Mark Darrah, an Executive Producer for many of BioWare's esteemed franchises, recently tweeted something interesting about Mass Effect Andromeda.
Now, it is no secret that MEA was perhaps one of the most disappointing games of 2017. I've played it in hopes of the Mass Effect franchise making a small comeback with amazing stories and gameplay, only to find it having been letdown on a lot of aspects in the game. Now that isn't to say MEA is a terrible game, but it had numerous flaws.
When these flaws add up and you look to other games that had been released fairly closely to MEA, then you know there are way better games than the BioWare one. Nier: Automata and Zelda are just some of the games that had proven to be an amazing set of 2017.
So what would've happened if MEA were to be released if other games weren't coming in at the same time? MEA did compete with several polished games and it isn't far-fetched to compare it with them.
However, the game was flawed. It's gameplay was certainly the best part of the game. I loved the customisation options and the combat options using space magic (Biotics) or a wide array of weapons with their own unique capabilities. You could build your character into anything, from a space ninja to space hulk.
Source: Bagogames
That is where all the praise ends. The story was so-so and technical issues left a lot to be desired. With several glitches, bugs and weird animations during cutscenes, it hurt the game's positive parts pretty badly.
Mark did mention another thing in his string of tweets. Dragon Age Inquisition only turned out as good as it did critically because of the lack of strong competition in that year. If Witcher 3, one of the best games of 2015, wasn't delayed, it could've had a negative impact on the DAI's score.
However, the thing is, this was never intended as an excuse for the relative poor performance of the sci-fi game. Still, I understood in a sense, that the game did poor critically in the face of going up against several games. But I think, BioWare and EA could take this as a learning experience and perhaps polish up their games before releasing them too early.
Now that Anthem is coming soon as BioWare's new game. This could be the time for the team to figure out what went wrong with MEA and apply proper solutions so that the game will do well in the market. We all know BioWare is capable of making great games with awesome gameplay and story. All they need to do, is to make sure that the game is not flawed on release.
