It’s been five years since gamers were treated to an entry in the Mass Effect series. With the trilogy ended, gamers around the world wondered what was next for the franchise – a reboot? will we see anyone from Shepard’s crew? will it be a sequel? We wouldn’t hear anything until 2015 when the game was first announced and when the game finally came out in 2017 the final product was polarizing to say the least.
New Universe, New Engine
Every game in the Mass Effect series up until Andromeda, used Unreal Engine 3. This was an incredibly popular engine at the time and was also used in: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (criminally underrated by the way), Spec Ops: The Line, Gears of War 3, Batman Arkham City, Bioshock and the list could go on and on but you get the point. Since the start of this generation of consoles, I’ve noticed that developers are opting to use their own game engine instead of purchasing a third-party engine. Most notably: Kojima Productions spent a long time developing the Fox engine for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Arkane Studios created the Void engine for Dishonored 2 but for the first game they used Unreal Engine 3.
It came as no surprise to anyone that the new Mass Effect game would be using EA’s favorite engine, Frostbite 3. EA had been pushing their developers to use this engine ever since Battlefield 3 was released. Initially just used for the Battlefield games, the engine saw a massive increase in usage when Frostbite 3 was released. No longer was it saved for Battlefield, it started being used for a variety of different game genres: Need for Speed: Rivals, Mirrors Edge Catalyst, Fifa and Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare all used it, but the most important game was Dragon Age: Inquisition.
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I say it was the most important game because honestly, it was a test. It was a test to see how Frostbite 3 could run a big open world rpg game. And it worked, the game received pretty positive reviews. With this result, EA wanted to go bigger and use it for the next Mass Effect game which was aiming to be a lot bigger in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition. Mass Effect Andromeda’s producer, Fabrice Condominas said that the move to Frostbite, “was a radical move” and because everything before was developed in Unreal Engine 3, he said they had to, “redo all your art, redo all your artificial intelligence, you have to redo everything” (full interview at https://www.finder.com.au/new-mass-effect-engine-a-radical-move). They had to start from scratch, which is probably why it took five years to be released but there was nothing to worry about because it’s the same team, so they know what they’re doing. Right? Not exactly. Turns out it was a completely new team working. The Mass Effect trilogy was developed by Bioware and was directed by Casey Hudson. This time around, Hudson had left the company and EA opened a subdivision of Bioware, called Bioware Montreal. So with the original team and director nowhere to be seen, fans started to get a bit weary.
In an interview with IGN, Aaryn Flynn (General Manager at Bioware) said that the Frostbite engine is, “first and foremost a shooter engine” (video at http://uk.ign.com/videos/2017/03/29/building-mass-effect-andromeda-in-the-frostbite-engine-ign-first). At a passing glance, this isn’t anything to worry about but the longer I thought about it, the more it troubled me. Mass Effect is so much more than just a shooter. If Frostbite 3 is a “shooter engine”, why on Earth would they use it to run a massive rpg where you explore different planets in a galaxy? Generally speaking, shooter games aren’t very big. Most are not open world (obviously there are exceptions) and instead focus on big set pieces. Bioware’s Creative Director, Mac Walters said to OXM, “we’re pushing the boundaries of what Frostbite can do” (interview at http://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/gaming/533770/Mass-Effect-Andomeda-news-Bioware-Release-Date-Frostbite-Dragon-Age-Inquisition).
To me, that was a little worrying considering we’ve never seen Frostbite 3 work with a game at this scale before and it’s been described as a “shooter engine”. In my opinion, Bioware Montreal should’ve played it safe and used something like Unreal Engine 4 or even Unreal Engine 3 again (I know it’s now an old engine but Outlast 2 used it and that looked great) especially because this was the first Mass Effect game since 2012 and that already left a bad taste in gamer’s mouths because of the ending. They needed to win people back but instead, we were introduced to a new development team and a new game engine that hasn’t been pushed this far. In the same interview, Mac Walters also said that, “the quality of the character animations is at an all-time high for us, and that’s great because it means expressiveness, emotion and a connection with the player”. We now know, that all of this was a lie. Maybe Mac’s face was tired.
Photo Credit: https://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2017/03/face-is-tired-2.jpg
Aftermath
Andromeda currently holds a score of 70 on PS4 on Metacritic, compare that to 89 for Mass Effect 1 (PC), 96 for Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) and 93 for Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360) and it’s quite a jump in critic’s reception. Clearly there’s a pretty big dip in quality and EA took notice. The criticism you’ll hear the most is how buggy the game is and how the animations are below average. It’s not hard to find videos on YouTube of the main character falling through floors, getting stuck in walls, enemies not responding, characters walking away whilst in a dialogue cutscene with the player, characters walking animations breaking and I could go on and on but it’ll be easier and save much more of your time by watching the videos for yourself.
The developers did promise that they would update the game and fix the problems gamers were having. But by this point the damage was already done, but it is amicable that the dev’s would continue to update the game. They followed through on their promises by releasing the 1.06 patch which did fix a lot of the bugs and glitches. There has been no word since on a further update.
Not only did it suffer from average reviews and negative fan feedback, it also took a kicking in sales. I couldn’t find any PC sales for Andromeda (because it’s only available on Origin and we all know how amazing that store is) so the sales I’ve collected only account for PS4 and Xbox One physical sales. By April 2017, Andromeda sold 1.4 million copies. This number isn’t terrible if you look at it at face value but it’s when you start comparing it to the previous installments is when EA starts panicking. Mass Effect 1 sold 3.05 million copies, Mass Effect 2 sold 4.07 million and Mass Effect 3 sold 3.08 million copies.
Granted, you could argue the fact that these games have been out a lot longer than Andromeda but given the internet’s impression on the game, I highly doubt it’s going to sell as many copies compared to any game in the trilogy.
Poor Bioware Montreal
Photo Credit: https://gamingcentral.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/1300588-1050×600.jpg
Since Andromeda’s release, some employees have moved on to help out DICE with Battlefront 2 and the rest of the team have started helping out Bioware on a new IP code-named, “Dylan”. By now you should’ve guessed it, Mass Effect has been put on hiatus. What should have been the start of a new trilogy and carry on the legacy of the original trilogy has been torn apart by the internet and ridiculed by gamers.
Bioware Montreal aren’t to blame here. They were tasked with creating a brand new Mass Effect game in a new engine that’s never been tested like this. They were a new team who tried to do too much and sadly, it didn’t pay off.
I don’t think fans of the series need to worry though. EA would be silly to throw out a high-selling series. It just may be a while before we hear word of the next game and don’t be surprised if it’s not a sequel to Andromeda.
