Mass Effect Andromeda

[Blarghagh]

Finally took a look at this because there were so many complaints about the animation and I'm not sure how this isn't par for the course for BioWare.

[algroth]

Sry, wrong thread.

Edited March 24, 2017 by algroth

[Hurlshort]

 

Actually I kind of like the idea that a good studio is freed up to create new IP's while established franchises are continued on with a group that is still trying to earn their stripes. Particularly when the original trilogy was wrapped up pretty neatly (regardless of whether you liked it.) Obviously this is going to mean the franchise may take a nose dive, but it is also going to mean we get more new properties.

 

The execution may be flawed, but the model seems very reasonable.

Freed up?  Or forced?  Coming up with idea after idea constantly is going to lead to burnout.  Plus, wouldn't you want to work on and build up your own ideas rather than have them thrown over to other people the moment they have any success?  Obsidian have made a big deal out of how PoE 2 is the first time they have been able to work on a sequel to their own work, and it seems a big deal to them.  Also, more properties does not equal good properties, this model is not good for creativity. 

 

 

That's not what happened with Mass Effect at all though. Bioware Edmonton spent about 10 years working through the original trilogy. That is a tremendous amount of time to devote to one project. The idea that they are expected to spend another decade churning out more sequels seems fairly stifling. I doubt you will find any developers that want to devote 20 years of their life working on the same IP. That is way more likely to lead to burnout.

 

I mean, really, you think people burn out because they have to work on a diverse and varied portfolio of projects? 

[Valmy]

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.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Valmy

[Raithe]

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.

 

It does have a bit of an awkward pacing. The first 10-15 hours of it is pretty much that big opening sprawl of introduction and showing off gaming mechanics and initial lore and setting out the situation. It's that "First planet - prologue: Becoming the special one", then "This is your Hub" followed by "This is your ship and companions" then the "This is the 2nd planet and you'll find out what it means to be a pathfinder ; plus story stuff" kind of run.

 

Then it proceeds to introduce you to the native intelligent species and you start to get a few choices of where you go in the cluster over the next 5 or so hours. You get the final companion as part of that process. I think the game stats have that at about the 25-30% mark done?  For all they've gone on about the exploration side and flying around the galaxy, there aren't really that many options once you get past the flying back and forth between 3 planets and the hub for that first quarter of the game.

 

I'm enjoying it as it goes, but there are a fair few niggling things that I'm having to ignore and rely on the good bits to balance out the rough spots. The first loyalty mission I did was definitely a highlight of the story/mission design I've seen so far.

 

The one thing that annoys my minor OCD is the amount of "Task: XXX" missions that get tagged into your journal. They aren't important per se, and about half of them are the "Collect X variety of thing or such" without any map points to aim for. And a few variants that require you to find and scan 3 or 5 of the same items across multiple enemy camps to be able to decipher/triangulate or such.... the problem being none of those camps are marked in the wilderness and it seems that its a random chance that the item you need to scan will appear in any camps you do find. So lots of just driving around the wilderness hoping to find the damn unmarked camps. However, supposedly, doing some of those Tasks will result in reduced difficulty for certain specific missions that you have to do as part of the main plot.

[Valmy]

Sounds like trying to find the minerals in ME1.

[the_dog_days]

Sounds like trying to find the minerals in ME1.

Yep. Pretty much the same thing.

[Valmy]

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.

[213374U]

Does anyone know if the APEX strike teams do something for SP? I'm running them constantly from the app because the currency you get from that is necessary to purchase stuff in MP, but I'd like to know if you actually need to do something with them in SP.

 

The missions are returning a lot of loot, along with research points and minerals. That's probably a good thing because I won't have to bother looking for elfroot, but not so good in the sense that I probably have much better equipment than I'm supposed to. I just got a Reegar Carbine from a gold lootbox and it just melts faces. And I'm playing on Insanity...

[GhostofAnakin]

If you decide to play those strike missions in MP, do you join someone's game or do you have to invite other players to join yours, in order to play through and complete the objectives?

[Raithe]

As far as I know, the Apex Strike Missions are just a little extra hard for better rewards compared to the normal Strike Missions. They're all basically a fluffy reason for the multiplayer, and simply give you the option to use the fluff of them with the single-player game.

 

Also I believe it's set up so you can "seamlessly" go from single-player to multiplayer within the game, or at least, that's the theory they gave. Mechanically, there's no connection to any of the story.

 

Edit:

You get the option to host or join someone else who has hosted it. You get people playing the MP side will create the matches because Apex Missions give greater rewards, but do something like boost the damage of the enemies (or something along those lines) that increase the difficulty.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Raithe

[GhostofAnakin]

Hmm.  Not sure I like that "higher difficulty" thing in MP.  I remember playing at higher difficulties in ME3 MP.  It was okay as long as you had 3 other players who knew what they were doing and didn't bail as soon as it got tough, but far too often you'd either be stuck with players who sucked or who would quit mid-game and force you to take on hordes of enemies either by yourself or with one other person who didn't quit the lobby.

[213374U]

As far as I know, the Apex Strike Missions are just a little extra hard for better rewards compared to the normal Strike Missions. They're all basically a fluffy reason for the multiplayer, and simply give you the option to use the fluff of them with the single-player game.

 

Also I believe it's set up so you can "seamlessly" go from single-player to multiplayer within the game, or at least, that's the theory they gave. Mechanically, there's no connection to any of the story.

 

Thanks, this is what I wanted to know. So nothing like in ME3 where it boosted your War Assets and Galactic Readiness to affect the endings, then? Just loot. Looks like they learned their lesson in that regard at least, then.

 

Re: difficulty. They aren't necessarily harder, rather they have specific modifiers. For instance, one is IIRC -50% weapon damage/+100% melee damage. If you have a melee build this actually makes the match easier.

 

I don't recommend attempting any but the APEX Bronze missions yourself, unless you have friends you can play them with. The random lobbies are filled with people obviously taking advantage of the "seamless transition" mentioned by Raithe, with level 1 characters and starter weapons... on silver and gold.

[GhostofAnakin]

The "tasks" in ME:A are feeling a lot like the various side quests in Dragon Age Inquisition.  There's a lot of them, but they're so mundane it's more tedious than fun.

 

As someone who's kind of a completionist, it sucks for me because I'm compelled to do them even if I don't really want to.

[majestic]

The game essentially *is* Mass Effect: Inquisition. Same engine branch, very similar controls, same pseudo-open world design, same quest structure... just everything less polished and with worse faces.

[GhostofAnakin]

The game essentially *is* Mass Effect: Inquisition. Same engine branch, very similar controls, same pseudo-open world design, same quest structure... just everything less polished and with worse faces.

 

It's crazy how bad the faces are in this game.  It's like BioWare actually made them worse than in their previous games.

 

When manly Cassandra suddenly looks like a supermodel in comparison, you know your facial animators did a poor job.

[HoonDing]

Ugly minor characters and minor NPCs is alright, in Witcher 3 everyone looked like a potato too.

 

Main characters, not so much

[Orogun01]

The game essentially *is* Mass Effect: Inquisition. Same engine branch, very similar controls, same pseudo-open world design, same quest structure... just everything less polished and with worse faces.

Maybe I remember it wrong but I don't recall Inquisition having such an inventory limit. Particularly one so low that forces you limit your weapon and armor options. Plus the stacking is so archaic that I actually can't figure out which items take an inventory slot and which don't. I smell bug here, but I might be giving the designers to much credit. Maybe they decided that your inventory filling with 40 something useless items was a good idea.

 

Edit: Ok, so I just confirmed that you can only use 3 active abilities per profile. With this the only thing I could defend about this game is gone; story is bad, animations are bad, gameplay is bad, game is bad.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Orogun01

[GhostofAnakin]

So I just came across that new species (won't name them to avoid spoilers).  How lazy is BioWare?  They've got Quarian legs with faces that look like they came out of the movie Avatar.

 

Honest question: how big was the actual budget on this game?  The character models look like the type you'd find in games with almost no budget that you find in the bargain bin, not an AAA title.

[Orogun01]

So I just came across that new species (won't name them to avoid spoilers).  How lazy is BioWare?  They've got Quarian legs with faces that look like they came out of the movie Avatar.

 

Honest question: how big was the actual budget on this game?  The character models look like the type you'd find in games with almost no budget that you find in the bargain bin, not an AAA title.

The females actually look the worst.

[Flouride]

I'm sure we have all seen this, but it is a classic, though scratch off the "some years from now" part as I feel it has already happened.  Bioware now is either just a skin EA puts on now and again or the dead body has been turned into a puppet that EA controls by ramming its arm up its arse.  Elbow.  Deep.

 

 

 

 

 

It all started when they opened up a bunch of new BioWare offices around North America. I think they closed the one which was supposed to work on Command&Conquer games. Austin studio is working on SWTOR (which really didn't succeed as well as they wanted) and now their Montreal studio ****ed up completely with their biggest IP.

Casual gamers don't know the difference between BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Montreal, they see the label BioWare. By naming these other subpar studios as BioWare they've started to destroy the name and expectations people have for BioWare.

Like Dragon Age 2 and the stupid ending in Mass Effect 3 weren't enough for people stop paying for their games (I haven't played Dragon Age: Inquisition).

[Flouride]

 

 

I have this pathological need to entertain all viewpoints, even the extremely stupid ones. If you watched only the first 40 or so seconds, you missed a few gems. He says that ugly main characters make Bioware sex scenes awkward to watch. Yeah, he went there.

 

He's also pretty sure that an ugly Ryder would be more likely to end up hooking up with the turian because he or she would be "out of options".

 

That being said, I find it hard to dispute that Bioware is a company that has for a long time now committed to pushing the "SJW" (ugh) agenda, and that ugly characters are ugly by design. For instance, Liam is a rather good looking lad. And BroRyder, while not Dutch underwear model-level hot, isn't fugly and at least resembles the model they supposedly based his likeness on. So it's not that Frostbite cannot render pretty characters or that artists are unable to model them.

 

The reasons why they went this route are anyone's guess, but it pays to remember that Bioware simply cannot win. Remember the derision when they touched up Ashley for ME3? DA2 Isabela? Heh.

 

 

The guy is obnoxious and his points quite stupid... He should have chosen his words more wisely because he has a point there. BioWare uglied up the female character on purpose if those shots from Pre Day 1 patch are actually legit. Why would they do that?

That new model looks very weird. I'm not saying ugly, but she looks very un-humanlike to my eyes. Something is just really off with that character model  and they probably didn't do enough Q&A to test out that new head model.

[213374U]

 

 

Sigh.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Raise a glass for the company that brought us Baldur's Gate 2, because Bioware is dead. In terminal condition at least as of Dragon Age 2, the patient has finally kicked the bucket. Overdosed on the drug of mediocrity. 

 

Let's all take our hats off and have a moment of silence for our fallen friend.

 

Edited March 26, 2017 by Drowsy Emperor

[SonicMage117]

I have Mass Effect 2 and have yet to play it lol Never played a Mass Effect game before. Too many rpg's, too little time I guess.