Andromeda paid for the low budget -apkrig

With the first specific information about the remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy, the series began to be widely discussed again. In addition, current and former BioWare employees have shared several stories in recent days, mentioned canceled projects and commented on content that will not be part of the mentioned remasters. The Gamer then took advantage of the situation to ask obviously shared developers about the details of the development of Andromeda, the fourth volume of Mass Effect, which was not very well received. Compared to the original trilogy, Andromeda did not offer a sufficiently varied and strong content, the main role was played by not very interesting heroes, and the number of races did not grow dizzying, regardless of the fact that we moved to a completely different galaxy in the story. Therefore, the questions of journalists, who received quite surprising answers, also aimed at the last of the mentioned shortcomings. Mass Effect: Andromeda was supposed to be a full-fledged part of the series with everything fans expected, but it was opposed by a low budget and limited development time.

“I don’t think the whole project had a chance to meet expectations. It was not just that the original trilogy set the bar too high, but everyone was looking forward to moving Mass Effect to a whole new galaxy, “says Neil Pollner, one of the screenwriters of the third part, who later moved to Andromeda. He explains that, given the scale of previous games, everyone had to legitimately expect the new galaxy to bring a ton of new things, whether they relate to locations, characters, new races or lora in general. But according to Pollner, the developers were given a budget for only two new alien species and Remnants, and they didn’t even have the money to use at least all the representatives of the already finished races from the Milky Way. At the beginning of Andromeda’s development, however, they did not anticipate these artificial obstacles, and in the pre-production phase, the game was very good.

For example, we worked on how Milky Way creatures learn to communicate with new races. We thought about the different possibilities of branching the story and the ways in which the player will explore the galaxy, “recalls screenwriter Neil Pollner.

“Me and other screenwriters from BioWare Montreal dreamed of the content and elements of the month before the Edmonton branch even set to work. That is, even before the budget began to be analyzed, ”says Pollner. His approach was, as expected, quite large, because it was necessary to create a whole new world and give space to the main character for his mission – to discover Andromeda and contact new species. “For example, we have worked on how the Milky Way creatures learn to communicate with new races. We thought about different possibilities of branching the story […] and the ways the player will explore the galaxy, ”recalls Pollner of the very beginning of the development of the fourth Mass Effect. He is joined by another screenwriter, Chris Hepler, who came up with ideas for five or six new races, but none of them made it to the final game at all. In addition to the budget for this, according to the design director Dorian Kieken, cosplay can also be partly possible, that is to say, the possibility of creating a cosplay relatively easily on the basis of characters from Mass Effect. That is why some were said to be very wild the races were removed from the game and the two that remained – the Angar and Kett – were adjusted so that the cosplayers could style themselves into them as part of their projects.

Another point on which, according to Pollner, the above-mentioned limits of development were signed was the very message of the story. He was supposed to tell about the explorer, the man who made the first contact, but from the first moments in the game just shot. “Ryder, an explorer, was supposed to deal with the pitfalls and dynamics of contact with unknown species, but instead he basically starts shooting ketty immediately. This defacto fell one of the main pillars of the game, “explains the screenwriter. But overall, we can’t even imagine what didn’t get into the game and what it could have been like if developers had been given more resources and time. Pollner claims that the individual members of the team wanted to compete with Andromeda with the possibilities of the previous parts and underline everything for which the BioWare studio is appreciated, but at that time it did not succeed according to the original plan.

Pollner describes the success of the trilogy as an anomaly rather than a critique of Andromeda, and claims that after deducting technical shortcomings, there are a lot of great ideas at play.

However, he adds fairly that it is impossible to compare one game with a complex trilogy, where the characters were given more space and players could experience a number of interesting situations. In addition, according to Pollner, the people from BioWare showed a certain fatigue that they had to work on a recurring concept for the fourth time in quick succession, and to this day they think that they still managed their work well. He therefore describes the success of the trilogy as an anomaly, rather than a critique of Andromeda, and claims that, after deducting technical shortcomings, there are a lot of great ideas at play. Therefore, we can only hope that the remaster of the first three episodes will meet expectations and strengthen in BioWare and especially in Electronic Arts the desire to enter the same river for the fifth time and try a small miracle in the form of a restart. But it will definitely not be until after the corrective Antem and Dragon Age 4.