If I remember correctly they got a lot of help on weapon audio for ME3 from the team from Dice, so that can explain why they sounded so much beefier.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited February 2021
It's pretty obviously a bit of a creative choice. They have the tools to goof around and make things sound satisfying just as they did for Mass Effect 3. If you just transpose the weapon sounds from there to Andromeda you'd probably find an overall more enjoyable experience but it also would do a poorer job of selling the open sandbox aspect.
To this day I mourn what Andromeda could have been. And I’ll fight any motherfucker that calls default fem Ryder ugly! Her and Peebee are adorkable and lovely!
With fixes, yes, the original models are lovely women. And there's nothing wrong with a dorky hero.
That first round animation pass though? *Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me*
manwiththemachinegun on
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Eh, the early fixes BioWare did to add visual depth to the eyes were already surprisingly elegant solutions to sanding down some of the rough edges in the visuals/presentation
Also worth noting that there's a good deal of extremely subtle retexture mods that actually dramatically improve default Ryder's look. It has less to do with the models themselves and more to do with weirdly uneven coloration in complexion and oddly colored default cosmetics on top of that
To this day I mourn what Andromeda could have been.
I'll never understand why they decided rehashing all of the Milky Way drama should be the bulk of the game's content rather than focusing on the stated premise - finding new habitable planets (with assorted new lifeforms and new civilizations) and building/maintaining/defending colonies on them.
Neither the Angara nor Kett were interesting enough on their own to scratch that itch, IMO. The latter were especially boring as antagonists. I'd much rather have a game where survival and colonial success were the main driving forces than yet another tepid save the world plot.
I do hope BioWare forces some of these beloved species out of their comfort zone in the next game.
I want to see what Turians become when the military supremacy they've relied on for centuries is suddenly weakened to the point of irrelevance.
I want to see what Krogans become when they're not whining about other species using them as disposable thugs-for-hire.
I want to see what Quarians become when they're not whining about their lost planet.
I want to see what Batarians become when they no longer have a Glorious Leader™ feeding them nonstop totalitarian propaganda.
Andromeda did have a Force Awakens problem where the species should logically have had different relationships due to their wildly different circumstances, but where shoehorned into having the same relationships as before, presumably out of some misguided appeal to nostalgia. Let's not do that again.
To this day I mourn what Andromeda could have been.
I'll never understand why they decided rehashing all of the Milky Way drama should be the bulk of the game's content rather than focusing on the stated premise - finding new habitable planets (with assorted new lifeforms and new civilizations) and building/maintaining/defending colonies on them.
Neither the Angara nor Kett were interesting enough on their own to scratch that itch, IMO. The latter were especially boring as antagonists. I'd much rather have a game where survival and colonial success were the main driving forces than yet another tepid save the world plot.
The reason is Paul Marketing desperately trying to undo the PR damage from ME3's ending. It was kind of a big deal as you may recall.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
To this day I mourn what Andromeda could have been.
I'll never understand why they decided rehashing all of the Milky Way drama should be the bulk of the game's content rather than focusing on the stated premise - finding new habitable planets (with assorted new lifeforms and new civilizations) and building/maintaining/defending colonies on them.
Neither the Angara nor Kett were interesting enough on their own to scratch that itch, IMO. The latter were especially boring as antagonists. I'd much rather have a game where survival and colonial success were the main driving forces than yet another tepid save the world plot.
Supposedly the extra interesting Andromeda aliens were cut due to budget and cosplay reasons.
Plus the software development process at Bioware sounds about as half-assed as it's possible to be while still getting things to compile, so that probably didn't help.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Yeah, the scope of Andromeda was initially "1000s of procedurally created worlds", and it took them way too long to figure out that wouldn't work, so a lot of questionable choices were made in the way-too-short dev time that was left.
Sorce on
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Bioware, or whoever it is at EA that gives them their marching orders, seems to have gotten bit by the Open World Game bug. That's just not where Bioware's strengths lie and they're not getting any better at making those sorts of games.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Hmm, I was thinking of starting a fresh ME-trilogy run on the XB1 but since I played everything on the XB360, it's doubtful my saved games and DLC-purchases were remembered, eh?
Hmm, I was thinking of starting a fresh ME-trilogy run on the XB1 but since I played everything on the XB360, it's doubtful my saved games and DLC-purchases were remembered, eh?
Saved games are iffy unless you put them on the cloud.
But all your DLC purchases are tied to your account not console.
Hmm, I was thinking of starting a fresh ME-trilogy run on the XB1 but since I played everything on the XB360, it's doubtful my saved games and DLC-purchases were remembered, eh?
Saved games are iffy unless you put them on the cloud.
But all your DLC purchases are tied to your account not console.
On the saved-game side, I'm mainly concerned with having talents unlocked to pick as a bonus ability. Having Decryption and Electronics mean I can play Shepard with mostly whomever I want and not worry about not being able to open doors and more importantly chest.
To this day I mourn what Andromeda could have been.
I'll never understand why they decided rehashing all of the Milky Way drama should be the bulk of the game's content rather than focusing on the stated premise - finding new habitable planets (with assorted new lifeforms and new civilizations) and building/maintaining/defending colonies on them.
Neither the Angara nor Kett were interesting enough on their own to scratch that itch, IMO. The latter were especially boring as antagonists. I'd much rather have a game where survival and colonial success were the main driving forces than yet another tepid save the world plot.
The reason is Paul Marketing desperately trying to undo the PR damage from ME3's ending. It was kind of a big deal as you may recall.
Oh, I was there for it. And had plenty of arguments with people claiming that the controversy surrounding the trilogy's ending was simply due to people being upset that they didn't get a happy ending.
But, the appeal of Andromeda was that it was set in the ME universe, but its own thing. Instead, it was ME Trilogy Lite - it felt 80% the same, with the remaining 20% being painfully bland and uninspired. It's the Star Trek Voyager of the ME universe.
They compounded one PR nightmare with another, and killed the franchise for a while because of it.
Hmm, I was thinking of starting a fresh ME-trilogy run on the XB1 but since I played everything on the XB360, it's doubtful my saved games and DLC-purchases were remembered, eh?
Saved games are iffy unless you put them on the cloud.
But all your DLC purchases are tied to your account not console.
On the saved-game side, I'm mainly concerned with having talents unlocked to pick as a bonus ability. Having Decryption and Electronics mean I can play Shepard with mostly whomever I want and not worry about not being able to open doors and more importantly chest.
Skill choices in 1 are tied to achievements... maybe. I'm not sure if they programmed it to check for the achievement itself or for a flag on your save file that you'd completed the requirements FOR the achievements. Never had to try that.
Bioware, or whoever it is at EA that gives them their marching orders, seems to have gotten bit by the Open World Game bug. That's just not where Bioware's strengths lie and they're not getting any better at making those sorts of games.
The one-two punch of trying to transition to open worlds and trying to transition to Frostbyte, an engine specialized for the Battlefield game series that was ill suited to any game with extensive RPG elements, compounded to make the games' flaws exponentially worse.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Bioware, or whoever it is at EA that gives them their marching orders, seems to have gotten bit by the Open World Game bug. That's just not where Bioware's strengths lie and they're not getting any better at making those sorts of games.
The one-two punch of trying to transition to open worlds and trying to transition to Frostbyte, an engine specialized for the Battlefield game series that was ill suited to any game with extensive RPG elements, compounded to make the games' flaws exponentially worse.
The haymaker that follows those punches is the time that is spent on all the transition is used by management as justification for releasing unfinished garbage. With more time the Angara home world could have been built up to previous standards. But all management understood was "We've been in development for over 4 years, we need to release this now!" Technically that was true but in reality most of what's in the game was developed in about 18 months and the lack of polish in every aspect is glaring as all hell.
The Angara's capitol had motionless character models staring at walls and drunk-walking models 3-4 map transitions away from the cantina. It was pathetic.
Bioware, or whoever it is at EA that gives them their marching orders, seems to have gotten bit by the Open World Game bug. That's just not where Bioware's strengths lie and they're not getting any better at making those sorts of games.
The one-two punch of trying to transition to open worlds and trying to transition to Frostbyte, an engine specialized for the Battlefield game series that was ill suited to any game with extensive RPG elements, compounded to make the games' flaws exponentially worse.
The haymaker that follows those punches is the time that is spent on all the transition is used by management as justification for releasing unfinished garbage. With more time the Angara home world could have been built up to previous standards. But all management understood was "We've been in development for over 4 years, we need to release this now!" Technically that was true but in reality most of what's in the game was developed in about 18 months and the lack of polish in every aspect is glaring as all hell.
The Angara's capitol had motionless character models staring at walls and drunk-walking models 3-4 map transitions away from the cantina. It was pathetic.
You need only look at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so see that transitioning a linear game series to an open-ended one can work, but only if you're willing to give your developers the time and budget they need to figure out how to make it work.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
To this day I mourn what Andromeda could have been.
I'll never understand why they decided rehashing all of the Milky Way drama should be the bulk of the game's content rather than focusing on the stated premise - finding new habitable planets (with assorted new lifeforms and new civilizations) and building/maintaining/defending colonies on them.
Neither the Angara nor Kett were interesting enough on their own to scratch that itch, IMO. The latter were especially boring as antagonists. I'd much rather have a game where survival and colonial success were the main driving forces than yet another tepid save the world plot.
Supposedly the extra interesting Andromeda aliens were cut due to budget and cosplay reasons.
Plus the software development process at Bioware sounds about as half-assed as it's possible to be while still getting things to compile, so that probably didn't help.
Dorian Kieken, who was the franchise design director at the beginning of Andromeda's development, explained that some of the early alien concepts were "pretty out there" and that they were cut because one of Mass Effect Andromeda's goals was to make it easy for fans to cosplay the game's characters.
“One of the strengths of the original Mass Effect trilogy is that you can actually cosplay most of the alien characters - except the Hanar, although I wouldn't underestimate the creativity of some cosplayers," Kieken said. "The intention in Mass Effect Andromeda was to introduce new races that would still be in the realm of cosplay, which is probably why more crazy concepts were abandoned.”
Kieken even said that the two alien races that did make it into Andromeda gradually shifted to "cosplay-safe territory," with the team trying to avoid "jellyfish" types of aliens.
Who gives a shit about cosplay? Do they really think 'how cosplayable is this alien' is going to affect how many people buy the game or its DLC? Of all the stupid things to obsess over.
That's been one of my big complaints about Bioware's handling of the Star Wars property too, how samey all the playable aliens are.
To this day I mourn what Andromeda could have been.
I'll never understand why they decided rehashing all of the Milky Way drama should be the bulk of the game's content rather than focusing on the stated premise - finding new habitable planets (with assorted new lifeforms and new civilizations) and building/maintaining/defending colonies on them.
Neither the Angara nor Kett were interesting enough on their own to scratch that itch, IMO. The latter were especially boring as antagonists. I'd much rather have a game where survival and colonial success were the main driving forces than yet another tepid save the world plot.
Supposedly the extra interesting Andromeda aliens were cut due to budget and cosplay reasons.
Plus the software development process at Bioware sounds about as half-assed as it's possible to be while still getting things to compile, so that probably didn't help.
Dorian Kieken, who was the franchise design director at the beginning of Andromeda's development, explained that some of the early alien concepts were "pretty out there" and that they were cut because one of Mass Effect Andromeda's goals was to make it easy for fans to cosplay the game's characters.
“One of the strengths of the original Mass Effect trilogy is that you can actually cosplay most of the alien characters - except the Hanar, although I wouldn't underestimate the creativity of some cosplayers," Kieken said. "The intention in Mass Effect Andromeda was to introduce new races that would still be in the realm of cosplay, which is probably why more crazy concepts were abandoned.”
Kieken even said that the two alien races that did make it into Andromeda gradually shifted to "cosplay-safe territory," with the team trying to avoid "jellyfish" types of aliens.
Who gives a shit about cosplay? Do they really think 'how cosplayable is this alien' is going to affect how many people buy the game or its DLC? Of all the stupid things to obsess over.
That's been one of my big complaints about Bioware's handling of the Star Wars property too, how samey all the playable aliens are.
I don't mind it being a consideration but it shouldn't be a high ranking one.
I also don't believe them. The game had content cut because they faff'd around with procedural generation bullshit for too long. I don't buy for a second that "b-b-but, um, think of the poor cosplayers!" came into play as anything other than people trying to do last minute CYA.
"I was on the fence about Andromeda but when I saw that there were two new bipedal races I could cosplay as, I was hooked!" - No one, ever.
I have to assume he meant it more in terms of community-based marketing, like having streaming features in a game or console, and not directly pulling in new players.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Bioware, or whoever it is at EA that gives them their marching orders, seems to have gotten bit by the Open World Game bug. That's just not where Bioware's strengths lie and they're not getting any better at making those sorts of games.
The one-two punch of trying to transition to open worlds and trying to transition to Frostbyte, an engine specialized for the Battlefield game series that was ill suited to any game with extensive RPG elements, compounded to make the games' flaws exponentially worse.
The haymaker that follows those punches is the time that is spent on all the transition is used by management as justification for releasing unfinished garbage. With more time the Angara home world could have been built up to previous standards. But all management understood was "We've been in development for over 4 years, we need to release this now!" Technically that was true but in reality most of what's in the game was developed in about 18 months and the lack of polish in every aspect is glaring as all hell.
The Angara's capitol had motionless character models staring at walls and drunk-walking models 3-4 map transitions away from the cantina. It was pathetic.
You need only look at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so see that transitioning a linear game series to an open-ended one can work, but only if you're willing to give your developers the time and budget they need to figure out how to make it work.
I'd also say that if you're going to have your RPG be all open world, then you probably shouldn't make nearly every world a barren inhospitable hellscape. You need things to do, places to go, and people to see. If they want to keep with the open world stuff, then they need to try and poach one of the world designers from Bethesda or somewhere. The Fallout and Elder Scrolls games have a whole lot of issues, but they at least manage to create interesting locations with good environmental storytelling.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I also suspect that it was at least partly to help create some level of emotional attachment? People kinda need faces to interpret emotion. If the Angara were sentient clouds of gas, the writers would have to dedicate tons of time to demonstrating the various ways clouds of gas show their emotions. If they look like humans, they can use similar facial expressions and it's a shortcut.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
They could be big stupid Jellyfish!
Or, badassfully, they could be 3 days from retirement.
That cosplay line is utter nonsense and reads as some ex post facto excuse for why there's only a handful of alien designs in Andromeda. A variety of non-humanoid alien design is a strength, not a weakness.
"Cosplay-safe" sounds like code for "easier to animate with our limited development tools" than anything else.
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited February 2021
Yeah, I always assumed the reason Bioware's outer space games are full of suspiciously human-like aliens was just production limitations like with live-action TV, only instead of special effects budget/time issues it's animation.
“One of the strengths of the original Mass Effect trilogy is that you can actually cosplay most of the alien characters - except the Hanar, although I wouldn't underestimate the creativity of some cosplayers," Kieken said.
With hurt feelings, excuse me. Disbelieving, you think I am an easy cosplay design.
Bitterly, I'm still sore we never got an Elcor multiplayer character who was basically a tank.
Bioware, or whoever it is at EA that gives them their marching orders, seems to have gotten bit by the Open World Game bug. That's just not where Bioware's strengths lie and they're not getting any better at making those sorts of games.
The one-two punch of trying to transition to open worlds and trying to transition to Frostbyte, an engine specialized for the Battlefield game series that was ill suited to any game with extensive RPG elements, compounded to make the games' flaws exponentially worse.
This seems less to do with BioWare's strengths and capabilities and more to do with production/management woes, given how they still ended up creating Dragon Age Inquisition in spite of its technical shitshow, a literal GOTY award-winner and plenty beloved RPG. I don't necessarily care for its open world format personally but there is a significant community out there that does
People make much noise about BioWare no longer being staffed by the storytellers of yore. Who's to say that the newer people they pick up moving forward aren't capable of nurturing a great open-world story within the right production conditions
that cosplay nonsense just makes me want to make a really cool Hanar puppet while I wear stage blacks
or maybe have a hanar puppet that I can work while in an Elcor costume
like, ffs, that's the dumbest excuse I've ever heard. I've seen cosplayers do some truly ridiculous things. And if they meant "for professional cosplayers to appear at marketing events," I'm sorry, Horizon Zero Dawn's marketing team hired someone to wear a Watcher at a PAX West one year that I got to see in person. A Watcher is a two-legged one-eyed velociraptor robot. Like, come on, Bioware/EA.
*edit* Freaking Wizards of the Coast's marketing team for Kaladesh got magi-punk Aether robots walking around outside the convention center, don't talk to me about "hurdurr easy for cosplayers"
This is the price you pay for pandering to the base.
I don't think it's pandering to the base so much as limiting the artistic vision to things that are easily marketable.
Isn't that the same thing?
I see how that could be argued, but there's a pretty key distinction. Pandering to the base is giving them what they think they want. If they re-did the ME3 ending in some way, that could be pandering to the base, depending on how it was done. If they released a Tali-centric DLC for the Tali crew on the forums or specific DLC that made specific characters romanceable to different sexualities or just romanceable in general, that would have been pandering to the base.
Limiting the artistic vision to what is easily marketable is changing what you're producing because YOU (or your company) don't think they want that. It's like Steve Jobs said about not liking focus groups to identify what people want from their products: frequently they don't know until you give it to them (no one wanted an iphone until they knew it was a thing they could have, and then everyone wanted one). The change in ammo systems from ME1->ME2 might be an example of this. Even though there are some diehard fans of the ME1 ammo (mostly for lore reasons, I think), ME2 is generally thought to have tighter combat and the tension generated by that choice is a key component of that. People didn't know they wanted it, they got it, and they liked the "better" combat, even if it annoyed them.
Limiting ME:A to Milky Way races (except for the new good guy race and the new bad guy race and the new prothean relics) is a great indication of confusion in design. They wanted to give people "the warm embrace of a familiar brand" and all the old feels, and (maybe correctly) hit on the idea of getting back to exploration and the Undiscovered Country to get some of those ME1 "this is all new" feels...... and then promptly sabotaged that when nothing is new and they force familiar properties to try to hit all the old story beats.
Confused design from the start with over-management from on high trying to make a quick buck.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited February 2021
Problem with the cosplay argument is you also need cool designs. The aliens presented in Andromeda weren't just boring they also looked lame.
Posts
Man my memories of playing Bad Company 2 with war tapes audio suggest otherwise.
Indoors or outdoors, my poor Revenant in Andromeda sounded like someone using a typewriter in another room.
That first round animation pass though? *Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me*
Also worth noting that there's a good deal of extremely subtle retexture mods that actually dramatically improve default Ryder's look. It has less to do with the models themselves and more to do with weirdly uneven coloration in complexion and oddly colored default cosmetics on top of that
I'll never understand why they decided rehashing all of the Milky Way drama should be the bulk of the game's content rather than focusing on the stated premise - finding new habitable planets (with assorted new lifeforms and new civilizations) and building/maintaining/defending colonies on them.
Neither the Angara nor Kett were interesting enough on their own to scratch that itch, IMO. The latter were especially boring as antagonists. I'd much rather have a game where survival and colonial success were the main driving forces than yet another tepid save the world plot.
I want to see what Turians become when the military supremacy they've relied on for centuries is suddenly weakened to the point of irrelevance.
I want to see what Krogans become when they're not whining about other species using them as disposable thugs-for-hire.
I want to see what Quarians become when they're not whining about their lost planet.
I want to see what Batarians become when they no longer have a Glorious Leader™ feeding them nonstop totalitarian propaganda.
Andromeda did have a Force Awakens problem where the species should logically have had different relationships due to their wildly different circumstances, but where shoehorned into having the same relationships as before, presumably out of some misguided appeal to nostalgia. Let's not do that again.
The reason is Paul Marketing desperately trying to undo the PR damage from ME3's ending. It was kind of a big deal as you may recall.
Supposedly the extra interesting Andromeda aliens were cut due to budget and cosplay reasons.
Plus the software development process at Bioware sounds about as half-assed as it's possible to be while still getting things to compile, so that probably didn't help.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Saved games are iffy unless you put them on the cloud.
But all your DLC purchases are tied to your account not console.
On the saved-game side, I'm mainly concerned with having talents unlocked to pick as a bonus ability. Having Decryption and Electronics mean I can play Shepard with mostly whomever I want and not worry about not being able to open doors and more importantly chest.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Oh, I was there for it. And had plenty of arguments with people claiming that the controversy surrounding the trilogy's ending was simply due to people being upset that they didn't get a happy ending.
But, the appeal of Andromeda was that it was set in the ME universe, but its own thing. Instead, it was ME Trilogy Lite - it felt 80% the same, with the remaining 20% being painfully bland and uninspired. It's the Star Trek Voyager of the ME universe.
They compounded one PR nightmare with another, and killed the franchise for a while because of it.
Skill choices in 1 are tied to achievements... maybe. I'm not sure if they programmed it to check for the achievement itself or for a flag on your save file that you'd completed the requirements FOR the achievements. Never had to try that.
The one-two punch of trying to transition to open worlds and trying to transition to Frostbyte, an engine specialized for the Battlefield game series that was ill suited to any game with extensive RPG elements, compounded to make the games' flaws exponentially worse.
The haymaker that follows those punches is the time that is spent on all the transition is used by management as justification for releasing unfinished garbage. With more time the Angara home world could have been built up to previous standards. But all management understood was "We've been in development for over 4 years, we need to release this now!" Technically that was true but in reality most of what's in the game was developed in about 18 months and the lack of polish in every aspect is glaring as all hell.
The Angara's capitol had motionless character models staring at walls and drunk-walking models 3-4 map transitions away from the cantina. It was pathetic.
You need only look at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so see that transitioning a linear game series to an open-ended one can work, but only if you're willing to give your developers the time and budget they need to figure out how to make it work.
From the article
Who gives a shit about cosplay? Do they really think 'how cosplayable is this alien' is going to affect how many people buy the game or its DLC? Of all the stupid things to obsess over.
That's been one of my big complaints about Bioware's handling of the Star Wars property too, how samey all the playable aliens are.
I don't think it's pandering to the base so much as limiting the artistic vision to things that are easily marketable.
I don't mind it being a consideration but it shouldn't be a high ranking one.
I also don't believe them. The game had content cut because they faff'd around with procedural generation bullshit for too long. I don't buy for a second that "b-b-but, um, think of the poor cosplayers!" came into play as anything other than people trying to do last minute CYA.
I have to assume he meant it more in terms of community-based marketing, like having streaming features in a game or console, and not directly pulling in new players.
I'd also say that if you're going to have your RPG be all open world, then you probably shouldn't make nearly every world a barren inhospitable hellscape. You need things to do, places to go, and people to see. If they want to keep with the open world stuff, then they need to try and poach one of the world designers from Bethesda or somewhere. The Fallout and Elder Scrolls games have a whole lot of issues, but they at least manage to create interesting locations with good environmental storytelling.
Or, badassfully, they could be 3 days from retirement.
"Cosplay-safe" sounds like code for "easier to animate with our limited development tools" than anything else.
Isn't that the same thing?
Bitterly, I'm still sore we never got an Elcor multiplayer character who was basically a tank.
Coquettishly: Subs can check out my revealing new elcor cosplay rig.
This seems less to do with BioWare's strengths and capabilities and more to do with production/management woes, given how they still ended up creating Dragon Age Inquisition in spite of its technical shitshow, a literal GOTY award-winner and plenty beloved RPG. I don't necessarily care for its open world format personally but there is a significant community out there that does
People make much noise about BioWare no longer being staffed by the storytellers of yore. Who's to say that the newer people they pick up moving forward aren't capable of nurturing a great open-world story within the right production conditions
or maybe have a hanar puppet that I can work while in an Elcor costume
like, ffs, that's the dumbest excuse I've ever heard. I've seen cosplayers do some truly ridiculous things. And if they meant "for professional cosplayers to appear at marketing events," I'm sorry, Horizon Zero Dawn's marketing team hired someone to wear a Watcher at a PAX West one year that I got to see in person. A Watcher is a two-legged one-eyed velociraptor robot. Like, come on, Bioware/EA.
*edit* Freaking Wizards of the Coast's marketing team for Kaladesh got magi-punk Aether robots walking around outside the convention center, don't talk to me about "hurdurr easy for cosplayers"
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
I see how that could be argued, but there's a pretty key distinction. Pandering to the base is giving them what they think they want. If they re-did the ME3 ending in some way, that could be pandering to the base, depending on how it was done. If they released a Tali-centric DLC for the Tali crew on the forums or specific DLC that made specific characters romanceable to different sexualities or just romanceable in general, that would have been pandering to the base.
Limiting the artistic vision to what is easily marketable is changing what you're producing because YOU (or your company) don't think they want that. It's like Steve Jobs said about not liking focus groups to identify what people want from their products: frequently they don't know until you give it to them (no one wanted an iphone until they knew it was a thing they could have, and then everyone wanted one). The change in ammo systems from ME1->ME2 might be an example of this. Even though there are some diehard fans of the ME1 ammo (mostly for lore reasons, I think), ME2 is generally thought to have tighter combat and the tension generated by that choice is a key component of that. People didn't know they wanted it, they got it, and they liked the "better" combat, even if it annoyed them.
Limiting ME:A to Milky Way races (except for the new good guy race and the new bad guy race and the new prothean relics) is a great indication of confusion in design. They wanted to give people "the warm embrace of a familiar brand" and all the old feels, and (maybe correctly) hit on the idea of getting back to exploration and the Undiscovered Country to get some of those ME1 "this is all new" feels...... and then promptly sabotaged that when nothing is new and they force familiar properties to try to hit all the old story beats.
Confused design from the start with over-management from on high trying to make a quick buck.