Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9523087" data-attributes="member: 18">Andromeda was screwed by three factors that this project isn't being.1) It wasn't made by BioWare Edmonton, but a then-new and inexperienced (and since-deceased) sub-studio, BioWare Montreal.2) They spent 3.5 of the 5 years it was in development basically making Mass Effect-themed No Man's Sky (before NMS), before BioWare (Aaryn Flynn would have made the ultimate call, he left in like 2018), decided they just needed to make a more "normal" Mass Effect game, and they had to do it real fast. So they repurposed the assets and gameplay they already had, very quickly wrote a script (which clearly didn't get many passes, it's full of the artefacts and oddities which suggest it was a fairly unpolished draft), and slapped a game together in 18 months. 3) During the 1.5 years they were trying to work on the "final" game, BioWare Edmonton, who were working on Anthem, kept poaching their writers to come and write stuff for Anthem. Clearly there was also a recognition that this had caused a problem, because some Edmonton people were sent down to help on Andromeda later on, but probably too late to have much impact.This was all reported on a fair bit by Jason Schreier.It's honestly shocking they did as well as they did given the timeframe (and small-for-AAA budget of $40m - which covered all 5 years). The combat gameplay was particularly good, but the story/setting were just not where they needed to be, and the open-world-ish bits weren't great.Whereas Mass Effect 5, which has been in official pre-production since 2023, and has had concept art and even video teasers since like 2019, and is being developed by the full BioWare Edmonton team, with no distractions. Apparently pretty much everyone has moved on from DAV, which was always planned as a one-and-done, no DLC game.Re: release date, I do think 2029 is probably realistic, because BioWare are moving from Frostbite (which DAI, MEA, Anthem and DAV all used) to Unreal Engine 5 (this is kind of a return, because ME1-3 used Unreal Engines of that era), which usually adds some time. 2028 isn't out of the question, but it wouldn't be early 2028.The only things we "know" about it so far (i.e. can be deduced from trailers/concept art/comments - bolded the only outright stated ones) are:1) It features a Spectre protagonist.2) It won't have stylized visuals like DAV.3) Liara is in it.4) It seems to be set probably hundreds of years after ME3, quite likely after MEA, even.5) It's set primarily in the Milky Way galaxy (not Andromeda)6) It's set after the "Destroy" ending of ME3 specifically, which was the most popular one by some margin, and particularly tended to be people's choice on first play-through.7) The protagonist does not appear to be Shepard (but we of course cannot rule out "sci-fi shenanigans" where by we might be a clone, semi-clone, android/cyborg replica, have Shepard's memories implanted, be possessed by Shepard's space ghost or something similar).8) Early concept art had MWG and Andromeda species together.9) Slightly later concept art appears to show Relays being rebuilt, possibly by Cerberus or a successor-organisation to them (given how they/the ships are painted).10) Later concept art still shows Geth immobile/disabled but perhaps not permanently destroyed.There are some pretty consistent fan theories but I won't detail them unless there's interest.</blockquote>

Verification