Valmy

Heh remember when Obsidian came under attack for something one of the backers wrote in some obscure corner of Pillars of Eternity? Gaming is a pretty toxic environment right now.

Bioware is being led by morons from other EA divisions now who are not even RPG people. So there is that.

I am comforted by the fact that by the time I get around to it, it will likely be fixed for the most part.

Their forums were horrid. The gaming community became a better place when they shut down. Yeah this is definitely a 'wait for the patches' title. One really nice thing about Andromeda is that there is not a ton of DLC to get for it. Yet anyway. The usual torrent of day 1 DLC did not materialize.

I don't think 40 million goes as far as some people think. I mean Wticher 3 cost twice that and I presume things cost less in Poland than they do in Montreal. I am frankly a little surprised a title in the Mass Effect series would have such a small budget. Remember each of those voice actors alone costs like 800 dollars an hour or something. Actually I am more than a little surprised. I am shocked EA wouldn't put something like 150 million into a title like this. That seems to be more in line with what most big budget AAA titles are running these days. Is Mass Effect not the big mainstream title I though it was? Was EA just trying to throw a title out there on the cheap?

EA certainly had that philosophy on display when they made Bio make DA2 and ME3 on such comically short development cycles. I think Skyrim changed all that. Now that everything has to involve collecting stuff for crafting systems in a vast open world games take forever to make now.

They probably save a pretty penny on not having to licence an engine, since they used Frostbite Does it really cost that much to license an engine these days?

I don't know if EA is really the great generous overlord they could be. I mean MEA only had a budget of 40 million? For a big AAA title that is pretty middling.

Ok on this point, at least, we can all agree.

That is kind of funny. I remember joking that with the endless slog of exploring wilderness zones in DAI, Bioware was returning to its Baldur's Gate roots. I guess Mass Effect is returning to its roots as well.

Sounds like trying to find the minerals in ME1.

I have heard that the quality is rather uneven. The first few hours are pretty weak and then it gets good...or at least much better. Anybody playing this want to chime in? I would feel a bit more optimistic if that were true.

Why not?

I think I know what they will say. They were forced to make ME3 and DA2 in absurdly short development times all while undergoing a major re-organization. That would take the fun out of it for anybody.

Ah well I was worried that political stuff might be part of it. I try to do my best to ignore that crap. Does it have more problems than Inquisition did? I heard that alot of this game was made by that new Montreal studio so maybe so.

I wish I was an investor. Nah it is just that I backed it on Fig.

With the understanding you are being a bit sarcastic here I just want to say: Nah it will be mediocre sequels for the forseeable future (though they are making a new IP of some kind right? Nothing I am that excited about). They are being led by generic suits now from other companies and the strong leadership of the Doctors was necessary for them to do what they did in the past. All not buying their games will do is kill the division entirely by their corporate masters. I don't know I feel like even in their decadence they are worth keeping around. But we will see if I feel differently after playing this latest offering.

Having seen some streamers stream this thing it looks about on the quality I have come to expect from Bioware so why people are all freaking out about this thing when they were cool with Inquisition I find odd. I will get it eventually and play it through once. It looks alright. But then animations and big time graphics are not really something I care about that much. KOTOR still looks good to me.

Hey I do have a fancy badge now. Nice!

To answer the OP: Not really. This is not a mainstream type of title. Which is fine by me. Skyrim, which I enjoyed, has pretty much ruined mainstream RPGs this decade. Pity.

I play Bioware games now primarily for the voice actors and their performances these days. For whatever reason they seem to do a really good job at getting great performances and I really enjoy it. But damn DAI was a chore. So much filler stuff I had to put up with. I am going to get and play Andromeda eventually, with EA games you have to wait awhile to get past all the promotional stuff and for all the DLC to come out so you get the whole game, but I cringe when I hear they are bringing in more open world concepts. I hope it is not as sprawlingly full of boring stuff like DAI was.

I would love to play a RPG someday where the whole plot and parts of the world you explore are radically different depending on the choices you make in the game. I know that is so impractical it would never happen, at least not with any production values, but I think that would be amazing.

I really liked the old health system. I thought it was pretty intuitive, I thought it was a great way to make sure you didn't just reload everytime somebody went down. I would prefer that when somebody goes to zero health the consequences would be more severe than 'OMG YOU NEED TO REST RIGHT NOW' and then when you do everything is cool. But since that very rarely happened I cannot complain too much.

I would like a Valian of some sort. So I guess that is a boring human.

Ah well hopefully they have interesting things to say.