The engine was difficult and the project ‘rudderless’ until the end
Mass Effect: Andromedastarted development five years ago, but most of the game came together in the final year and a half, according to “almost every” developer speaking toKotakuanonymously in a lengthy expose on the strugglesAndromedawent through to become BioWare’s lowest-rated (on Metacritic) game.
Several sources described those 18 months as the worst period ofdevelopment crunchthey’d ever been a part of. “We’ll put something together, and it’s been bug tested and signed off and approved,” one developer said. We’d say, ‘OK, we can now move on from that to the next thing.’ And while our backs are turned, what we’d just put together falls apart.” Appropriate fora game that was a laughing stocka week before launch.
“It really wasn’t until Mac Walters came on board—and that was very much a reaction to the state of the critical path—he was really brought on board to give it direction and get it into shape,” a developer said. “Before that it was quite rudderless.”
The problems reportedly go back to the beginning. EA’s vaunted Frostbite Engine is apparently no good for RPGs. “When it does something well [like vehicles, for example], it does it extremely well. When it doesn’t do something, itreallydoesn’t do something,” one developer said.Andromedaneed maps larger than Frostbite’s maximum size and both “the save system, and various action-RPG mechanics” were reportedly difficult to implement. “The pain started withDragon Age: Inquisitionand continued on withAndromeda,” a developer said about the engine.
There’s all kinds of stuff going on in theKotaku piece. Cut features. Significant time spent on procedurally-generated worlds that was all scrapped in 2015. Series producer and longtime BioWare employeeCasey Hudson quit in 2014as part of a greater rotating cast of leadership changes. “At least a dozen” by the end of 2014, and, unsurprisingly, the “animation team in particular was understaffed…and when people left, their positions sometimes weren’t refilled.”
