Andromeda VA Blames EA, Online Toxicity for Troubled Launch

Tom Taylorson, the voice actor for Scott Ryder in Mass Effect Andromeda, recently attributed the game's troubled launch and reception to decisions by publisher Electronic Arts and a hostile online environment.

In an interview with the fan site We Are Mass Effect, Taylorson described the 2017 title as having been "done dirty by a publisher expecting too much from it, not being fully cooked, forced out the door too early, forced to use corporate's shiny new engine when many of the team didn't know how to work with it and it was NOT suited to the storytelling part of the game." The game, developed by BioWare Montreal, arrived with significant bugs and required multiple post-launch patches. Critics gave it an average score of 72 out of 100 on OpenCritic, with only 40 percent recommending it.

Taylorson highlighted challenges with EA's Frostbite engine, originally designed for shooter games rather than narrative-driven RPGs like the original Mass Effect trilogy, which had used Unreal Engine. Developers at the studio learned the tool on the job amid tight deadlines, he said. The project faced inflated expectations from EA despite these hurdles, leading to an unpolished release on March...