The Mass Effect Andromeda Lead Writer Chris Schlerf has announced his departure via a series of tweets. Maybe not surprising considering his ties to Bungie and Halo 4.
More information.
ME:A - Lead Writer Has Left for Bungie
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LongMuckDong
Watchdog
Andromeda will be fine, surely most of the writing was done already?
Drew K to the rescue perhaps?
I will go postal if you stuff this up BioWare haha... (not actually joking, lol).
Drew K to the rescue perhaps?
I will go postal if you stuff this up BioWare haha... (not actually joking, lol).
Well it does not need writing anyways. 25% of the game will be corridor cover combat, 70% some waste time minigames and 5% red/blue/green storytelling.
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No.
EA is onto skipping E3 and such happenings, doing "inovations" with some let's gather cattle on our terms schemes.
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MEA has Mac Walters as creative director, he probably managed the writing team after Chris left. That was his old job on the previous ME games. Also, I know of one ME3 writer who was moved to an unannounced game (she wrote so in her twitter), so writing much be close to done.
As for Schlerf, he left over 6+ months ago (before mid-August 2015, that's when the BSN stalkers realized he was gone), he just now realized people were speculating about it...
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Merin
Watchdog
Basically, it sounds like EA / BioWare (huge game dev's?) has caught up with the rest of the corporate world's business model on employee's. Treat them like shit, pay them like shit, have a high turn over rate at a staggered interval so you can get rid of employee camaraderie and not have to deal with raises / incentives.
Workers in the game design industry will adjust to switching jobs constantly, getting paid less, have less say and be more of an interchangeable cog.
Yay.
Workers in the game design industry will adjust to switching jobs constantly, getting paid less, have less say and be more of an interchangeable cog.
Yay.
Two Americans left their job in Montréal in a mostly french speaking province after the Canadian dollars lost ~30% of its value in less than a year. One of them might have even been at the max of his Canadian work permit extensions and moved to Daybreak in sunny San Diego. The other looks very, very happy to be back in Seattle…
Sure they left because BioWare is a shitty workplace. <= This is sarcasm
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IMO leaving EA and getting a job somewhere else is a desirable thing.
Now I may not like that "somewhere else", I mean it's Bungie for god's sakes what was he thinking. But less EA impact, better chances developer delivers a great product.
Now I may not like that "somewhere else", I mean it's Bungie for god's sakes what was he thinking. But less EA impact, better chances developer delivers a great product.
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LongMuckDong
Watchdog
You know that feeling when you're trying to convince yourself that everything is going to be ok, but you have a creepy feeling in your gut that something isn't ok...
That is my feels right now, and I live and breath Mass Effect.
That is my feels right now, and I live and breath Mass Effect.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
Mass Effect and Dragons Age have both been long over for me. How is fleeing the cesspool that is EA anything but a total victory for this guy, good luck with future endeavours.
Bioware is heading the way of Atari. How long now until the Bioware brand becomes completely marginalized and needs to be rebranded under a new name, I wonder? Maybe at some point they'll start selling off their IP to younger, less suit-riddled companies. Seems like it's just a matter of time now.
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BoboTheMighty
SasqWatch
One mistake I would not want to see repeated here is constant changing of the writing team, if this goes in the same direction as previous games.
Lack of continuity when it comes to improving with their sequels seems one of BW's biggest problems over the last 8-9 years.
Lack of continuity when it comes to improving with their sequels seems one of BW's biggest problems over the last 8-9 years.
How many people do you figure work on a game the size of ME:A? 100? 200? 300? How many have left? 2? Dunno that I'd call it an exodus. More like click bait. A corporate employee changed jobs. It happens.
Falksi
Sentinel
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Who needs creativity, soul, passion, camaraderie, etc. when you can have targets, formulas, and executives?
Anyone would think each successive Bioware game has been getting progressively worse or something!
On a serious note, it will be a miracle if ME:A is even remotely decent.
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GabrielMP_19
Vault Survivor
How many people of those 100-300 individuals is doing the writing? Besides, they're lead writers, people that really change the course the story of the game goes.
That said, I think there's a fine chance ME:A will be alright (not awesome, but ok). The only thing that preocupates me a bit is the future of Bioware, really. I really used to like their games and I'm afraid they won't be so good soon.
Lead writer can't change the direction of the game all by themselves, they have strong input on the narrative design though. They are below the lead designer and project director. David Gaider talked about it in his defunct tumblr.
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