Mass Effect Andromeda

[GhostofAnakin]

It's gated by story progress too

 

It was like that in the original trilogy too, I believe.  But they just seemed to have a lot more to say in those games. 

[the_dog_days]

 

It's gated by story progress too

 

It was like that in the original trilogy too, I believe.  But they just seemed to have a lot more to say in those games. 

 

 

I had the opposite impression. In ME:A everyone seems to want to tell you their life's story just after somehow making themselves a part of your crew. ME1 had a little bit of that, but in ME2 the writers stuck to tried-and-true tropes so the player doesn't have to spend 45 minutes talking with them to feel like they can understand who the character is and what their motivations are.

 

And I'm saying that as some who vastly preferred ME2 to anything in ME:A.

[ShadySands]

I thought it was weird that they tucked a lot of dialog behind the already greyed out options. Seems like they should have made it turn white (or whatever color the default was) again so you know they have more to say.

 

I thought they were pretty chatty overall and I enjoyed their banter with each other

[marelooke]

 

ME2 was one of the better looking games on release in some respects and that didn't stop you buying it then, no?

 

IMO Andromeda never looked too pretty at any point. In fact, it looked decidedly dated (compared to heavy hitters like W3) all the way. But it was not graphics that made it look good or bad, it was that the spoiled gameplay looked boring and that seemingly transitioned to the final product.

Tbh, I got it free as a gift from a friend on Steam last year but your point still stands as I have bought other games based on appealing graphics/art styles.

 

How do they go backwards? I don't understand how devs cause their games/franchises to devolve! Why try to change what the fans love so much???

 

 

Kinda weird nobody brought up that they were forced to change engines. As far as I can tell facial animations and the latter have been relatively bad on all BioWare's Frostbite (I think?) games. Forcing all your developers to use a single engine might seem like a nice cost saving for management, but it clearly doesn't work properly. Not to say that it couldn't be made to work, but clearly nobody considered it worth freeing up the budget for it.

 

It also, likely, means that BioWare has much less control over the engine and can't fix issues they see on their own terms without having to jump through a bunch of corporate hoops to get things approved so the engine team can work on it,...

 

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.

 

I thought that most of the ME3 plot arc wrapups felt rushed and often shallow (the Asari one was especially bad, so much so that I only remember the obnoxious Kay Leng "fight") and were thrown at you in way too rapid succession.

Tuchanka was clearly a high-point (and the best part of ME3, by far, imho). And while I can't say I "hated" the Quarian/Geth thing too much it felt too way predictable and after all the hubub about that sun in ME2 I'm pretty sure they scrapped their initial idea and went for something more vanilla. (come on: zealots attack machines, machines get desperate and call upon bad powers to save them. Things predictably go haywire and you get to fix it. Does it get any more cliché than that?). Given the buildup in the previous games it was a minor disappointment.

The Turian arc was decent, though nothing particularly special, I'd hoped for some family solving problems with Garrus as him having issues with his father is often hinted at in the previous games (isn't solving personal issues the thing Shepard does best? I mean, ME2 was a fix-personal-issues simulator), but alas.

 

Basically ME3 should have been split into multiple games imho (and ME2 scrapped if they really didn't want to go over their 3 game "limit", since most companions from 2 only make cameo's in 3 anyway and Cerberus was already set-up as villain in ME1, so there...)

Edited March 30, 2017 by marelooke

[Malcador]

https://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2017/03/mass-effect-andromeda-animation-fixes/

 

On April 4th they'll make things better or something

[Chilloutman]

https://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2017/03/mass-effect-andromeda-animation-fixes/

 

On April 4th they'll make things better or something

Decent animations DLC?

[213374U]

I thought that most of the ME3 plot arc wrapups felt rushed and often shallow (the Asari one was especially bad, so much so that I only remember the obnoxious Kay Leng "fight") and were thrown at you in way too rapid succession.

Tuchanka was clearly a high-point (and the best part of ME3, by far, imho). And while I can't say I "hated" the Quarian/Geth thing too much it felt too way predictable and after all the hubub about that sun in ME2 I'm pretty sure they scrapped their initial idea and went for something more vanilla. (come on: zealots attack machines, machines get desperate and call upon bad powers to save them. Things predictably go haywire and you get to fix it. Does it get any more cliché than that?). Given the buildup in the previous games it was a minor disappointment.

The Turian arc was decent, though nothing particularly special, I'd hoped for some family solving problems with Garrus as him having issues with his father is often hinted at in the previous games (isn't solving personal issues the thing Shepard does best? I mean, ME2 was a fix-personal-issues simulator), but alas.

Yep. The Thessia arc was supposed to develop differently, possibly related to Cerberus being completely indoctrinated by that point, and it originally involved a betrayal where you had to choose between Virmire survivor and Liara.

 

I was also very disappointed by how little weight the decision made during Legion's loyalty mission in ME2 had in the Rannoch plot. It's basically just a +/- numerical modifier to your War Assets, and a short remark from Legion, that's it. For a choice that's presented as either genocide or mass brainwashing, it felt... cheap. Also, dark energy? What dark energy...? Heh.

 

The turian plot was, from what I read, intended to be more involved, with you doing more stuff around Palaven. But that would mean producing a lot of new assets, so instead they kept that asinine Cerberus "coup" on the Citadel, where they just had to add a bunch of decals to the walls, even though it made zero sense for Cerberus to do that at that point in the story.

 

Oh well. That's what you get from shuffling writers around and having people work 90 hour weeks, I guess.

 

https://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2017/03/mass-effect-andromeda-animation-fixes/

 

On April 4th they'll make things better or something

 

I thought Ars was more or less a "serious" outlet. Posting that meme vid doesn't do much for their rep, in my eyes. The animations have been in the spotlight, but the game has other problems, gameplay problems, that are more pressing. And I'm not even talking about MP stuff. Things like banter (often mission-related) clipping, broken quests, dodgy hitboxes, a lack of a quicksave function, performance problems, etc. should be a priority rather than dealing with the backlash from "my face is tired".

 

This is just more stupid bandwagoneering.

[Bartimaeus]

To be fair, though, that meme video is pretty hilarious.

[ktchong]

Its Metacritic scores have dropped to 73 (for PS4) and 76 (PC and Xbox One.) 

Edited March 30, 2017 by ktchong

[algroth]

Its Metacritic scores have dropped to 73 (for PS4) and 76 (PC and Xbox One.) 

The horror.

[213374U]

To be fair, though, that meme video is pretty hilarious.

 

I know, and I enjoy silly vids as much as the next guy (the original "we'll bang okay" clip still cracks me up). It's just that it felt OOC for what Ars is... or what I thought it was... in my mind.

 

I guess the piece is just reporting on what BioWare is doing, rather than offering opinion on what they should be doing, but still, I don't think that's a fire that needs more fuel added to.

[Gorgon]

With 40 million I coud build a rocket to Mars.

How the hell could you piss away 40 million and spend so little on polish. I mean turd polishing clearly indicates the need for polish. That's what they did with DOI. I can only conclude that it must have been very down to the wire and the schedule pushed back several times.

 

Or perhaps just the opposite, the EA treatment, just push out whatever is there when time runs out. 

 

 

That's a lot of toilet metaphors I know. 

[Hurlshort]

To be fair, the Mars rover costs are in the billions, so Hoonding would have a pretty janky rocket for 40 million.

[Valmy]

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?

Edited March 30, 2017 by Valmy

[213374U]

AFAIK, the $40 million is the absolute minimum this game may have cost to make, based on what ME3 was estimated to cost, with a much shorter development cycle and a smaller scope. No hard figures because EA doesn't release that kind of information.

[majestic]

Boy am I glad they brought the silly vehicle exploration back. Drivin' with my Nomad through the Hinterlands of Eos until I hit a wall of light indicating the end of the map. Bioware ran out of mountains it seems. And the only interesting thing buried in the sand is a Remnant outpost featuring a container with random low quality lewt.

 

But yeah, fix those animations.

[Raithe]

Boy am I glad they brought the silly vehicle exploration back. Drivin' with my Nomad through the Hinterlands of Eos until I hit a wall of light indicating the end of the map. Bioware ran out of mountains it seems. And the only interesting thing buried in the sand is a Remnant outpost featuring a container with random low quality lewt.

 

But yeah, fix those animations.

 

The thing is some of those remote outposts that you discover if you just wander end up being quest locations later in the game for assorted side-quests, which can be oddly disconcerting.

[GhostofAnakin]

Why does Shepard ... err I mean Ryder flirt with everyone he comes across?  It's like BioWare decided to not even make you work for it.  Meet someone?  Heart emoticon!

 

When I first met the new species, we'd literally talked for like less than a minute and the option to "heart" them came up.

 

Jesus, Ryder.  Your mom's dead, your dad's ... "gone", and your sister is ... "asleep".  Then there's the whole "new galaxy and role of Pathfinder" thing that should be occupying your time.  Instead, you're doing your best Leisure Suit Larry impression to every man and woman you see.

[majestic]

I keep interacting with my pet Pyjak hoping for some hot action but nothing so far.

[Gfted1]

Theres always time to Kirk up the galaxy.

[SonicMage117]

Are the animations really that bad?

 

It seems the better the graphics of today's games, the more glitches and bad animations there are. I thank God that pixel games with sprites are still being made. I love the smooth animation of a nice pixel game

[SonicMage117]

Do you agree?

[ktchong]

I do not think Bioware or EA will satisfactorily fix or save Mass Effect: Andromeda.  Both Bioware and EA have a history: they abandoned their products in broken states and moved onto other projects.  Bioware is actually worse than EA in that regard, and it has gotten worse over the years. 

 

 

So Bioware has become worse than Black Isle, Troika, or Obsidian (in the pre-Dungeon Siege III days): they would release a buggy game, would not commit to fully patch the broken product, and would then abandon the game in a broken state and move on to other projects.   (But thank goodness Obsidian has cleaned up their act after Dungeon Siege III.)

 

 

To make the situation worse, Bioware does not allow fans to mod their later games, (since Mass Effect.)  If Bioware had allowed fans to mod their broken games, at least fans could create mods to patch the products abandoned by Bioware.  Bethesda also makes buggy  games and never completely fixes its broken products, but at least Bethesda games are very open to modding, so other people can patch the games.  Fans can't even do that for Bioware games, which would remain forever broken after being abandoned. 

Edited March 31, 2017 by ktchong

[Raithe]

Actually one thing that struck me, the whole Andromeda Viability score. Now I know I left about half a dozen of the "Tasks" undone, but I'd completed pretty much all else (although I was on normal difficulty), but I think I only managed to scrape enough AVP to unlock about 19/20 CryoPods. That leaves what, about 9 more to unlock?

 

So is it set up so that you cannot get enough to unlock all of them within the game? (odd since there's pretty much no level cap on your character levelling). Or have they put it that way so future DLC can take advantage?  Was I missing something that lets you access a whole lot more of the viability points?

[ShadySands]

The game caps you at 19 (at Nexus level 20). At the end of the game I had tons of AVP but instead of unlocking the next level it just keeps going. It might be meant to make your decisions have some trade-offs or it could be a bug because I think it started showing negative. Still I don't think I would have gotten enough points to unlock them all even without the cap

 

Edited March 31, 2017 by ShadySands