{"id":46012,"date":"2019-04-09T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T10:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=46012"},"modified":"2019-04-08T12:01:04","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T16:01:04","slug":"andromeda-part-25-bioware-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=46012","title":{"rendered":"Andromeda Part 25: BioWare is Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re reading this series, then you’ve probably already heard the news that BioWare says they’re not done with Mass Effect<\/a>. Of course, they listed Mass Effect 3<\/em> and Andromeda<\/em> as possible launching off points for future stories. Their first instinct is to build on the games with the weakest stories, which probably indicates that any future titles would be more of the same.<\/p>\n

Guys! Mass Effect 2 is the fan favorite! Sure, story dorks like me would whine all the way through it, but it’s the strongest in terms of fan support. If you’re going to copy a previous game, copy the popular one!<\/em><\/p>\n

I think it’s safe to say that BioWare is now completely divorced from their brand as developers. Andromeda<\/em> was their big chance to start over with a clean slate, and it was a sad imitation that missed the point on every level. This is a company that banks on their reputation as storytellers that no longer knows how to tell a story.<\/p>\n

But Shamus, this game came from a new studio! This shouldn’t reflect on the rest of BioWare!<\/b><\/p>\n

If anything, that’s the most damning fact of all.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Blame Goes Uphill<\/h3>\n

THIS HURTS YOU.<\/div>
THIS HURTS YOU.<\/div><\/p>\n

The Andromeda<\/em> team was led by people from the main BioWare studio<\/a>, and by necessity the blame for this trainwreck belongs to those people. Maybe the leadership hired incompetent people when filling out this new studio. Maybe they hired good people but forced them to make a game based on this incompetent story. Maybe they hired a mix of people but management had no idea how to differentiate good work from bad work.<\/p>\n

It’s not like this story was a good idea with a couple of bad spots, or something could have been saved with more polish. This story was atrocious. This is a moronic story concept with an infantile villain and a shallow understanding of the sci-fi genre. This story couldn’t even rise to the level of shallow action schlock, much less the level of brainy details-oriented science fiction. We had two plots in this gameFinding Meridian to stop the Archon and terraforming planets by doing vaults.<\/span>, both of them were dumb, neither of them fit the established setting, and they were fundamentally at odds with each other.<\/p>\n

Maybe with more time and money you could have fixed the bugs, the animations, the audio, the game balance, and all the other technical problems this game had, but none of that would change the fact that the entire game was built atop this terrible narrative foundation. There’s no escaping it. The blame for this has<\/strong> to land in the lap of the creative leads.<\/p>\n

I realize I’m very close to breaking my own protocol by making this personal. Elsewhere in this series I refer to the writing and design staff as “the writer” so that we don’t focus on single people, because I’m more interested in diagnosing problems than identifying culprits. But when we start talking about “the leadership”, we’re talking about a much smaller and more specific group of individuals. At this point we’re pretty close to pointing fingers.<\/p>\n

The Oblivion quest is fully animated and voiced. It wasn't made by a lone maverick. At some point a manager looked at this completely nonsensical quest script and said, 'Yup. Looks good. Put it into the production pipeline.'<\/div>
The Oblivion quest is fully animated and voiced. It wasn't made by a lone maverick. At some point a manager looked at this completely nonsensical quest script and said, 'Yup. Looks good. Put it into the production pipeline.'<\/div><\/p>\n

On the other hand, blame needs to go uphill. The leadership either mandated terrible ideas, or they approved of terrible ideas from other people, or they sat back and allowed terrible ideas to take root. At the start of this series I linked to\u00a0The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Troubled Five-Year Development<\/a>. It’s a long, grim article that gives us a glimpse into Andromeda<\/em>‘s troubled development. There were a lot of problems, but almost all of them are the result of poor leadership in one way or another. This game wasn’t sabotaged from above by corporate politics, or the victim of bad timing in the market, or rushed out the doorYes, the game was half-baked at release, but the team had five years. They had enough time to make a AAA game, but that time wasn’t used properly.<\/span>. It didn’t run out of money. Certainly EA’s mandate to use the Frostbite game engine didn’t do Andromeda<\/em> any favors, but that doesn’t explain why the villain is so embarrassing or why nothing makes any narrative sense. Someone approved of all of these incoherent sidequests, lame characters, and unsatisfying choices. The blame for that has to land in the laps of the BioWare leadership.<\/p>\n

I realize that a lot of people poured years of their lives into this project. That list of people includes the leadership I’m criticizing. Maybe I’m being a jerk by calling out the guilty in public, but it doesn’t feel right to dance around this topic. I feel bad for the talented people who saw their hard work turned into a bad game, but the first step in making sure that doesn’t happen again is holding the right people accountable. Maybe I’m being cruel, but having the same leadership try again with the same terrible approach would be even more cruel.<\/p>\n

Tone at the Top<\/h3>\n