There’s not going to be a Mass Effect Andromeda sequel. The BioWare RPG game didn’t live up to the internal developer and exterior player expectations, so instead we’re getting Mass Effect 4, but the director of Mass Effect Andromeda has talked about these shortcomings saying he’d loved to have seen a sequel.
Former BioWare writer and director Mac Walters was involved with the Mass Effect series for its entire run, from senior to lead writer on the original trilogy and the eventual creative director on Andromeda, and he’s opened up about that spin-off’s failings and how he’d liked to have seen an Andromeda follow up.
“I only wish we had been able to then do a second one because then you would have really seen that polish just like we did from [Mass Effect] to [Mass Effect 2] on the original [trilogy],” Walters tells Eurogamer.
It’s no secret that Mass Effect Andromeda was poorly received, or that it would’ve been part of a new series for the BioWare space game, so when it didn’t live up to the original trilogy both in terms of characters and general polish it was clearly shelved in favor of the upcoming Mass Effect 4. Walters recognizes this and is rather candid about what he and BioWare should have done differently.
“If you tried to put all the content of Mass Effect 3 on the Mass Effect 1 team, it would have taken us ten years,” Walters adds. “Similarly, there were just a lot of things that we had to relearn, re-figure out [with Andromeda], and ultimately when you do that, it’s very, very challenging to come out and be as polished as your third iteration was, and we didn’t hit that. And we probably should have – in hindsight – just reduced scope more and executed on what we could to [ensure] quality.”
As a soft reboot of Mass Effect, Andromeda was in the very tricky position of trying to be both as big and deep as Mass Effect 3, but also start something new with a brand new development team. BioWare Montreal made Andromeda, while the Edmonton branch made the original trilogy, so it wasn’t even the exact same studio making the spin-off sequel.
I think reducing the scope of Andromeda and letting Montreal sort of start from scratch in terms of scale would have been a better idea. It creates a different expectation upon release and would have hopefully allowed for a tighter and more polished experience, which could have been expanded upon with a sequel.
Then again, following up the end of a series like Mass Effect was always going to be difficult, just look at how the MCU has struggled for so many after Avengers Endgame. How do you come back from something that big?
While the new Mass Effect seems like a ways off, you can at least enjoy playing loads of Mass Effect and Dragon Age games for dirt cheap in a sale, so if you missed these iconic series, or need to fill some gaps in your collection it’s a great purchase.
We’ve also got everything you need to know about the Dragon Age 4 release date as well if you’re in the mood for BioWare’s more fantastical musings.
