"I have no idea how they let this one out the door..."
End of the quarter is two weeks away. EA needed the revenue bump in the earning report this quarter. It is sad that stock market issues drive release decisions.
But things like pathfinding and game mechanics are / should be amongst the first things they make for a game like this, even before deciding and developing a visual style / graphics and sound and the like. So rushing on developing / polishing pathfinding doesn't make sense to me.
End of the quarter is two weeks away. EA needed the revenue bump in the earning report this quarter. It is sad that stock market issues drive release decisions.