Ex-Mass Effect Devs Criticize Nightingale's "Excessive Open World"

Inflexion Games, the studio helmed by former BioWare leads, is significantly overhauling its open-world survival crafting game, Nightingale. This follows feedback indicating the game needs substantial improvements. Read on for details on the planned updates and the developers' candid assessment.

Former Mass Effect Developers Address Nightingale's Shortcomings

Summer Update Promises Major Changes

Aaryn Flynn and Neil Thomson, key figures at Inflexion Games, recently released a YouTube video detailing Nightingale's upcoming transformation. They openly admitted dissatisfaction with the game's current state, player count, and overall reception since its February early access launch. A major update, slated for late summer, aims to rectify these issues.

Flynn directly addressed the concerns: "We are not satisfied with where the game is at, we're not satisfied with the overall sentiment, we're not satisfied with our player numbers." While initial efforts focused on bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements (including the highly-requested offline mode), the team is now prioritizing a return to their original vision.

Thomson highlighted a key problem: the game's open-world design. He described it as "almost too open world, too self-motivated in terms of goal-setting." The upcoming update will introduce more structure, clearer progression paths, defined objectives, and improved realm design to combat the reported repetitiveness.

"We do love the game very much, but we do think there's a lot of room to improve it," Flynn stated. The planned improvements include a stronger sense of player progression, clearer understanding of in-game mechanics, and more distinct realm identities. The team is also re-evaluating core game elements and will increase build limits for more complex structures. Previews of these changes are expected in the coming weeks.

Despite currently holding "Mixed" reviews on Steam, positive reviews are steadily increasing, with approximately 68% of recent reviews being positive. Flynn and Thomson expressed appreciation for player feedback and support. Flynn concluded, "We played this new version really recently, and there's still a bit more work to do, but I think it's elevated it quite a bit, but obviously you'll all be the judge of that when we bring this thing out."

Game8 shares similar concerns regarding Nightingale's lack of guidance and overly complex crafting systems. For a more detailed analysis, check out our full review.