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Comment by pinevale | Hacker News Reader

BioWare hasn't published a successful game in a very long time. Their last releases were Anthem (2019) and DA: Veilguard (2024), both of which tapped into the studio's reputation but underperformed in the long haul. Veilguard was also so "meh" against the backdrop of Baldur's Gate 3 that it probably harmed the brand and the franchise more than if it never came out.

They basically used to make amazing games in the 2000s and never quite lived up to that reputation again. Whether the acquisition by EA was the cause or the symptom of the decline, I don't know.

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Don't forget ME:Andromeda (2017). The truth is that it has been almost 15 years since Bioware made an even arguably great game.

I think Andromeda was actually more of a victim of modern "outrage" culture. A few bugs, memes, and suddenly a game is "trash". The game wasn't terrible and I recall enjoying playing it at the time. Sure, some of the animations were stiff and the main character design wasn't stellar but those were _really_ blown out of proportion in games media at the time.

Nowadays if your game has even one thing wrong and the wrong influencer makes fun of it, suddenly it's trash. At the same time, your game can be trash and if an influencer laughs their ass off at the bugs (in a good way), everyone wants it. It's a sad culture. /rant

I still think Mass Effect Andromeda was one story DLC away from being my favorite Mass Effect game. The team behind Andromeda was the team that made all the best story DLC for the previous three games. Their wheelhouse was taking the game past the last stages of polish to telling the small stories that really tie the whole thing together. I still wonder what we might have gotten from the cancelled DLC if the technical bugs of the Frostbite engine switch hadn't created such a bad first impression.

(Side note, the ME: Andromeda novels are really good and hinted at a lot of storylines that we may never see closure on, but were certainly building blocks the game was working on getting to.)

I'm playing ME: Andromeda now on a handheld and I don't get the hate. Sure it's not ME2 but graphically more polished though the storyline lacks the impact of the first trilogy. Otherwise, I think it's a fine game.

Crowbcat brought alot of people to hatewagon the game due to its video knit-picking on details.

Andromeda got critized a lot for admittedly unnecessary flaws, but at its core it was a great mass effect. It even corrected many mistakes of the original trilogy, like having a proper ending that used the allies won during the game.

Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) was their last critically acclaimed and successful game, and even that oen was considered a drop in quality for the series.

Andromeda had a lot of good in it, tbf. Their big mistake there IMO was hard-resetting the universe the way they did. Like I was excited for more mass effect but I fell off that game so hard. Mechanically it was solid but I just… didn’t care.

Anthem frankly killed them. A live service looter shooter which were already out of vogue by the time it was released. Obviously made by marketing entirely, no soul whatsoever. They never recovered from it.

I will always defend Andromeda as not being as bad as everyone said. I enjoy going back and playing it, and they were a few better writers away from having a really good game. I cared more about the Irish redhead copilot than about any one of the actual companions.

> I cared more about the Irish redhead copilot than about any one of the actual companions

This squares with Joker being a fan-favourite character in the main trilogy

Yeah, Andromeda has some cool ideas (the whole Remnant thing felt like a very classic Scifi mistery) but it was stuck in classing BioWare cliches with companions loyalty quests and romances, the main character being weird chosen one, the main plot was dumb and it was barely a Mass Effect because of the disconnect from the main universe and missing some of the favorite Mass Effect things (like the Geth).

It might have been successful if it weren't a Mass Effect. Or maybe not, who knows.

I think a large part of the issue is that the sum total of ME trilogy is a hard act to follow, without aiming to sound hyperbolic it's a very bright light that outshines a lot. Anything trying to be a sequel has a difficult balancing act of being familiar versus being different and bringing new ideas in.

> missing some of the favorite Mass Effect things (like the Geth)

Some of that is interestingly handled in the Andromeda novels and there were hints that even some of the cancelled DLC was going to reintroduce some of those elements, but EA diverted the DLC teams to Anthem instead.

I didn't say it was bad, I didn't think it was. The combat as I said was the most interesting iteration. I loved the gun play, I just didn't give a fuck about the characters. I found most of them either offputting or just meh.

I genuinely only remember Ryder and PeeBee by name.

> Mechanically it was solid but I just… didn’t care.

This is a great summary of the entire issue with the game.

I really tried to like it but it didn't inspire any enthusiasm. I didn't really care for the plot, the stakes seemed so low compared to the previous title and none of the races/planets really scratched that explore itch.

They where by than "owing the don" as in there existence was company internally subsidized and you do not recover creative control from that. And those external management initiated "next shiny thing" chases kill you.

I liked the fresh reset because it was good excuse to get back to the "Exploration" roots of Mass Effect 1.

That said, the rumor is the in development Mass Effect 5 had found a story way to bridge the gap between the two and make it seem a lot less like a hard reset and find a way to continue past the ME3 endings.

Of course we likely will never get to hear the ME5 story the way it was scrapped along with the studio in this announcement.

Yeah, while it's sad they are gone, the reality is that they have been zombies for a long time.

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