Bioware Producer Says Mass Effect Andromeda "Didn't Have a Fair Shake"

Bioware is not in an enviable spot in the gaming world at this exact moment. It’s currently developing a Destiny clone that no one asked for, and very few people are excited about (there aren’t even any romances goddammit), and worse, if it doesn’t do well, there are people with very serious and well-founded fears that EA will add them to the growing list of studios they’ve killed off – a possibility that would have been downright laughable just three years ago.

But then Visceral happened. And then Mass Effect Andromeda happened, which was so bad for the studio that it basically shelved the whole Mass Effect series.

But did it really deserve to? According to Mark Darrah, executive producer of Anthem and Dragon Age, Mass Effect Andromeda was certainly a troubled game, but it likely would have gotten a better reception if it weren’t for the circumstances of its launch.

“MEA is a deeply flawed game. Especially at launch. But the review environment was crowded. Nier, Nioh, Horizon, and Zelda all launched in MEAs window. Each does something better than MEA (again, a flawed game). As a result, even systems that are pretty decent get scrutinized against superiorly implemented ones. Does launching in a different window turn 72% into 90? Certainly not. 72 into 77/78? Maybe”

That’s not an unfair assessment. But it’s also worth remembering that the game would also be compared to the other games in the Mass Effect series, and while they were also flawed… they weren’t AS flawed. And they seemed to have a lot more heart, too.

Regardless, he took it with stride.

“That’s the nature of the industry. You don’t have full control over when you launch and no control over when others do. DAI benefited by how tough a year 2014 turned out to be for games. You launch the best game you can. MEA has a lot of problems and got lapped by genuinely better games.”

We can speculate on Andromeda till the stars die out – and we just might – but at the end of the day, it was what it was. All we can do is hope Anthem turns out better.