Story here
I am stunned and saddened.
Also I am business savvy enough that whether you’re a video game company, publisher, bank, or whatever business…if a major player leaves in the middle of a major development it’s not good.
I am sure more information will come out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if EA was barking about the upcoming games (namely Mass Effect) and he had enough.
This also makes me a bit scared over the next game :eek:
If he had anything to do with the ending of Mass Effect 3, I can’t say I’m sorry to see him go.
I venture to say that he was a major part of it.
That being said…EA was pushing him pretty hard to get the game out, so he was kinda backed in a corner
It wasn’t the bugginess or art direction, or any other problem that could be blamed on a time crunch, it was the sheer inanity of the story. They had 6 years to make the story ending not be non-sensical, stupid, and disappointing. They just didn’t.
The original story was supposed to be about dark energy as foreshadowed in Mass Effect 2.
My understanding is the lead writer left the project at some point, and either they couldn’t use the story or it simply sucked, so they had to come up with something fast. How much time that was between that effort and the game shipping I have no idea.
I have also heard that 3 was supposed to be a lot more involved than it was too.
Javik was a huge part of it, Kei Lang had a bigger role, and there was supposed to be another Vermire type decision where you had to choose between Liara and some kind of information or something.
Granted I’m pie-in-the-sky, but I think that EA kept pushing them to release the game and to make it more of a shooter and Bioware could only do so much