Anthem: Bioware's next Mass Effect-like IP

[Edge-]

Fallen Order didn't take 5 years to make. EA just served several pkates of shit with Star Wars stamp on it before they finally let a studio with the least EA Overlord oversight to do something decent with the license.

Least EA oversight?...did you like, not read the Kotaku article about Anthem and how EA basically only stepped in shortly before the first E3 demo to tell them, "This game sucks as-is and you need to add in flying and make it prettier" which...are the only two aspects of the game that are consistently praised?

And several plates as in...2? Battlefront and Battlefront 2?

Come on, dude.

[Lahis]

Least EA oversight?...did you like, not read the Kotaku article about Anthem and how EA basically only stepped in shortly before the first E3 demo to tell them, "This game sucks as-is and you need to add in flying and make it prettier" which...are the only two aspects of the game that are consistently praised?

And several plates as in...2? Battlefront and Battlefront 2?

Come on, dude.

EA is still forcing Bioware to use Frostbite which clearly doesn't work for them at all. Respawn somehow has the freedom to choose their engine.

[Dhrizzle]

EA is still forcing Bioware to use Frostbite which clearly doesn't work for them at all. Respawn somehow has the freedom to choose their engine.

BioWare were allowed to use an engine of their choice, they chose Frostbite because it's good for the budget to use an engine owned by their publisher. The bigger mistake was ignoring the work done on previous games and starting again from scratch.

[Katchii]

EA is still forcing Bioware to use Frostbite which clearly doesn't work for them at all. Respawn somehow has the freedom to choose their engine.

EA didn't force that choice on them though.

As Edge has said, Anthem's issues are entirely of BioWare's own making, EA had very little if anything to do with it's failures and are the ones directly responsible for two of the parts that are consistently praised.

EA has a shitty reputation for a good reason, but they're not directly responsible for every failure seen in every game that has their logo on it...the developers of those games carry the vast majority of the blame, and in this case that's BioWare.

[Edge-]

EA is still forcing Bioware to use Frostbite which clearly doesn't work for them at all. Respawn somehow has the freedom to choose their engine.

They. Did. Not. That was a BW decision and they could have used other engines. They chose to use it for DA:I. They chose to throw away that work and start from scratch again when they chose to use it for ME:A, and then chose to use it again and throw away all the work from DA:I and ME:A and start from scratch again.

All their studios have the freedom to choose their own engine. They're all encouraged to use Frostbite, which works for everything from open world Need for Speed racing games to shooters (which it's designed for) to sports titles, but it has never been a requirement. If the team felt it was too difficult to work with and unsuited for their needs, they could have easily gone and licensed UE4 or another capable engine that they may have more experience with.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthemTheGa...the_frostbite/

[Makabreska]

BioWare were allowed to use an engine of their choice, they chose Frostbite because it's good for the budget to use an engine owned by their publisher. The bigger mistake was ignoring the work done on previous games and starting again from scratch.

They willingly chose that engine after Andromeda shit show? Wtf?

[schwank05]

All the game needs to be great is more content, better loot and it will be fantastic. The game looks amazing, and the Gameplay is some of the best I have ever played. If they fix the bugs, create an actual hub that you can run in, and either make maps randomly generated or just flat out have more of them and make the loot system better.

[Edge-]

They willingly chose that engine after Andromeda shit show? Wtf?

Andromeda's problems weren't with the engine, it was with them simply not having enough staff or time to actually polish anything.

[Makabreska]

Andromeda's problems weren't with the engine, it was with them simply not having enough staff or time to actually polish anything.

It was, at least partially. Forstbite was notorious for having problems with facial animations, something prevalent in Andromade. I mean, since at least Andromeda release it was all in the news how problematic Frostbite is to work with.

[qwerty123456]

Yeah... What the fuck?

It sounds like they're going to start work on Anthem 2.0 now. Like, now.

What the fuck have they been doing for 12 months?

Probably seeing how much they were making off microtransactions and if it would be worth it to do a 2.0.

[Rendark]

the fact that they're not abandoning it but sticking with it is praiseworthy.

No it is not praiseworthy.

[Edge-]

It was, at least partially. Forstbite was notorious for having problems with facial animations, something prevalent in Andromade. I mean, it was all in the news how problematic Frostbite is to work with.

...what? Sauce for this?

Because the facial animations in the Battlefield/front games are fucking amazing, but they also do full mocap for much of that.

The issues with Andromeda were simply that they had an algorithm go and make a first pass and were supposed to have animators touch them all up afterwards but...they never did. They lacked both animators and experienced animators so it never happened.

You can even see in Anthem plenty of the facial animations are pretty solid when they've actually been touched up. It's not an engine problem, it's a development resource problem.

[rhorle]

Has anything been announced if it will be a "new" purchase or included for existing owners? Since I never did buy it even though I was interested it is something I'd pick up now for around $20 before the likely increase the price. (Physical is sold for $20 for PC while digital is still $60)

[Makabreska]

...what? Sauce for this?

Because the facial animations in the Battlefield/front games are fucking amazing, but they also do full mocap for much of that.

The issues with Andromeda were simply that they had an algorithm go and make a first pass and were supposed to have animators touch them all up afterwards but...they never did. They lacked both animators and experienced animators so it never happened.

You can even see in Anthem plenty of the facial animations are pretty solid when they've actually been touched up. It's not an engine problem, it's a development resource problem.

K, maybe was wrong about facials, but this article shows plenty of issues with Frostbite:
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/ea-...ware-ea-sports

"Seemingly, the major issue with Frostbite is that it was an engine built for a specific purpose: first-person shooting and multiplayer. The problem is manyEA games obviously aren't first-person shooters: BioWare builds RPGs, Ghost Games makes racing games, and Madden and FIFA are sports sims.

For Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare had to create a dialogue system within Frostbite and make an animation system for dogs and horses, but Frostbite could only animate bipedal creatures. For Need for Speed Rivals, Ghost Games had to rework Frostbite's streaming system to accommodate the speed at which its cars could move.

Frostbite was missing features, but Inquisition was wrapping up when Andromeda went into pre-production, so the latter title was getting some of the features it needed. The problem was the outline for Mass Effect: Andromeda was actually a much bigger project than even Inquisition. Andromeda's maps were supposed to represent entire planets, so they needed to be bigger than even Inquisition's vast spaces, and Frostbite wasn't equipped to handle that.

"Whenever you're trying to do something that fits the engine-vehicles, for example-Frostbite handles that extremely well. But when you're building something that the engine is not made for, this is where it becomes difficult," one developer told Kotaku.

"It's been painful," said another. "The pain started with Dragon Age: Inquisition and continued on with Andromeda as well.

The same problems that plagued Andromeda resurfaced here. BioWare didn't quite know what Anthem was during development, and while some of the systems could be ported over from their previous games, Anthem was firmly a multiplayer online experience. There's not much connection between the types of games Anthem, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Mass Effect: Andromeda are. So again, BioWare had to craft new features within Frostbite and again, it wasn't a pleasant task.

"It's hard enough to make a game," one former BioWare employee told Kotaku. "It's really hard to make a game where you have to fight your own tool set all the time."

[zealo]

It was, at least partially. Forstbite was notorious for having problems with facial animations, something prevalent in Andromade. I mean, since at least Andromeda release it was all in the news how problematic Frostbite is to work with.

The engine can handle better than what Andromeda came out as. Bioware themselves did too, with DA:I a few years before it releasing in a way more polished state.

Andromeda was an issue of them not using tech they already had built for RPGs in Frosbite from a previous game in it.

[Gorsameth]

I still attribute a huge part of Andromeda's problems to throwing a studio that previously only did some DLC for Mass Effect to the wolves by having them make a successor to ME:3. (probably because no one else wanted to touch the franchise with a 10 foot pole after that disaster).
I simply don't think they were ready to take on the task.

[Edge-]

I still attribute a huge part of Andromeda's problems to throwing a studio that previously only did some DLC for Mass Effect to the wolves by having them make a successor to ME:3. (probably because no one else wanted to touch the franchise with a 10 foot pole after that disaster).
I simply don't think they were ready to take on the task.

That's not a bad thing at all. Most support studios are packed with talented folks and would kill for the ability to lead development on a title rather than just work behind the scenes.

It had nothing to do with BW Edmonton/Austin "not wanting to touch" the franchise, their resources were tied up on other projects and EA gave BW Montreal a shot at joining the big boys. They had plenty of budget, plenty of time, and plenty of resources. The Kotaku piece delved into this more, and I'll pull a few choice bits - https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-...ive-1795886428

Mass Effect: Andromeda was in development for five years, but by most accounts, BioWare built the bulk of the game in less than 18 months. This is the story of what happened.

Sound familiar? : P

Rather than develop a Mass Effect 4 at the studio’s main headquarters in Edmonton, which had made the first three games, BioWare decided to put its Montreal studio in charge.

BW decision to give it to Montreal, EA supported it. EA didn't force it.

Developers in Edmonton said they thought the game was floundering in pre-production and didn’t have a strong enough vision, while developers in Montreal thought that Edmonton was trying to sabotage them, taking ideas and staff from Montreal for its own projects, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dylan.

Emblematic of bigger internal issues specific to BW.

The animation team in particular was understaffed, sources said, and when people left, their positions sometimes weren’t refilled.

Poor project management.

“We started to realize by summer 2015 that we had great technological prototypes, but we had doubts they would make it into the game,” said another person who worked on the game. The Andromeda team had gotten systems like spaceflight up and running, two people said, but they couldn’t figure out how to make those systems fun to play. “I think production reality hit hard and they had to make some really strong cuts.”

Lots of wasted time on features that never made it into the final game. Which again...is pretty familiar for this thread : P

When two people were in Austin, four were in Montreal, and three were in Edmonton, it could take an extra hour just to get everyone connected during a meeting, as anyone who’s tried to use video-conferencing software can attest.

Poor overall planning from BW by having teams split up between offices and timezones. Also not unique to ME:A, but happened in Anthem.

Most of Mass Effect: Andromeda was made in just a year and a half, by those accounts. “It really wasn’t until Mac Walters came on board—and that was very much a reaction to the state of the critical path—he was really brought on board to give it direction and get it into shape,” said one person who worked on the game. “Before that it was quite rudderless.”

You could replace ME:A with Anthem, and Mac Walters with Andrew Wilson and this would be just as true.

There was, and is, nothing wrong with support studios getting a chance to step up and show off what they're capable of. And by all accounts, just with Anthem, EA was largely hands-off and supportive for the most part. Obviously they'd prioritize their "Frosbite strike team" for a title like FIFA that's their primary moneymaker, but that's a known factor and should be a consideration for development teams during pre-production.

This all came to a head with the closure of Montreal and the revelations of the brutal issues with Anthem. There are bigger issues, but they're internal to BW specifically.

[BeepBoo]

And it's not necessarily "Anthem with dragons", but it sounds like it'll have more online components than DA:I.

This has me worried. I much prefer my solo RPGs to be moddable and cheat-able, so I can do things like itemdupe, etc. I'm rarely interested in actually properly farming materials in games like that to craft cool stuff I want. I just want to have fun experimenting at-will without needing to also sink 10s of hours into acquiring the stuff I need to test said build.

Can't do that when games have online components, unless they're nice like NMS.

[Gorsameth]

No where do I blame EA. I'm saying Bioware shoved the project on a studio that wasn't up to the task based on what came out.

[Edge-]

No where do I blame EA. I'm saying Bioware shoved the project on a studio that wasn't up to the task based on what came out.

Fair enough, I misread the subtext.

But either way, the studio should have been up to the task. And the article I linked speaks to broader issues within BW proper beyond just Montreal shitting the bed, and we've seen them come to a head in a big way with Anthem.