I wanted it to succeed. I was put off, not by "wokeness" which BG3, DAI and DA2 have in spades and I love them. People who thi൩nk that "non buy-nary" is a killer pun or have panic attacks over "woke" are idiots, at best.

I was put off by it's lack of resemblance to a "role playing game." A lack of meaningful choices and carryover choices from prior games which is a B✤ioware staple. The tone also🧸 seemed a bit too Disney for me, frankly. Yeah, I'd love for your game to succeed, but this one wasn't for me, thanks.

T💯his fear is misplaced because the last thing Bioware is going to risk at this stage of the piece is creating new assets. They're likely to instead stick a JJ Abrams-esque riffing on greatest hits.

Electronic Arts won't be in any mood for risky creative dec🌜isions after Veilguard, which ironically played it extreꦬmely safe by rehashing ME2 with every rough edge buffed off.

Again, Andromeda, Anthem and Veilguard all had different writers, develop🔜ers and directors, and all of 🦩them faceplanted.

So, the common thread, the connective tissue is not indiv💎idual employees, it's the owners of the comp𝓰any. The same company that crunched all three teams, demanded multiple changes in direction and then threw them all under the bus.

Electronic Arts.

Electronic Arts can't make good CRPGs. They basically have to be tricked into making good single player games. Yes, I know Baldur's Gate 3 did well, but EA could never greenlight a BG3 because they'd be stuffing it full of monetisation while pressuring the writers to avoid complexity and con♕t🅘roversy. This is why the next Mass Effect will likely bomb, if it's even allowed to happen.

I don't think EA completely comprehends the damage they've done to their own IP here. They think their consumers are like goldfish and will forget everything in a couple of years so marketing can do their thing and 🤡build up hype.

The problem is when you have a property with as much cultural impact𒐪 as Mass Effect, that's a bad presumption, mass effect has dedicated fans who won't forget.

Fans can be the best friends or worst enemies of an IP, they can effectively set up an anti-marketing campaign that can dissuade new players and longterm fans are very annoyed with Bioware. If they assume🔯 they'll calm down and forget about it in a couple of years, ෴I've news for them!