Mass Effect Andromeda

[GhostofAnakin]

Yeah, ME3 had some flaws, but it was about what you could have asked for as a final chapter up until the final "end run".  Hell, one could argue it was still on its way to a satisfying ending after your confrontation with the Illusive Man.  It was after that, and resulting "red, blue green" options, that took the game in a direction that was just inanely stupid, and seemed to crap on everything you did up to that point.

[Sarex]

[HoonDing]

Till this day I still believe that legion was the first geth to gain its own "soul"

[majestic]

Yeah, ME3 had some flaws, but it was about what you could have asked for as a final chapter up until the final "end run".  Hell, one could argue it was still on its way to a satisfying ending after your confrontation with the Illusive Man.  It was after that, and resulting "red, blue green" options, that took the game in a direction that was just inanely stupid, and seemed to crap on everything you did up to that point.

 

The sad part is that it would have been enough, after the Illusive Man (oh, by the way, VERY original to have him indoctrinated at the end, Cerberus worked well enough as a white human power group without the reaper bull****), to have Shepard reach the Crucible controls and with his dying breath activate the sequence to emit a singal through the mass relays that simply turns off the Reapers or interrupts the technology. The silly war asset and galactic war readiness score could have had an effect on how much damage the Reapers caused and it could have been talked about in an ending slide or two.

 

I think there was a fan edit of the ending where Shepard just rides the elevator up and then immediately switches to the destroy ending without talking about how it will also kill the Geth and EDI in the process. That worked reasonably well. Except for the mass relay boom thing. I guess someone at Bioware had recently read Hyperion. Whatever.

[majestic]

Till this day I still believe that legion was the first geth to gain its own "soul"

 

Some say you aren't born with a soul, but you have to earn it through hardship and pain.

 

[213374U]

Sure, you can do that, but it removes one important part of the ending. Being part of the game before that. For all of Bioware's faults, Mass Effect 3 was, up until the last segment on the Citadel, pretty much perfect space opera, and for the better part they managed to have wonderful payoffs for those who played all the other games and imported their characters.

 

Things like fostering peace between the Geth and the Quarians after learning it wasn't as clear cut as the tired old AI uprising plot.

The Tuchanka and Rannoch arcs were definitely the high points of the game. Not just the way the plots are finally resolved, but also the ways they could resolve, based on decisions you made in ME1 and 2. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how dark the tone was if Wrex had died in ME1 -- the genophage turned out to be the right call.

 

However, side by side, you have the completely nonsensical Cerberus "coup" which was a leftover of a plot that saw the organization as Reaper puppets, the laughably bad dream sequences, the whole "help the krogans so they help the turians so they help the humans...", the entire first act whose only saving grace was the "leaving Earth" scene, the canned prothean that was supposed to have been the Catalyst but ended up as a narrative stump, and other things I'm probably forgetting.

 

If they had had time to treat the game in its entirety as those two plot arcs, ME3 would have been a completely different game. Alas, 'twas not to be.

 

Still a good game, though.

Edited March 27, 2017 by 213374U

[majestic]

 

What is it with these people? I mean he has a point here and there but demonstrating that you're too dumb to actually play a really simplified game (yeah, what are strike teams, what are cryo pods? It's not like the game tells you these things, dumbass) and fawning over Male!Shep's voice acting (wow, for real?) just craps over his points in a non-flattering manner. Hard to take him seriously.

 

I mean, what ARE strike teams? Not like the stupid Turian next to you explains that. In very simple sentences. *sigh*

 

edit:

 

Oh, and the hilarious part where he calls the female Krogan a "guy" who doesn't at all sound like he expected "him" to sound? Dude! Awesome.

 

 

Sure, you can do that, but it removes one important part of the ending. Being part of the game before that. For all of Bioware's faults, Mass Effect 3 was, up until the last segment on the Citadel, pretty much perfect space opera, and for the better part they managed to have wonderful payoffs for those who played all the other games and imported their characters.

 

Things like fostering peace between the Geth and the Quarians after learning it wasn't as clear cut as the tired old AI uprising plot.

Still a good game, though.

 

Oh, I really tried to untangle my thoughts of the ending with the rest of the game, because the rest is actually quite good and pretty much perfect at times. It's just really hard to do, and I find myself unable to really replay it. Or try the DLCs. I still have an achievemnt or two to do like reaching maximum level and the DLC ones but I, uhm, don't really have the heart to. Blargh.

Edited March 27, 2017 by majestic

[Malcador]

At least the Reapers were considerate to wait around for you to get things ready. One silly downside to games with an invasion as a backdrop, granted.

[Darkpriest]

Hah. I was looking for any official forums for the game. Now I know why they removed Bioware forums last year. It would be set ablaze :D

[Zoraptor]

I'd definitely add K** L*** to the list of bad bits of ME3. Just dreadfully executed. I can see what they were thinking but just chucking that character out there and saying "he's cool! and dangerous!! and he'll kill a tier 2 friend who'd already dying then later beat you in a cutscene no matter how badly you're roflstomping him" is pretty indicative of the worst aspects of Bioware's storytelling. Much as with the catalyst, and the ending, if you've set them up over the course of the three games per Rannoch and Tuchanka then you can end up with a good pay off- or at least an understandable one- instead of having them all pulled from the posterior in the last game. The ending is, basically, the ending to Deus Ex after all, and they had a prime opportunity to introduce the concept of the catalyst in the first game when you meet that Prothean encyclopaedia. Or any time at all in ME2.

 

Pretty pointless criticising it anyway, it is what it is; it's just more annoying than if it were wholesale rubbish because those mistakes were easy to avoid and it should have been better. Gues it's a bit more constructive than complaining about dlc costs at least.

[Orogun01]

 

 

 

Faces seem to have more diversity meaning there's good and bad in them.

 

Until you realize every asari (except for one) has the exact same face with slightly different color. Good luck in-seeing that, because once I noticed now it makes it impossible for me not to think of them all as the same character in different costumes.

 

 

That's actually kind of a problem for all the ME games...and for all races, actually. The party members of those alien races look unique enough, but everyone else looks more or less the same outside of a few minor exceptions.

 

 

It was a problem in ME before hand.  I've only met a couple of Asari and one or two Turians so far in ME:A and they seemed distincter to me in there than in ME1-3.

 

Sorry but i'm going to call bull on that, Asari faces had at least 4 or 5 different models in the original trilogy. 

 

Andromeda is literally the same face model...and it's not a good looking one, looks like a pudgy ceramic doll.

[Orogun01]

I'm in the planet with the Outcasts (can't pronounce the name..Kadarsomething or some such) and just got to the club. I don't know if it was by design or what but every dancer seems to be male but the dance moves are definitely female...it just feels like I walked in the wrong club or something. There is at least one Asari dancer, but you never really know with those.

[the_dog_days]

I'm in the planet with the Outcasts (can't pronounce the name..Kadarsomething or some such) and just got to the club. I don't know if it was by design or what but every dancer seems to be male but the dance moves are definitely female...it just feels like I walked in the wrong club or something. There is at least one Asari dancer, but you never really know with those.

 

What threw me was that many of the dancers were in full armor. Super sexy.

[the_dog_days]

 

 

 

 

Faces seem to have more diversity meaning there's good and bad in them.

 

Until you realize every asari (except for one) has the exact same face with slightly different color. Good luck in-seeing that, because once I noticed now it makes it impossible for me not to think of them all as the same character in different costumes.

 

 

That's actually kind of a problem for all the ME games...and for all races, actually. The party members of those alien races look unique enough, but everyone else looks more or less the same outside of a few minor exceptions.

 

 

It was a problem in ME before hand.  I've only met a couple of Asari and one or two Turians so far in ME:A and they seemed distincter to me in there than in ME1-3.

 

Sorry but i'm going to call bull on that, Asari faces had at least 4 or 5 different models in the original trilogy. 

 

Andromeda is literally the same face model...and it's not a good looking one, looks like a pudgy ceramic doll.

 

 

^ Gets it. Saw a gif where there are something like six asari walking together and they all as the same default face.

[Lexx]

To me it feels like ME:A had been given way too little money and time.

Lots of the stuff that I see people criticize appears to be elements that still could have been polished with more time.

[the_dog_days]

As much as I'd like to blame EA, this game has 40 mil, a five year developmental cycle, and it honestly looks like many of the in world assets are reused from DIA. How much money and time does should it take to make this game? For any normal studio I would expect the title, as it stands today, to need another year to get it into a playable state but with these guys it might take two and a half. With all they had going for it, BioWare should've settled for the level and game size of ME2 or 3. 

[Humanoid]

ME3's ending was awful, but I never got to that point. It's not the reason I hate ME3.

 

Kai Leng was idiotic, but I never got to the point where you meet him. It's not the reason I hate ME3.

 

The about-faces on the Genophage and the Rachni queen were lazy and cynical but I never got to either of those points. They're not the reason I hate ME3.

 

No, the game had completely fallen apart well before then. Right from the start of the game, it barrages you with rapid-fire idiocy, from the extraordinarily contrived tribunal scene ("we fight or we die!"), said tribunal being very conveniently wiped out, some kid dying, the MacGuffin for saving the universe being oh-so-very-conveniently located on the planet next door, two nonsensical dream sequences, then irrationally telling you you're in the right for demanding the Turians drop everything in their defense of their homeworld so they can help Earth. It was at that point I'd had utterly enough and quit the game in a fit of rage, never to return to it. This "EARTH EARTH EARTH" appeal to blind "patriotism" in a crudely cynical pitch to the brodude CoD audience destroyed Mass Effect as a franchise.

 

 

P.S. I did watch the rest of the game unfold, painfully, on YouTube, and I consider my decision to cut my losses fully vindicated. All the decision points were fully predictable in such a way that the lawful good choice always resulted in the best outcome, as long as you always chose the blindly idealistic option you'd come out on top. All up, a complete waste of money, and comfortably one of the trinity of worst games I've had the misfortune to purchase (the other two being Oblivion and Call to Power).

[SonicMage117]

You guys are really making me want to delve into Mass Effect 2....

 

I love space pigs, interstellar travel and rpg's... sometimes I question myself to why I still haven't played it. No, seriously I question myself - as in talking to myself out loud.

 

Is it as good as Kotor 1&2? You can be honest, I can take it!

[Humanoid]

It's better than KoTOR, at least in terms of my personal preferences. Which is to say, I don't like Star Wars, and I don't like having to manage party members. (It does have party members, but for the most part they're completely autonomous and out of your field of view, so you can pretend they're not there)

 

ME2's overarching plot is kinda dumb, especially for those who played ME1 first (I played them in reverse order) but the smaller-scale stuff is generally pretty well-done. But the same can be said for KoTOR so I'm not going to bother splitting them there.

[Raithe]

I think the thing that gets me is that ME:Andromeda is full of interesting concepts and "could have worked" elements that for some reason are just... mishandled or not developed out, or generally executed in a way that doesn't quite work. I can understand how resources need to be managed during game development, but they laid the groundwork and ideas and then did nothing (or didn't do it that great).

 

The idea that as you increase viability throughout the Cluster and find resources that the Nexus will grow and change. You get to choose which Cryo-Pods are woken up in order and depending on which you get mechanical boosts via Military/Science/Commerce but no actual fluff, its purely a mechanical number resource rather than having an in-game/universe effect. Although you had the trailer hype about the Nexus growing and constructing, that turns out to purely have been the in-universe Andromeda Initiative stuff and not actual game elements.  There are basically two Nexus you have : The dark version when Hyperion arrives that's half shut down, then the "turned on" version after you put that first Outpost on Eos. I mean sure, as you locate other Arks and encounter the Angara you get a few more people and races wandering around and several overheard conversations change or such, but that's it. The maps and look stays the same. There's no change to the visuals of it.

 

Outposts - On the one hand, that very first outpost has a few interesting aspects in the sense that you start it up and it's in one condition, you get a few quests related to troubles they're having or ways you can help out. Then after travelling around the cluster you return and get a nice bit about how the colony has developed while you've been away (both the outpost and the planet itself).  But then that never happens with any of the other outposts you set up. So it turns what could have been an interesting way to connect you in to the outposts into a one-off storytelling exercise rather than involving game-element.

 

Also for a niggling thing, while your map will show the location of major quest locations (or where you can pick them up) and some of the side quests, and quite often shows where members of your crew are lurking if they're on the map....  you have to hunt down the locations of important outpost people, which means you can potentially miss out on background conversations and some of the minor side-quests because you didn't realise that in the middle of those three non-speaking npc's standing in a crowd was a 4th who happens to be the outposts chief science officer who actually has conversation options.

 

I like the idea that Research is split from Development. The science of discovering things doesn't always mean you have the resources to produce things. The scanning stuff added to the feel of being a Pathfinder and not just some military commando-type.

 

However, it kind of falls apart due to a slightly awkward UI, and that the only thing you can R&D is guns, armour, and mods to either. Seriously, once you pick one gun type to use, it's not like you actually need to research the 20 other varieties of Assault Rifle "just in case". It's not like you can change your companions equipment, as it's only Ryder who uses them. If the research and development actually had some useful effect beyond that it would have been nice. Or even if you could Research other things that could provide help to Outposts, colonists, and Nexus itself. I ended the game with a huge amount of Research points I never spent because there was never any point to using them. You pretty much choose a gun, a suit of amour, and keep researching their improvements as you gain access to them when you level up. Beyond that, eh.

 

Exploring systems and planet scanning. Okay, it's gorgeous imagery for travelling around the cluster and within the systems. However, after the 10th, or 20th planet, it hits a "Okay, it's pretty, but this is getting tiring/annoying" because you manoeuver through a slightly clunky interface each time, then hit scan, then find out if there happens to be any anomalies (all of which provide almost no benefits), then click a button to zoom out, then another button to zoom out, then select another planet, get another gorgeous "zooming through space as the solar system you're in rotates and moves, before closing in on the location you picked" visual before doing it all again. 

The anomalies you find can be of fluffy background interest, but half the time are simple "bacteria under the ice" "unusually large mineral formation" etc, and it's kind of eyerolling silly that an unusally large mineral formation you detect from orbit happens to be +43 Iron.  When you can find more when mining with the Nomad. Also, you never get those one off missions or on-foot explorations during those wanderings. You really could have done with some of those like they did in the original trilogy. As it is, you only get to land on the specific story planets.

 

Which also leads me to some of the quest structure and UI elements... Travelling to other planets and quests that have you move back and forth. Understandable, and makes sense in a lot of cases. But it can be as annoying as all get out (especially anything that takes you to Kadara port). 

Because you have to go through the: travel to the Tempest - sweet visual of ship leaving planet as loading screen - use navigation console, zoom in on system you want, travel there, select planet, travel there, click land - sweet visual of ship landing as loading screen - find out if what you want is on Kadara port itself, find out its not, so you have to select the elevator to take you down - loading screen as you go to slums - run 30 meters to get outside of that map - then you can select the world map to fast travel - do the quest thing, find you now have to go back to the original planet and quest giver (or yet another planet as a continuation of the quest) - get in the Nomad and use the "T" option to have the Tempest pick you up directly - sweet visual of leaving the planet as loading screen....     I'm sure you get the point. I really wish they gave you options of landing on Kadara at the outpost when/if you develop one there and not leave you stuck having to go through all of that every time you want to go there.

 

While in a gamer and mechanical sense I get the whole "Just because I have a quest that's about speed and vital to save someones life, I can spend an hour trolling around here and making sure I've picked up alllll the quests before I leave" can be a thing, it annoys the roleplayer in me to have a vital quest that talks about speed..and not rushing off to handle it before coming back. And , frankly in the later half of the game you get a whole load of quests that have you bouncing back and forth across the planets.  While that's fairly easy to implement on a fantasy world and a world map... When you have to go through about 6 or so screens and a multitude of mouse clicks just to travel from one location to another to fetch something...and then return, it really starts to suck enjoyment out.

 

And yes, they've obviously planned Andromeda to be the first of it's own series or to use future dlc to flesh out / finish storylines.  There are several quests which while they can be resolved in a certain sense, are pretty much just there to open up aspects of the universe but not answer the questions. Purely hooks to hang things from in the near future (and to have choices made that transfer across to later games).

[Bartimaeus]

ME3's ending was awful, but I never got to that point. It's not the reason I hate ME3.

 

Kai Leng was idiotic, but I never got to the point where you meet him. It's not the reason I hate ME3.

 

The about-faces on the Genophage and the Rachni queen were lazy and cynical but I never got to either of those points. They're not the reason I hate ME3.

 

No, the game had completely fallen apart well before then. Right from the start of the game, it barrages you with rapid-fire idiocy, from the extraordinarily contrived tribunal scene ("we fight or we die!"), said tribunal being very conveniently wiped out, some kid dying, the MacGuffin for saving the universe being oh-so-very-conveniently located on the planet next door, two nonsensical dream sequences, then irrationally telling you you're in the right for demanding the Turians drop everything in their defense of their homeworld so they can help Earth. It was at that point I'd had utterly enough and quit the game in a fit of rage, never to return to it. This "EARTH EARTH EARTH" appeal to blind "patriotism" in a crudely cynical pitch to the brodude CoD audience destroyed Mass Effect as a franchise.

 

 

P.S. I did watch the rest of the game unfold, painfully, on YouTube, and I consider my decision to cut my losses fully vindicated. All the decision points were fully predictable in such a way that the lawful good choice always resulted in the best outcome, as long as you always chose the blindly idealistic option you'd come out on top. All up, a complete waste of money, and comfortably one of the trinity of worst games I've had the misfortune to purchase (the other two being Oblivion and Call to Power).

 

Yeah, someone said earlier "ME3 was perfect up until the ending", and I just sorta sat there and thought...huh? The utter failure of Kai Leng as an antagonist in virtually every aspect of design, the stupid child dream crap, the almost totally meaningless and poorly implemented decisions that were supposed to actually have an effect from all three games (such as the Rachni and Genophage that you mentioned), and the complete total elimination of exploration - building off of ME2 nearly eliminating it already, of course - and finally, the utterly boring and endless, repetitive drudgery that was the gameplay. The last one is my fault for playing on the hardest difficulty throughout the series, but goodness gracious, it's so darned boring. All three games had flaws in places - often different places - ...but ME3's were pretty front and center throughout.

[SonicMage117]

It's better than KoTOR, at least in terms of my personal preferences. Which is to say, I don't like Star Wars, and I don't like having to manage party members. (It does have party members, but for the most part they're completely autonomous and out of your field of view, so you can pretend they're not there)

 

ME2's overarching plot is kinda dumb, especially for those who played ME1 first (I played them in reverse order) but the smaller-scale stuff is generally pretty well-done. But the same can be said for KoTOR so I'm not going to bother splitting them there.

Interesting.

 

Guess it's time to dig in. I've had it installed for months, it's time to unleash the fury!

[Amentep]

Sorry but i'm going to call bull on that, Asari faces had at least 4 or 5 different models in the original trilogy. 

 

Andromeda is literally the same face model...and it's not a good looking one, looks like a pudgy ceramic doll.

I only have anecedotal experience, having played ME 1 and 2 (and part of 3) within the last 6 months.  My memory is that most of Bioware games go

 

Companions and major NPCs - unique faces

minor, villagers/citizens, mobs - same face in different colors or tattoo patterns (or hair for humanoids)

 

My memory (which may cheat) is that Liara (companion), Benezia, Sha'ira, Aria (major NPCs) all had unique faces.  Samara and Morinth (Companion) shared the same unique faces.  All the other Asari (the Dantius sisters, Shiala and her clones, the various Asari commandos) to my memory used the same basic face with tonal and tattoo/make-up designs differing. 

 

Although Asari are probably a bad example anyhow, because their reproduction seems to leave a lot of likelihood that relatives would look the same given Samara-Morinth and the Dantius sisters.  But I think it holds through with Turian and Krogan. 

 

That said, given that most of the time people are background dressing, its possible that I just never paid it any attention.  And doubt I will this time around.

 

Anyhow having spent some more time around people I've noticed several uses of the same hairstyle with slightly different human face combinations. And the same asari face with different tones on non-talking NPCs.  But again I don't think this is startlingly different from the previous MEs.  The only one who threw me was an NPC who had the exact same face as one of the custom Ryder defaults. 

[213374U]

I only have anecedotal experience, having played ME 1 and 2 (and part of 3) within the last 6 months.  My memory is that most of Bioware games go

 

Companions and major NPCs - unique faces

minor, villagers/citizens, mobs - same face in different colors or tattoo patterns (or hair for humanoids)

 

My memory (which may cheat) is that Liara (companion), Benezia, Sha'ira, Aria (major NPCs) all had unique faces.  Samara and Morinth (Companion) shared the same unique faces.  All the other Asari (the Dantius sisters, Shiala and her clones, the various Asari commandos) to my memory used the same basic face with tonal and tattoo/make-up designs differing.

Asari had different faces for sure. These are all from ME2: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

 

Perhaps they weren't hand-crafted except for Liara, but it wasn't just the makeup. Being basically blue female humans, it stands to reason that they had a system in place to quickly build faces as they did for random humans. Why they couldn't afford something similar for Andromeda is anyone's guess.

 

edit: actually, not that different. Maybe clever use of makeup, skin tone and tattoos. Hmm

Edited March 28, 2017 by 213374U

[Bartimaeus]

Uh...I think those are all the same face. It's a little hard to tell because of angles and lightning and makeup AND animations, but all of them share the exact same nose (EXCEPT maybe #5, which is at such a different angle that I just can't tell for sure), all of them seem to share one of two lip shapes (and they're only a little different from each other, so much so that I'm not even 100% sure that they're actually distinct lip shapes...but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt - I think one of the shapes you can see that the upper lip is larger and more prominently sticking out like in #1, while the other shape is smaller like #2), and all of them seem to have the same basic cheek-bone, jaw, and general head structure and shape.

 

So the biggest differences that I can see are makeup/tattoos, animations (how they're smiling or frowning and such - this helps give the illusion of variance), and lighting tricks. I think Amentep is really on the mark here. Liara, Benezia, and Aria (e: and Samara/Morinth, whom I already forgot, ) all had unique faces...but everyone else besides maybe a couple of other exceptions we can't think of right now, not so much.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Bartimaeus