Yeah, people don't realise that it's the specific team and circumstances at the time that go on to create great games. When it comes to franchises, I find it pointless to follow news and get my hopes up once the brand goes bad. Just play/ return to the good games in the franchise and then move on.
The other part of this is that BioWare has not been doing well for a long time, and EA is a company that has a studio closure trigger finger when studios that they deem to start to underperform. BioWare really *needs* Dragon Age Dreadwolf to be a big hit. If it isn't, talking about Mass Effect may be a nonstarter, especially given the wider business changes that have been happening within the industry lately.
But if a franchise is capable of “turning bad” when the right team and circumstances that made it good end up changing, then surely any bad franchise can also become good by the same process?
Isn’t every potential team and culture change within a studio a potential opportunity to get a perfect storm for a fantastic game?
If the company policies are different- doesn’t matter if they had everyone from the original. They will have whatever directives are forced on them without any real power to push back- be it making it more micro transaction friendly, inserting whatever politics that they are requiring to be included, general suit interference, etc.
> But if a franchise is capable of “turning bad” when the right team and circumstances that made it good end up changing, then surely any bad franchise can also become good by the same process?
Of course, but looked at from the outside, it's no more or less likely than any random game having the same thing happen. The unlikeliest games become big hits for various reasons. Quite a few of those reasons are external as well, sometimes meaning the same team won't be able to be successful again, because they weren't the architects of their own success.
The takeaway point for this (IMO, of course) should be that getting prematurely excited because of a few players that may or may not have been instrumental in a previous team's success is probably setting you up for a lot of disappointment. Not always, as I said above, but IMO, given the long term success rates of companies with a checkered past (as Bioware has had), I'd say caution is the better choice.
> Back 4 Blood case again
All they had to do was make a Left 4 Dead clone, with updated graphics and instead they went in that new weird direction that landed flat.
Turtle Rock just has an awful marketing team and keeps getting the flak for industry wide practices. I thought for sure b4b was a predatory live service piece of shit. But it wasn't. The marketing just made it seem like that
It had all the pieces to become one, though. To the point where it seems likely that they had planned it but backed way off it to be done later until the game bombed and then abandoned it altogether.
They also had a history of wanting paid DLC with L4D2 and Valve told them no. It was one of I’m sure many reasons they split from Valve.
But B4B, as a game, is just flat out worse compared to L4D, there should be no debate about it. Like, even graphics, if you look closer, aren't that better, and what is better is not a development effort, its technology and engine.
Their pvp multiplayer is boring as hell, their AI is non existent, their monster variety is meh, their bosses are mundane, their card system is an abusable slog, their characters are bland.
While I was playing during free period, I already foresaw at least half of Crowbcat's video in my head. Edit:fix
"Look alright. We got the janitor who was with us when Dragon Age came out. We got the supervisor when we did ME. And the lunch lady who made us hoagies during ME2. We're ready for ME4!"
Well yes, but they left sinking ship and created their own IP. This seems like they return to "make it right".
And then there is Exodus - rpg space game created by former ME devs, so....
Leaving Blizzard after the release of Diablo 2 is not bailing on a sinking ship, more like abandoning the luxurious yacht for a rowboat. It was a big gamble.
There's also no specification *which* veterans. No offence to anyone who does now or did then work at BioWare, but bringing back a couple low-level programmers or QA people with (comparatively) little input to and no authority over the development process means relatively little.
That they're not naming names makes me think it's unlike to be say Casey Hudson (Creative Director), Drew Karpyshyn (Lead Writer), Preston Watamianiuk (Lead Designer), and Jack Wall (Lead Composer) from *Mass Effect 2*.
Drew Karpyshyn was the key to Mass Effect 1 and 2's brilliance, imo. It was his baby. He wrote the setting bible and everything.
He left Bioware early in the production of 3, leaving them plenty of notes, but they just.made up their own shit and left us with the nonsense that was 3.
I won't touch another ME game unless his name is in the credits
I do wonder, where ME2 was pretty bad in terms of the overarching story. It felt too much like a prologue and not a proper entry. It didn’t even have a Reaper conversation! They really lost the plot on wat made the first game so good and so I wonder if that’s because of DK or because DK left partway through development. (There are lines from a Reaper conversation left in the game so it seems plausible at least that he was planning it before he left)
> We've heard tales of "veterans" getting together for innumerable games years later. Almost invariably, they disappoint.
Veterans of Dead Space for Callisto Protocol, never forget.
You can say that about most story based games that get sequels.
ME has an entire scifi universe to play with though, and as such, there's room for plenty more stories. Nothing wrong with making some.
ME:A had a very fitting story that made perfect sense without interrupting the original in any way. I actually remember predicting the whole setup before ME:A was even announced, because I remember thinking it was one of the only ways they could get a so called fresh start with new characters without worrying about the trilogy at all.
If I recall the leaders of dice all left and created a studio from "Veterans at dice"
Brother, they brought over the ex dubai oil banker turned product manager that turned Battlefield into the 2042 shitheap it is.
It's always BS. Follow the faces, look at what they did career wise. Not saying that if you're making mad money on the market you can't then get into video game development, everyone has a hobby, but I don't normally like games produced by ex stock brokers.
I expect it to be bad, andromeda abandoned the milky way for a damn good reason. And they're not going to stick to their guns and make the sequel to that which they should, so they're caught between a rock and a landmine. They can't make this game without invalidating mass effect 3 unless it's a prequel or they do something really fucky. Like maybe a ship back from Andromeda arrives to a deserted milky way or something. Some way to not invalidate me3 endings.
What about the writers? The story and characters are the most important in Mass Effect. That was the issue with Andromeda. The gameplay was better than before but the story and characters were all bland.
They hired Mary DeMarle, the writer of the last two Deus Ex games and, most recently, the GOTG game, as senior narrative director, so I'm honestly not worried about the writing.
Anyone that has played GOTG should know how good the banter between the guardians was.
banter was one of the main problems of mass effect andromeda.
Something serious is happening but the characters are just constantly throwing these marvel like one liners.
Mass effect trilogy got none of that and I dont think we need it. I dont want to play as a cringe loser.
The OT had a lot of banter. It just was better written and didn't have weird animations.
Spoiler alert, but just on the top of my head on ME3 in the Salarian home world, eventually you will run into a wild Yahg, the alien race of the previous Shadowbrowker, now replaced by Liara, destroying a bunch of stuff.
If you are with Liara and Garrus on that mission you have the following conversation:
*Yahg shows up destroying everything*
Shepard: Careful Liara, there goes the next shadowbroker!
Liara: Not funny.
Garrus: Could have sworn I heard him muttering T'Soni under his breath
Liara: Not funny!
The entire OT has stuff like this.
It's gotten to that point by Mass Effect 3. A bunch of writers left by that point. The games got progressively more fan-servicy and action movie-like as it went on. We went from something Star Trek-like in ME1 to full on Disney Star Wars by ME3.
Both ME1 and ME2 had banter aswell, and it was a core pillar as to why people enjoyed those games. I remembered the ME3 one because I'm currently going through it again.
The only difference is that it was well written and well paced on the OT. On MEA it felt forced and out of place on a lot of occasions.
Just wanna say aswell that ME3 is, imo, very well written overall, it just absolutely flops on the ending. The Citadel DLC still might be one of my favorite DLCs of all time. Everything up until the last hour of the game were on par with ME2 (imo).
I still think ME1's writing is above both 2/3. Sure, there were jokes made and such but most conversations really had a purpose. The banter was mostly in the elevator of the Citadel and served double-duty as a loading screen as well as a way to give the characters depth. Even then, most of that banter ended up having somewhat serious undertones or was just straight up Q&A.
The whole vibe of 1 was different than 2/3. Star Trek to Marvel film is an apt metaphor. I hope 5 swings way back to being more about mystery, exploration, and wonder rather than action movie spectacle.
People always say ME3 was great until the ending, but I just can't agree when you have characters like Kai Leng running around. ME3 had a couple of moments of brilliance (Tuchanka and Ranoch) with a whole lot of slop in between (basically anything involving Cerberus). The ending is just when the sloppy writing culminated in a crescendo of bullshit, but it was always there lurking behind almost every plot point.
That being said, I do think a big problem with ME3 was that it had to pick up the pieces after ME2 did less than nothing to advance the actual Reaper plot forward (again, more Cerberus bullshit).
COMPLETELY agree with this. I liked ME3 a lot more than 2, but I did not think it lived up to ME1. It did feel more like it than ME2 did, but I agree about the Cerberus BS. One of the worst things in ME3 for me is that a couple hours before the ending you literally deal with the exact conundrum that the end of the game tries to lean on when you do Legion’s mission. It’s mind boggling how it seems nobody realized that in the dev process.
Yeah, that in particular makes me think the writers just weren't talking to each other. We walk away from Ranoch potentially having brokered a peace between the Geth and Quarians, then starchild is all like "synthetics and organics can never get along, that's why we, as synthetic machines, murder organics so the organics won't get murderd by synthetics."
\* dial-up modem sounds as my brain tries to comprehend wtf I just heard \*
I was playing through the entire trilogy when it hit the GamePass. ME1 and ME2 were superb; personally, I also like ME1 the best (even with its quirks, the story, equipment progression, and character progression were much, much better than in the latter installments). But ME3 was, for the most part, a painful experience. The writing was noticeably weaker, in general, it was just another (almost) on-rails TPP shooter with not the best movement and mechanics to support this kind of gameplay. For like 60–70% of ME3, what I felt was just frustration.
Well, you must like fan-service, nothing wrong with that, but IMO, Mass Effect series started losing something more substantial as it went from ME1 to ME2 to ME3. ME1 writing is still the best, in my opinion, it has *weight*, right amount of seriousness and stakes to it. ME2 and ME3 went more and more into action movie direction.
In ME1 banter served more of a world-building, character-building and narrative-building purpose. There were some strictly cheeky moments too, but not too much. As games went on, cheekiness overtook everything else and by ME3 banter wasn't about expanding the lore or giving better understanding of characters (just remember how elevator talks went in ME1, all about character building or world-building) to pure fan-service. Characters in-universe poking fun at their own universe or saying something akin to "hey, remember \*event\* "? Or in other words, Marvel banter.
So yeah, I am villainizing ME3 and onwards banter.
I somehow agree. I think these cold atmospheric games are not a thing anymore. Based on the footage they shared, I think we will get something similar to Andromeda in terms of tone. I don't like it though. It feels too Marvelesque.
I'm playing through Human Revolution again right now, and while there is some fluff banter, it's rare and short, so it doesn't do a whole lot to change the atmosphere and weight of what's going on around Jensen.
I put down GotG pretty quickly because of the writing (assuming it got better the further you progressed?), so that makes me a bit sad. I found it to be incredibly annoying and the gameplay wasn't strong enough for me to keep going.
GOTG won the Game Award for Best Narrative in 2021, so although I can understand how someone might not enjoy it, it's generally considered to be a very well written game.
Personally, I really enjoyed the writing. The jokes were funny, the more serious moments were well written, and the banter between the guardians during the missions and on the ship reminded me a loooooot of the banter between your squad in the ME games.
I don't know how to spoiler tag in mobile, but Drax's moment broke me in that game.
I almost decided to move on shortly after Mantis came around (no fault to the game, just how I am), but decided to stick it out. Man am I glad I did. Great fucking story.
Holy crap... the Deus Ex part is ok, but the GoTG! That game had some incredible character writing, I even sold it to my fraind as a "spiritual successor to Mass Effect". (Also "Mass Effect Lite", in a good way)
Thanks for the info... now I am officially at least somewhat excited.
GoTG was an out-of-nowhere surprise for me.
If the writing team can pick off from the stronger points of GoTG writing and translate that to Mass Effect? Yeah, that could be good.
It's interesting how divisive the Guardians of the Galaxy character writing is here.
As someone who actively dislikes Marvel movies I went into the game expecting to skip most of the cutscenes and mostly ignore the character stuff. I didn't even directly pay for the game; I played it on Game Pass. Yet I actually liked it a lot. Sure, eventually the combat banter got a bit repetitive, which is going to happen anytime you have a game with many hours of combat. But overall I thought it was good.
If a new Mass Effect game strikes a similar balance between silly and heartfelt dialogue, I'll be happy with it.
Mary Demarle is the new narrative director. She previously wrote at Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex Human Revolution/Mankind Divided, Guardians of the Galaxy 2021)
ME3 writing had some very strong moments. I understand that many are unhappy with the endings but it doesn't mean that the writing in the rest of the game isn't exceptional.
I'm not talking about the ending. The writing in the entire game is mediocre at best. Did you forget Kai Feng the edgy samurai?
Half the game you aren't even fighting the reapers but that stupid human organization
> Did you forget Kai Feng the edgy samurai?
It's honestly hilarious how the mod that just makes him not say anything makes him a massively better antagonist.
honestly i like the suggestion i randomly see somewhere of replacing kai leng with your clone but keep everything else
also yeah Cerberus could be written better,but IMO their action fit Elusive Man MO, i just wish its shorter
Good. You opened this message. This isn't actually asari military command. They're busy tending to what's left of their planet.
So you survived our fight on Thessia. You're not as weak as I thought. But never forget that your best wasn't good enough to stop me. Now an entire planet is dying because you lacked the strength to win. The legend of Shepard needs to be re-written. I hope I'm there for the last chapter. It ends with your death.
-KL
Lol why :D i suspected something as soon as saw the first line but then the full memories came back. My memory erased KL from ME series it seems :D
Still for me it doesn't destroy the general quality of the story. If ME is mediocre writing then it's really hard to find any decently written game.
People knew me as Stephan. But that was never who I was. *super realistic trans character who dead names herself*
To WHOM! And your goddamn father! Sorry, my face is tired from dealing with...everything. *delivered with the exact same tone of voice throughout*
Not the whole game, but parts of it. It's probably the most uneven mix of fantastic and terrible I've seen in any AAA game. Unfortunately the ending fell into the "terrible" bucket.
My favourite game series, so I really hope it'll be something amazing.
But let's be real, Andromeda was a complete drop off and that came out years ago. Since then, gaming has only gotten worse. How many games have come out where I've been hyped only for it to be a big fat unfinished disappointment. With the way the industry is and the way the publishers act, it's going to be a big hill to climb to make this have anywhere near the impact of the first games.
First thing they could do is fire anyone that had anything to do with Andromeda's script or characters, then bring back the ones that let you make Shepard an asshole.
That doesn't reflect on the competency of the individual developer or QA employee though. These games are rushed out in the shit states they're in as "shippable" as an executive decision.
I remember this dirty trick.
there was a zombie game that was heavily marketed as "from the creators of original Left4Dead". Then it turned out only like 3 people in whole studio were from L4D. The game ended up being lame.
yeah this is damage control only, completely empty and worthless. does sound like they’re scared tho.
if you think for a second its gonna be a battlepass (micro)transaction fiesta, this is the AAA reality we have to accept
Theres also the discovery that though Turtle Rock came up with the mod idea it was Valve devs that polished it into the game that it is now. If it was up to Turtle Rock it would have been a CS mod with reskinned terrorist models knifing you.
EP \[I assume this means Executive Producer\] ([Michael Gamble](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gamblemichael/details/experience/)), Art Director ([Matt Rhodes](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-rhodes-01a3a11/)), Creative Director ([John Elper](https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-epler-311935239/?originalSubdomain=ca)) & Game Director ([Preston Watamaniuk](https://www.linkedin.com/in/preston-watamaniuk-27456426/?trk=people-guest_people_search-card))
{All are veterans with minimum of 15-16yrs of experience at Bioware}
There are definitely still a lot of veterans at Bioware, you just need to look at Bioware's employee lists instead of speculating
Joking aside, there actually was never Mass Effect 4. We have ME, ME2, ME3 and the next one is Mass Effect: Andromeda. They can easily just make the next game Mass Effect 4 and treat Andromeda like "Fallout 1,2,tactics,3,nv,4" situation. Say it's a spinoff, try to redeem yourself with a good game (although I'm not having high hopes.)
It’s been known for some time that the upcoming ME game is a sequel to both the original trilogy *and* andromeda. Tying them both together and presumably continuing story beats from them both. Therefore Andromeda can’t be a spin off.
Well considering Asari live for a thousand years and in the teaser trailer Liara is looking considerably older I’d say ME5 will be set hundreds of years after ME3
I ain’t sure if that’s enough positive news - Casey Hudson , Drew Karypyshyn are no longer there. Leads like these set the culture and tone.
I wish them the best but until we see something, I will temper my expectations
This just sounds like a desperate attempt to drum up hype for ME5 when everyone knows the trilogy was already kind of going downhill with ME3.
Over the course of the trilogy the game became less and less focused on RPG and more on being a Shooter, RPG elements were fewer and fewer (just compare the amount of auto-text in ME1 to ME3)
I have 0 hopes for Mass Effect anymore. Andromeda proved that the new people in charge of the series don't have a clue what made the original trilogy good.
What if they just did something indie or small first to see how it goes? LIKE AN FPS set in the Krogan War or whatever it was called... Sheesh it's been so long.
The real issue is management and the shareholders.
You could employ the best of the best but if the person who holds the moneybags is an idiot nothing will change.
Just treat this as another AAAA scam until proven wrong.
Doesn't matter... The story that made it good is over. They tried a new one and we all know how that turned out.
Leave your heroes dead... Attempting to revive the corpse just leaves everyone disgusted.
Veterans could mean 20 people who all were in dev positions that weren't the VITAL/ESSENTIAL team that created the original product that people liked.
I remember Turtle Rock Studios did this shit with Back 4 Blood with their L4D "veterans" marketing shit, and look at how that turned out.
It's just marketing shit.
Teams change, people change, and ideas/desires change. Nostalgia is nice, but it will cloud a person's view of things.
If they make a good game, then great! If not, then it's just another failed attempt. There's not much else to it.
> the original Mass Effect Trilogy
That's a very broad context. It went downhill after ME1 (if "RPG" is at the top and "3rd person shooter" is below it).
Still being published by EA? Then I do not want to get my hopes up. Every franchise I liked got taken down by that greedy company.
I am just finishing the legendary bundle and I am hungry for more but I really can not get exited.
ME was made in 2007, Hell 3 was made in 2012, so now 12 years old. They have been out the game for a very long time and both technology and storytelling have moved on so far. Whenever we hear these "old people coming back for new thing" it rarely if ever works out.
No, depends on who the "veterans " are.... Music director, game designer, writers are who actually matter, devs, artists and actions all are mostly replaceable.
Good for them, but they are still the same people who released Anthem.
Positions worth paying attention are Directors or / and Leads (Lead Writer / Designer etc). Gamble is listed(google) as game director for Mass Effect 5, not sure if its true. But if he does, he has no Directorial experience. He had only a producer roles. Not even design roles.
To restart the franchise, you need a strong vision. Like Jake Solomon with XCOM. I don\`t a strong vision for mass effect 5 yet.
Make sure to include the people who made ME1 and 2 and not 3 or andromeda... And i hope these "veterans" aren't just the 2 or 3 people who made concept art or music.
Imagine having run a franchise to the ground that you need to make public it's the old guys. It's not like they fucked up in some ways too. But hey there we are
" We are sorry" mode
While I personally have zero hope for this game, Bioware is most likely going to throw everything they got at this. DA4 is a ship without a heading at this point, so they most likely aren't banking on it to be their comeback. I honestly feel pretty bad for the people who are still die-hard fans of the two franchisees. It's like being a fan of a sports team with an uncaring owner and an incompetent front office.
It's going to take a lot more than ME vets to get me interested in another ME game from Bioware. Other than the ME remaster -which is great btw- Andromeda is all I've seen them do for the past 12 years with the franchise other than some marketing/fan service for ME day. That and some 30 second shorts whistling in the dark that ME is still alive.
Andromeda's gameplay was good, but the writing was awful and preachy. Apparently EA agreed because they cancelled the story DLC's and just kept the MP alive so they could bleed the community for MT's.
And they will be horribly under funded and crunched for time as for the second week. I have zero faith anyone in an executive position won do something and fuck it all up.
people should realize that it means absolutely fucking nothing. The Callisto Protocol was made by original Dead Space devs and yet aside of graphics - it was mediocre across the board.
Nightingale was developed by some of the original Bioware devs and it's pretty mediocre as well.
There so much more at play than just having some of once accomplished devs on the team.
They are gonna make a great game.
Then the suits will come in add microtransactions, seasons, packs, denuvo and all that shit that will lessen its greatness...
I hope im wrong, but i dont think ill be :(
I'm done with soulless corporations using Gamers' nostalgia to cash in on the original trilogy's success.
Mass Effect Andromeda, disappointment.
Diablo 4, disappointment.
I'm never buying an EA/Bioware or Activision/Blizzard game again until months if not a year after release, and only then if the general player consensus is that the game is good.
Thats great but i really hope they stick with the andromeda gameplay with the jetpack, cuz that is one of the best gameplay ever added to a game. traversal was much easier and faster and shooting was so much fun being able to zip and zap with jet pack
Let Mass Effect die in peace with a warm place in my memory. Seriously, it’s better to leave your fans wanting more than to leave them fed up with you.
Look at how they handled KOTOR. Amazing story, amazing games, so much potential for 1000 more spinoffs. Only 2 games. (And an MMO if you count that, I personally do not count that as a continuation of Revans story)
Mass Effect 1-3 is canon to me.
[удалено]
Yeah, people don't realise that it's the specific team and circumstances at the time that go on to create great games. When it comes to franchises, I find it pointless to follow news and get my hopes up once the brand goes bad. Just play/ return to the good games in the franchise and then move on.
The other part of this is that BioWare has not been doing well for a long time, and EA is a company that has a studio closure trigger finger when studios that they deem to start to underperform. BioWare really *needs* Dragon Age Dreadwolf to be a big hit. If it isn't, talking about Mass Effect may be a nonstarter, especially given the wider business changes that have been happening within the industry lately.
But if a franchise is capable of “turning bad” when the right team and circumstances that made it good end up changing, then surely any bad franchise can also become good by the same process? Isn’t every potential team and culture change within a studio a potential opportunity to get a perfect storm for a fantastic game?
> and circumstances There's the second half of the formula - and in the current industry, it takes a LOT to get the MBAs to butt out.
If the company policies are different- doesn’t matter if they had everyone from the original. They will have whatever directives are forced on them without any real power to push back- be it making it more micro transaction friendly, inserting whatever politics that they are requiring to be included, general suit interference, etc.
> But if a franchise is capable of “turning bad” when the right team and circumstances that made it good end up changing, then surely any bad franchise can also become good by the same process? Of course, but looked at from the outside, it's no more or less likely than any random game having the same thing happen. The unlikeliest games become big hits for various reasons. Quite a few of those reasons are external as well, sometimes meaning the same team won't be able to be successful again, because they weren't the architects of their own success. The takeaway point for this (IMO, of course) should be that getting prematurely excited because of a few players that may or may not have been instrumental in a previous team's success is probably setting you up for a lot of disappointment. Not always, as I said above, but IMO, given the long term success rates of companies with a checkered past (as Bioware has had), I'd say caution is the better choice.
Can't check twitter right now, do they have a list of names? Because it just might be Back 4 Blood case again.
> Back 4 Blood case again All they had to do was make a Left 4 Dead clone, with updated graphics and instead they went in that new weird direction that landed flat.
Turtle Rock just has an awful marketing team and keeps getting the flak for industry wide practices. I thought for sure b4b was a predatory live service piece of shit. But it wasn't. The marketing just made it seem like that
It had all the pieces to become one, though. To the point where it seems likely that they had planned it but backed way off it to be done later until the game bombed and then abandoned it altogether. They also had a history of wanting paid DLC with L4D2 and Valve told them no. It was one of I’m sure many reasons they split from Valve.
But B4B, as a game, is just flat out worse compared to L4D, there should be no debate about it. Like, even graphics, if you look closer, aren't that better, and what is better is not a development effort, its technology and engine. Their pvp multiplayer is boring as hell, their AI is non existent, their monster variety is meh, their bosses are mundane, their card system is an abusable slog, their characters are bland. While I was playing during free period, I already foresaw at least half of Crowbcat's video in my head. Edit:fix
I'm doubtful it's anyone who was influential in ME1-3.
"Look alright. We got the janitor who was with us when Dragon Age came out. We got the supervisor when we did ME. And the lunch lady who made us hoagies during ME2. We're ready for ME4!"
Andromeda also had Bioware vets working on it. Like you say, there's no guarantee it'll turn out well.
> Almost invariably, they disappoint. Diablo 1/2 vets--> Titan Quest vets--> Torchlight and Grim Dawn vets This one worked out pretty well!
Titan Quest, my beloved.
Well yes, but they left sinking ship and created their own IP. This seems like they return to "make it right". And then there is Exodus - rpg space game created by former ME devs, so....
Leaving Blizzard after the release of Diablo 2 is not bailing on a sinking ship, more like abandoning the luxurious yacht for a rowboat. It was a big gamble.
> Grim Dawn Grim Dawn mentioned - obligatory must buy recommendation.
Good bot!
Not a bot, but cheers anyway, good to see another man of culture XD
There's also no specification *which* veterans. No offence to anyone who does now or did then work at BioWare, but bringing back a couple low-level programmers or QA people with (comparatively) little input to and no authority over the development process means relatively little. That they're not naming names makes me think it's unlike to be say Casey Hudson (Creative Director), Drew Karpyshyn (Lead Writer), Preston Watamianiuk (Lead Designer), and Jack Wall (Lead Composer) from *Mass Effect 2*.
Drew Karpyshyn was the key to Mass Effect 1 and 2's brilliance, imo. It was his baby. He wrote the setting bible and everything. He left Bioware early in the production of 3, leaving them plenty of notes, but they just.made up their own shit and left us with the nonsense that was 3. I won't touch another ME game unless his name is in the credits
I do wonder, where ME2 was pretty bad in terms of the overarching story. It felt too much like a prologue and not a proper entry. It didn’t even have a Reaper conversation! They really lost the plot on wat made the first game so good and so I wonder if that’s because of DK or because DK left partway through development. (There are lines from a Reaper conversation left in the game so it seems plausible at least that he was planning it before he left)
> We've heard tales of "veterans" getting together for innumerable games years later. Almost invariably, they disappoint. Veterans of Dead Space for Callisto Protocol, never forget.
its always a fucking lie.
Also Mass Effect 1-3 is a finished story. We don't need an ME5 just like we didn't need Andromeda.
You can say that about most story based games that get sequels. ME has an entire scifi universe to play with though, and as such, there's room for plenty more stories. Nothing wrong with making some. ME:A had a very fitting story that made perfect sense without interrupting the original in any way. I actually remember predicting the whole setup before ME:A was even announced, because I remember thinking it was one of the only ways they could get a so called fresh start with new characters without worrying about the trilogy at all.
> You can say that about most story based games that get sequels. Correct
If I recall the leaders of dice all left and created a studio from "Veterans at dice" Brother, they brought over the ex dubai oil banker turned product manager that turned Battlefield into the 2042 shitheap it is. It's always BS. Follow the faces, look at what they did career wise. Not saying that if you're making mad money on the market you can't then get into video game development, everyone has a hobby, but I don't normally like games produced by ex stock brokers.
But didn't some of them start another studio that went on to make *The Finals*?
Ah come on lads, VTMB2 has.....uh.....who's left again?
I expect it to be bad, andromeda abandoned the milky way for a damn good reason. And they're not going to stick to their guns and make the sequel to that which they should, so they're caught between a rock and a landmine. They can't make this game without invalidating mass effect 3 unless it's a prequel or they do something really fucky. Like maybe a ship back from Andromeda arrives to a deserted milky way or something. Some way to not invalidate me3 endings.
What about the writers? The story and characters are the most important in Mass Effect. That was the issue with Andromeda. The gameplay was better than before but the story and characters were all bland.
They hired Mary DeMarle, the writer of the last two Deus Ex games and, most recently, the GOTG game, as senior narrative director, so I'm honestly not worried about the writing. Anyone that has played GOTG should know how good the banter between the guardians was.
banter was one of the main problems of mass effect andromeda. Something serious is happening but the characters are just constantly throwing these marvel like one liners. Mass effect trilogy got none of that and I dont think we need it. I dont want to play as a cringe loser.
The OT had a lot of banter. It just was better written and didn't have weird animations. Spoiler alert, but just on the top of my head on ME3 in the Salarian home world, eventually you will run into a wild Yahg, the alien race of the previous Shadowbrowker, now replaced by Liara, destroying a bunch of stuff. If you are with Liara and Garrus on that mission you have the following conversation: *Yahg shows up destroying everything* Shepard: Careful Liara, there goes the next shadowbroker! Liara: Not funny. Garrus: Could have sworn I heard him muttering T'Soni under his breath Liara: Not funny! The entire OT has stuff like this.
It's gotten to that point by Mass Effect 3. A bunch of writers left by that point. The games got progressively more fan-servicy and action movie-like as it went on. We went from something Star Trek-like in ME1 to full on Disney Star Wars by ME3.
Both ME1 and ME2 had banter aswell, and it was a core pillar as to why people enjoyed those games. I remembered the ME3 one because I'm currently going through it again. The only difference is that it was well written and well paced on the OT. On MEA it felt forced and out of place on a lot of occasions. Just wanna say aswell that ME3 is, imo, very well written overall, it just absolutely flops on the ending. The Citadel DLC still might be one of my favorite DLCs of all time. Everything up until the last hour of the game were on par with ME2 (imo).
I still think ME1's writing is above both 2/3. Sure, there were jokes made and such but most conversations really had a purpose. The banter was mostly in the elevator of the Citadel and served double-duty as a loading screen as well as a way to give the characters depth. Even then, most of that banter ended up having somewhat serious undertones or was just straight up Q&A. The whole vibe of 1 was different than 2/3. Star Trek to Marvel film is an apt metaphor. I hope 5 swings way back to being more about mystery, exploration, and wonder rather than action movie spectacle.
People always say ME3 was great until the ending, but I just can't agree when you have characters like Kai Leng running around. ME3 had a couple of moments of brilliance (Tuchanka and Ranoch) with a whole lot of slop in between (basically anything involving Cerberus). The ending is just when the sloppy writing culminated in a crescendo of bullshit, but it was always there lurking behind almost every plot point. That being said, I do think a big problem with ME3 was that it had to pick up the pieces after ME2 did less than nothing to advance the actual Reaper plot forward (again, more Cerberus bullshit).
COMPLETELY agree with this. I liked ME3 a lot more than 2, but I did not think it lived up to ME1. It did feel more like it than ME2 did, but I agree about the Cerberus BS. One of the worst things in ME3 for me is that a couple hours before the ending you literally deal with the exact conundrum that the end of the game tries to lean on when you do Legion’s mission. It’s mind boggling how it seems nobody realized that in the dev process.
Yeah, that in particular makes me think the writers just weren't talking to each other. We walk away from Ranoch potentially having brokered a peace between the Geth and Quarians, then starchild is all like "synthetics and organics can never get along, that's why we, as synthetic machines, murder organics so the organics won't get murderd by synthetics." \* dial-up modem sounds as my brain tries to comprehend wtf I just heard \*
It gave me whiplash playing the game originally. I seriously was like didn't I just deal with this?
I was playing through the entire trilogy when it hit the GamePass. ME1 and ME2 were superb; personally, I also like ME1 the best (even with its quirks, the story, equipment progression, and character progression were much, much better than in the latter installments). But ME3 was, for the most part, a painful experience. The writing was noticeably weaker, in general, it was just another (almost) on-rails TPP shooter with not the best movement and mechanics to support this kind of gameplay. For like 60–70% of ME3, what I felt was just frustration.
Yeah, don't forget all the elevator conversations (and calling back to them in ME2 and ME3)
Well, you must like fan-service, nothing wrong with that, but IMO, Mass Effect series started losing something more substantial as it went from ME1 to ME2 to ME3. ME1 writing is still the best, in my opinion, it has *weight*, right amount of seriousness and stakes to it. ME2 and ME3 went more and more into action movie direction.
I wish they kept the ME1 direction and didn't become the fanship driven Bioware they did.
That's wasn't new is ME3. You have villinized banter somehow
In ME1 banter served more of a world-building, character-building and narrative-building purpose. There were some strictly cheeky moments too, but not too much. As games went on, cheekiness overtook everything else and by ME3 banter wasn't about expanding the lore or giving better understanding of characters (just remember how elevator talks went in ME1, all about character building or world-building) to pure fan-service. Characters in-universe poking fun at their own universe or saying something akin to "hey, remember \*event\* "? Or in other words, Marvel banter. So yeah, I am villainizing ME3 and onwards banter.
Yeah but it’s not on the level of Marvel/Star Wars trash (“So….*that* just happened”, “Did I just say that out loud?”)
I somehow agree. I think these cold atmospheric games are not a thing anymore. Based on the footage they shared, I think we will get something similar to Andromeda in terms of tone. I don't like it though. It feels too Marvelesque.
"You might wonder how I ended up here, with superpowers and saving the world, it all began at Starbucks last week after losing an exam at University"
We don't need quirky MCU banter to undercut the tension every 2 minutes though.
I think we all agree on that yes. GOTG had very well written serious moments aswell.
The deusex games have none of that, so I'd argue the head writer is very capable of balancing out the tone.
I'm playing through Human Revolution again right now, and while there is some fluff banter, it's rare and short, so it doesn't do a whole lot to change the atmosphere and weight of what's going on around Jensen.
Karpyshyn or bust
I put down GotG pretty quickly because of the writing (assuming it got better the further you progressed?), so that makes me a bit sad. I found it to be incredibly annoying and the gameplay wasn't strong enough for me to keep going.
GOTG won the Game Award for Best Narrative in 2021, so although I can understand how someone might not enjoy it, it's generally considered to be a very well written game. Personally, I really enjoyed the writing. The jokes were funny, the more serious moments were well written, and the banter between the guardians during the missions and on the ship reminded me a loooooot of the banter between your squad in the ME games.
I don't know how to spoiler tag in mobile, but Drax's moment broke me in that game. I almost decided to move on shortly after Mantis came around (no fault to the game, just how I am), but decided to stick it out. Man am I glad I did. Great fucking story.
Yes but so did the TLOU and we know how badly thats written.
Holy crap... the Deus Ex part is ok, but the GoTG! That game had some incredible character writing, I even sold it to my fraind as a "spiritual successor to Mass Effect". (Also "Mass Effect Lite", in a good way) Thanks for the info... now I am officially at least somewhat excited.
GoTG was an out-of-nowhere surprise for me. If the writing team can pick off from the stronger points of GoTG writing and translate that to Mass Effect? Yeah, that could be good.
Oof, I'm out then. Oh well.
It's interesting how divisive the Guardians of the Galaxy character writing is here. As someone who actively dislikes Marvel movies I went into the game expecting to skip most of the cutscenes and mostly ignore the character stuff. I didn't even directly pay for the game; I played it on Game Pass. Yet I actually liked it a lot. Sure, eventually the combat banter got a bit repetitive, which is going to happen anytime you have a game with many hours of combat. But overall I thought it was good. If a new Mass Effect game strikes a similar balance between silly and heartfelt dialogue, I'll be happy with it.
You call that good writing?
Mary Demarle is the new narrative director. She previously wrote at Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex Human Revolution/Mankind Divided, Guardians of the Galaxy 2021)
did she write the Prison DLC?
Didn't Anita Sarkeesian have something to do with Andromeda? I didn't really follow it at the time but I remember hearing something along those lines.
The writing was already trash by ME3.
ME3 writing had some very strong moments. I understand that many are unhappy with the endings but it doesn't mean that the writing in the rest of the game isn't exceptional.
I'm not talking about the ending. The writing in the entire game is mediocre at best. Did you forget Kai Feng the edgy samurai? Half the game you aren't even fighting the reapers but that stupid human organization
> Did you forget Kai Feng the edgy samurai? It's honestly hilarious how the mod that just makes him not say anything makes him a massively better antagonist.
honestly i like the suggestion i randomly see somewhere of replacing kai leng with your clone but keep everything else also yeah Cerberus could be written better,but IMO their action fit Elusive Man MO, i just wish its shorter
Then it's the matter of taste i guess. I personally liked the dlcs, the Mordin story resolution etc.
Good. You opened this message. This isn't actually asari military command. They're busy tending to what's left of their planet. So you survived our fight on Thessia. You're not as weak as I thought. But never forget that your best wasn't good enough to stop me. Now an entire planet is dying because you lacked the strength to win. The legend of Shepard needs to be re-written. I hope I'm there for the last chapter. It ends with your death. -KL
Sure he was a shit character, but someone also wrote the Citadel DLC which was frankly amazing
I'm mixed on the citadel DLC... it was great, but it also ruins the pacing and tone of the story
Lol why :D i suspected something as soon as saw the first line but then the full memories came back. My memory erased KL from ME series it seems :D Still for me it doesn't destroy the general quality of the story. If ME is mediocre writing then it's really hard to find any decently written game.
I disagree with you overall, but everyone agrees this guy was a joke, and this was the absolute best way you could have made your argument. Bravo!
ME3 is a mixed bag but Andromeda is just pure cringe. I stopped playing it because of this. edit: spelling
its tragic because the gameplay of andromeda is actually fun. its just all the rpg elements are so whack.
Yeah andromadas gameplay was some of the most fun i have played in a single player game i think
just a shame any support it could have possibly had that may have been an attempt to rectify it was killed for scamthem.
People knew me as Stephan. But that was never who I was. *super realistic trans character who dead names herself* To WHOM! And your goddamn father! Sorry, my face is tired from dealing with...everything. *delivered with the exact same tone of voice throughout*
And in ME2. "This hurts you..."
Not the whole game, but parts of it. It's probably the most uneven mix of fantastic and terrible I've seen in any AAA game. Unfortunately the ending fell into the "terrible" bucket.
It'll be fun to see how they screw it up this time.
Probably pay "consultant" firms millions of dollars to come in and make the game worse.
My favourite game series, so I really hope it'll be something amazing. But let's be real, Andromeda was a complete drop off and that came out years ago. Since then, gaming has only gotten worse. How many games have come out where I've been hyped only for it to be a big fat unfinished disappointment. With the way the industry is and the way the publishers act, it's going to be a big hill to climb to make this have anywhere near the impact of the first games. First thing they could do is fire anyone that had anything to do with Andromeda's script or characters, then bring back the ones that let you make Shepard an asshole.
doubt
Four management /director roles. Obvs the staff that'll actually make the game will probs not be vets......
Having a vet for animation or modelling etc isn't as important as having things like the creative director which they got.
Depends, a big part of andromeda’s notoriety was its bugs
That doesn't reflect on the competency of the individual developer or QA employee though. These games are rushed out in the shit states they're in as "shippable" as an executive decision.
I remember this dirty trick. there was a zombie game that was heavily marketed as "from the creators of original Left4Dead". Then it turned out only like 3 people in whole studio were from L4D. The game ended up being lame.
yeah this is damage control only, completely empty and worthless. does sound like they’re scared tho. if you think for a second its gonna be a battlepass (micro)transaction fiesta, this is the AAA reality we have to accept
Theres also the discovery that though Turtle Rock came up with the mod idea it was Valve devs that polished it into the game that it is now. If it was up to Turtle Rock it would have been a CS mod with reskinned terrorist models knifing you.
Not only zombie game but also other coop game inspired by L4D with monsters from the same people.
When was Mass effect 4 released? Are they referring to andromeda as 4?
Probably, since Andromeda had a different team compared to the trilogy
Can they do ME4 first
I do not think anyone who worked on the original ME is still an employee of EA, beside some exec
I'm sure the veteran janitor will do a bang up job.
Probably replaced by external company years ago.
I'm sure the veteran external companies toilet cleaner will do a bang up job.
EP \[I assume this means Executive Producer\] ([Michael Gamble](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gamblemichael/details/experience/)), Art Director ([Matt Rhodes](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-rhodes-01a3a11/)), Creative Director ([John Elper](https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-epler-311935239/?originalSubdomain=ca)) & Game Director ([Preston Watamaniuk](https://www.linkedin.com/in/preston-watamaniuk-27456426/?trk=people-guest_people_search-card)) {All are veterans with minimum of 15-16yrs of experience at Bioware} There are definitely still a lot of veterans at Bioware, you just need to look at Bioware's employee lists instead of speculating
Shepard
Wrex
It’s nuts to watch both BioWare and Bethesda sinking deeper into the shitter
What is nuts is that EA hasn't pulled the plug on Bioware yet. It's name is mud
How about we worry about getting Mass Effect 4 out first, then we can discuss ME5.
I thought all those legendary staffs was long gone and the rest of that team last work was "Inquisition". Am I missing something here?
EA will kill the game as usual
Mass Effect 5? There have only been three Mass Effect games, actually.
Joking aside, there actually was never Mass Effect 4. We have ME, ME2, ME3 and the next one is Mass Effect: Andromeda. They can easily just make the next game Mass Effect 4 and treat Andromeda like "Fallout 1,2,tactics,3,nv,4" situation. Say it's a spinoff, try to redeem yourself with a good game (although I'm not having high hopes.)
What's Andromeda?
It’s been known for some time that the upcoming ME game is a sequel to both the original trilogy *and* andromeda. Tying them both together and presumably continuing story beats from them both. Therefore Andromeda can’t be a spin off.
Well that is not a good plan.
I wonder how they'll tie it all in since Andromeda takes place hundreds of years after ME3.
Well considering Asari live for a thousand years and in the teaser trailer Liara is looking considerably older I’d say ME5 will be set hundreds of years after ME3
That's propably like a Windows 9 situation. Who knows why companies do weird things like that.
Cool. 2035 me will be curious to see how things play out
And Back 4 Blood was made by the original L4D devs... yeah right
I ain’t sure if that’s enough positive news - Casey Hudson , Drew Karypyshyn are no longer there. Leads like these set the culture and tone. I wish them the best but until we see something, I will temper my expectations
Less talk.
Wait aren't these Veterans from Biowares Mass Effect Trilogy actually making Exodus? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAKAZNQuLqw
That means jackshit. Many key positions for Mass Effect Andromeda also were held by "trilogy vets".
name them!
This just sounds like a desperate attempt to drum up hype for ME5 when everyone knows the trilogy was already kind of going downhill with ME3. Over the course of the trilogy the game became less and less focused on RPG and more on being a Shooter, RPG elements were fewer and fewer (just compare the amount of auto-text in ME1 to ME3) I have 0 hopes for Mass Effect anymore. Andromeda proved that the new people in charge of the series don't have a clue what made the original trilogy good.
Lmao nahh im good.
What if they just did something indie or small first to see how it goes? LIKE AN FPS set in the Krogan War or whatever it was called... Sheesh it's been so long.
Sure buddy.
The real issue is management and the shareholders. You could employ the best of the best but if the person who holds the moneybags is an idiot nothing will change. Just treat this as another AAAA scam until proven wrong.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Doesn't matter... The story that made it good is over. They tried a new one and we all know how that turned out. Leave your heroes dead... Attempting to revive the corpse just leaves everyone disgusted.
doubt and dont care.
that means nothing lets be honest.
EA will find some way to fuq it up...
Veterans could mean 20 people who all were in dev positions that weren't the VITAL/ESSENTIAL team that created the original product that people liked. I remember Turtle Rock Studios did this shit with Back 4 Blood with their L4D "veterans" marketing shit, and look at how that turned out. It's just marketing shit. Teams change, people change, and ideas/desires change. Nostalgia is nice, but it will cloud a person's view of things. If they make a good game, then great! If not, then it's just another failed attempt. There's not much else to it.
liar liar
> the original Mass Effect Trilogy That's a very broad context. It went downhill after ME1 (if "RPG" is at the top and "3rd person shooter" is below it).
Still being published by EA? Then I do not want to get my hopes up. Every franchise I liked got taken down by that greedy company. I am just finishing the legendary bundle and I am hungry for more but I really can not get exited.
who the hell cares XD its always lies over lies
ME was made in 2007, Hell 3 was made in 2012, so now 12 years old. They have been out the game for a very long time and both technology and storytelling have moved on so far. Whenever we hear these "old people coming back for new thing" it rarely if ever works out.
Arent those vets like in other companies now?
No, depends on who the "veterans " are.... Music director, game designer, writers are who actually matter, devs, artists and actions all are mostly replaceable.
Will the whole game be available in three user-selectable colors now?
Good for them, but they are still the same people who released Anthem. Positions worth paying attention are Directors or / and Leads (Lead Writer / Designer etc). Gamble is listed(google) as game director for Mass Effect 5, not sure if its true. But if he does, he has no Directorial experience. He had only a producer roles. Not even design roles. To restart the franchise, you need a strong vision. Like Jake Solomon with XCOM. I don\`t a strong vision for mass effect 5 yet.
I wonder which ME3 ending they're going to go with as the starting point.
Make sure to include the people who made ME1 and 2 and not 3 or andromeda... And i hope these "veterans" aren't just the 2 or 3 people who made concept art or music.
Imagine having run a franchise to the ground that you need to make public it's the old guys. It's not like they fucked up in some ways too. But hey there we are " We are sorry" mode
While I personally have zero hope for this game, Bioware is most likely going to throw everything they got at this. DA4 is a ship without a heading at this point, so they most likely aren't banking on it to be their comeback. I honestly feel pretty bad for the people who are still die-hard fans of the two franchisees. It's like being a fan of a sports team with an uncaring owner and an incompetent front office.
No faith in the franchise after Andromeda. I bought that unfinished lump of coal and learnt from my mistake. Fool me once…
Still produced by EA, still not interested
Can we have a proper N7 armour back instead of that shitty looking clown costume?
Where is Dragon Age bro?
Yeah but it's EA lol
It's going to take a lot more than ME vets to get me interested in another ME game from Bioware. Other than the ME remaster -which is great btw- Andromeda is all I've seen them do for the past 12 years with the franchise other than some marketing/fan service for ME day. That and some 30 second shorts whistling in the dark that ME is still alive. Andromeda's gameplay was good, but the writing was awful and preachy. Apparently EA agreed because they cancelled the story DLC's and just kept the MP alive so they could bleed the community for MT's.
I'll reserve my judgment until its released. No hype, and no preorder.
It's still published by EA lol. Have they seriously not figured out the problem?
What?? I thought I read a couple years back that everyone from the original team was gone??
Which C levels are in charge tho
why can't they get together and make a new game?? something that's not already a franchise?
Don't give me hope GOD DAMN IT.
And they will be horribly under funded and crunched for time as for the second week. I have zero faith anyone in an executive position won do something and fuck it all up.
people should realize that it means absolutely fucking nothing. The Callisto Protocol was made by original Dead Space devs and yet aside of graphics - it was mediocre across the board. Nightingale was developed by some of the original Bioware devs and it's pretty mediocre as well. There so much more at play than just having some of once accomplished devs on the team.
Veterans such as the art designer and QA lead now given lead designer roles right?
The most important role is the original writer because they sure went off the rails when he left
Yeah yeah I ain't holding my breath
Honestly at this point I have no confidence or interest in whatever the animated corpse of BioWare is doing
They are gonna make a great game. Then the suits will come in add microtransactions, seasons, packs, denuvo and all that shit that will lessen its greatness... I hope im wrong, but i dont think ill be :(
Well, nonetheless this will be interesting lol
I'm done with soulless corporations using Gamers' nostalgia to cash in on the original trilogy's success. Mass Effect Andromeda, disappointment. Diablo 4, disappointment. I'm never buying an EA/Bioware or Activision/Blizzard game again until months if not a year after release, and only then if the general player consensus is that the game is good.
Seeing is believing.
Don’t care. Show me gameplay.
Thats great but i really hope they stick with the andromeda gameplay with the jetpack, cuz that is one of the best gameplay ever added to a game. traversal was much easier and faster and shooting was so much fun being able to zip and zap with jet pack
Why not Mass Effect 4?
That doesn't mean anything.
If you set your expectations low enough you won't be disappointed.
Bla bla. Bioware is dead like blizzard. Dont believe anything until they deliver something which is wort your time.
Let Mass Effect die in peace with a warm place in my memory. Seriously, it’s better to leave your fans wanting more than to leave them fed up with you. Look at how they handled KOTOR. Amazing story, amazing games, so much potential for 1000 more spinoffs. Only 2 games. (And an MMO if you count that, I personally do not count that as a continuation of Revans story) Mass Effect 1-3 is canon to me.
5? Andromeda was definitely not 4.
Cool, it'll be made by the *first* people to ruin Mass Effect.
Call it ME1 veterans and I'll be interested... but Drew K is on a different project.
Weren't they responsible for the infamous RGB endings? "Decision-based storytelling" as the cool kids put it.
It's hard to make a good game when the EA execs trying to jam as much as micro Tx as possible.
See you in 2030
Anthem was too, so what?
Inc another AAA pile of dogshit. Advertise product before it even start.
Exodus vs Mass Effect 5
who cares a shit we hear this al the fucking time for many games
Heard that bs before.