Mass Effect: Andromeda just couldn’t convince the fans. Some developers have now talked about what they think the reasons were.
Budget and cosplay played an important role in the development
“We were only given the budget for two new species, plus the Remnants. Not to mention, we couldn’t even include all of the species in the Milky Way. And we weren’t able to let players travel across the galaxy. That meant we had to develop the story around some pretty blatant inorganic constraints, so you didn’t just get something that felt (and was) much smaller than what you had before, but almost everyone who played the game was getting probably had something he really liked about Mass Effect that just wasn’t there. We developed several additional species for the new galaxy, as well as several different storylines as to why the expedition was undertaken. Most of that pre-development work ultimately didn’t work out used,” said Neil Pollner, author at Mass Effect: Andromeda.
“I remember some early concepts that were pretty weird,” says Dorian Kieken, former design director at Bioware Montreal for Mass Effect 2 and 3 and franchise design director at Andromeda. “One of the strengths of the original Mass Effect trilogy is that most alien characters can actually be cosplayed – except for the Hanar, although I wouldn’t underestimate the creativity of some cosplayers. The intention in Mass Effect Andromeda was to introduce new races that are still in the realm of cosplay, which is probably why more crazy concepts have been abandoned.”
The developers couldn’t really let their creativity run free for budget reasons and because the new aliens they had invented had to be “cosplay-compliant”. Neill Pollner also explains that the team actually wanted the same level of variation, options, and consequence as the RPGs the studio was previously known for.
Still, he thinks it’s a good game: “I think the game is actually a hell of a lot of fun, and after the technical flaws have been ironed out and the initial reactive disappointment faded, the game stands by itself. There are a few real ones good stuff in there. ”
Hopefully Bioware has learned from the mistakes for the next Mass Effect.