Mass Effect Andromeda: Shitstorm Edition - RIP Biowear

[Secret Asshole]

Where could they possibly go for a new Mass Effect Game though? The post ME3 universe is utterly fucked and everyone hates Ryder and crew so much continuing Andromeda's story line is out of the question.

The only plausible way forward is either a prequel or a huge (100+ years) time skip.

They'd have to admit they fucked the ME 3 ending. My guess is completely ignore the ending and going with 'destroy' and the galaxy rebuilding itself. Shepard is a legend and you can import your Shepard and have statues of them and shit. Reapers are dead, but you've got to unite a broken galaxy. Just completely ignore what they did at the end of ME and leave Shepards fate ambiguous if he/she survived or not.

Biowarefags haven't gone extinct, they're just fleeing to other RPG devs. It's only a matter of time until the only thing CDPR or Obsidian makes are soap opera power fantasy waifu simulators.

Probably, yeah.

Also, the thing is the vast majority of players chose the destroy ending. The writing was shit tier and we are expected to suddenly sympathize with genocidal robots we've been fighting for 3 games in a literal 2 minute deus ex machina explanation. I've seen Harry Potter self insert fan fiction better written than the end of that shitshow. Fuck ME 3.

Also nobody is going to give a shit about a prequel when they learned the galaxy is blown the fuck up anyway and literally nothing they do will matter. Because the first contact war ends the same way and the galaxy gets blown the fuck out. Kind of boring when you already know the ending to the story.

That and Bioware no longer has the talent to write good games.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

did andromeda get better?

 

[Derp Potato]

did andromeda get better?

When I saw the hiring was based on diversity over talent when this game was in production, I'm assuming it can only get better.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Which ending for ME3 was the canon one? Given how post-apocalyptic most of the galaxy would be, I could see picking up (say) five years later on some other planet, trying to rebuild- it would require a massive tonal shift though, more Cowboy Bebop than Babylon 5.

 

[Ruin]

Which ending for ME3 was the canon one? Given how post-apocalyptic most of the galaxy would be, I could see picking up (say) five years later on some other planet, trying to rebuild- it would require a massive tonal shift though, more Cowboy Bebop than Babylon 5.

Destroy is the canon ending. Everything else is incredibly poorly written fanfiction.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Destroy is the canon ending. Everything else is incredibly poorly written fanfiction.

Nothing about ME3 wasn't incredibly poorly written fanfiction.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Destroy is the canon ending. Everything else is incredibly poorly written fanfiction.

Considering like 90% of the playerbase basically spit in the face of the writers because they wanted Destroy to be the 'wrong' ending, yet the vast majority chose it over the 2 others. I think something like 5% chose synthesis or whatever fucking body-horror creepshow that was, just so Joker could fuck a robot.

There's also mods that alter the ending of ME 3, use Destroy and put the Citadel DLC as the epilogue, removing all references to how they're going to fight the reapers. I don't know how good they are, but a lot of people put in effort to try and make the ending something slavagable.

 

[QB 290]

I took the control option, only really so the geth would live and because it had a little bit of story relevence.
Honestly though, just make the modded "happy ending" cannon and roll on the clock 200 years or something, the cannon endings suck, nobody likes them and they just ruin everything.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Fixing one ending isn't going to make Bioware any better at writing endings in the future. Or any other part of a game, for that matter. ME3 was a disaster long before the RGB section. Even ME2 has some major flaws in the plotting and characterization.

 

[Jaimas]

Which ending for ME3 was the canon one? Given how post-apocalyptic most of the galaxy would be, I could see picking up (say) five years later on some other planet, trying to rebuild- it would require a massive tonal shift though, more Cowboy Bebop than Babylon 5.

Let it never be forgotten that the ending of ME3 is that it quite literally was written by two faggots who weren't the original writing team and wanted their retarded twist ending. They then proceeded to not only pretend that there was no backlash to said ending, but called pretty much everyone who bitched entitled for calling the ending shit. And EA rewarded one of the assholes who caused this fucking dereliction of common sense by giving him carte blanche to do what he would with the series and he brought us all Andromeda.

Looking back on it, this shit was prophetic. So much of what we'd see later in GG and shit like the fuckstorm surrounding Star Wars: TLJ would find its fucking precursor here: Calling fans of the series entitled manbabies for disliking it? Check. Circling the wagons with the journo class and claiming that they were being harassed and attacked and ergo gamers were evil? Check. Screaming about MUH ARTISM when people point out the fucking litany of shit that doesn't make sense about the ending? Big check. All it needed was some legbeard shrieking about misogyny and we'd have a full bingo card.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Reading between the lines my personal theory is that no one had any idea for an ending up to only a couple of months before release so Casey Hudson (being a producer, not a writer) just locked Mac Walters in a room with him until he had literally anything they could put in the game. Casey Hudson did nothing wrong, he's been there from the start. Mac Walters was promoted beyond his competency and it's mostly his fault. That said proudly proclaiming a player molded coherent trilogy from day one without any real outline for what the trilogy's plot should actually be is idiotic and the fault of everyone that worked on the series period.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Let it never be forgotten that the ending of ME3 is that it quite literally was written by two faggots who weren't the original writing team and wanted their exceptional twist ending. They then proceeded to not only pretend that there was no backlash to said ending, but called pretty much everyone who bitched entitled for calling the ending shit. And EA rewarded one of the assholes who caused this fucking dereliction of common sense by giving him carte blanche to do what he would with the series and he brought us all Andromeda.

Yeah, BioWare screwed the pooch there, but to this day I have trouble holding it against them since they almost immediately released what was at least an attempted fix for the ending. So I looked on their "oh the fans are so entitled" as a face-saving gesture more than genuine shitting on the fans. If Lucasfilm had taken the exact same tack they have with TLJ *but* released a 20-minute epilogue that fixed some of the plot holes, I'd be much less contemptuous of them.

But, as you say, it did indeed turn out to be a leading indicator. BioWare coasted on their writing chops for a long time, and when those failed, they didn't have any recourse but to attack the fans- and the JournoLists who hung off their wang (and ad dollars) had no problem circling the wagons, because journalists deserve a worse reputation than lawyers and bill collectors combined.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Reading between the lines my personal theory is that no one had any idea for an ending up to only a couple of months before release so Casey Hudson (being a producer, not a writer) just locked Mac Walters in a room with him until he had literally anything they could put in the game. Casey Hudson did nothing wrong, he's been there from the start. Mac Walters was promoted beyond his competency and it's mostly his fault. That said proudly proclaiming a player molded coherent trilogy from day one without any real outline for what the trilogy's plot should actually be is idiotic and the fault of everyone that worked on the series period.

I was always under the impression they originally intended it as an episodic trilogy like Indiana Jones and only tried turning it into a tight three-part narrative when they were almost done with ME2

 

[Jaimas]

Reading between the lines my personal theory is that no one had any idea for an ending up to only a couple of months before release so Casey Hudson (being a producer, not a writer) just locked Mac Walters in a room with him until he had literally anything they could put in the game. Casey Hudson did nothing wrong, he's been there from the start. Mac Walters was promoted beyond his competency and it's mostly his fault. That said proudly proclaiming a player molded coherent trilogy from day one without any real outline for what the trilogy's plot should actually be is idiotic and the fault of everyone that worked on the series period.

The biggest issue was that they completely changed writing staff amidships. They had a huge battery of PLOT that basically got flushed about 70% of the way through ME2 that was supposed to dictate where the series was going to go. There's some argument as to why they buried it - some have argued because parts of it were leaked and they wanted to spite those who did it, others because Walters is a zero-talent hack.

I lean towards the latter, considering the abortion Andromeda's story was.

Yeah, BioWare screwed the pooch there, but to this day I have trouble holding it against them since they almost immediately released what was at least an attempted fix for the ending. So I looked on their "oh the fans are so entitled" as a face-saving gesture more than genuine shitting on the fans. If Lucasfilm had taken the exact same tack they have with TLJ *but* released a 20-minute epilogue that fixed some of the plot holes, I'd be much less contemptuous of them.

I do not consider a fucking paltry attempt at "fixing" it to be an argument for acceptibility, considering the game languished in a non-fixed state for almost a year before that came out. There is a far bigger reason, however, that I, and presumably many others, will never forgive their alleged attempt at fixing it. It's got nothing to do with the fact that it was too little, too late, or the fact that someone fucking programmed a better ending generator in fucking Twine, designed to give you a Fallout-style epilogue, fucking months previously. It's not the fact that the new ending is a band-aid slapped over the shitty old ending, the fact that the endings are still "pick a color," and basically identical even in the extended cut, or the fact that they still fucking break the lore of the game (SYNTHETICS AND ORGANICS CANNOT CO-EXIST, they argue, after spending the bulk of a chapter proving otherwise).

It's something deeper. It's the fact that even this fix is dripping with contempt for the ME Fanbase.

They didn't make Extended Cut because they gave a shit about the game. They did it because if they didn't the fanbase would never let them live it the fuck down. ME4, which would later become Andromeda, was already in the production queue, it was damage control this bitch or it was going to fail by default (which it did anyway, but details). None of this is more viisble than the refusal ending, which, while championed as an example of player choice, also pretty much boils down to a perfect synopsis of how that crop of writers felt about the playerbase refusing to accept their shit ending:

"You didn't like our endings? Fuck you then. Reapers fall, everyone dies."

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

I was always under the impression they originally intended it as an episodic trilogy like Indiana Jones and only tried turning it into a tight three-part narrative when they were almost done with ME2

The plot of Mass Effect 1 makes it clear that if Sovereign is prevented from accessing the Citadel and destroyed, then the Reaper threat is effectively over. They were hanging out deep in the middle of intergalactic space. Maybe even between mega clusters. Even their drives weren't powerful enough to get anywhere in those huge voids without a mass relay. It's only at the very end, literally the last minute or so of the game, that Shepard suddenly says "The Reapers are still out there".

I believe that an episodic series with some save import on top probably was the original intent, but somewhere late in development of the first game they decided it had to be a continuing story. Yet they had no idea how to do that. Even Drew Karpyshyn's "lol dark energy pollution" story doesn't really give you any kind of ending or plausible, satisfying way to deal with what the Reapers were hyped up to be without resorting to deus ex machina.

 

[Emperor Julian]

The easiest way to keep the ball rolling would be to simply state that the Catalyst (aka harbinger) is a liar (which is what I assumed) and go with destroy and then roll from there. Maybe be do some smaller scope games about the setting to let people enjoy the experiance of the world.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

The easiest way to keep the ball rolling would be to simply state that the Catalyst (aka harbinger) is a liar (which is what I assumed) and go with destroy and then roll from there. Maybe be do some smaller scope games about the setting to let people enjoy the exeriance of the world.

The easiest way from a writing standpoint would be to pretend most of ME3 never happened and go for a do-over, but that would be hard from a marketing standpoint. This is all academic though. Bioware is at the end of the EA cycle, which has been repeated more times than you can fathom. Independent developers arise, evolve, advance; and at the apex of their glory: they are extinguished.

The Cycle cannot be broken.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

The easiest way from a writing standpoint would be to pretend most of ME3 never happened and go for a do-over, but that would be hard from a marketing standpoint. This is all academic though. Bioware is at the end of the EA cycle, which has been repeated more times than you can fathom. Independent developers arise, evolve, advance; and at the apex of their glory: they are extinguished.

The Cycle cannot be broken.

But they won't flog off any of Bioware's properties, oh no. They'll hold onto it and hoard it and then in five years' time, some godawful Mass Effect or Dragon Age mobile game which is basically an excuse to sell microtransactions will come out and be ridiculed, and they'll ree about how the public are too entitled or how they innovated too much. Because that is was Electronic Arse does.

There's a reason the big bad in Ultima VII was an evil god whose symbol was the EA logo of the time and who was a "destroyer of worlds."

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

But they won't flog off any of Bioware's properties, oh no. They'll hold onto it and hoard it and then in five years' time, some godawful Mass Effect or Dragon Age mobile game which is basically an excuse to sell microtransactions will come out and be ridiculed, and they'll ree about how the public are too entitled or how they innovated too much. Because that is was Electronic Arse does.

There's a reason the big bad in Ultima VII was an evil god whose symbol was the EA logo of the time and who was a "destroyer of worlds."

They don't sell off the IPs because deep down the top flight of EA know someone will come along with love, talent and who cherished the original games and will piss all over any kind of output EA had put out previously along that line. That's why we saw the spate of "knockoff" games that came about a little while ago and they fucking stormed gaming. You had Ken Levine's Bioshock Series which had very similar themes to System Shock and even stole half its name, then you had Cities Skylines which didn't so much beat SimCity as murder it to the point EA pulled the plug on Maxis.

I'm just sat here waiting for the Dead Space knockoff, tbh.

 

[Whatisgoingon]

They don't sell off the IPs because deep down the top flight of EA know someone will come along with love, talent and who cherished the original games and will piss all over any kind of output EA had put out previously along that line. That's why we saw the spate of "knockoff" games that came about a little while ago and they fucking stormed gaming. You had Ken Levine's Bioshock Series which had very similar themes to System Shock and even stole half its name, then you had Cities Skylines which didn't so much beat SimCity as murder it to the point EA pulled the plug on Maxis.

I'm just sat here waiting for the Dead Space knockoff, tbh.

Well, I hope an Ultima knockoff is coming. Even though I know it never really will.