http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428

It seems a lot of the problems consumers had with Andromeda were a direct cause of the game's rough development cycle. I'm including some choice sentences and quotes.

The development of Andromeda was turbulent and troubled, marred by a director change, multiple major re-scopes, an understaffed animation team, technological challenges, communication issues, politics, a compressed timeline, and brutal crunch.

Mass Effect: Andromeda was in development for five years, but by most accounts, BioWare built the bulk of the game in less than 18 months.

Over the past few years, one of BioWare’s biggest obstacles has also become one of EA’s favorite buzzwords: Frostbite, a video game engine. “It’s been painful,” said a developer. “The pain started with Dragon Age: Inquisition and continued on with Andromeda as well.”

Andromeda original concept for the game's exploration was vastly different. Hundreds of procedurally generated worlds, very similar to No Man's Sky, it seems they couldn't get it to work.

“The concept sounds awesome,” said a person who worked on the game. “No Man’s Sky with BioWare graphics and story, that sounds amazing.”

First, word came down that they were moving from hundreds of procedurally generated planets to 30. Some time later, that number shifted again, from 30 to seven, according to several sources.

Many of the gameplay mechanics—the combat, the multiplayer, the driving—were on time and proceeding smoothly. Those weren’t touched by the rescope. But the content—the story, the levels, the cinematics—was way behind schedule after Andromeda’s messy pre-production cycle.

“What you see [in the final game] is writing that has been done in the past two years rather than the full five years of writing,”

Almost every Andromeda developer who spoke to me for this story said the bulk of the game was developed during that final stretch, from the end of 2015 to March 2017.

A result of this backloaded development was a whole lot of nights and weekends at the office. Several people told me that the last year and a half of Andromeda was the worst crunch they’ve ever faced.

These quotes are just some of the highlights. I encourage you to read the article if you want to learn more. It's a great read.

Looks like there is already a topic about this article from a few minutes before yours, so I'll lock this to keep all the comments in one place.