Key Takeaways
- Seven years on, BioWare creative director John Epler reflects on Mass Effect: Andromeda’s failure.
- While feeling that the game was better than it was given credit for, he admits that the negative reviews were not “unfair”.
- The game performed so poorly that the planned DLC was cancelled.
BioWare has, at long last, got something to celebrate. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out now, finally ending the series’ ten-year hiatus, and has been met with largely positive reviews. This comes after back-to-back misses with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, which called the studio’s future into question.
Now, in an interview with Rolling Stone, The Veilguard’s creative director is reflecting on the past decade at BioWare. Having been with the studio since the mid-2000s, John Epler was there for BioWare’s peak, as well as its darkest days in the 2010s.
Dragon Age Director Reflects On Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Failure
“I do think Andromeda was a better game than its reception suggested, but on the flip side, I don’t think the reception was unfair,” says Epler. “At the time of launch, there were technical issues and things that didn’t work.”
Those technical issues dominated the conversation when Andromeda launched in 2017, as it quickly became clear that the game needed more time in the oven. The animations were targetted in particular, as conversations with NPCs often proved awkward, even if this was never something that BioWare games excelled at before.
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However, the new protagonist and companions also failed to gain the following that Shepard and the Normandy crew did with the original Mass Effect trilogy. It was a tough act to follow, even after the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, but even so, it seems that few were overly upset when all of Andromeda’s DLC was cancelled.
It’s unclear what Mass Effect 5 will cover now, given that Shepard’s story is, seemingly, over. We probably shouldn’t expect to play as Andromeda’s protagonist, Ryder, though, as it seems that this is part of BioWare’s history that it would rather move on from.
In any case, it was recently reconfirmed that BioWare will not do any DLC for The Veilguard. This is so it can go all-in on Mass Effect 5, so hopefully, we’ll get some news soon – even if this year’s N7 Day is going to be a little lighter.
The fourth title in the long-running series of action RPGs from BioWare, Mass Effect: Andromeda was initially launched in 2017. As Ryder, you must lead a ship full of settlers to a new world, while dealing with threats along the way.