In our review of Mass Effect: Andromeda, we said “What’s bizarre is that BioWare took the trouble to send us 2.5 million light years away to introduce just two new alien races (plus a few robots) over over 50 hours of campaign and main side missions and only one location will join your crew. “This was apparently not the original plan, and many of the Andromeda developers recently spoke to TheGamer to discuss why these new alien species never made it to the final game.
“I think it was a project that could not have lived up to expectations,” said Neil Pollner, who was a senior writer for Mass Effect 3 and wrote parts of Andromeda. “Not just the high standard of the original trilogy, but the logical expectations that anyone would have of Mass Effect going to a new galaxy. Because the scope of [the first] Mass Effect was so incredibly big, there was an inherent promise that you would have a massive new experience with a ton of new things in [what was supposed to be the first] Mass Effect Andromeda – new species, new knowledge, a whole new galaxy at your fingertips, etc.
“But we only received the budget for two new species, plus the remainder. Not to mention that we couldn’t even include all the species in the Milky Way. And we wouldn’t be able to let them travel across the galaxy. This meant that we had to develop the story around some very striking inorganic limitations. So, not only did you get something that looked (and was) much smaller than what you had before, almost all players probably had something they really liked about Mass Effect that just didn’t exist. “Pollner continued to discuss how they had big plans in pre-production, including expanding the “first contact” experience with new aliens, but most of that work was not even used.
Chris Hepler, another longtime writer for Mass Effect, discussed how he proposed five or six new alien species, and former Bioware writer Jo Berry also introduced some that “were incredible.”
Dorian Kieken, who was the design director for the franchise at the beginning of Andromeda’s development, explained that some of the early alien concepts were “quite widespread” and that they were cut because one of Mass Effect Andromeda’s goals was to make it easier for fans to do cosplay of the game characters.
“One of the strengths of the original Mass Effect trilogy is that you can actually cosplay most of the alien characters – except Hanar, although I don’t underestimate the creativity of some cosplayers,” said Kieken. “The intention in Mass Effect Andromeda was introducing new races that would still be in the realm of cosplay, which is probably why more crazy concepts have been abandoned. “
Kieken even said that the two alien races that managed to get into Andromeda gradually moved into “cosplay-safe territory”, with the team trying to avoid “jellyfish” alien types.
While some of these designs can be expected to make it to the next Mass Effect project, fans of the series can look forward to interacting with the original set of aliens in the legendary edition of Mass Effect in May.
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Adam Bankhurst is an IGN news writer. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.