's face and neck would stretch out during some cutscenes. Had a customization bug where female rider would look as if she had bruises on her face, remember someone filing that bug, one of the devs commented on it something along the lines of "this looks like she suffered domestic abuse, would let it slide but I know better, fixed" Yeah there tons more. Like unplugging your headphone jack and then plugging it again would cause the game to crash like 7/10 times, but those were fairly old builds of the game thay we were testing on, don't think any of that happened to real users. And yes, it was disappointing... But I did enjoy working the guys there, really nice ppl for the most part. We'd play pranks in each other during work just to keep us sane. People don't realize that QA works their butts off. The main reason so many bugs are the way they are at launch is because time isn't enough to iron them out..

@@bitofapickle are you still in the games industry? If so where or how would you recommend getting into it? I assume starting with QA?

@@SavageSenzu hey! Sadly no, I'm not in the game industry anymore,it just doesn't pay well, unfortunately..unless you're a developer or if you do art or a map designer... though I did spend some 4 years working as a senior QA tester and various other roles. I do still have some connections in EA though. And yeah, starting with QA is pretty much the easiest way to get into the gaming industry, the pay is awful, it will get slightly better as you evolve...IF you have a thirst for knowledge and want to actually advance yourself (most don't).... After this you can branch out in several different areas depending on why a you want to do. Plus it opens up other jobs like software QA and automation QA which is paid pretty handsomely depending on the company and experience you may have. If you find any open positions for gaming QA, go for it, they usually always hire people without any prior experience, they always need testers :)

@@bitofapickle Female Ryder specifically? How curious

Yeah, the plot is the biggest problem. With OG trilogy I always want to know what will happen next. In ME andromada it's just the combat gameplay carrying me to go on.

Because of this rule, Monster Hunter World was made with MT Framework instead of the new RE Engine that was being used for a while at that time. Guess what ? Yeah, they delivered... shocking, right ? haha

More like D-team

I'd more call it C team. I've always viewed Austin, the SWTOR studio, as the B team, and not in a bad way.

Good point

​@@gamenetic6426 MT Framwork and RE Engine are both made by Capcom, so they had people who could use it. Unreal Engine and Frost was not made by the same devs, so switching engines is harder. Also, OP said changing engines DURING development. No one should be doing that, no matter the engine.

Yep. Bland enemies, bland allies, and a bland, unremarkable world. The game deserves credit for the work put into it, but it just feels like they forgot to put some heart into it.

@@Scorch052 that's because they were too focused on making political posts on Twitter

Never really thought of the issues of arriving after the Nexus, but yes, arriving with the mission to be a back up against the Reaper invasion is a good play. A lot of the problems in the plot that occur are from Tann's incompetence/not fitting the role of director and racism which happen because the Nexus arrived first. You never get a chance to kick his butt out which could have been a major decision with consequences one way or the other later. Obviously the fact SAM is a deus ex machina is another major issue... that's definitely lazy in parts. The story could have still played out the same way but Ryder is there at the key events that dictate what happens next.

at least if that was the core part of the plot it would have made sense and made it a better game on that alone

@@mariobadia4553 Because that's definitely what EA pays hundreds if not thousands of employees to do every day during a game's development.

@@TheCoolCucumber you need to read up on a lot of the past issues with andromeda. It was mainly bioware who were at fault mostly along the way. EA actually gave them extensions, didn’t ride them and didn’t impose any technical limitations, like being forced to use frostbite (which was BioWare’s decision, not EA). The bad writing, animations, characters, designs, technical limitations, story (and a bunch of other things) are solely BioWare’s fault. This was a secondary bioware studio who didn’t have the experience or talent to handle such a beloved IP that cracked under pressure and didn’t follow thru with a good ME game. This isn’t my opinion, it’s a fact that’s provable by just doing a bit of research during the lead up to release and some time after. Many ex-bioware devs have come forward and spilled the beans on many of these topics, and the main culprit is bioware, not EA. I don’t like giving EA any credit, but sadly, in this instance, most of the fault lay with bioware.

I only played the game long after its' release when it had all the patches and was on large discount. They had fixed technical issues and tuned up the animations/character models, gameplay wise it was solid. BUT the shitty writing is something they are never able fix and that's the worst part of the game IMO. There's a reason why I have re-played the trilogy multiple times, I want to experience that epic journey again, interact with all those great characters again and experiment with different choices. Andromeda? I have no desire to replay it at all.

BioWare's writing has been terrible for ages now.

yes very true dont forget blue Shrek. Anyway at least the jet pack was kinda cool.

Forced diversity SJW writing is never good, no matter how much cope people have. This game failed before it launched.

What happened in 2077? I wasn’t alive then yet. /s

@@Golemoid Cyberpunk 2077 destroyed all our souls...

"relatively good game", ehem certainly not..

@@galacticquasaur2956 speak for yourself, I loved it.

Slink would you say it's worth playing through? I tried twice and most recently got stuck where the main quest objective is unachievable so I need to restart, not sure if it's worth it

Yep. Even the planned Quarian DLC would improve a lot on the game, I bet. It's a shame it was killed. This game had potential especially after the arc crashed. That dyson sphere would be awesome to explore. Like a Halo but more monumental.

Fortunately, Andromeda served as a lesson to not force anything on developers, and give them enough time in development if they need it. The next Mass Effect looks incredibly promising, and it is slated to release in 2025 if everything goes right. They have ditched Frostbite entirely, and are now working with Unreal Engine 5. My biggest hope for the next game would be that Bioware brings forth some highly requested features. Namely a fully decked out character creator (face and body), and different origins for the protagonist (last name changes depending on origins, similar to in Dragon Age Inquisition) - This could let the player finally be able to choose races, and in turn make the game even more replayable. This would mean things like unique dialogue, and perhaps unique quests depending on origin, and perhaps different ways to recruit squadmates. It would totally make sense to do this in a post-Reaper War setting, so that you could get up to speed on how the different races fared after the war.

EA IS the publisher.......You mean developers

@@uncleho1945 Thats because that didn't actually happen....Thats just a fantasy fairytale that imbeciles cooked up in their own tiny little warped brains......Something those same simpletons create about every game that gets "ruined" in their basic little minds....

@@uncleho1945 Nice fanfiction you got there. Here is a hint for you - maybe it was left out because nothing like that actually happened/affected game development.

Profit overtook passion. Games used to be made by people who loved what they did, now they’re made by corporations trying to make a quick buck. It doesn’t matter how much effort, IPs and even peoples’ health is sacrificed. The shareholders want money ASAP, and managers who don’t deliver get replaced.

Combat is the best in the series. Hands down. But every other thing just falls flat.

You're high

Writing was weak but otherwise I did enjoy the game aswell

@@thecalham Well the rpg element was too weak for me but then again buying and playing ME: legendary made me realise that ME 1 is my favourite and the reason for that is that it has the most rpg mechanics out of the three. And I'm kinda in the minority so. But nice that you enjoyed the game.

Npcs and squatmates were edgy, cringy and Just dumb. Gameplay was awseom

Any news on that game ?

@@eustachedelamoustache, not really.

Facial animations often take the top spots on lists of complaints but the writing is a much, much bigger problem in this game. Good dialogues and interactions would have helped alot, previous Bioware games didn't exactly have that good facial animations either (they weren't as bad as in Andromeda obviously but still)

@@jackiemortes Exactly, the derpy face animations, bugs, and glitches could have been forgivable if the the writing didnt come across like a 12 year-old's fan fiction. Who ever wrote this trash clearly had no idea what they were doing. Its a shame because I actually enjoyed the combat and the environments were beautiful, but i just couldnt get past how terrible the writing was.

The dialogue was perfectly normal. Go to a college campus you will see that’s how sjw really talk. Everything missing is the constant upward inflection on the last word of the sentences

@@cidfacetious3722 Dude....why? Lose the political agenda, it's a video game.

Beautiful because besides that, everything was beautiful. The planets, combat, environments, sound design. All of it was beautifully crafted

Same.

Smh. Again, bioware wasn’t forced, they chose frostbite. Many ex-bioware devs have come forward and stated this. Idk why ppl keep pushing the notion that bioware were forced when past (and current) employees have stated it wasn’t EA’s decision at all. People gotta stop blaming EA for every fault in the world when they don’t know the full story. Just like bioware chose unreal engine 5 for the next mass effect, they outright chose frostbite for andromeda.

@@NeckPUNCHattack the op didn't say they were forced

@@Heru_Iluvatar the op literally said “when bioware HAD TO USE THE FROSTBITE ENGINE.” If you understand what’s being said, then you also understand that means they were forced to stop using the unreal engine and “had to use frostbite.” It literally can’t be meant any way other than they were forced… because… if they weren’t forced, they would’ve continued to use the engine they liked/were most comfortable with. Sorry, but the op DID say they were forced.

They chose it, you are right. Many people are just coping.

First time he's ever almost lost it

Best moment in the video (which was solid as usual of course). 🙂

They didn’t switch to 3ds Max, they switched from 3ds Max to Maya Imagine listening before talking about something you know nothing about… And I'm a 3D artist myself, my work in on my Steam profile.

Have a sneaking suspicion you can pour petrol in a dumpster flowed by a match and have a vision of the ME4/Dragon Age releases. Their best games are already out and we likely wont see anything better. They say the worst part of age is living to see heroes turn into villains, but I remember EA being a studio responsible for great games 20 years ago. Unless a studio has good funding without a corporate overlord calling the shots you will get a cookie cutter game with the highest calculated investment dollar to profitable feature ratio. When they get big enough to reach this level you have a soulless company with a once great name.

Dude I played the trilogy like 10 times. Finishing me3 as we speak on legendary. The farthest I went with mea is the ice planet and ditched that insult cluster fuck of a game that is mea. The only thing it has in common with the trilogy is the name (mass effect) that's it

when first playing it, i really liked Andromeda for being Mass Effect 1 levels of openness and rpg opportunity, mixed with the great combat systems perfected in later games. Andromeda is the most "fun" out of all of them, but it definitely hits a wall for me. I lose interest around Havarl and Voeld because there is very little interesting about the story and characters.

Imo Andromeda is a very solid title. Good plot, good game play and really good side missions,especially comparing to awful me1 side missions.

No, BW Montreal helmed andromeda while Edmonton helmed anthem. Anthem stared development in 2012 and andromeda started in 2013. How could Edmonton “hand off” the game to Montreal when they were working on anthem a full year before andromeda even started development?

@@NeckPUNCHattack Found the simp folks lmao.

It all depends on Dragon Age 4. EA has given them full freedom to choose whatever engine and budget they want. It all depends on what they deliver.

I feel the same way. The programming issues they had were surpassable. The main problem was: weak plot, horrible and uncharismatic characters (new aliens included), and a feeble and despicable main character.

it's poorly done ME 1 story....

Lmao careful you'll be called a SJW judging by your comments

They deserve to make money man, you can skip the sponsor lol

They put out very competent videos regularly

Been over 10 videos in the last year. How have you been a fan for a year but haven't kept up with any content in the last year

yep ended with a great game that had an OK story improved when they fixed the ending which had a theme around sacrifice for the greater society which some imbeciles cried and shat their diapers over because wah they didn't get an ending with their Shepard getting old on a porch somewhere....

@@lutherheggs451 Nah, people were mad because the ending made no fucking sense.

@@lutherheggs451 >ME3 >great game pick one, please. The entire game is dogshit. From Cerberus becoming the galactic empire, to Kai Leng, to the death of sidequests, to Kai Leng, to zero wrap-up to half the cast, to Kai Leng, to playing like Gears of War with biotic powers, to Kai Leng; did I mention Kai Leng? Forget the ending, the whole thing is fucking garbage. Cope harder please

a WIDER audience

@@lutherheggs451 Mass Effect 3s story is pretty bad, not horrible but not good, not even "ok"

Same here, got a pre-used copy of Andromeda as my first mass effect game back in 2018. Took me a while to get invested but when it happened i was hooked. I then went back to the original trilogy and loved it. Ever since Mass Effect has been my favorite IP of all time. Funny how the OG trilogy was like a 3-part prequel for me lol

Never played andromeda, only the OGs.. glad to see people are still discovering them :)

@@shitalkingoon You should give a try to Andromeda imho. If you won't like it, that's fine, but if you like it, will be cool.

You're lucky! Mass Effect 1-3 were phenomenally good. Andromeda was that broken I never finished it because i had to restart after full clearing the rebel planet and the game bugging out during the purging sequence. Then the online was lagfy and buggy as hell. It shat on the previous entries, all to perfect Anthem which was great but ultimately incredibly limited once you finished the story. I can't help but think if the resources spent on Anthem were spent on Mass Effect, Andromeda would have been one of the best games Sci fi games of our time.

I also liked Andromeda. I also find amusing that some people claim ME1 is some kind of an masterpiece. It has one of shittiest mechanics, annoying driving and those side missions. Oh my God. Same friggin layout and I do mean identical layout on like 30 side missions. Worst level design ever. I literally could memorize it completely and worst of all know pretty much exact layout and run through them. Side missions on Andromeda where actually really good, like 100x better than me1

The gameplay was the best in the entire franchise....The story was meh at best.

@@lutherheggs451 I actualy enjoyed Andromeda's story more than ME1, ME2 or ME3. But I see what you might not like in Andromeda.

You are being generous with "a bit of a step down" part, but I completely agree. Good combat and I see what they were going for, but it just didn't work.

I too don't hate Andromeda, but I disagree. I think that Andromeda's companions and the ship crew are far better than those of the original trilogy. They have more depth and personality.

@@vaniellys wait what 😂

@@vaniellys I can see how you come to that conclusion. I prefer the original trilogy crew more but I definitely enjoyed Andromeda's crew and would love to see more of them. Except Liam.

could have been - we know the rest from experience

Not really you cant fix writing and story with updates.

@@TheReaper569 I mean you technically could, although it would be extremely expensive, time consuming and probably not remotely worth it considering how ruthless EA is known to be.

@@gamerinatrance3618 yes but re writing, more animations, new cutscenes. You might as well put a dlc or make a new game.

The 'Single player MMO' feel is exactly how I felt about Dragon Age Inquisition. I'm not sure when they adopted this design philosophy (best guess is Dragon Age 2) but ever since they have they keep making these single player MMOs and they've all fallen flat imo. DA: 2, Inq and Andromeda are all mediocre single player experiences at best.

I felt the gameplay was enough to keep me playing, but the main story was overall fairly weak, the antagonist lame, and I didn't care for Ryder and crew much. But you are running around in a open world with solid 3rd person shooting elements while throwing space magic left and right.

The game has a bad rep because of the less than ideal launch. The Majority of the problems, as you know, were cleaned up within a month or two. There are some mind-blowing good mods out there that really reduce the grind and smooth out the game play. The story flows better and the character development feels more consistent - once you're not spending hours collecting useless crap (this coming from someone who likes exploring and finding loot). I ended up really liking the game, story and characters once the grind and resource drudgery was taken from a deafening roar to a whisper through modding. It's a crying shame the game didn't get some good DLC later on, like a Quarian Ark. It's far fetched, but perhaps it's not too late?

I really enjoy Andromeda. It gets an unfair rep. I hope the next ME game connects to Andromeda.

@@Retrogamer1-o3p As long as the story is coherent and good, it doesn't have to in my opinion, but I would like to have a ME:A 2, nevertheless.

Personally for me the story wasn’t bad but I do agree it doesn’t live up to the original trilogy in terms of story telling. At least in ME 1-3, almost every decision I made felt it had a legit impact with dire consequences depending on what choices I made. I even liked how I was given the option of playing either paragon or renegade. And depending on what I gravitated towards to gain points in one of the respective sides to unlock certain dialogues, it made it all the more immersive.

They really should've just stuck with Unreal Engine.

Found you xD

@@bekjanz :D

That would work except for the fact that they had no idea what the Reapers were.

@@mariobadia4553 Even better, just like the first time.

I just finished LE but haven't gotten the nerve to start ME:A immediately after it. Think the contrast would be too big between 'The Best' and ... I played Andromeda once through after launch and after couple of patches had smoothed things somewhat but the experience was still crap and i had to really motivate myself to push through it. It was like going for a uphill jog in beautifull location with lead weights on your feet and in the middle of hale storm. Sure it was nice looking but asking did i enjoy it? After all this time and having gotten over the disappointment, perhaps the second playthrough might be better.

Haha true

The writer could have been involved I'm both games.

Damn is she that bad? Haven't played the campaign yet lol