Multiplat Anthem

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Ryz said:
Similar to Rockstar with 'crunching' and developers feeling the brunt of it through stress and anxiety. But the direction from the brass at Bioware sounds non existent and Anthem was a massive hodgepodge rushed mess. No surprise the final product was underwhelming as it was.
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It's a shame because the assets in terms of graphics, animation, control, shooting etc are fantastic but unfortunately the final execution was a shambles.

Can Bioware even come back from this? Andromeda didn't please many and now Anthem. Their B team have started work on the next Dragon Age and I would hate to see how that turns out unless there are some massive philosophical shifts at both Bioware and EA. Even if the next DA is a hit, how many ignore it due to it just being Bioware?
 

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dwwaino said:
It's a shame because the assets in terms of graphics, animation, control, shooting etc are fantastic but unfortunately the final execution was a shambles.

Can Bioware even come back from this? Andromeda didn't please many and now Anthem. Their B team have started work on the next Dragon Age and I would hate to see how that turns out unless there are some massive philosophical shifts at both Bioware and EA. Even if the next DA is a hit, how many ignore it due to it just being Bioware?
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Seems symptomatic of the industry at the moment, thought CDPR would be different but reading up they have their challenges as well.

Seems like devs with resource issues with publishers turning the screws is just a powder keg waiting to go off.
 
Ryz said:
Seems symptomatic of the industry at the moment, thought CDPR would be different but reading up they have their challenges as well.

Seems like devs with resource issues with publishers turning the screws is just a powder keg waiting to go off.
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CDPR came straight to mind too actually but I guess the difference is they publish their own stuff and don't set release dates. Their mantra is the well known "it is ready when it is ready" and I imagine that after Witcher 3 pretty much allowed them to print money they are under even less pressure to make a dead line. EA are the perfect example of suits that don't know anything about video games making decisions for share holders.
 
ha, i dropped by to post the article but i see i'm well late.

the gameplay vids of anthem always seemed pretty shallow and uninteresting to me so im not at all surprised to read about the developmental hell. that said, it's still fascinating to find out bits and pieces re just how misdirected, undeveloped or chaotic its production cycle was. also interesting that EA's number-crunchers were only a modest factor in the outcome and according to the article most of the major issues were in-house; after 7 years in the oven even the most generous capitalist would be impatient.

it ****s me off though that all EA has to do is make sequels to tie tighter, KOTOR or dark forces to make a fortune but instead they'll **** around with a quality studio to deliver generic shit.
 
G Mus said:
I didn't realise that frostbite was such an issue
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I would highly recommend anyone with an interest in game development read Schreier's book, "Blood, Sweat and Pixels", where he goes in depth on the tortured histories of certain games. One of the chapters is devoted to Dragon Age: Inquisition, which was made by BioWare. They had massive problems with the Frostbite engine when making DA:I, and it seems like nothing changed (either in terms of the engine or their work practices).
 
I'd love a 24 hour hands on with Frostbite to know what the issue actually is working with it. It's easy as a bunch of nuffies to just claim "Frostbite sucks" but would love to know why, and why EA are forcing so many of their studios to use it. Ubisoft for example are happily using their own Anvil, Dunia and Snowdrop engines for their different franchises. What is it with Frostbite that's so junk? Work flow? Too many overheads? Not the right tools for anything that isn't Battlefield? Is it just an excuse? These aren't complaints coming from the tech leads either, the more you read it's even coming from level designers who's job is pretty much dragging and dropping with probably a little scripting.

I find it a hard one to understand. You can go jump into Unreal or Unity for free which are absolutely bloated with tools and overheads but you can still make anything you want without all the dramas you hear about from Frostbite, and you aren't even allowed to go under the hood to tune performance on these engines like EA developers could do with their own proprietary engine.
 
dwwaino said:
I'd love a 24 hour hands on with Frostbite to know what the issue actually is working with it. It's easy as a bunch of nuffies to just claim "Frostbite sucks" but would love to know why, and why EA are forcing so many of their studios to use it. Ubisoft for example are happily using their own Anvil, Dunia and Snowdrop engines for their different franchises. What is it with Frostbite that's so junk? Work flow? Too many overheads? Not the right tools for anything that isn't Battlefield? Is it just an excuse? These aren't complaints coming from the tech leads either, the more you read it's even coming from level designers who's job is pretty much dragging and dropping with probably a little scripting.

I find it a hard one to understand. You can go jump into Unreal or Unity for free which are absolutely bloated with tools and overheads but you can still make anything you want without all the dramas you hear about from Frostbite, and you aren't even allowed to go under the hood to tune performance on these engines like EA developers could do with their own proprietary engine.
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Yeah I cant comment on it personally. This guy who was previously at Bioware wasn't shy in ripping it a new one

 
dwwaino said:
I'd love a 24 hour hands on with Frostbite to know what the issue actually is working with it. It's easy as a bunch of nuffies to just claim "Frostbite sucks" but would love to know why, and why EA are forcing so many of their studios to use it. Ubisoft for example are happily using their own Anvil, Dunia and Snowdrop engines for their different franchises. What is it with Frostbite that's so junk? Work flow? Too many overheads? Not the right tools for anything that isn't Battlefield? Is it just an excuse? These aren't complaints coming from the tech leads either, the more you read it's even coming from level designers who's job is pretty much dragging and dropping with probably a little scripting.

I find it a hard one to understand. You can go jump into Unreal or Unity for free which are absolutely bloated with tools and overheads but you can still make anything you want without all the dramas you hear about from Frostbite, and you aren't even allowed to go under the hood to tune performance on these engines like EA developers could do with their own proprietary engine.
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In his book, Schreier talks about the problems the devs had with Frostbite when they made DA:I. It's on my Kindle which is at home, so I can't provide a summary of the issues they had with it right now. The book is one of the best books on the gaming industry I've ever read. Highly recommended.

Aaron Flynn confirmed to Schreier in March 2018 that BioWare wasn't forced by Electronic Arts to use the Frostbite engine to make Anthem, but they chose to use Frostbite to maintain cohesion with other EA studios. Kotaku is blocked by my employer, so I can't link to the article, but it's relatively easy to find.

Further, back in 2013, BioWare had actually approached EA about the potential to use the Frostbite engine to develop Dragon Age and Mass Effect games (which ended up being Dragon Age:Inquisition and Mass Effect:Andromeda).
 
Ant_ said:
Yeah I cant comment on it personally. This guy who was previously at Bioware wasn't shy in ripping it a new one

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Not the first I've read that from either. Though Manveer is the former project lead that caused a lot of drama during Andromeda's development due to his racist tweets. Some of that misery he is complaining about on his Twitter is self inflicted.
 
Dixie Flatline said:
In his book, Schreier talks about the problems the devs had with Frostbite when they made DA:I. It's on my Kindle which is at home, so I can't provide a summary of the issues they had with it right now. The book is one of the best books on the gaming industry I've ever read. Highly recommended.

Aaron Flynn confirmed to Schreier in March 2018 that BioWare wasn't forced by Electronic Arts to use the Frostbite engine to make Anthem, but they chose to use Frostbite to maintain cohesion with other EA studios. Kotaku is blocked by my employer, so I can't link to the article, but it's relatively easy to find.

Further, back in 2013, BioWare had actually approached EA about the potential to use the Frostbite engine to develop Dragon Age and Mass Effect games (which ended up being Dragon Age:Inquisition and Mass Effect:Andromeda).
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What a poor excuse. They would have been fully aware of how Frostbite works when they first sat down for their action/methodology plan at the start of the project. Either they were obligated or EA sold them a lemon.
 

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dwwaino said:
Not the first I've read that from either. Though Manveer is the former project lead that caused a lot of drama during Andromeda's development due to his racist tweets. Some of that misery he is complaining about on his Twitter is self inflicted.
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Yeah I'm aware of the MEA dramas. Was more focusing on his comments about the game engine.
 
dwwaino said:
I'd love a 24 hour hands on with Frostbite to know what the issue actually is working with it. It's easy as a bunch of nuffies to just claim "Frostbite sucks" but would love to know why, and why EA are forcing so many of their studios to use it. Ubisoft for example are happily using their own Anvil, Dunia and Snowdrop engines for their different franchises. What is it with Frostbite that's so junk? Work flow? Too many overheads? Not the right tools for anything that isn't Battlefield? Is it just an excuse? These aren't complaints coming from the tech leads either, the more you read it's even coming from level designers who's job is pretty much dragging and dropping with probably a little scripting.

I find it a hard one to understand. You can go jump into Unreal or Unity for free which are absolutely bloated with tools and overheads but you can still make anything you want without all the dramas you hear about from Frostbite, and you aren't even allowed to go under the hood to tune performance on these engines like EA developers could do with their own proprietary engine.
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Off an old memory (so grain of salt)

It was designed for battlefield and worked very well with that. The issues were it wasn't very flexible. Third person, party play, and even some aspects of in play RP meant a whole bunch of workarounds kept having to be bandaided on, most which caused further gameplay issues.
 
silverscope said:
Give it a few more weeks and they'll be in the $20 pile.
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It turns out you were right. I picked up the Legion of Dawn Edition from EB games for $19 to be exact. What's funny is the original price tag on the box says $119. So I literally got $100 off the original price. It's kinda sad I guess that some people actually paid $119 for this.

The game itself is decent when you're actually doing missions. What really ****s everything up are the constant loading screens, and being forced to endure boring dialogue with NPCs in Fort Tarsis because you can't skip those parts like you can in most games. Before too long, you start to dread going back to Fort Tarsis after every mission because it's so ****ing uninteresting.
 
Guess I'll be staying away from this one.
 
Beerfish said:
Guess I'll be staying away from this one.
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Well I certainly don't regret paying $19 for it. The game has some legit good elements - the combat mechanics are good and the flying & movement aspect is really fun. The actual core gameplay (the combat) is enjoyable, it's just that the more peripheral stuff is what drags it down, like the loading screens (every time you get killed in combat, you have to sit through a loading screen just to respawn) and the kind of boring stuff you have to do in Fort Tarsis like walking around talking to NPCs. The environments are also really beautiful - Bastion reminds me of Pandora from the Avatar movie. It pains me because I think this game did have a lot of potential. I'm just hoping they make it free to play (there's been talk of this) to increase the player base.
 
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I love this game. This is testament to why you don't listen to reviewers. It's not perfect but it's still one of the most enjoyable third-person action games I've ever played. When you're in the thick of combat with a bunch of team mates this game is just pure fireworks. IMO everything that happens while you're in Bastion is 8/10. The Fort Taris stuff is like 4/10, which is what drags the game down overall.

Edit: The Cataclysm update is supposed to be releasing soon (probably some time in July), which hopefully will bring some of the players back and reinvigorate the game.
 
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woota said:
I love this game. This is testament to why you don't listen to reviewers. It's not perfect but it's still one of the most enjoyable third-person action games I've ever played. When you're in the thick of combat with a bunch of team mates this game is just pure fireworks. IMO everything that happens while you're in Bastion is 8/10. The Fort Taris stuff is like 4/10, which is what drags the game down overall.

Edit: The Cataclysm update is supposed to be releasing soon (probably some time in July), which hopefully will bring some of the players back and reinvigorate the game.
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It was this game that was the final straw for me when it came to click baity reviewers like Skill Up. He sat on his Metro Exodus review for two weeks (when he had a pre-release review copy) so he could churn out tweets and videos about this game for the clicks.

Like I said at the launch of this game, the actual moment to moment gameplay is fantastic. As in the movement, shooting, flying etc. It's just too obvious that the game has been hacked up and restarted. There are some great missions which were probably a part of the original project, but then there is shit loads of filler. The open world and NPCs are the fort are probably also a carry over from the original project. It's clear at one point it was meant to be more of an RPG but that was scrapped when it got rebooted. This game had genuine potential IMO so it's a shame.

I'll probably try Cataclysm because I have Origin Premiere so it won't cost me anything but I'll be surprised if it will reinvigorate the game even if it's good. First impressions last and BioWare's reputation is currently in tatters.
 

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