Mass Effect: Andromeda goes Gold

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I've very reserved about the game and waiting for feedback.

I'm waiting for Jim Sterling's review.

I like Jim Sterling for the most part but I don't think he's a very good reviewer. I do love how he scores games based on enjoyment alone vs trying to "objectively" rate games like most reviewers; however, I don't feel he's good at fully understanding game mechanics at times like his review of The Last Guardian he didn't know the game had a command system somehow while complaining about Trico's AI and his review of Vanquish where he played it like a standard cover shooter instead of an action game. Plus, he's not very creative and games like say Dishonored is all about creativity and having fun with the mechanics as just the standard teleport power makes your character extremely OPed if you just play it as a stealth game.

I've very reserved about the game and waiting for feedback.

I hope the game is like previous Mass Effects with quality over quantity quests (DA:I). How good the core game is and having only elements that improve that core are what I look for most in games. I don't want to waste time on lackluster content or busywork.

I'm not sure how this whole storyline is going to work or make sense. What's the point of going to another galaxy? To get away from the Reapers? It wouldn't make sense the Reapers are just a thing for our galaxy as then the whole organics vs synthetics with the synthetics winning and killing off all organic life would happen in all other galaxies then. Of course, those winning super powerful synthetics would make it to the Milky Way at some point. I always figured when the Reapers were gone from the Milky Way, they were tending to all the other galaxies because that's really the only thing that makes sense.

ME3 had a lot of "quantity over quality" to paraphrase you. Fetching Obelisks, Banners and Books for 5 War Assets or whatever. On the subject of the storyline, I can explain it in a spoiler-free way (since I don't know the game's story).

Plot snip...

I'm with you on the waiting for feedback. I'm long since done with pre-ordering any AAA game because of too many broken promises, shady practises and the rest. And after DA2, ME3 and more significantly, DA:I, BW doesn't have the track record they used to have. The hands-on videos I linked to offer some hope tho with generally positive feedback and I'll credit EA for the simple act of allowing the press to discuss the game a month prior to release, unlike Ubisoft and their embargo policies. But yeah, the jury is out till after reviews start coming in.

Those sidequests were just little things to at the Citadel that were super optional. When you compare ME's story quests plus full-on sidequests (like loyalty/character missions), that's more quality questing than just about every RPG outside of maybe Witcher 3 IMO. If Andromeda has an equivalent amount of hours (or more) of that kinda questing, then I'm probably sold.

Mass Effect has never been great with plot details. I remember there was a long ass thread here on the Escapist about the ME plot issues just from the 1st two games I believe. The problem with the Andromeda plan to me will be that they will most likely have to still fight the Reapers at some point because 3 of the 4 endings have the Reapers still alive. It doesn't make any sense for just the Milky Way galaxy to receive the "Reaper" treatment. Is the Milky Way galaxy the only galaxy that's not allowed to have synthetic life destroy organic life? Reapers only tending to one galaxy in the whole universe doesn't make sense.

I'm really good at looking at gameplay walkthroughs of a mission or 2 and knowing if I'll like the game. I knew exactly what Watch Dogs was going to be from watching demo walkthroughs and I got exactly the game I expected. I played the betas of Destiny, The Division, now Ghost Recon Wildlands, and I knew they aren't anything I'm interested in. Hell, I knew from a dev talking about Destiny at the freaking E3 reveal that it was going to be shit because he said something like "we have classes but don't worry about picking the wrong one because they all play about the same", then what's the point of classes? Destiny was FUBAR from the planning stages IMO. On the other end, I knew Dishonored 2 and The Last Guardian were going to be great games and I had no problem buying them at release. I know I'm going to love Prey and most likely Horizon Zero Dawn. With Horizon, I did need a bit of review input to convince me to buy because I really didn't have a good grasp of moment-to-moment gameplay (I knew the game would have great moments but what's in-between them) along with questing and story quality. RPGs are the hardest to judge because of writing (story and characters) being more subjective in nature along with how much busywork (too inventory management) and quality questing the game will have. I'm a lot more hesitant with RPGs just due to their time commitments. Something like say Uncharted 4 which I found excruciatingly average is only 10 hours long or so and I can sell it right away so it cost little time and money.

 

[Dalisclock]

TBH it's a rather absurd retcon (or is it a plothole?)...ME2 already established in a huge retcon of its own, that the Council did not believe in the Reapers, despite Sovereign's attack. So despite that ME2 established this, the races still had the notion of creating these Arks that would ensure their civilisations lived on in another galaxy just in-case the Reapers they didn't believe existed did in fact win. And that apart from an off-the-cuff remark by Hackett that has only post-Andromeda announcement been taken to be a foreshadowing, no one in the galaxy knew to mention the Arks in either ME2 or 3. You'd think *someone* would have noticed it.

What makes the "Ah, Repears. We have dismissed that theory" thing in ME2 so annoying is that in ME3, while you're in the archives during the citadel DLC, you find a report about the attack on the citadel which first claims "A geth attack....", then notices who you are and switches to the real thing, which indicates it was a repear attack. So the concil apparently believed you all along and were gaslighting you in all of ME2.

As far as noticing? I dunno. Apparently nobody noticed Cerberus has their own massive military until they used it in ME3, despite the huge logistics trail having a military entails. So apparently the galaxy really is a big place.

 

[Dalisclock]

I've very reserved about the game and waiting for feedback.

I'm waiting for Jim Sterling's review.

I like Jim Sterling for the most part but I don't think he's a very good reviewer. I do love how he scores games based on enjoyment alone vs trying to "objectively" rate games like most reviewers; however, I don't feel he's good at fully understanding game mechanics at times like his review of The Last Guardian he didn't know the game had a command system somehow while complaining about Trico's AI and his review of Vanquish where he played it like a standard cover shooter instead of an action game.

Yeah, feel much the same way. I haven't play TLG yet but I intend to in the next few months. What got me about his review of TLG was not much about that he felt TRICO's AI was a bit buggy at times(which is fair because pretty much everyone said the same thing), but he kept going on about how his Dog is more responsive then Trico and that's why it's bad. This ignores the fact Trico is NOT a dog and that not every dog is smart. Some animals are kinda dumb, even by standards of their own species. Hell, Trico is probably smarter then a Pug(if we're comparing him to a dog) and I say that as someone who likes pugs.

It's a little thing but it annoyed me.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I've very reserved about the game and waiting for feedback.

I'm waiting for Jim Sterling's review.

I like Jim Sterling for the most part but I don't think he's a very good reviewer. I do love how he scores games based on enjoyment alone vs trying to "objectively" rate games like most reviewers; however, I don't feel he's good at fully understanding game mechanics at times like his review of The Last Guardian he didn't know the game had a command system somehow while complaining about Trico's AI and his review of Vanquish where he played it like a standard cover shooter instead of an action game.

Yeah, feel much the same way. I haven't play TLG yet but I intend to in the next few months. What got me about his review of TLG was not much about that he felt TRICO's AI was a bit buggy at times(which is fair because pretty much everyone said the same thing), but he kept going on about how his Dog is more responsive then Trico and that's why it's bad. This ignores the fact Trico is NOT a dog and that not every dog is smart. Some animals are kinda dumb, even by standards of their own species. Hell, Trico is probably smarter then a Pug(if we're comparing him to a dog) and I say that as someone who likes pugs.

It's a little thing but it annoyed me.

There's really only a few occasions where Trico wouldn't do something right away for me. I remember there's a section where you had to make him dive and swim underwater, I got him to dive quite easily on command but he kept veering off track underwater. I think it was more of a positioning issue where he started to close or something. I forget how much Jim mentioned Trico eating the barrels in the actual review but in his video he complained about it quite a lot. Firstly, he tried to get Trico to eat a barrel while crawling through tunnel section. How don't you get that Trico's "eat barrel animation" requires him to be standing up? It's simple video game type logic to understand that. He made it sound like you had to place the barrel in such a perfect position for Trico to eat it, which is so wrong. You can literally walk up to Trico holding a barrel and he'll eat from your hands, but Jim never tried that obviously. Then, he complains about Trico not snatching barrels from the air when you throw them but in Jim's gameplay footage, he just pick ups barrels and throws them as fast as he can. I'm sure if you just pick up something and immediately throw it at your dog, he's not going to catch it either. I had great success having Trico snatch barrels just by taking time to line up the throw and a couple seconds holding it so Trico is ready. The creator did say everyone's Trico will be different based on how you interact with him, I'm not sure how much differently the AI changes, but I'm guessing Jim didn't do very well with his "relationship" with Trico. Anyways, I really loved The Last Guardian even though it has some occasional AI hiccups and minor technical issues.

 

[votemarvel]

I swore I wasn't going to get Andromeda at launch. Mass Effect 3, which wasn't 99% awesome apart from its ending, pretty much killed my interest in the franchise.

Then I saw it for 32.99gbp on cdkeys.com and snapped it up. My will is weak.

Having the Arks launch before the events of ME3 is a smart decision on Bioware's part. Those endings, whether you liked them or not, can now stand untouched and Bioware can continue the story of the Mass Effect Universe without having to canonise a ME3 ending, everyone gets to keep their favourite (official or modded.)

Edit: Why does the forum change the symbol for the British Pound to a question mark? I'd blame Brexit but it was happening before the vote.

 

[Zhukov]

But yeah, even though the ending to 3 was bad for about 5% of a great game, you can't even talk about the first game in the series before people jump in whining about how the last 5 minutes of 3 games ruined the entire series for them and if you enjoy the series even a little bit you're a corporate shill for ea.

Funny thing is, I was one of the people who hated that ending. Still do. Not quite ruined-the-series-forever hated, but definitely put a massive dampner on the whole thing.

But anybody who is still angry about a video game ending 5 years later needs to get some bloody perspective in their lives.

 

[votemarvel]

But anybody who is still angry about a video game ending 5 years later needs to get some bloody perspective in their lives.

People still discuss books written centuries ago with the same level of passion that exists around the shipped endings to Mass Effect 3.

So why should people lose that passion after just five years? Because it's a video game?

 

[Elijin]

But anybody who is still angry about a video game ending 5 years later needs to get some bloody perspective in their lives.

People still discuss books written centuries ago with the same level of passion that exists around the shipped endings to Mass Effect 3.

So why should people lose that passion after just five years? Because it's a video game?

Because people have discussions about those books. The themes, the writing, the merit, etc etc. 5 years later the only people who still have strong feelings about ME3 endings just sit through the same loop of 'it shouldn't exist, its the worst, it retroactively makes the whole series trash, etc etc etc'.

 

[votemarvel]

Because people have discussions about those books. The themes, the writing, the merit, etc etc. 5 years later the only people who still have strong feelings about ME3 endings just sit through the same loop of 'it shouldn't exist, it's the worst, it retroactively makes the whole series trash, etc etc etc'.

There have been people who moan like that but there have also been people who do discuss the endings critically, putting across why they disliked it. True most of those are from people who dislike them but perhaps that speaks to their quality more than anything else.

Still even if people do just want to post something that boils down to "lol itz sux" why should they be stopped from doing so?

My reaction to the shipped endings was "meh!", something I tweeted to Bioware. I wouldn't say they ruined the franchise for me, ME3 was working on that well before the endings, but it did put a damper on my desire to replay.

I look back at Mass Effect 1 and the first thing I did on finishing it was start the game again. When I finished ME3 I sat back and thought "meh!". There was so little effort in those endings that they simply couldn't provoke a reaction from me either way.

The Extended Cut though proved that Bioware could make good endings. Sure many would still have been unhappy but there would have been nowhere near the level of fuss we got, there would have been no Retake.

Look at the shipped endings and then the Extended Cut. Why on Earth could Bioware not have put that level of effort found in the latter when they were making the game originally?

We are going to see a lot more discussion of the Mass Effect 3 endings as Andromeda comes closer to release, simply because they show the lack of effort that Bioware is capable of.

As a side note, the bit that really annoys me about ME3 was the Face Import Bug. Even after they fixed it, my Shepard still doesn't look right.

 

[Hawki]

Just because both galaxies are in the same universe doesn't mean it's not a new setting. Jesus Christ, how do people not understand the importance of GOING TO A NEW FUCKIN' GALAXY?

At what point is the setting new? When they leave the universe and enter a new one where even the laws of physics are all different? No for fuck sake. Mass Effect is designed around civilizations in the Milky Way and humanity's role in the Milky Way. Without the galaxy the whole setting falls apart and becomes something that resembles cheap fan fiction created by people who were too stupid to figure out how to preserve the original setting.

I'm well aware of how far galaxies are from each other, and how big a deal it would be even in a setting where FTL travel exists. To its credit, Andromeda seems to realize this as well, considering that it takes the Arks 6-700 years to get there.

That said, the analogy still isn't perfect to dumping people in an entirely new setting, since as stated, there's still a route from point a (Milky Way) to point b (Andromeda). And as far as inter-galactic travel goes, did Stargate stop being Stargate once the Tau'ri reached Pegasus? Did it stop being Stargate when SGU came along, with a ship on the other side of the universe? Some people would say "yes" to the second question, but I've never heard them use the setting as a basis for that.

There is really no excuse for what Bioware is doing with Mass Effect. A competent company with competent writers would have simply made a prequel. And there is no law against making a game with a smaller, more personal story. But nooooo, Bioware is 100% incompetent of making a story that's not literally on a galactic scale. Despite the fact that some of the best moments in the trilogy were about individual characters and their personal problems. A competent writer could write a smaller, more personal story about one of trillions of people in the Milky Way galaxy. You could write hundreds of thousands of stories that all take place in the same month and none of the characters from other hundreds of thousands of stories would have to meet each other. That's how enormous the galaxy is. But it's like no one at Bioware is aware of how big the galaxy actually is. It's so stupid.

There's no law against telling smaller stories and/or prequels, but they do run into their own set of problems. Namely:

a) Mass Effect has an EU, which is better suited for telling side-stories.

b) One of the core attributes of Mass Effect is choice, both thematically and mechanically, to the extent that this spans the galaxy. A lot of the events in prequels would be stymied by canon.

c) In the setting, by ME1, humanity's only been on the galactic stage for about 40 years, and it would be a very hard sell to your average joe where you can't play as a human. Even more so when humans don't even exist. I could see some kind of chronicles-esque game existing, allowing you to experience major events in history, and not just the First Contact War, but as a conventional Mass Effect game, not so much.

Bearing in mind that would be impossible to continue from ME3 without committing to an ending (or setting it so far in the future it might as well be a new setting), I'm fine with the shift to a new galaxy. Granted, I've only ever played ME1 to completion, and in an ideal world I'd have Andromeda be its own IP, but regardless, I'm fine with it. It lets people end ME3 how they want to, it allows newcomers to drop in without having to experience the previous games, and it still appears as a Mass Effect game in terms of mechanics, tone, and theme, if not setting.

 

[Zhukov]

But anybody who is still angry about a video game ending 5 years later needs to get some bloody perspective in their lives.

People still discuss books written centuries ago with the same level of passion that exists around the shipped endings to Mass Effect 3.

So why should people lose that passion after just five years? Because it's a video game?

Haha. "Passion". Nice try.

I'm not talking about passion. People can have all the passion they want. I'm talking about people getting whiny and angry over a piece of fiction to the point where discussion becomes unpleasant to engage in.

If someone gets so angry about Homer's Odyssey that they become a pain in the arse to talk to and insist on repeating the same played-out points for literally years on end then I don't want that person around either.

 

[Gergar12_v1legacy]

Is this the first game about the Andromeda system ever??? I would think it's the first well-known game about the Andromeda System. The combat is fluid, but it does not look like it will contained space combat which is a shame seeing as how you could make a space sim on a mobile device...

I also wonder if there are any type 3 civilizations on there? One that consumes the power of an entire galaxy by using the supermassive black hole in the middle of the galaxy?

 

[votemarvel]

Haha. "Passion". Nice try.

I'm not talking about passion. People can have all the passion they want. I'm talking about people getting whiny and angry over a piece of fiction to the point where discussion becomes unpleasant to engage in.

If someone gets so angry about Homer's Odyssey that they become a pain in the arse to talk to and insist on repeating the same played-out points for literally years on end then I don't want that person around either.

You can't get that whiny or angry though about something you aren't passionate about.

If I'm using the wrong terminology I'd welcome being corrected.

 

[Zhukov]

Haha. "Passion". Nice try.

I'm not talking about passion. People can have all the passion they want. I'm talking about people getting whiny and angry over a piece of fiction to the point where discussion becomes unpleasant to engage in.

If someone gets so angry about Homer's Odyssey that they become a pain in the arse to talk to and insist on repeating the same played-out points for literally years on end then I don't want that person around either.

You can't get that whiny or angry though about something you aren't passionate about.

I'm not entirely sure about that.

Regardless, one can be passionate without making the conversation unpleasant.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Then ME3 happened which contradicted both ME1 *and* Arrival anyway by saying the Reapers evidently don't even need a relay to travel from Dark Space into our galaxy.

It didn't contradict anything. The Reapers do posses conventional FTL drives. The Citadel relay while not 100% vital, would have saved them more than 6 months in FTL travel time, not to mention the resources they would have burned making that kind of trip.

 

[Elijin]

Haha. "Passion". Nice try.

I'm not talking about passion. People can have all the passion they want. I'm talking about people getting whiny and angry over a piece of fiction to the point where discussion becomes unpleasant to engage in.

If someone gets so angry about Homer's Odyssey that they become a pain in the arse to talk to and insist on repeating the same played-out points for literally years on end then I don't want that person around either.

You can't get that whiny or angry though about something you aren't passionate about.

If I'm using the wrong terminology I'd welcome being corrected.

The escapist is a great example of you can be whiny and angry without being passionate. People are whiny, negative and dismissive of AAA games all the time here, while also directly expressing zero interest. Its also pretty clear a lot of them mean it and only throw out negativity at the games because they can.

Then ME3 happened which contradicted both ME1 *and* Arrival anyway by saying the Reapers evidently don't even need a relay to travel from Dark Space into our galaxy.

It didn't contradict anything. The Reapers do posses conventional FTL drives. The Citadel relay while not 100% vital, would have saved them more than 6 months in FTL travel time, not to mention the resources they would have burned making that kind of trip.

*pst* over here

Spoiler

that's still dumb

like, point of plot of games annihilating dumb

'sovereign couldn't bring his homies' is the reasoning for the roundabout stupidity with Saren and the geth to get the citadel

if all he had to do was wait 6 months he wouldna' dunnit, so his bros get a bit slimmer, who cares they were doing fuck all for 50000 years anyway, they earned burning a few space calories

he essentially risked his life and mission to spare his buddies a slightly annoying roadrip. wha'?

seriously, sparing 6 months worth of resources means fuck all to things that are in the age of millions, that be dumb

these things have enough juice to exist in nothing for 10s of 1000s of years, and then have enough leftover to completely fuck up a universe full of space weirdoes

also, after failing super hard in 1, what were they doing for the 2 years of ME2? why didn't they just start going immediately? why would they even bother with losers like the collectors, when they aren't nearly a big enough force to invade or defeat the space-faring races? why did they have to fail hard again, before they decided to start moving onto the retcon relay of fuck yous? where they failed again

delaying them a few months. this be dumb. dumb, dum dum dumb.

the contradiction doesn't disappear if you say it doesn't contradict anything and then give the reason why it contradicts everything as your reason for not doing so

While the 6 month figure is probably off, and it delayed them for years, its important to remember that Sovereign didn't see any risk. It wasn't measuring a faster trip vs a significant risk, because he didn't feel the organics could pose any real threat to him. And then we space macguffined the shit out of him.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I still think this game is a massive cop-out and it might even qualify as an insult. The setting is of crucial importance for science fiction. It's the most important thing and they've chosen to abandon it because they wrote themselves into a corner and they're too stupid to fix it. We've barely scratched the surface of what the Milky Way has to offer. I hate the very concept of this game.

Just imagine if any other game did something like this. If suddenly a sequel Dragon Age or The Elder Scrolls or any other RPG is set on a completely different planet with completely different races and rules. The stupidity of the "idea" for ME:A is mind-blowing.

Worked for Stargate: Atlantis.