Alright, folks, I think it's time we admit the painful truth: the Mass Effect franchise is probably done. We didn't get any DLC for Andromeda and BioWare has pretty much announced that they are shelving the idea indefinitely. So how did this happen? Why was the game so bad? How do you go from ꦐmaking one of the most enthralling and immersive trilogies in gaming to making a laughable meme factory? As always when it comes to making something as complex as a video game, there isn't one single thing we can fault with the failure, it's more of🃏 a perfect storm of unhappy accidents.

Jason Schreier, a reporter working for Kotaku, who paint a pretty colorful picture of what was happening behind the scenes. Unfortunately, they had to remain nameless 𓂃due to them signing nondisclosure agreements about the work process. Many of the people who were interviewed said it was the most unhappy and difficult project they had ever worked on, claiming that it felt needlessly more difficult than any other game they had worked on.

Through these interviews, we have a pretty detailed timeline of how and when things went wrong, from inception to release date. So while it may be salt in the wound to hear about something you hold so dear going so far off the rails, it does serve as a good warning as to what NOT to do on future titles. So what exactly did go wrong with Mass Effect: Andromeda?

36 🔯 ꦬ It Was Made By BioWare Montreal

via: branchez-vous.com

Don't get me wrong, this isn't to say that I think BioWare Montreal was incompetent or anything. I'm simply pointing out the fact that they were founded solely to create the DLC for Mass Effect 3. And hey, that🎃 DLC was actꦰually incredible, making that game way more fun.

But they didn't know how to handle a sprawling narrative.

A self-contained story about you liberating a🦩 city, or fighting off your evil clone before throwing a rager of a party is all well and good, but it isn't an intergalactic soap opera. Which is what fans 🌜wanted.

35 🌃 Story Versus Exploration

via: youtube.com

Right out of the gate, the director of Andromeda, Gérard Lehiany, wanted there to be hundreds of planets to explore. Sounds awesome already. But hundreds of planets woul☂d probably mean that they would need to procedurally generated. This means that a computer algorithm would design the planets randomly, but at a higher volume.

The probl🐓em with this was, if the planet's landscape is created at random, how do you have set events and missions on them? Suddenly the narrative of the game, the core story, was interfering with the scope of the exploration aspect.

34 Too Manܫy♊ Planets

via: masseffect.wikia.com

Above I mentioned that in order to make hundreds of planets, they would need to be created at random by an algorithm. Some members of the team actually got an algorithm working, but the results were less than promising. Sure, the computer 🌺could make them, but it couldn't make them interesting.

The planets in previous games were all made by hand, in a way that explora🥂tion, or🅷 objective seeking, would be fun and interesting. The computer couldn't account for human fun, so the maps were dull, and needed to be touched up by hand.

33 🅷 The Frostbite Pr🐓oblem

via reddit.com

The common engine used in all Mass Effect games is called Frostbite, and is widely regarded as one of the most powerful bunches of video game developing software out there. That being said, it was created for the Battlefield game series, which you will note is a first-person shoot🐈er.

When developers use Frostbite to develop an RPG, they don't necessarily have all the tools they need, especially in regards to dialogue options, team building or inventory. This would be a huge setback for the team working on Andromeda who were already having troubleꦕs at the concept stage.

32 Frostbite Can't Animate ꦡ ꦛ

via: ibtimes.com

Multiple people from multiple teams have discussed their troubles working with Frostbite, including the team working on another BioWare title, Dragon Age: Inquisition. On top of having to build a network of software programs AROUND Frostbite in order to make it work for an RPG, Frostbite is🐎 also♓ terrible at animations.

Everyone who works with it says that it can render things with incredible detail, but the moment it comes to making humans look, you know, human, it falls flat. And in a game as dialogue heavy as Mass Effect that isn't exactly going to fly.

31 ANT Fixe𓆉🉐s Almost Nothing

via: youtube.com

So what is a game developer to do when the engine they have been instructed to use 💫doesn't support making animations? Obviously, they patch in a new program that would be able to handle animations. The solution is so simple, only a loon wouldn't see it.

Enter the animations softꦰware ANT, which was added in♋to the Frostbite bundle to make it more animation friendly. The only problem was that everyone who used it claimed it fixed next to nothing, claiming that it was full of "duct taped issues." So not exactly the huge help they needed.

30 💖 Frostbite Isn't Big En🍌ough

via: game-maps.com

So if your game requires your characters to explore hundreds of whole planets, those are going to be some seriously huge maps. Sure you can probably skip over parts of a planet, you don't need to flesh out every desert or 🥃ocean, but for the most part, you need to create a whole landscape, right?

Turns out, Frost💝bite isꦰn't very good at that either. The package had a map limit of 100 by 100 kilometers, which you'll notice is somewhat big, but barely a moon. So there's another pointless setback.

29 The💛 Company Changes Animation Programs

via: forbes.com

One huge complaint many of the animators who worked on the project had to say afterward was that BioWare made them switch animation programs. They went from using 3D Studio Max to Maya. This wouldn’t have been a problem, Maya is a great product, but BioWare should have told them b𝔉efore they started, not🌜 in the middle of pre-production.

This 🌠accounted for months of progress being wiped out over an arbitrary change in programs, w🌜hich further set them behind schedule.

28 💧 Animators Ignore Some Or📖ders

via: forbes.com

It isn’t rea🍸lly a good sign when employees take it upon themselves to openly defy orders. On the other hand, sometimes you get anꦬ order so stupid that you have to trust that you know best and to just go your own way.

Many animators felt the🎃y knew better than the higher-ups at BioWare and decided to ignore the order to switch animation programs. They simply (and covertly) just went on using 3D Studio Max instead, much of which made it into the final game.

27 The Squabbling Begins 📖

via: eluta.ca

At this point in development, infighting began between the headquarters of BioWare Edmonton and BioW🅺are Montreal. Edmonton, who would be the headquarters for all of BioWare, were disappointed in the progress, and arguably, it did seem like the game was progressing much slower than anticipated.

What really stung is that they were claiming that the folks in Montreal didn’t even have a strong enough concept or idea for the game. They claimed that they we🐬re still trying to think of a game at all, despite 🍰being in the production phase.