Mass Effect: Andromeda goes Gold
- Thread starter KingsGambit_v1legacy
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The Charon relay (that is in our solar system) is the better part of 42 billion km's away from Earth. Going at traditional sublight speeds, it would take decades to get from there to Earth. Now the Reapers may or may not have faster sublight than normal people, but that journey would still take years whereas a FTL jump, and you are there in seconds.undeadsuitor said:
You mean in a space station at the centre of the galaxy, protected by a unique relay, that if you don't have the correct protocols for, will slam you in to ancient ship debris or worse? Gee I don't know, cupcake, why wouldn't they build there?MC1980 said:
It has nothing to do with having or not having this or that drive. It has to do with essentially rendering ME1 and everything we, the player, as Shepard did moot. In ME1, the story goes something like:008Zulu said:
Sovereign, the Reaper left behind to check on galactic progress wakes up, decides it's time for the cycle to start and sends the "It's time!" signal to the Keepers on the Citadel. This doesn't work, so after presumably trying to get in touch by Email, whatsapp and phoning, he realises something is wrong. He indoctrinates and recruits Saren, a SPECTRE with unrestricted access to the Citadel, and the Geth to find out. Saren finds the Beacon on Eden Prime with the message left by the Protheans, goes to Feros where he trades Shiala to the Thorian in exchange for the Cipher. With Benezia's help, the Cipher lets him understand the Beacon's message which said he needs to go to Ilos to find the Conduit. To get to Ilos, he needs to find the lost Mu Relay, whose location is known only by a resurrected Rachni Queen on Noveria. He sends Benezia to get the location with her Biotic abilities since Ubisoft have already trademarked the Animus.
Meanwhile Shepard is a step behind throughout. He recruits Liara to help decode the Beacon's message and the Normandy crew arrive on Ilos moments behind Saren. Here we meet Vigil who explains that the best the Protheans could do was to help Shepard's cycle by preventing the Keepers from receiving the signal to activate the Citadel. Following Saren through the Prothean built conduit, we prevent the Citadel relay from being activated, destroy Sovereign and prevent the cycle from starting.
Then ME3 comes along and says "Yeah, turns out they have great engines on those Reapers. Just took 6 months and voila!". So if the Reapers did *not* need the signal from Sovereign OR the relay to get here, everything explained and built up in ME1 was moot. Everything we the player did in ME1 was pointless. The terrible ME2 writing team then had the gall to recycle the SAME story for Arrival but ME3 invalidated that too. It takes the Arks in ME: Andromeda 600 years to reach one galaxy over...the Reapers just went on maximum thrust for 6 months and they came from outside all known space.
I mean everything that happened in ME1 and ME2 was pointless when Sovereign could have just gone "You know it'll only take 6 months to get to the lads and 6 months to come back. Being an immortal being who's survived millions of years, I could probably spare a year." But no, he recruits Saren and the rest, announces his presence to the galaxy and makes such a mess of things Harbinger would be slow-clapping if he had arms. ME2 and ME3 were good games because the gameplay was alright and the characters were great. The story and storytelling were dire tho, and the worst part about ME2 and 3 was that EA robbed us of the stories we could/should have gotten. ME1's story might have had some issues but they were minor in service to an exciting, well told and consistent plot. What came later was shameful.
I'm hoping for two broad-strokes points about the story this time.
"ME3 was a dumpster fire. Bail." This seems to have been accomplished.
Thematically being The Old West IN SPAAAAAAAAACE. Vast spaces with little villages. Colorful characters you meet at the seedy space-saloon. An overall optimism as you round up a posse to deal with mustache-twirling villains. Pretty much Star Trek ToS without the federation or planets-of-hats.
"ME3 was a dumpster fire. Bail." This seems to have been accomplished.
Thematically being The Old West IN SPAAAAAAAAACE. Vast spaces with little villages. Colorful characters you meet at the seedy space-saloon. An overall optimism as you round up a posse to deal with mustache-twirling villains. Pretty much Star Trek ToS without the federation or planets-of-hats.
This may be the first game I've bought for my XBone since Fallout 4, so I really hope its good. Bioware has a pretty high bar to reach on this one.
How would the Reapers discharge their FTL drives out in the Dark? The lore states that if you don't, your ship essentially melts.KingsGambit said:
Mordin's anti-bug repellent only worked on small groups. It's why Jack/Samara had to deploy a biotic field during that assault on the Collector base.MC1980 said:
As for the Collectors being discovered, that's why they were targeting the colonies, because they had severed all ties with the Alliance. If the Elusive Man didn't bait the Collectors in to attacking the one Colony with an Alliance war hero on it, who knows how long their raids would have gone undetected.
Didn't everyone? That was the entire premise of mass effect fields, manipulating space time through magic to bypass those pesky physics laws.KingsGambit said:
Mass Relays were just an advanced form of the same tech, the main distinctions being range and speed.
The Reapers are nothing if not supremely arrogant. They see us as little more than brainless livestock, they don't factor in the "lower species" throwing a wrench in their plans.MC1980 said:
A new official cinematic has been released, highlighting some of the different planets and their biomes.
Of particular note:
Of particular note:
At 2m10s, when speaking about Habitat 5, it mentions "For our Turian and Quarian colonists...", that strongly implies there will be some Quarians among the Milky Way refugees, a species whose presence in ME: Andromeda has hitherto remained unknown.
Wait, Quarian colonist??? Wasn't the entire point of the Quarian act in ME3 that there immune system was so shit at this point that it was impossible for them to recolonize any planets other than there own and that's why they went full derp and started a war over there planet while repear were invading. Now they can just colonize w/e planet?KingsGambit said:
Does EA want to retroactively ruins one of the few good part of ME3?
No idea, just going by the trailer. Until now, it's been left deliberately vague and ambiguous whether or not any Quarians would be present in ME:A. There's been no straight answer or proof either way. That comment is the closest it's come to an answer.Meiam said:
But you aren't wrong. I wrote in my first page post that IMO it seems unlikely. Firstly, their immune systems can't cope on a sterile ship with their own species, let alone any other environment. Making a trans-galactic voyage seems very unlikely on this basis alone. Secondly, they aren't a large population; the relatively few there are all inhabit the same migrant fleet and are very community focused. The idea of leaving the fleet forever seems like something few if any quarians would ever agree to. And also, the Arks we know left after ME2 but before ME2 Arrival, a point where the Migrant Fleet is very much accounted for, with plans to retake Rannoch already underway.
Another thing I found mildly interesting was the scientific impossibility presented at 2m25s, where the narrator states, "This will be our first destination on arrival, 600 years from now" (with regard to Habitat 7). It is not possible for them to have this information prior to arriving in Andromeda, unless someone else travelled there 1,200 years prior to ME2, explored that galaxy, took all the photos and travelled back again to arrive in time to tell them what to expect. Which is also impossible since the races weren't spacefaring by then, didn't know the Reapers existed (and so had no reason to search other galaxies for suitable new homes), and so on. It's an absurd mistake, but whatever, marketing don't give a damn.
That's not scientific shortcut, it's scientific impossibility and a silly mistake that is easily avoided. Fans nitpick, and that's an absurd blunder. They could have said "Here are the planets our scouts/long range sensors/native have suggested since arriving here in Andromeda".undeadsuitor said:
Attention to detail, continuity, consistency and logic are all important in storytelling and when trying to sell a game, an illusion that immerses the player in another world, mistakes along these lines completely ruin it. It's the reason ME3 (and ME2 to an extent) got so much flack, because fans picked up on way too many issues. This is just a trailer, but the point stands.