Mass Effect Andromeda

[213374U]

Oh my god. All these years. I feel so... so cheated. How could you, BioWare?

[Bartimaeus]

Hah, yeah, I'm not too surprised that it was the case for ME1 - new IP and assets, they were still their own company when 90% of the game was made (EA only got them right before it was released)...so the real question is why there wasn't notable improvements for ME2/3 when they were under the financial umbrella of EA, and already had a lot of base assets made? But all that's ancient history at this point, I guess.

[majestic]

 

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.

 

 

Ey, I said Mass Effect 3 was a perfect *space opera* up until the ending (and I specifically pointed out the that the game has an extraordinary amount of pathos and heartstring tugging), not a perfect game because all of the Mass Effect games are a bit flawed in terms of gameplay and level design. It's a side effect of being a shooter/RPG-hybrid that even the wonderful System Shock 2 or the original Deus Ex could not quite shake off.

[Valmy]

Hah, yeah, I'm not too surprised that it was the case for ME1 - new IP and assets, they were still their own company when 90% of the game was made (EA only got them right before it was released)...so the real question is why there wasn't notable improvements for ME2/3 when they were under the financial umbrella of EA, and already had a lot of base assets made? But all that's ancient history at this point, I guess.

 

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.

[Azdeus]

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.

They probably save a pretty penny on not having to licence an engine, since they used Frostbite

 

 

 

 

[Valmy]

 

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.

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?

[213374U]

However little it may cost, it's still more than using one developed in-"house". In an ideal world, this also has the advantage of having more or less direct access to the people who programmed the engine and any and all necessary documentation.

 

In spite of that, bafflingly enough, Bioware cannot seem to program decent online functionality no matter what, on an engine originally designed to build multiplayer games with.

 

At any rate, I'm skeptical that being a division of EA means having more resources. EA's business model seems to be based on two things, mainly. First, create or preferably acquire successful franchises, and then start churning out sequels as quickly as possible, regardless of quality and production values. Second, nickel-and-dime customers as much as possible through microtransactions. Neither of those things require great financial effort, outside of marketing costs, which seems to be EA's forte. The steady decline of SWTOR is more evidence that EA would rather reduce costs to maintain profitability, than invest in hopes of increasing revenue.

 

By the way, I bought the Super Deluxe Edition. More money than sense and all that...

[Valmy]

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.

[Volourn]

"As much as I'd like to blame EA"

 

Uh. EA is 100% repsonsible. They are BIO. In very way that matters. I mena this isn't even the EDM studio but even the EDM stuido is nu BIO. EA controls every aspect of development as well they should. they get the praise and they get the blame.

[Zoraptor]

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.

 

 

Does anyone know where that $40 million figure comes from? 40 million seems to be inordinately low for ~5 years even excluding marketing and quite possibly also excluding external costs like any time DICE spent on engine customisation, texture farming from EA Low Wage Country etc, and tax breaks from the Quebec govt.

 

I still reckon that MEA looks like a badly managed project rather than a badly funded one.

[HoonDing]

With 40 million I coud build a rocket to Mars.

[ShadySands]

I'm pretty much done with my first playthrough

 

I ended up at level 62 but I still have like 7 systems I haven't bothered exploring and like 8 tasks still in my journal. Considering going ahead and knocking it all out but the space travel is painful at this point and the tasks are all the ones with no nav points that you just have to stumble upon X amount of X to finally get a nav point to go do X and I don't really care for those

 

For what it's worth I really enjoyed the game but thought that Raithe's review on the previous page was spot on. I'll definitely pick up any DLC if EA decides to still put some out

[Bartimaeus]

Does Cheat Engine's speedhack help speed through the repetitive area transitions at least?

 

Where the heck I would be without Cheat Engine in my life, I just don't know...

[ShadySands]

I thought about trying it but the game gave me several tamper "warnings" without having anything running so I just left it alone

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, uh, any singleplayer game that pulls that crap on me is gonna find itself completely and permanently disconnected from the internet and in offline mode right quick. Into the trash it goes.

[213374U]

Does Cheat Engine's speedhack help speed through the repetitive area transitions at least?

 

Where the heck I would be without Cheat Engine in my life, I just don't know...

 

I don't know about speeding animations up specifically, but I know for a fact that Cheat Engine is being used for godmode, infinite ammo, no cooldown on powers etc. on public MP lobbies. You'd think they'd have learned from ME3, but apparently not.

 

So my guess would be, yeah.

[Bartimaeus]

That's pretty crappy. Not what Cheat Engine is supposed to be for. ...Also, it's embarrassing that the netcode is so bad that client-side changes also affect the server. Hyuk.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[213374U]

Yep. What's most mystifying about it is that this sort of thing was already a pretty big problem in ME3 *and* is something that directly cuts into their bottom line. People doing this have no reason to participate in microtransactions. And after you ban someone -assuming they do, as they did in the past with mass ban waves- you've effectively lost a customer.

 

Not building a more robust system this time around is very hard to justify.

[Bartimaeus]

Which comes back to project mismanagement, huh...

[Malcador]

Which comes back to project mismanagement, huh...

Basically anything in the software world.

[Bartimaeus]

It's literally embarrassing, I'm not even kidding or exaggerating in the slightest. You have literally ~20 year old games like Age of Empires that forced client-server synchronization: you're telling me MASS EFFECT in 2017 can't? Are you serious? Just...what?

[Orogun01]

 

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. 

 

That is true, and back in the days of Jade Empire I did forgive that a lot but they at least had the good notion of space the same faces out and relegate them to minor characters. When a vital character that has been well established beforehand turns out to have the same face, or when you get the more that one character on the same scene with the same face; then it becomes so obvious that you just have to call it out.

[Vaeliorin]

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).

That's basically how I felt about DA2.  Lots of potentially interesting things, terrible implementation.

 

My biggest concern at this point is that the poor reviews (not sure how sales are doing) might result in there not being a GOTY or Ultimate Edition with all the DLC available for me to purchase for $20 in a couple years.  They never did one for ME3, after all.

[GhostofAnakin]

The party/squad members don't seem to have much new to say after the initial time you talk to them.  Apparently I shouldn't have exhausted all the available dialogue with them when they first came on board, as now they rarely say anything new.

[ShadySands]

It's gated by story progress too