Anthem, despite interesting art direction, was impossible to like.
It's almost odd that Bioware still exists as a large studio (>300 employees) when it seems they've forgotten how to release a good game. Baldur's Gate -- which is 25 years old -- was released in 1998, and its sequel was released less than two years later, in 2000. All of the Mass Effect games were released in a 4.5 year period from late 2007 to early 2012.
...Now they're in a state where they haven't released a good game in over a decade. They're a zombie studio. If you ask me, EA, despite its reputation and the way they have botched the decision-making process at the studio (e.g. by forcing Bioware to use the Frostbite engine,) has shown admirable patience, tolerance, and forbearance.
The gameplay was my favorite in the series, maybe in any RPG. Thats a high bar, considering how much time I put into ME3 coop.
And... There were a few interesting side quests and lore bits.
But general character/writing quality really made me sad. I get the whole game was rushed, but it makes me worry about BioWare even more than Anthem. Character writing was their bread and butter, and Andromeda was supposed to be a character game, not a coop arcade like Anthem/Destiny.
Allowing teams to fail repeatedly is bad management. Someone at EA should be fired.
This really has to be put into perspective: It took them less than five years to release all three Mass Effect games, and it took less than three years to release the complete Baldur's Gate Series.
So Bioware is a lot like NASA: No longer able to do the things they were once capable of. In Bioware's case -- via mismanagement or poor corporate direction -- they've forgotten how to develop and ship games. Now, at this point, it's really quite surprising that EA has kept them around for so long. With these layoffs, it might be that their patience is beginning to run out.
Naughty Dog released Uncharted 1-3 and the TLOU during the PS3 era so 4 games. They released Uncharted 4 and TLOU 2 during the PS4 era which is 2 games. And so far they haven't released any game during the PS5 era (not including remasters/remakes). They will likely only release 1 new game before the PS6 is released.
Lets take Starfield as another an example since its the next big studio RPG to be released. Its been in development since 2015 so basically 8 years.
Mass Effect 3, which is by no means a small or content-poor game, however controversial its ending, was released just two years after its predecessor. It incorporated a number of obvious mechanic/gameplay updates, engine tweaks, and QoL improvements. It even incorporated a popular multiplayer mode. All of the music, all of the voice acting, all of the motion-capping (if they did any of that) was done quickly.
Bioware could release "Mass Effect 4" with the same mechanics and systems, if the story's good enough, and people would be (extremely) happy. So what now takes them >8 years that previously took them two?
Also noteworthy: Content can't possibly be the bottleneck, as Pillars of Eternity (a Baldur's Gate-like RPG) and its sequel were released within a roughly three year period, and those games contain millions of words of content. The second game is also fully voice-acted.
For example on Infinite you had a scenario where people might not be around long enough to learn the in house tooling which was troublesome enough to cause some to want to drop what's been done and switch to Unity whiplashed around by directions set by different parts of the company and half the workers were 18 month contract workers.[1]
If you compare the credits for the Mass Effect trilogy series for example there's a good amount of people who left by the end of ME3 and fewer are still there for a ME4. Mike Laidlaw, Steve Gilmore for example. Drew Karpyshyn is lead writer on only the first two ME games. Aaryn Flynn, James Ohlen and Casey Hudson both went off to make their own studios.
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/how-micro...
This is especially worrying in light of Andromeda's development.
The devs (allegedly) wasted years making tools and systems that didn't work, then rushed and cobbled the game together at the very end.
Also bad management. We also learn that usually teams aren't actually working for such periods as they get dragged around. Cyberpunk was only actively developed for a few years it turned out, despite the claim being they had been working on it that entire time.
SWTORs problem was that they used their singleplayer game focused engine for an MMORPG.
And I don't mean multiplayer, that is fine. But the hotbar mashing combat, the grindy areas filled with standing mooks, all the padding and instancing... Bioware Austin did a great job changing it to be more KOTOR-like over the years, but at its core its a hotbar MMO.
On a seperate note, Andromeda was tragic, but I still liked it.
Anthem was... Just tragic. I am literally the target demographic (a ME3 coop fan) but was not the least bit interested.