Lead designer for Mass Effect: Andromeda, Ian Frazier, spoke recently with IB Times about working on the AAA sci-fi RPG epic with the rest of the BioWare team. However, part of the conversation veered into territory about the criticisms and feedback coming from the hardcore gaming community, and Frazier described it as being like a punch to the gut.

According to Frazier…

“As far as my personal reaction. I won’t speak for the other guys, but I spent quite a bit of my time on Twitter and various forums and such. And I won’t lie, it’s hard. It’s hard to see the criticisms, some of the challenges that are out there. “It’s difficult because we do want to help, so you’re out on Twitter and forums and stuff trying to troubleshoot issues or give people a hint on something they’re struggling with. But to do that, to help the fans and try to absorb the feedback to better steer what we do next, you have to wade through a lot of crap. And that part is not a lot of fun”

The criticisms for Mass Effect: Andromeda centered around the fact that the game couldn’t even measure up to the technical performance or standards set by the decade old Mass Effect 1. These issues combined with a lot of the typical SJW talking points embedded into the story, and poor dialogue, left a lot to be desired, and plenty of people bummed about the newest entry in the Mass Effect franchise.

Frazier notes that he didn’t enjoy the “gut punch” when reality hit him hard, but it did help them get some insight into what it is they needed to address…

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t enjoy the occasional gut punch, but on balance I think it’s really valuable that things have gone this way. Our ability to get feedback from fans on such a broad spectrum is great.”

BioWare closed down the forums on their own site, but a lot of fans migrated elsewhere, so they’ve had to go searching for feedback through the noisy and incomprehensible clutter of Twitter and Facebook.

BioWare has already released a patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda addressing the dead fish-eye effect and the body movements for some of the dialogue sequences for a few of the characters. However, they note that over the course of the next two months they’ll be fixing more of the characters’ faces and the poor lighting, graphics and animations as well. There’s no word on if they’ll also fix the awkward dialogue.

Maybe for the next BioWare outing they’ll actually make the game better than a decade old title and Frazier won’t have to worry about feeling like he got punched in the gut. Also, there’s still no ETA on when they’re going to add fair-skinned customization options so you can make light-skinned Asians and Caucasians/whites.