What Were You Thinking, Bioware? (Patreon)

I don't like Destiny.

I don't like Left 4 Dead.

I don't like Nazi Zombies.

I don't like Killing Floor.

I don't like Risk of Rain.

I liked Payday!

But not its sequel…

When it comes to coop shooters, whether it's about progressing through a linear stage, or progressing through a linear stage for loot, I'm just not really into it.

Even horde based games like Call of Duty and Killing Floor isn't something that I could go to for hours and hours, just a handful of sessions before I'd want to play something else.

These days, I don't really play those games at all.

And yet… every once in a while, for some weird reason, get a little inkling to boot up Mass Effect 3's Coop; when I think back on it, I played that game more than Destiny, Left 4 Dead, Nazi Zombies, Killing Floor, Risk of Rain, and Payday combined, and judging from just the little short I uploaded to YT, I'm not the only one.

I'm going to quickly ask this question, and follow it up with a much longer one.

Why did I play this game so much?

Well, I'm an admitted Mass Effect Fanboy, and as discussed in "I'm Jealous of Warhammer", a big part of this game's appeal was being able to play as characters and races with weapons and abilities that weren't available in Shepard's lone journey.

However, I'm not sure quite how powerful that reason actually is, considering that Mass Effect Andromeda also had Multiplayer, very similar Multiplayer, and I barely touched it?

Really, I think it's because Mass Effect 3 accidentally stumbled upon a phenomenal gameplay formula which unlike Destiny, Left 4 Dead, Naz- you get the point, never overstayed its welcome.

Matches, even intense ones, were only 15-20 minutes. They were bite-sized, and as a result, could be something you just played one round of to pop some heads with a Black Widow, or binged for 4-5 hours with friends, swapping between its vast selection of characters, weapons, and builds.

The dead-air, was between matches, not in the middle of a boring mission or wave like in most coop-horde shooters, and getting bad loot, while annoying, wasn't as annoying as other games, being that it only took 15-20 minutes to boot up another game.

Plus, the higher the difficulty, the more you got.

So the better you were at the game, the more money you made.

Here's the real question however, the real reason I'm writing this, it hit me when someone in the comments of said YT Short, said "why didn't Bioware make a Destiny type-game if they hit such gold with ME3 MP?" and someone said "They did, it was called Anthem, and it flopped."

What hit me?

Okay… Bioware Montreal, the support studio behind Mass Effect 3's Mutliplayer, on their first attempt, made a game that was addicting, rewarding, and well-supported by both fans and themselves the developer, going as far as to update the game extensively every Tuesday for a year (even on PS3/360 through their certification process).

So what does Bioware Montreal make next?

Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Bioware Edmonton, the main studio behind Mass Effect 3 itself, and previous two games along with the Dragon Age series, made a game that was addicting, rewarding, and well-supported by both fans (endings aside) and themselves the developer, going as far as to end the trilogy on one of the biggest and most personal expansions ever made in Mass Effect 3's Citadel.

So what does Bioware Edmonton make next?

Anthem.

The support studio whose previous work is a Multiplayer Wave-Based Loot-Game, makes the next Singleplayer Story-Driven RPG.

The main studio whose previous is a Singleplayer Story-Driven RPG, makes the next Multiplayer Wave-Based Loot-Game…

…This is madness!

Bioware and Montreal were part of the same company, they were working within the same franchises, they were working underneath the same corporate overlords… so why were they assigned the opposite of their experience?

…Why?