Same deal with Halo studios. 6 years since Infinite and all they had was "We want the next game to have campaign, multiplayer and forge avaliable day one." As if that's some insanely lofty goal.
Anthem actively sabotaged Andromeda by refusing to answer technical questions or provide any assistance because Anthem was the prime game. Andromeda was the b-team for chumps, AAA devs working on the way of the future, Anthem! Absolutely fucked themselves on both fronts. Toxic work culture between studios.
But Veilguard is almost 2 years old right now and the new ME was supposedly being developed all the way back in 2020. Given that timeline, having the game only being in “early” development is kinda nuts.
i think it spent the first 4 years in "preproduction" as in, we got a poster and they story boarded some ideas. Kind of like Elder Scrolls 6 which i think they still haven't actually started "production" on.
ES6 started full production years ago. That original teaser was just because (for some reason) people thought Skyrim would be the last ever elder scrolls game and basically every Bethesda announcement was flooded with people asking if ES6 was ever happening.
Ever since fallout 4 we had a pretty good idea of exactly what Bethesda planned on doing: first fallout worlds (fo76), starfield, project Alter (oblivion remaster), project platinum (FNV remaster), ES6, and then fo3 remaster
With starfield being finished years ago ES6 has already been well into full development and should be done before the end of the decade
how is it possible… 4 years since the guys from Lessons from a Screenplay who released that video on how Mass Effect should be the next game of thrones; got hired by Bioware to work on the next Mass Effect game and somehow Bioware claims Mass Effect was still in early development.
Not really, no. I guess most people don't keep close track of BioWare's staff levels.
A modern AAA game typically takes 200-400 people to make. To work on multiple at once, you need more. BioWare had 250 when working on Veilguard, so that was all they could be in full production on.
You can do pre-production for an upcoming game whilst doing full production, and they did ME5 pre-production basically the whole time they were working on Veilguard (in its various forms, remember EA made them reboot it twice).
Everything we saw about ME was from pre-production. If EA hadn't forced the two reboots, DA4 would likely have been out in 2021 or 2024 (respectively).
EA really fucked them by forcing them to fire most of the 250 staff so they only had like 70-100 staff left. That's not enough for full production. BioWare were having to rehire people and stuff up to try and get out of "early" production, and then EA shut them down whilst they were doing that.
But no, it isn't telling. It's expected if you actually followed things. EA are decision-maker here - they could not forced the two reboots of DA4, they could have not fired most of the studio after Veilguard, they could have waited for BioWare to staff up, but instead they did the worse things.
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u/Grimnirsdelts 7h ago
They were still in early development? I mean isn’t that very telling on why this was cancelled?