This is confirmed to be real according to Jason Schrier. They were going to use this trailer to reveal the game soon if Bioware hadn't closed. It's obviously a little unpolished (especially in the fake gameplay section) but it did look promising.

I mean, it would’ve probably come up flat.. just like the previous ME..

Yeah. I wouldn't count on post-EA acquired Bioware to have actually delivered.

BioWares last 3 games didn't sell well, and this was at least years down the line. This is clearly very early in production. I can't say I am surprised this was cancelled in that context.

Even if it was the best game ever made, it was years away from a studio that had just had 3 financial failures in a row. Maybe it would have been approved if it was already like, 90% complete, but this looks like it's maybe 10%.

It's a decent trailer.

My instant headcanon is playing as a spectre turned shadow broker agent. That could have been done well.

But also, Liara looking visibly old, is so odd.

She looks older here than ANY matriarch we've seen except for maybe Benezia.

Meaning this would have been set at least 600, probably more like 800 years after the original trilogy.

I goyr me thinking of a bounty hunting. You're hired by Liara to track down targets. You put together your crew of specialists and have to switch out party members depending on the bounty.

One can dream.

eh I'm happy to just let it go. Bioware hadn't made a good game since 2014. every release after Inquisition was awful. Sure we can look at a pre-rendered video and think "oh man, sucks I won't be able to play it" but lets be real here...the chances of it even being good with their recent track record? i'm doubtful.

I played it well after launch, but I enjoyed Andromeda. I would have preferred less combat and more focus on a "man" vs nature scenario, but it was a solid experience after they smoothed over the bad launch.

It was a shock and disappointment at the time when they announced they were dropping the Quarian DLC and any plans for a sequel. I felt like the franchise deserved a bit more faith than that, but, well, EA gonna EA.

Salt in the wound. That "gameplay" was obviously not legit, but the entire concept is solid. Man... Might have to do a replay of the trilogy now.

In case anyone is wondering, the song is Quartz by French 79

What gameplay?

This reminds me of that time when DA division was shuttered and one of the employees said the ME division had been looking down on them for some years and weren't enthusiastic about bringing them in.

Well, I guess none of them have to worry about that anymore...

I enjoyed andromeda quite a bit. It lacked the scope and feel of 1 and 2, the aliens should've been more alien, but gameplay was fun, jetpacks were fun. It was very worthwhile (sale) purchase.

Didn't they treat the SWTOR division the same? Well guess who's the only one still around

I said "gameplay" for a reason. But certain sections were obviously meant to evoke player interaction.

They had a trailer for anthem and none of it was in the game. It looks a concept trailer.

I say that as someone who has bought and loves their games, even anthem and ME:A.

They aren't the same developers anymore 😔

Sad to see them get laid off but they have been mismanaged for a decade

They didn't claim or imply anything was supposed to be gameplay.

We agree on that, we just seem to disagree on what certain parts of the trailer were meant to evoke. And that's okay. I interpreted it differently than you.

I was kinda hoping it was actually a youtube poop "we'll bang ok?" video, like some kind of mass effect rickroll

Yeah, they gave SWTOR to a non-BioWare party some years back.

Broadsword Online Games (2023–present)

Sometimes I don't understand the hypocrisy of the gamers, if EA had never shut down BioWare, the people would probably just hate the game because EA bad (and I don't telling you EA good, but this is the typical argument), but now that they announce that the studio was shut down everyone seem to love this demo

Obviously I'm not all gamers.

But I think it's ok to be outraged at every step of the usual EA pipeline of 1) Buy studio 2) force studio to make bad decisions 3) close studio, because (surprise!) they are not profitable

consider that different gamers can have different opinions.

Honestly, I thought that was a damn good trailer. Had this been the pre-EA Bioware, i'd be really excited to play that game.

Yeah large publishers don't measure sales longterm for games like this. Mainly because turning it around is extremely risky financial wise and expensive because most of the developers contracts are up so they either have to rehire or shuffle people from other projects. Not an issue for smaller studios who don't layoff after every project btw

Stories of studios making banger games due to tight constraints and small team sizes. Limitations like that bring out human creativity.

When studios get big publishers want more control over what gets made, multiple teams need to be created and more management is required so every one can communicate with eachother to satisfy the publishers increasing revenue goals which turns the studio into a business where they need to maximize profit.

The opposite can also happen where studios get truck loads of money with no oversight from publishers so they work on whatever they want rather than what players want.

The worst thing is making a smash hit game requires mostly skill and luck with luck being the right team, the right constraints, the right market and the right leaders.

BioWare had a streak of luck but as people move on after every project that luck fades away. BioWare 'magic' was flopping around for most of projects development cycle so they had to crunch near the end of a games release. Mass Effect had this problem from 1 all the way to 3 with 3 being an absolute shitshow of working from sunup to sundown Monday to Sunday for months before release.

I still haven't even played ME3 past the first couple of missions. Why do people hate Andromeda so much, and why don't you?

Andromeda had some of the best combat and controls of any of the games. Unfortunately, the story is bland and repetitive.

Which is unfortunate given it was ostensibly an RPG.

I'll sound like a hipster, but I still like ME1 the best because it was this interesting promise of an expansive sci-fi RPG world. The world did expand but it sanded off the RPG.

The story is decent enough, but the missions definitely had some "filler". Its biggest issue was that way launch it was a buggy mess

My favorite is still ME2. I feel like it did the best balancing action and RPG elements without becoming too "Call of Duty"-esque or being weighed down by RPG bullshit or time sink.

ME1's "you can hold a sniper rifle, but you're too brain dead to use it" if you didn't pick Soldier was a great example of being too RPG bullshit to me. You're telling me I have the accuracy of a drunk child with a sniper rifle because I picked playing Adept or Engineer? I'm glad they fixed it in the remake.

The word "some" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement. There was a LOT of filler to pad out playtime.

"Coming soon"

🥲

It was an OK game. Very bland story-wise, but solid combat.

Ooh. Eliminating targets for Liara/The Shadow Broker, sure, but I don't know that doing it for money works for the "I wanted to make a difference" angle in the trailer here.

But I like the focus being preparing for and carrying out assassinations on key targets. You could even implement the suicide mission mechanics where bringing the wrong squadmates for a certain target, means one or both of them die.

Taking a lot of the SWTOR team with them

If EA doesn't sell off the property to a studio compromised of just enough names fans pretend to recognize from the OG Bioware I vote that the gamers rise up

It had some silly cutscene animations and the main story is quiet short.

However the gameplay (like anthem which is very similar but with flying mechs) is great

I played almost 200hr of ME:A much of it in the multi-player because it was just crazy fun combat. I also 100% the story and exploring the worlds finding all the little collectibles and lore was great.

Its clear that the main story was horribly rushed but there was a ton of lore around that fleshed out a lot.

Recommend picking it up on a cheap sale for $4-$8

There was, but in replacing ME1 I've found that many of the side missions were similarly filler, not to mention the whole scanning thing. ME2 was the best of the series in this regard.