Mass Effect Andromeda

[BreakABone]

Release Date: March 21st, 2017 (US) / March 23rd (EU)

On behalf of our teams across Montreal, Edmonton and Austin, I’m excited to announce that Mass EffectTM: Andromeda will be launching in North America on Tuesday, March 21, 2017 and beginning Thursday, March 23, 2017 in Europe. We appreciate your patience (and in fact, even your lack of patience in some instances) as we’ve been focused on completing the game. Here’s a little bit of context into how we’ve gotten here.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is our most ambitious Mass Effect game to date. We’re telling completely new stories, creating new characters, new planets, new species, and introducing new gameplay systems. And for the first time, we’re bringing Mass Effect to the FrostbiteTM game engine, an incredible engine that’s delivering a tremendous graphical jump from the trilogy to Mass Effect: Andromeda. To deliver on this, we’re taking all the time we can to make sure you’re getting the best possible experience.

Over this holiday break, developers at BioWare took home a version of the game in what we call the “holiday build”. This is a longstanding studio tradition that goes back to the early days of the original Mass Effect. Many load up a PC or console and go home to play as much as possible at their leisure. Coming back from holiday, the feedback has been great. Getting the endorsement from members of our studio, many of whom played key roles on the original trilogy, was definitely a key factor in helping us lock in on the date.

Even more exciting for us over the last couple of months has been seeing the excitement build in the community as we’ve started to share more about the game. The passion you have for the franchise continues to drive us. And now, we’re just a couple of months away from delivering a brand new Mass Effect experience to you for the first time in five years – richer, deeper and ready for exploration. We’re excited about how far we are going with the franchise, and we hope you find it’s been worth the wait.

See you in Andromeda,

Aaryn

[Ginkasa]

I'm interested, but I can't say I'm particularly excited. I probably would have been fine it ME3 had been it for the franchise, so I'm a little wary at how this one will go. I'll definitely give it a shot, though.

[Vampyr]

I currently have very little faith in Bioware.

The ME3 ending was awful. I honestly wasn't a huge fan of the changes they made in ME2. I felt like the exploration and RPG-ness of it took a hit for being more of an action game.

Dragon Age Inquisition was also a let down. It kind of felt like a single player MMO.

My biggest problem with their games though is that they don't seem to be able to deliver on big story promises. Any time you write or tell a story, and you allude to, foreshadow, or straight up describe something, you are essentially making a promise to the reader or receiver of the story.

It's the principle of Checkhov's Gun. If you mention in the first chapter that there is a gun on the mantle, then in the second or third chapter it needs to be fired.

The Bioware RPG's are constantly in the process of setting things up and never, ever delivering on them. There are so many open ended and abandoned plot threads across Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and I don't think any of them are ever going to be resolved. They're very good at setting something up, expanding on it in a DLC, and then never mentioning it again.

[Ginkasa]

I disagree a little with Mass Effect. While I'm not the biggest fan of the way the story was wrapped up, I do think it did actually wrap up that trilogy's story. Maybe the answers to our questions weren't what we were hoping for, but at least we did get those answers.

I definitely agree with Dragon Age, though. The second and third games just seem like set up for the next game down the line.