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Was Mass Effect Andromeda the most damaging entry a Game series has ever had?
- Thread starter Stalker
- Start date
Obviously opinions differ but there was a cautious optimism because the series was getting back to its exploration roots. Bioware had also just come off of Dragon Age Inquisition which was very well received, so there was a sense Bioware had shaken off some of the cobwebs of the Mass Effect 3/Dragon Age 2 Era.
Also nobody knew how bad some of the animation/story/dialogue stuff was. It was made by a former Bioware support studio so there was this level of amateurism to a bunch of stuff Bioware had never gotten wrong before that was appalling. The animation stuff was fixed mostly by patches but the story couldn't be.
Nah. There are a few game series that folks don't even talk about anymore. That's even worse because no one cares to even mention it. Franchises like killzone.
My guess is;
If Anthem is successful, that will become the new EA Bioware space game.
If Anthem is not successful, Bioware might not be around much longer.
These are my thoughts as well. Mass Effect is done with and Anthem is their new, hopefully big, franchise
I doubt Mass Effect is dead forever. I do think it will be sometime before another entry surfaces, especially if Anthem doesn't sell a ton of copies.
I thought about this one too, but the series came back pretty strong IMO with the very next entry and then a great remake. Then Underworld. *cough* Then the reboot series which has been pretty great. I don't think AoD hurt the IP much overall, just CORE and their planned trilogy.
Hello friend, can I introduce you to God of War Ascension, Gears of War Judgement, Metroid Other M, Metroid Federation Force and Dragon Age 2?
Thank you for introducing us to franchises that continued to be both critically and commercially successful after every single one of those installments.
A reboot could absolutely save face for Mass Effect. If fucking Tomb Raider can claw it's way back to being a reputable franchise, then Mass Effect is fine. If ME never returns, it won't be because of a lack of viability of the franchise, it will be because Bioware imploded and shut down before it was given the chance.
Square Enix seems a little more forgiving of franchises and studios who makes mistakes than EA.
I love and adore Mass Effect. The original trilogy is perfect. The ending was rough but it didn't damage my enthusiasm for the series. I've replayed the trilogy several times, around once a year. I read the books and comics. I do anything Mass Effect I can get my hands on.
Andromeda...killed it for me. Just totally killed my enthusiasm. It's atrocious. Every aspect of the game is terrible. Bioware completely lost their touch. We waited five years for this and it was garbage. I'll still replay the original trilogy and still love it forever, but Andromeda has just been dropped into a black hole in my memory. It doesn't exist.
Andromeda...killed it for me. Just totally killed my enthusiasm. It's atrocious. Every aspect of the game is terrible. Bioware completely lost their touch. We waited five years for this and it was garbage. I'll still replay the original trilogy and still love it forever, but Andromeda has just been dropped into a black hole in my memory. It doesn't exist.
It's not a definitely awful game but I don't think it's nearly as refined as the first two games, while the true death knells were the inflated budget and intrusive monetization driven by brash expectations for the series to be so much more than it was.
I'd say Destiny 2 gets that honor. But hell, ME:A wasn't even a bad game. Was way better than ME3 in my opinion despite its flaws.
I feel the ME3 ending had a more damaging effect on the Mass Effect franchise than Andromeda. After the ME3 ending a number of people weren't that interested in the series any more.
DA, GoW and Metroid have recovered already while ME looks like it could, at the very least, be killed off.
I nominate DNF.
Surely not.
Don't get me wrong, the people responsible for Andromeda thoroughly screwed the pooch, but I have trouble believing it was the worst such instance.
How about Dawn of War 3? I'm given to understand that died in the arse in short order.
I don't play fighting games, but didn't the latest Marvel Vs Capcom recently pass out in a ditch?
Don't get me wrong, the people responsible for Andromeda thoroughly screwed the pooch, but I have trouble believing it was the worst such instance.
How about Dawn of War 3? I'm given to understand that died in the arse in short order.
I don't play fighting games, but didn't the latest Marvel Vs Capcom recently pass out in a ditch?
Dawn of War 3 is a good example since Relic cuts plans for additional content. Pretty good chance they'll take another crack at the franchise I would have thought though.
Classic EA setup with anthem, they used the failure of MEA to refocuse the entire studio around one high risk to big to even slightly not meet high expectations game.
I agree. DS3 wasn't nearly as good as DS1, but I think I probably enjoyed it just as much as DS2. I don't think horror and action need to be mutually exclusive; DS3 was simply Aliens to DS1's Alien. I feel like some of the bolder decisions (both in terms of design and storytelling) in DS1 actually got walked back in DS2 (i.e. before DS3).
The writing for the series was already on the wall, and only DS3 being a far bigger hit than the two previous games was ever going to save it.
A lot of mentions for MVC Infinite but I don't think it's quite as bad. Where MEA was a legitimately massive franchise shitting the bed on all fronts, MVC Infinite is actually a decent, highly functionable game that's been presented and handled very badly. It disappointed its fans and failed to grab mainstream attention, but it's not on the same scale as MEA, an active series with millions of customers.
To try and throw out some other games that were highly praised turned middling at best:
Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Red Faction: Armageddon
Dont think they beat out alot in this thread, but i think these can fit for similar reasons.
Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Red Faction: Armageddon
Dont think they beat out alot in this thread, but i think these can fit for similar reasons.
If it wasn't EA, I would agree. With them it's a toss up.
This is the same company that dropped its premiere space sim franchise even after decent sales of Wing Commander: Prophecy, then let the franchise continue to rot when Star Citizen raised hundreds of millions with nothing to show for it, proving the thirst was real.
This is the same company that killed Dead Space after one poorly received game.
This is the same company that wasn't smart enough to cancel C&C 4 and start over.
This is the same company that pushed BioWare into the GAAS model instead of making KOTOR 3, even when they had the Star Wars license, exclusively.
Then again. This is the company that released a sequel to Mirror's Edge.
So I guess we'll see.
So would you say that Ultima 8 or Ultima 9 killed the series
Because 8 was a shockingly bad drop in quality and complexity for a series that was once the trailblazer in that, and 9 was supposed to be the big 3D debut that got delayed for years and came out as a buggy un-fun mess that completely cocked up the series' lore, which was great since it was supposed to be ending the story. Both of them were developed under EA's auspices.
Now the only trace of Ultima 20 years later is that Online is still somehow running to this day.
Like, this was one of the most prominent and influential franchises in the history of gaming. It's impossible to overstate the combined influence that Ultima 1-7, Underworld 1 & 2, and Online had on literally like half of the genres in video games. Origin, the studio that developed so many milestone games, is now the name of EA's online service. And then it just completely died in two wet farts and these days most people probably think that Bethesda or BioWare or whoever invented all the RPG stuff that they directly cribbed from Ultima games.
Because 8 was a shockingly bad drop in quality and complexity for a series that was once the trailblazer in that, and 9 was supposed to be the big 3D debut that got delayed for years and came out as a buggy un-fun mess that completely cocked up the series' lore, which was great since it was supposed to be ending the story. Both of them were developed under EA's auspices.
Now the only trace of Ultima 20 years later is that Online is still somehow running to this day.
Like, this was one of the most prominent and influential franchises in the history of gaming. It's impossible to overstate the combined influence that Ultima 1-7, Underworld 1 & 2, and Online had on literally like half of the genres in video games. Origin, the studio that developed so many milestone games, is now the name of EA's online service. And then it just completely died in two wet farts and these days most people probably think that Bethesda or BioWare or whoever invented all the RPG stuff that they directly cribbed from Ultima games.
That's weird, because unless they've got a KOTOR III I'm secret development, Battlefront games don't come anywhere close to scratching the same itch that Mass Effect does.
I think Mass Effect is big enough that it could come back in the future as a good will effort. Something like C&C just doesn't have the broad appeal that a mass effect would imo
While EA has the star wars licence I don't think there's any chance they touch Mass Effect again, but after battlefront ii i would imagine disney and lucas probably want to move away from having all of their video game eggs in one basket
It won't be for *awhile*, but mass effect will return
Mass Effect Andromeda was poorly-cooked, so I think it's EA's fault.
AssCreed Unity is bigger for me, because it took everything I liked from the franchise and made it in the most annoying way possible. Again, mostly Ubisoft's fault over annual games.
Final Fantasy XIII is a trainwreck of epic proportions. This one basically destroyed the good name of the FF franchise and turned itself in a joke. The XIII-2 and Lightning, which I think it was to recap the investment, didn't helped the biased over the universe and their characters. Even today people aren't sold, or at least has big doubts, of Square-Enix announcing a new game from the franchise if it will good enough.
But, in my opinion, Paper Mario: Sticker Star is, by far, the worst game following this way of thinking. It's just sad to think it's from the same company and the same series from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. And it's sadder that the Mario & Luigi games are following that pattern.
AssCreed Unity is bigger for me, because it took everything I liked from the franchise and made it in the most annoying way possible. Again, mostly Ubisoft's fault over annual games.
Final Fantasy XIII is a trainwreck of epic proportions. This one basically destroyed the good name of the FF franchise and turned itself in a joke. The XIII-2 and Lightning, which I think it was to recap the investment, didn't helped the biased over the universe and their characters. Even today people aren't sold, or at least has big doubts, of Square-Enix announcing a new game from the franchise if it will good enough.
But, in my opinion, Paper Mario: Sticker Star is, by far, the worst game following this way of thinking. It's just sad to think it's from the same company and the same series from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. And it's sadder that the Mario & Luigi games are following that pattern.
From a quality standpoint, not even close. Andromeda was not a terrible, franchise-killing game.
Everything that went wrong with Andromeda is on EA. The game was announced too soon, it had horrible marketing, it obviously needed more development time, and worst of all... EA just completely abandoned it like cowards. The Mass Effect series would be in a much better position right now if they had continued to patch the game and allow the developers to work on at least one big expansion to fill in the Quarian storyline.
Everything that went wrong with Andromeda is on EA. The game was announced too soon, it had horrible marketing, it obviously needed more development time, and worst of all... EA just completely abandoned it like cowards. The Mass Effect series would be in a much better position right now if they had continued to patch the game and allow the developers to work on at least one big expansion to fill in the Quarian storyline.
The sad thing is, due to the relative hardware pool, Sticker Star sold the most, IIRC - so say goodbye to any chance at something like TTYD ever again.
That being said, I'm not sure Sticker Star actually qualifies for the thread topic in question.
ME:A probably will end up killing the franchise (or at least deep-freezing it for a LONG time), but ME3 also played a role there, IMO.
Dead Space and Simcity 2013 are also decent examples.
Uh....DS2 was pretty clearly the Aliens to DS1's Alien, in making Isaac more mobile, more of an explicit necromorph killing machine, etc..
DS3 is some weird mashup of 2, 3, and Resurrection - and takes a lot of negative influence from the latter two films.
Andromeda wasn't even that bad of a game. The outrage was vastly overblown. Boring, sure! But this monstrosity of a game that ruined a franchise it is not.
