Mass Effect Andromeda actor says the game got a ‘bum rap’ from ‘chuds’ and was ‘done dirty by a publisher expecting too much from it’

One of my most universally derided hot takes is that Mass Effect Andromeda was great, actually. A lot of the criticisms levelled against it at the time were valid, and it definitely shouldn’t have launched in the buggy state it did. But Andromeda’s one of those games where you could almost feel the backlash before it even released: and sure enough, it got mostly middling reviews (though PCG gave it a healthy 80%), and an absolute savaging from elements of the audience.

But I loved it, and the whole setup of being space pioneers trying to establish a foothold for humanity in an unknown corner of the cosmos just worked for me. It quickly became clear, however, that Andromeda was not going to kick off its own Mass Effect trilogy, or even get its mooted singleplayer DLC before Bioware ended support for the title.

Andromeda’s protagonist, Ryder, was customisable like Commander Shepard and could be played as male or female. Voice actor Tom Taylorson played the male Ryder, and has given a new interview to fansite We Are Mass Effect in which he bemoans the game’s critical and commercial response, and gives publisher EA a bit of a kicking.

“I think, like many, the game got a bum rap,” says Taylorson. “It was done dirty by a publisher expecting too much from it, not being fully cooked, forced out the door too early, forced to use corporate’s shiny new engine when many of the team didn’t know how to work with it, and it was not suited to the storytelling part of the game.”

Andromeda was developed on the Frostbite engine, which was the case for the vast majority of EA games in this era (the OG trilogy was developed on Unreal). Bioware did have some familiarity with this toolset, and built several games using it, but Andromeda’s development was a troubled time and Frostbite was a big part of it (as this excellent Kotaku investigation details).

“On top of that, it was released to a very toxic atmosphere online and elsewhere in the gaming space,” says Taylorson. “It quickly became punching bag of the week for online chuds for views and clicks. Their love of hate sealed the deal. What saddens me is that this would not be the last time I was in a project doomed by online haters picking a game for Punching Bag of The Week: I also worked on Highguard.”

Andromeda was planned to have post-launch DLC, though in reality Bioware Montreal spent most of the first few months after release firefighting the game’s many technical issues, and obviously the larger intention was for this to kick off a new Mass Effect saga consisting of multiple games. Instead, EA had seen enough, and pulled the plug entirely.

“Personally, I was bummed, but moved on quickly,” says Taylorson. “You have to. You’re only as good as your last project or audition. So you go out and audition again. Personally/ artistically? It hurt most because I knew that was it—Ryder wouldn’t be coming back. I, and others, thought we’d have a good decade of playing with these characters in these spaces. And just like that—gone.”

Bioware is now working on its fifth Mass Effect game, and though it’s not a direct sequel to Andromeda there are hints that it will incorporate elements of it as the studio tries to reboot one of its flagship series.

Taylorson adds that he “felt terrible” for the developers at Bioware Montreal, and “that hate” directed at them, but says that as the years have passed he’s felt a lot more audience affection for Andromeda than it got at release.

“Over time though, I’ve seen a lot of love for the game and its characters, for what it did well, and appreciation from fans for whom it was their game of the moment,” says Taylorson. “A game that helped them, a game that got them through a tough time. There is something to be said for a 7/10 that comes to you in a time of need.”

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