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Mass Effect Andromeda - Ready for judgment (TuT)


InvertMouse

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Hi there 8). I am a fan of the Mass Effect trilogy, so I very much looked forward to this new game. After all the memes and comments about its awful writing, my hype died down a lot. By the time this game came out, I thought, all right, if it sucks, I'll just rush through it and hop onto Persona 5.

Fortunately for me, I'm enjoying Andromeda so far. Were the animations and giltches always this bad? I can't quite recall. Yeah, sometimes my squadmates get left behind and teleport in front of me. I can live with that, though.

Story wise, I find the trilogy had grit, while Andromeda is more youthful. Different, but again, that's fine. I've heard concerns about the politics and agendas that may be spoon fed into this game. My radar was on alert, but I haven't sensed anything so far. Maybe I'm just not knowledgeable enough in this area.

People say the spectacle of the original is absent in this new game. That could well be the case. The Citadel was so memorable, after all. Thing is, several hubs in Andromeda are huge as well. In terms of density, there are still areas where a random pedestrian will have tons of dialogue you can eavesdrop on. The scale feels the same, and I haven't picked up on any signs of laziness. Is it because we've experienced it once already, so we need more? Maybe Andromeda didn't take things to new heights, and that's the problem.

The story seems all right so far. Nothing that will set new trends, just safe. Some mysteries here and there, the occasion humor and emotion. Doesn't seem that different from the trilogy. Though the original had a lot at stake plot wise, I went into Andromeda with a light-hearted attitude, and that made it all right.

All of this leads me to worry and think, do I have weird, or even bad tastes :vinty:? I like to think my preferences are pretty ordinary. With the glitches, that will depend on everyone's tolerance. The mixed opinions on the story is what confuses me. Then again, I love this anime season's Gabriel Dropout, and after reading comments from people who loathe the show, I realize there is no pleasing everybody :wahaha:.

Are opinions on Andromeda mixed, or are they negative? They seem to sway toward the negative, so I'm pretty confused. Has anyone else been playing this? I'd love to hear some opinions.

Thank you ^_^!

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3 hours ago, InvertMouse said:

I've heard concerns about the politics and agendas that may be spoon fed into this game. My radar was on alert, but I haven't sensed anything so far. Maybe I'm just not knowledgeable enough in this area.

Anyone who's reaching far into their ass and pulling this argument is probably not someone you want to take seriously anyway. :P

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Well i think that Andromeda deserves the judgement after i looked into it, they had a huge budget, 4years? and a nice workforce with it.

As i have seen on the wiki, the developers completely changed, and i guess the new ones couldnt really live up to the expectations.

For me, the andromeda lost something that made it a mass effect game, tho i am planning to still check it out even if not pay for it.(i shouldnt have said that, should i?)

After your "review" of the game, it kinda made me feel at ease that it aint that shitty, and glitches, horrible animations and faces were kinda present in the previous games too, so i guess i will be used to it.

I guess the huge hype was the thing that destroyed this game, as we have seen in the past with other games.

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From what i looked, and my memory is quite fresh since i replayed the whole trilogy 4 months ago(so with all the patches), there's a shitton of whacky and cluncky animations (and Mass effect 2 is SOO bad in that way), and while it's true, Andromeda doesn't look as good as we all wanted it to be, accusing some sort of political agenda to be behind every problem is...your belief doesn't magically give you skills in animation and programmation, or in writings, you know.

 

The problem here, is that Bioware is not a good game developper, they were lucky, back in time, to have actual good writers, but they all left the ship, and unfortunately, those who're still here are, in fact, quite bad at their job, mostly, Andromeda is the result of Bioware, not of some sort of political agenda (and please, stop blaming every thing you dislike with political agenda, you just make a fool out of yourself (i'm thinking about Yandere Simulator dev, a very pathetic human being)) 

 

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I'm hearing people say that Bioware has gone to poo and are far from the studio they were when they produced such classics as KOTOR. People seem to have short term memories, this sort of thing has happened every time there was a bioware release. When KOTOR was released, people complained about the writing, Bastilla and Carth, the linearity of it, Bastilla and Carth, the short length, Bastilla and Carth, and the corny dramatic "twist" in the middle. Remember these EMOTIONAL and IMPACTFUL natural sounding pieces of dialogue:

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I've always loved Carth's emotional reminiscence. Very natural. Did anyone else like that tiny afterthought of an info-dump in the middle? Or maybe people remember that at the beginning of the game when your ship was being boarded by a dark jedi, the guy who woke you up calmly explained things to you and gently guided your hand through the ship. How natural was that? Then came Jade Empire which everyone hated, and Mass Effect series which many people hated, and DA:2 which many people hated, and every time Bioware releases a game it's like all hatred of their previous titles magically disappears. I'd examine the phenomena but I have bigger issues on my mind right now, but I will say it's downright wacky.

The newest complaint though is that Bioware is "overrun with SJWs" and I have no time for that. If they stop catering games to you then stop buying their games. Also the Asari "fix" that anon dude did is horrible. It looks like a 15 year old's wet alien dream, complete with seductive overbite.

Anyway, Mass Effect Andromeda. So far I agree with InvertMouse that the game is nowhere near as bad as people have been saying. The writing seems fine. The characters are where Mass Effect is shining here, with dialogue revealing personality and character while still moving the story forward, and this makes the game quite fun to explore and engage in. A story is about people and when you have great people with (generally speaking) good dialogue, that's a major tick in the plus column. 

Unfortunately (and I'm not far enough into the game to say for sure) I don't think the story will be one of the game's strong points. But considering ME2 didn't have a plot either, I think we can forgive them that. Bioware have never really had exceptional plots (ME1 being an exception.) The worldbuilding isn't on the same level as the original ME trilogy (which was exceptional.) Lastly the villains of the game sorta suck a little. All in all, it's not as good as the previous Mass Effect games, but the writing is fine/good.

The combat is better than any of the other Mass Effect games, which means I suck a little at it because I suck with action games in general. I've died 6 times so far, but I bumped the difficulty up to hardcore and I refuse to bump it back down :P 

I can live with the facial animations, although as has been said they do make the dialogue seem worse than it actually is. I can live with the walking animations (we've all played Beth or Bioware games, right?) It seems like exploration will be a big theme in the game, so I hope it proves to be fun. I'm just heading out to Eos, which is apparently the Hinterlands of Mass Effect Andromeda, so I hope the experience there won't be overly dull. 

So far I've had plenty of fun. Had to put the game down yesterday and was yearning for the moment I could get back to it, and that's always a good test to see whether it's been worth the $100 :3

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Not really a fan of bioware nowadays. The last DA was... Let me just say that I'm glad I never needed to buy it myself. And I really liked what they tried to do with DA2 (minus the rushed ending).

And MEA was another step down.

 

Even with the whole "SJW" stuff excluded some (alright, most) stuff felt forced and out of place. The characters look ugly, imo. But that is my personal opinion. It is rather refreshing that they took their extra time to make all characters look not pleasing for the player since it is easier to make pretty looking characters than it is to make ugly ones.

 

Time they maybe should have put in their writing.

Now the writing/story is where they f-ed up royally. Whoever wrote that steaming piece-of-something-that-belongs-in-a-place-where-people-do-their-personal-business is most likely still laughing that they really got paid for this. I hate it, it sounds like they hired some hipster-teeny that tried to emulate a jrpg into his last history class about colonies.

 

But I haven't seen more than the beginning, might get better afterwards, but I really doubt it.

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Thanks for the responses 8)! I guess opinions are pretty divided. Not too far into the game yet, so it'll be interesting to see if I start spotting this flaws. I hear the game is already on discount, so I guess the sales numbers are poor? Will be interesting to observe what happens to the franchise and Bioware in general after this.

Is this a situation where there is a lot of backlash, but they make a profit regardless, or will this put them in trouble? At least with my local store, I noticed after the memes appeared, the collector's edition appeared on the store page again, which probably meant cancelled preorders :yumiko:.

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  • 2 weeks later...

After finishing the main story and having spent 67 hours with it I can only feel disappointed in the game. It's not a bad game, not by any means, but it's never anything spectacular. The open worlds adds no value whatsoever, conversations with characters you encounter throughout the galaxy rarely feel as fun as they did in the trilogy and the biggest problem of all is that there never feels like there's that much at stake. The choices of life and death, sometimes literally, that played a great deal in making Mass Effect into what it is are sometimes still there but the few that come don't feel like they mean anything. And perhaps worst of all it often feels like I'm playing Dragon Age with guns. Luckily there are still some good and pleasant characters to chat with on your ship.

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Very basic cover shooter gameplay, reduced role playing elements, a basic script with more holes than a swizz cheese, template characters without much depth, a tone of bugs (even after five patches), not the best graphics, outdated/broken (facial) animations, bad voice acting and an obvious lack of quality control / interested both during, after and before release by Bioware.

 

Those are things I can shit on somewhat objectively. On a personal level, I despise everyone working for Bioware for shoehorning their political agenda both into their games and every facet of social media, even if it's unrelated to said media.

Look, if you are anti-trump, you can make an anti-trump post on your facebook. That's fair and no one should stop you, because it's your facebook. But if I visit the OFFICIAL Mass Effect Twitter, I don't want to see a lazy photoshop with Mass Effect characters telling me to vote against Trump. Keep this bullshit out of my fucking video games, you desperate, pathetic tools. 

Politics aside, I despite (the mass effect section of) Bioware for stubbornly refusing/accepting any kind of criticism against Mass Effect 3. They not only never apologized for the ending everyone on the planet hated, no they hired the same guy who wrote it for their next game. I hated Dragon Age Inquisition and have a LOT of issues with Dragon Age, but those teams actually listened to some of the feedback with some modesty and intrigue. The Mass Effect team(s) haven't learned a single god damn thing.

Furthermore, EA is still EA and selling a 300$ special edition of a game without actually putting the game into it, is laughably EA. Not even Ubisoft could do something that EA. 

 

Purely on a technical level, I consider Andromeda as unacceptable in the same day and age as The Witcher 3. Fuck, I consider it unacceptable in the time-frame as Fallout 4.  And everyone hates Fallout 4.

 

On the plus side, the alien worlds and weapons/technology designs are kind of pretty, I'll give it that.

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People are at Bioware's throat as old as Mass Effect 3's ending (and dialogue wheel, but that seems minor). Before that, Dragon Age 2 was a sore disappointment and a disservice to the first part.

A lot of Americans are very upset with this SJW thingy, I can tell it really exists but your opinion will vary on it...

As for me, I don't really give a toss. I hereby declare Bioware officially dead. They need a really big change of direction to catch my attention anymore.

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26 minutes ago, Okarin said:

People are at Bioware's throat as old as Mass Effect 3's ending (and dialogue wheel, but that seems minor). Before that, Dragon Age 2 was a sore disappointment and a disservice to the first part.

Before that people hated ME2 for taking out all RPGness from ME1 (before replacing some in ME3) to make it a generic shooter ... with mediocre shooter mechanics. Before that people hated ME1 because it meant Bioware was heading down the shooter path. Before that they hated Jade Empire for being just an action game. Before that they hated KOTOR because it meant Bioware was developing games for "console casuals." Before that people hated NWN for "false advertising" because it was meant as a multiplayer game, but the "sample single player scenario" was advertised as a full on single person game.

The Bioware hate is old-hat. It's not as recent as people portray it to be, and the ME3 ending drama was blown out of all proportion. The only uncontroversial games Bioware ever released was the Baldur's Gate series. What's really hurting Bioware is that for the first time in a very long while, they've actually got some competition 0.0

CD Projekt = new Bioware?

1 hour ago, TexasDice said:

no they hired the same guy who wrote it for their next game. 

The rumour going round is that Casey Hudson was responsible for the ME3 ending

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Of course, some RPG fans didn't even like BG2, thinking it was RPG-lite:

Quote

Extreme Linearity
The story was very linear by itself, the chapters that limited your movement made it extremely linear. Once you get out of the starting dungeon, you have to 2 Bioware-style choices: to save Imoen or to get even with Irenicus, both choices have the same path. Chapter 2 is filled with quests of all kind, but somehow they left me with an impression that the only reason they are there is to level you up, provide you with NPCs, and load you up with tons of ph4test l3wt (more on it later), and give you a complimentary stronghold to pile up the loot. Can you skip these quests? No, because you need 20,000. Needless to say, you can't threaten the thiefs with a fury of Bhaal's spawn, you can't persuade them, and you can't bluff. Once you have paid the money, what do you have? You have to do more quests including Bodhi's place. I'd understand if these quests were accepted instead of money, but you have to do them anyway. Once you are done, you go to the island, then to the prison, then..... Comparing BG2 to games like Fallout and Arcanum that allow you to do whatever you want exploring freely all but the most critical locations, BG2 is extremely linear. Doesn't make it a bad game, just a bad RPG.

The choices
You can choose very little, and your choices are of no importance and have little impact on the game. When I started the game I was asked a riddle by a genie, I thought it would have some consequences. Turned out it didn't. Both answers led to fighting a summoned creature. The better answer resulted in a creature with a better loot. Little did I know that this approach will be appiled to almost every situation in the game. 

The romances
PST had NPCs with deep personalities, who had meaningful interactions with PC, and there was a scene or two that explored some feelings between the characters. The creators of BG2 did not quite get the mechanics of PST, so they added lotsa NPCs who complained, bitched, whined, moaned, and irritated the hell out of me. The developers replaced "deep personality" with "attached quests and more loot", and instead of a hint of romance gave you a trip to a singles bar. Well, some people might find that amusing, I didn't, in fact half-way through the game, I switched to custom made party just to shut them up. 

The loot
Every game has loot, but BG2 managed to upgrade loot into a separate feature. Loot was everywhere, in a sewer, in a barrel, under the bed, in a cupboard, everyone was selling it, everyone was packing it. The Crom Fayer hammer+4 that set Str at 25 (+7 to hit, +14 dmg) :shock: is a good example. Saint made a good post in another thread so I'll quote it here:
"And yes, one reason I think that is the ph4t l3wt syndrome of showering the player needlessly with hordes of fantastic treasure, uber-powerful magic items, and so on, all found in mundane locations like sewers, local town crypts, and so on. Bioware is really, really bad about dumping hordes of ph4t l3wt, which is the term for it and I didn't coin it, especially when the location certainly doesn't call for it. It's munchkinism. Rewarding a player for a quest is one thing, but you certainly shouldn't find a shiny Armor of Comfort in a sewer location for characters of level 3-4. And something like the Deck of Many Things should never, ever be placed in a CRPG because quick loading and quick saving basically makes it a built in cheat"

The Summary. 
I also like Saint's summary a lot so here it is:
"It's almost like their design philosophy centers around 12 year old D&D player mentalities. Take an uber story about an uber thing, fill it with uber beings that people would know about if they followed the setting and let the player be uber and kill them, and then cram it full of as much uber items as possible. Then, of course, skimp on the role-playing options."

Source: creator of Age of Decadence http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/why-was-bg2-subpar.1935/#post-17979

That being said their games still sell well, so *shrugs*

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Rooke, I talked about "people being at Bioware's throat".

Bioware in a time was like CD Projekt Red now, a loved and envied developer. Its old games may have caused some dissension, but it all blew up with Mass Effect 3.

It isn't looking good for Bioware, but I guess they'll manage to bring in new fans and survive somehow. AAA games these days isn't a quality badge really, so they fit in perfectly.

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For me, the writing is not good enough.  It just doesn't gel.  Events don't seem to have the urgency that they should.  And the biggest problem I have with the game is Ryder himself.  Sorry, Ryder, but you suck.  Commander Shepard was badass and interesting enough to carry three games because the character's dialog was full of verve and personality.  Ryder by contrast just is kind of there, and never really has any cool lines.  It's just kind of boring to be Ryder, which is very unfortunate.

Edited by Nandemonai
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I'll start by saying that I loved Mass Effect 3's ending.

Now that it's out of the way, here are my impressions of Andromeda so far:

Most of the characters are well written and interesting; the gameplay is much more engaging than the original trilogy; exploring a total new universe is an intriguing experience and this game is doing it extremelly well.

I've read all the criticism this game is receiving and I don't agree with them. 

The characters here are better introduced than how the characters of the original trilogy were introduced in ME 1. Really, they all just became unforgettable characters after ME 2.

I'm laughing so hard at some of the comic moments of the game. Most of the VAs do an exceptional job on the characters' voices. Currently playing as a Male Ryder. 

The so talked bugs are just animation bugs that Bioware is already making a patch for (they already made a patch, I'm not sure what for). I'm still to play a game that is released with zero bugs. Mass Effect: Andromeda is no exception to this. Oh, and I haven't encountered any game breaking bugs.

I see a lot of people criticizing this game without even playing it. Really, play it yourself and make your own conclusions about it. Don't let people that haven't played it discourage you. 

This game is really battling against The Witcher 3 for the position of my favorite game in PS4.

I really hope Bioware will be able to expand this new Andromeda universe.

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It's not bad game, but it's still extremely disappointing especially for a big brand like Mass Effect.

The Story is very predictable and even boring at some points.

The writing is okay (not great, just okay).

The dialouge-system is the same mess as in Fallout 4 fused with telltale. Meaning the character often says completly different things from what you chose and the choices make no real difference.

The early version (before the current patch) had a lot of glitches, an awful AI and even some gamebreaking bugs (I had three cases where a main-Quest couldn't be continued becuase something that was needed could not be interacted with). I don't know how much of that was fixed with the latest patch though, I don't intend to play it a second time or even installing it since it's slowing my PC down without the game even running for some reason.

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My impressions from what I've played so far, basically it's decent. I like that characters so far and I can appreciate it trying to be different from the original trilogy, but for me the biggest issue is Andromeda is really easy to put down in favor of another game. There just isn't that much sense of urgency or even that what I'm doing matters that much. I've made two planets 100% viable for colonization and the game so far seems barely aware of it and the sidequests that have some moral choice at the end don't seem to matter either. Also there's that murder mystery sidequest with the face palm worthy outcome. I'll get back to Andromeda eventually though (maybe when there's story DLC).

 

 

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