I managed my expectations on a new mass effect game. Of course I wanted to be back in the world.
But this still really hurts to hear. Wish something could have happened to help them. Not sure if dragon ages poor performance quickened this result.
On another note, I wish studios would stop announcing games before they have something concrete. What was the point of that teaser all those years ago if they are still considering it early development today?
I imagine they put out those teasers so they could go back and tell the publishing execs "See? People are still excited about Mass Effect! There's still a market for it!"
Guess even that wasn't enough, though. An ignominious end for one of, if not the single most important studio in western RPG history.
Tbf, I feel like any excitement for a new Mass Effect game has always been tempered by a lot of skepticism. And given that these comments are filled with people saying that it probably would have been a disappointment, can you even really blame the execs for not being convinced?
What’s frustrating is people don’t thinka new Mass Effect itself would be disappointing just one made by current Bioware would be.
Mass Effect has the name recognition to be a successful franchise it just needs to made by a team that understands what made the OG trilogy so beloved. Strong characters and good writing is what the franchise needs.
Kind of like how WotC (I know, I know) brought Larian on to develop BG3. They realized those folks probably understood what made BG great better than any of the people still at Bioware. And considering how long it had been since BG2, I imagine hardly any of those same devs remained anywa, similar as how few of the people that made Mass Effect great were still there either
And then WoTC let go or lost pretty much all of the D&D team that worked with Larian on BG3 since the beginning, resulting in Larian turning down the option to do more with D&D and instead returned to their own IP.
Modern popular game IP owners are largely horrible stewards of their worlds.
I feel they at least deserved one last attempt to prove themselves. If ME5 came out and it was received like Veilguard, so be it. I wouldn't have been that upset if that was what did them in. Mass Effect was always the bigger IP to begin with, so if that couldn't save them, nothing could have.
But to just unceremoniously kill off the entire studio because it'll help Jared Kushner's bottom line? Fuck that. Fuck EA. Fuck private equity. The entire western AAA development landscape is a goddamn joke because of shit like this.
Well you'll get no arguments from me about that last section, Bioware was dying because EA has been strangling them for years But Bioware was dying, and the fact that Mass Effect 5 was only being thrown around as a hail Mary does not give me hope that it would be a triumphant return to form.
How many hundreds of millions of dollars and failed projects need to be had until they got their "last chance". Dragon age was a huge flop. Anthem was a massive failure and a bigger embarrassment. It's not like EA didn't want those games to succeed. They had a decade working on a game they rush finished and put out in less than 12 months and then were shocked that it released in the state that it did and blamed fans for expecting too much. If you wanna make the argument that veil guard was fucked with through development I'll give that to you, but why wouldn't they helicopter parent the team that hadn't released a successful video game in over 13 years? And this isn't even getting into Andromeda, a game that I was a fan of.
People were begging for ME3 Legendary multi-player for ages, I remember them saying they were gonna look at it and then just nothing. And from an EA studio not doing multi-player should've been a sign
i like the changed they did to ME1 but they barely did anything in ME2 and ME3. Why couldn't they simply rework the inventory so you could use whatever weapons you wanted for ME2, still limit the slots but give it a bit more flexibility. it's not like it would have taken a lot of time either.
Guess even that wasn't enough, though. An ignominious end for one of, if not the single most important studios in western RPG history.
This has been the way throughout EA's history. Doesn't matter how important your IP is culturally, doesn't matter how much money it might make, you're always 1-2 underperforming (by EA's standards, not yours) games from being shut down entirely.
Honestly even The Sims, a simple cash cow sales performance-wise (i.e. always makes vastly more money than you put in) has been on a knife edge several times.
I imagine they put out those teasers so they could go back and tell the publishing execs "See? People are still excited about Mass Effect! There's still a market for it!"
Yeah, I would be surprised if there was anything seriously in the works, at least for this long. I'm sure there was plenty of pre-production and churn, but I'd be shocked if there was anything resembling a finalized script and design, ESPECIALLY considering how notorious Bioware was for changing critical narrative points very late in the process even in their heyday.
The ME3 ending stain never got washed away, ME:A underperformed and put another big stain on the company for the criticism it received, and I'd be willing to bet a LOT of the vague teasers were more just trying to prove to INTERNAL audiences that the appetite was still out there. Less about you or me seeing them, and more about going to an executive and showing all the Kotaku and IGN articles getting posted speculating about the "next Mass Effect."
I don't know anybody outside a very specific niche that ever seriously thought another Mass Effect was on the table after Andromeda.
I think that was part of EAs problem, by the time they released a sequel most people were like "what is this?" Veilguard would have been a bad game either way, but it might have had a bit more hype if it had been released closer to Inquisition. Part of that is due to Anthem, which EA prioritized. But Anthem was Casey's baby.
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u/CobraShelby95 8h ago
I managed my expectations on a new mass effect game. Of course I wanted to be back in the world.
But this still really hurts to hear. Wish something could have happened to help them. Not sure if dragon ages poor performance quickened this result.
On another note, I wish studios would stop announcing games before they have something concrete. What was the point of that teaser all those years ago if they are still considering it early development today?