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Title: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on November 09, 2016, 11:57:21 AM
How bought something positive that came out this week: new trailer.

https://youtu.be/pyZw_oqk7Q8 (https://youtu.be/pyZw_oqk7Q8)

Admittedly I am an unabashed fanboi, but I'm excited. Even more so realizing Clancy Brown is doing a voice.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on November 09, 2016, 12:10:26 PM
Mass Effect 3 broke me. That trailer did nothing to change that.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on November 09, 2016, 12:45:42 PM
There was a Mass Effect 3? I've never found it on Steam.  :oh_i_see:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on November 09, 2016, 01:20:43 PM
Oddly, I actually played the whole series on XBone.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on November 09, 2016, 01:27:16 PM
I almost played it all on console, but then my 360 died like 10 hours into 3. Ending up re-buying and finishing on PC. I really enjoyed 3, 2 was the best, but 3 was very good in its own right.  Well, at least until the end, then it fell apart. Still, the gameplay was solid; the narrative was solid, and even the multiplayer was cool. There's a solid base to work with.

I've been avoiding watching anything about this in order to avoid pre-release hype fatigue.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on November 09, 2016, 01:49:54 PM
I thought 2 had the best gameplay and story, 1 had the best level design and 3 failed on just about every other level to be anywhere near what 1 or 2 was. 3's gameplay felt way too much like the magic tunnel with a story that utterly disintegrated at the end.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on November 09, 2016, 02:28:42 PM
3 did get the balance on weapons and loot correct. One was a giant cluster, carrying around ten suits of armor for every party member, where 2 stripped the system down to nothing.

Citadel was actually the highlight of the series, but beyond that you're right.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rendakor on November 09, 2016, 02:32:40 PM
I couldn't finish the first one. None of the personality options really fit my playstyle, and I really hate voiced MCs in a dialog-choice-based game. That was the game that made me realize Bioware doesn't make games for me anymore.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on November 09, 2016, 03:08:02 PM
OK. I watched that. It's a cinematic. Neat premise. 

I'll wait for info on gameplay. I'm perfectly fine with it being like 2 or 3, but I'd like something closer to 2.  Do we know the overall game structure yet? Are they shoehorning this entry into an open world framework? I guess I could google, but I'm lazy.  :awesome_for_real:

I couldn't finish the first one. None of the personality options really fit my playstyle, and I really hate voiced MCs in a dialog-choice-based game. That was the game that made me realize Bioware doesn't make games for me anymore.

Femshep is the greatest voiced main character ever.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on November 09, 2016, 03:18:33 PM
 :heart:




Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rendakor on November 09, 2016, 03:40:06 PM
I couldn't finish the first one. None of the personality options really fit my playstyle, and I really hate voiced MCs in a dialog-choice-based game. That was the game that made me realize Bioware doesn't make games for me anymore.

Femshep is the greatest voiced main character ever.
I never play female toons in games like this; kills the immersion for me.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: PalmTrees on November 09, 2016, 04:37:13 PM
3 left a real bad taste in my mouth, there's gonna have to be some really good reviews. And a Steam sale with the day one dlc included. I really liked the ME setting and that they've dumped it for an entirely new one is a letdown.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on November 09, 2016, 06:56:00 PM
I'm excited for it, but I'm a huge ME fanboy. Despite some of the downsides of 3 I really ended up loving the multiplayer which was something I absolutely did not expect when it had been initially announced.

OK. I watched that. It's a cinematic. Neat premise. 

I'll wait for info on gameplay. I'm perfectly fine with it being like 2 or 3, but I'd like something closer to 2.  Do we know the overall game structure yet? Are they shoehorning this entry into an open world framework? I guess I could google, but I'm lazy.  :awesome_for_real:


From Game Informer by way of NeoGaf (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1309671):

Quote
Backstory
-Around 2185, at the height of galactic progress, unaware of the impending Reaper invasion (though after Sovereign), several species band together for the "Andromeda Initiative"
-4 Arks, each carrying a different race, are built, housing thousands of individuals to chart a course to Andromeda

More on the Andromeda Initiative:
"Founded in 2176 and launched in 2185, the Andromeda Initiative is a civilian, multi-species project created to send scientists, explorers and colonists on a one-way trip to settle in the Andromeda Galaxy. With powerful benefactors lending their support, the program has grown substantially in scope since its inception. The Initiative’s ultimate goal is to establish a permanent presence on the seemingly resource-rich frontier of Andromeda, and eventually create a reliable route between it and the Milky Way Galaxy."

-Turians are confirmed in the game
-The Heleus Cluster is noted as having a significant amount of "Golden Worlds", or planets ripe for life
-Each ark is led by a "Pathfinder"
-The Pathfinder, recon teams and others onboard are in cryosleep, unaware of what transpires in the Milky Way after they depart
-You play as either Scott or Sara Ryder (you can change your name), the children of Alec Ryder (pathfinder of the human ark)
-Alec Ryder is voiced by Clancy Brown
-Events at the start of the game occur that pass this role down to you, you are untested and unproven, unlike Commander Shepard of the previous trilogy
-This doesn't mean Mass Effect is Ryder's story from now on, they want the game to feel like a complete story (while teasing other stories that could happen)
-More customization options than previous games
-You can customize your father and your sibling, though not as extensively
-The "Nexus" is basically a forward command center staffed by multiple species that arrives in Andromeda early to pave the way for the Arks
-The Hyperion (humanity's ark) arrives at an incorrect location that's volatile and loses contact with the other arks and Nexus

Inspiration
-The (much improved) Mako of ME1, the loyalty missions of ME2, the multiplayer of ME3

Combat
-Global cooldowns are now replaced by individual timers
-Pausing returns but only for switching weapons or using consumables; powers are instead hotkeyed for quick use in combat while squad commands are in real time
-Dynamic cover system (ala TLOU)
-Still a cover based shooter with a goal to get the player moving around the battlefield more
-Jetpack allows for more movement variety; you can quick dash instead of rolling
-Jetpack has a hover function that allows you to hit enemies seeking cover or survey your surroundings
-Less emphasis on linear, clearly telegraphed environments that tell you a combat encounter is coming (though linear areas are still in the game)
-Game Informer's hands on was positive, feel the game has a clearer identity in combat than previous games
-You still queue up attacks, combos, order your squad, etc
-All key elements are still intact but the studio wanted to encourage more experimentation and wider variety of abilities

-Class system is gone; instead you have full access to abilities from all classes, you can mix and match skills from tech, soldier or biotics
-Goal is to allow players to try different approaches to combat without being locked in at the start
-However, you can still specialize once you invest enough points into a category of skills, you unlock a profile that can get you bonuses for your particular play style
-This is where class names like "Vanguard" (invest in combat and biotics) and "Adept" (invest in biotics) resurface
-Invest in multiple categories and you unlock the "Explorer" profile
-There is a narrative reason that allows you to reconfigure your points throughout the game so that you can try out multiple gameplay approaches without making multiple characters
-You can customize your helmet, chest, shoulders, arms and legs, more extensive than previous trilogy
-Many familiar weapons return, as well as new melee options like swords and hammers

Enemy/Environments/Crafting
-The 'Kett' are the main enemy
-The team wanted players to experience the first time encountering a new alien species vs already having it established in prior games
-Rather than painting them as mortal enemies, BioWare wanted to make them feel foreboding but not ugly as they want you to also empathize with them
-Instead of having "linear slices" of planets that you land on, you explore these planets from the surface to their underbelly
-Critical paths, optional planets, major hubs, loyalty missions return
-Your land vehicle is designated the "Nomad", and the team got special guidance from NFS developers on its handling.
-The Nomad isn't sluggish and cumbersome like the Mako, it's very fast, still boosts and maneuvers much better
-The Nomad doesn't have weapons, you can customize things like its speed and appearance
-BioWare did not want to repeat having things like mineral nodes and multiple identical outposts scattered across planets
-Points of interest include combat encounters, puzzles, narrative beats etc on planets
-One planet, called 'Elaaden', is flagged as a possible habitat zone, however the surface is hazardous (no water, extremely hot); you can be pointed in this direction in multiple ways, for example, a Krogan can request the Pathfinder to find a missing colony ship or you can just choose to land on the planet yourself and see what you find
-On planets, one of your priorities is to scout for drop zones for your crew that drop "forward stations" that establishes a foothold for you
-These stations allow for changing up your loadout, fast travel point, etc
-Planets can have multiple dangers like acid pools, burning wreckage, weather etc that can all kill you
-Most planets have at least one major enemy base
-Planets can have areas, encounters and "super bosses" that are too tough for you to handle at first, encouraging players to come back later
-Since Andromeda is a new galaxy, Ryder can actively scan and discover things in the environments; that gets sent back for analysis and unlocks new technologies for the player
-Scanning and discovering these things also allows you to obtain blueprints to craft weapons and armor for yourself
-You can create a wide array of items, not just ammo types and weapon mods, items that haven't been seen before in the Milky Way (thanks to new alien tech)
-Some plot threads and missions lead you across multiple planets

Squadmates
-Peebee (nickname): Asari squadmate shown in previous footage. Went off on her own after arriving on the Nexus and described as having a "bubbly personality". She's smart and not concerned with social norms and "niceties".
-Liam: Arrived with the Pathfinder, former police officer and described as having a "light attitude", bringing levity to situations

The Tempest (Your Ship)
-Important to harken back to the Normandy as it was a fan favorite
-There are no loading screens as you move through the ship
-Galaxy map returns but rather than piloting a mini ship on a map, it is more immersive, you select a planet, the game gives you sense of traveling towards that planet, and when you back out, you're immediately at your destination
-You don't pilot the ship manually, but it feels seamless as you go from planet to planet and see them from your bridge getting closer in the window
-They wanted a seamless experience from picking a planet to walking down to your cargo hold, hopping into the Nomad and landing on a planet. There is a landing sequence and you get off the ship. No more loading screens and instantly popping up on the surface of a planet.

Relationships/Characters
-There are more relationships in the game than any other Bioware game (as they noted fans make a big emphasis on romance in the games)
-The squadmate with the least amount of lines in Andromeda has more lines than the squadmate with the most amount of lines in ME3
-Due to complications in the awakening process, your sibling won't join you in combat but you can interact with them and build a relationship
-Many of these dealings are optional, and discovering more about the Ryder family is a plot thread
-BioWare is confident the details of this story are what differentiates it from a traditional "hero's journey"
-Loyalty missions return but they are not critical to the ending of the game; you can complete them after you complete the main story path for example
-Emphasis that relationships don't just culminate in a sex scene, but rather characters can just want to get in the sack, while others are interested in long term relationships and others still aren't interested at all. Bioware wanted to capture more "shooting bottles with Garrus" moments in the game, of which there are plenty

Multiplayer
-More evolved and refined form of ME3
-Card based economy where you earn XP and credits
-There are microtransactions but no real world money is required, you can unlock normally
-You still set the map, enemy, as before but you can also activate modifiers that can give you decreased health (for greater reward) or more damage (less reward)
-Bioware also plans to release custom crafted missions with unique modifiers that players can't change themselves
-These custom missions give you a 3rd currency, "mission funds" which allow you directly purchase items and weapons vs the mercy of random card packs; however these items are only available for a limited time in the store and can change often
-In MP, you play as the "Apex Force", a militia strike team from the Nexus
-Different enemies require you to use different tactics (some are shield heavy, some use heavy biotics etc)
-Playing MP will have advantages for the single player but it absolutely does not affect the ending of the game
-New "Prestige" mechanic added: With several types of characters, you earn regular XP and prestige XP. The prestige XP goes into every character of that 'type', for example 'tanky' characters. Earning enough prestige can grant you added health for all tank characters, etc.

Choices
-No more Paragon/Renegade system
-They want more nuance and subtlety and giving the player more opportunity to express themselves
-You can agree or disagree with someone without being punished or cornered into a paragon or renegade choice
-Dialogue option tones: heart, head, professional and casual.
-These don't affect you or sway a meter one way or another, rather they allow you freedom without worrying about unintended consequences
-"Narrative actions" (previously "interrupts) return but rather than giving a "red"=bad or "blue"=good choice, it can say "shoot", leaving more ambiguity to your choice
-Decisions aren't necessarily obvious "right" or "wrong", there are pros and cons to each and you'll just have to play the game the way you want

The future
-Mass Effect: Andromeda leaves the door open for more games (obviously)
-New game+ mode allows you to change your gender if you choose
-BioWare is coy about multiple endings; "it's a suprise", "it's different than the trilogy"


Getting rid of the Paragon/Renegade stuff is way overdue, and the more free-form character building stuff sounds nice also.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on November 09, 2016, 10:17:50 PM
3 was worth it for the MP.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Yegolev on November 10, 2016, 06:21:42 AM
I always play girls.  I even play blacks in the non-racist games.  You guys are weird.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: lesion on November 10, 2016, 08:38:04 AM
Take all my money, Clancy Brown! TAKE MY MONEY!


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: apocrypha on November 10, 2016, 09:10:50 AM
I always play girls.  I even play blacks in the non-racist games.  You guys are weird.

Me too. My reasoning used to be "If I'm going to spend the entire game looking at my character's butt I'd prefer it not to be a male one". Now, I don't have a reason, it's just what I do.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on November 10, 2016, 10:33:11 AM
I always joke that Mass Effect turned me into a virtual lesbian. I've been on the femshep boat since my second playthrough of ME1.  She was just a better Sheppard, even with the weird cougar voice shit she was pulling in 3.

Dudeshep was goofy as hell, but I always kept one around for an Ashley/Tali romance options.  Plus, these games were always good for a couple playthroughs.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: TheWalrus on November 10, 2016, 10:05:03 PM
1s tank driving physics can fuck right off. The most nonfun implementation of vehicle shit I've ever played. 2 was awesome, and I never finished 3. My friend told me to stop, so I still have a good impression of the series.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on November 11, 2016, 10:48:11 AM
I tell people to play 3 far enough to unlock the Citadel DLC, then play that and consider it the series wrap up.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Kail on November 11, 2016, 04:44:00 PM
Sounds cool enough that I really wish they'd put this on Steam for a change.  I reeeeeeeally don't want to have to bother with ANOTHER game store account to keep track of.

Slim chance of that, though, I suppose.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: tar on November 12, 2016, 01:43:08 AM
I always play girls.  I even play blacks in the non-racist games.  You guys are weird.

Me too. My reasoning used to be "If I'm going to spend the entire game looking at my character's butt I'd prefer it not to be a male one". Now, I don't have a reason, it's just what I do.

Yeah, sounds more than a little familar, voice was a big factor for me. Oddly, I find that playing male voiced characters break immersion more. Could be an uncanny valley effect, they're just that bit too close without being 'right'.

Sounds like they're heading in my kinda direction, getting rid of the paragon/renegade stuff is great. That was my major gripe with the series.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on November 12, 2016, 12:10:15 PM
The women are usually a bit more of a blank slate since I have no assumptions about myself as a woman. Also the voice characterizations always seem to inflect the way I speak more than the men.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: MournelitheCalix on November 14, 2016, 09:33:20 AM
Mass Effect 3 broke me. That trailer did nothing to change that.

Yep me to.  Hard to emphasize this enough.   If Bioware thinks I am forgiving and forgetting...well they have another thing coming.  I won't purchase this game until the entire arc is out and everyone an their brother tells me its:


1.)  A can't miss, defining game of an era.
2.)  An ending that doesn't kill any desire I may have had to play the entire thing again.


Sadly though I think we are probably quite alone in that once it comes out those who were upset will forget and slavishly throw money at Bioware.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Fabricated on November 14, 2016, 07:06:20 PM
I just can't bring myself to care about this franchise anymore after they shit the bed so bad with 3.

And of course it's a really lame method to just go "clean slate" with the universe- a combination of laziness and half-admission they cocked it all up.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Khaldun on November 15, 2016, 06:39:23 AM
I know everyone really hates the ending, but 3 actually lost me first with the dumb fight with Kai Leng. I just hated that so much that I wasn't all that interested in going further.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: PalmTrees on November 15, 2016, 06:00:24 PM
I remember letting out a sizeable groan of "fuck off space ninja" when he showed.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Samprimary on November 26, 2016, 10:23:32 PM
I remember letting out a sizeable groan of "fuck off space ninja" when he showed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJSZ1TwjcsQ


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Kageru on November 28, 2016, 12:17:46 PM

"The (much improved) Mako of ME1, the loyalty missions of ME2, the multiplayer of ME3"

... The mission structure of any other open-world game where we pepper a planet with side and story missions and you drive around in your mako doing them and having cool character moments with your crew in a broad "clear the area of obstructions" story with even more stripped back RPG mechanics.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on November 28, 2016, 04:56:09 PM
It's Fallout4; Mass Effect Edition. :D


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on November 29, 2016, 04:42:40 AM

"The (much improved) Mako of ME1, the loyalty missions of ME2, the multiplayer of ME3"

... The mission structure of any other open-world game where we pepper a planet with side and story missions and you drive around in your mako doing them and having cool character moments with your crew in a broad "clear the area of obstructions" story with even more stripped back RPG mechanics.

That sounds like Dragon Age: Inquisition with an APC to me.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on November 29, 2016, 05:12:20 PM
I'd be mostly ok with that as long as they get rid of some of the more tedious side-quest stuff DA:I had. DA:I's combat wasn't fun enough to me for it to hold my interest through all of the side quests. Didn't particularly like the characters that much either to the point where I honestly can't remember more than two of them right now (and one of them is Varric which is a bit of a cheat).

So DA:I with Mass Effect combat, hopefully better characters, and some of the lessons they've said they learned about what didn't work with DA:I's side quests seems good to me.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Teleku on November 29, 2016, 11:41:05 PM
Weird with the Femshep love here.  Always thought Shepard was a really well voiced/acted character.  Never could make it very far into my attempts at a femshep.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on November 30, 2016, 10:47:51 AM
Was there a lot of clamoring for the mako to return?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on November 30, 2016, 10:51:48 AM
I always play girls.  I even play blacks in the non-racist games.  You guys are weird.
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3667682/Mesmer.jpg)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Samprimary on November 30, 2016, 06:26:03 PM
Weird with the Femshep love here.  Always thought Shepard was a really well voiced/acted character.  Never could make it very far into my attempts at a femshep.

For me it was mostly that in Mass Effect 1, Jennifer Hale was by far the superior voice actor. Her counterpart even said that it showed him he had to really, really step up his game.

To his credit, he mostly did. But a surprisingly large number of people ended up habituated into Hale's shepard by the end of 1 and carried that torch forward.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on November 30, 2016, 10:23:20 PM

For me it was mostly that in Mass Effect 1, Jennifer Hale was by far the superior voice actor. Her counterpart even said that it showed him he had to really, really step up his game.

To his credit, he mostly did. But a surprisingly large number of people ended up habituated into Hale's shepard by the end of 1 and carried that torch forward.

This, basically. Hale was just the far better voice actor which is why I went fem-shep for most of my Mass Effect playthroughs. That and I found it easier to make a custom-looking fem-shep that didn't look horrific during gameplay/cut-scenes.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: kaid on December 01, 2016, 02:14:34 PM

For me it was mostly that in Mass Effect 1, Jennifer Hale was by far the superior voice actor. Her counterpart even said that it showed him he had to really, really step up his game.

To his credit, he mostly did. But a surprisingly large number of people ended up habituated into Hale's shepard by the end of 1 and carried that torch forward.

This, basically. Hale was just the far better voice actor which is why I went fem-shep for most of my Mass Effect playthroughs. That and I found it easier to make a custom-looking fem-shep that didn't look horrific during gameplay/cut-scenes.

I did like male shep for commander shepard interstellar giggalo/jackass renegade runs. He was good at the voice over work of the character being a total dick.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Phildo on December 01, 2016, 02:34:21 PM
Male Shepard totally nailed "this is my favorite store on the Citadel."


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Comstar on December 02, 2016, 04:40:53 AM
Well a slightly better trailer came out...and I don't want to play that game right now. Looks like they took the worst parts of Dragon Age III and did more of that.

I'm hoping it's more a bad trailer than anything else, but I'm getting a bad feeling about this.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on December 02, 2016, 07:28:50 AM
I like that they seemed to have moved beyond the linear claustrophobic maps of the previous games. Needing to craft most things is intriguing too though knowing BioWare it'll likely be a horrible grind to get resources and I'll end up hacking my game to give myself effectively unlimited resources like I did in ME 1. The summoned immobile half-height barrier was also a crack up.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on December 02, 2016, 11:29:50 AM
The new trailer was very "meh" for me. It looks like Inquisition in space, basically, which is not a good thing, especially in regards to the combat and free-roam.

Also, Bioware seems to be getting worse with facial animations every game. The facial animations in the new trailer were.. well, down-right horrible.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on December 02, 2016, 11:44:12 AM
The faces were fugly (default SisRyder especially) which doesn't help.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on December 02, 2016, 02:37:53 PM
The one thing I hope we can finally get away from are the morally grey plot choices that seem to be so popular over the last 5 years.  Do I perform this reprehensible act that will help 51% of the population, or do I do this less repugnant thing that makes life slightly worse for everyone going forward?

I don't want to go back to the "save the puppy/kick the puppy" paradigm that used to be so prevalent.  But can't we be just a little heroic again?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: penfold on December 02, 2016, 04:13:14 PM
The faces were fugly (default SisRyder especially) which doesn't help.

Knowing the diversity of the Bioware team fugly is mandatory now because something something male gaze something objectification blah blah beauty trope etc.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on December 03, 2016, 02:45:25 AM
I think they just recycled Sera's model for that one.

Trailer is all kinds of awful. Certainly none of the semi high brow storytelling that ME used to have.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Khaldun on December 04, 2016, 05:57:47 AM
I actually want some stuff that is better morally grey than the usual Bioware "will I be an evil utilitarian or a good person who commits sins of omission"?

Choices that reflect some kind of personal disposition are more interesting and character-defining. It would be interesting if they went with something like a horoscope setting: 10 or 15 "dispositions" or "temperaments" that are defined through choices, where as you go through a game it starts to present you more and more with choices relevant to the disposition you've been favoring.

I do like the Bioware choices that are about "Which of your NPC friends do you like best?" (Not just the which-one-are-you-trying-to-sex kind.)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Samprimary on December 04, 2016, 07:21:42 PM

For me it was mostly that in Mass Effect 1, Jennifer Hale was by far the superior voice actor. Her counterpart even said that it showed him he had to really, really step up his game.

To his credit, he mostly did. But a surprisingly large number of people ended up habituated into Hale's shepard by the end of 1 and carried that torch forward.

This, basically. Hale was just the far better voice actor which is why I went fem-shep for most of my Mass Effect playthroughs. That and I found it easier to make a custom-looking fem-shep that didn't look horrific during gameplay/cut-scenes.

the gap in quality is the most pronounced in the first game, but Mark Meer, true to his word and absolutely to his credit, 100% pulled his weight after that and put a lot of work into being the best voice actor for shepard that he could. by 3 he was about as good as Hale, which is saying a lot, as you're rarely ever going to find anyone better than her at VA.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: lamaros on December 05, 2016, 12:24:54 AM
Fuck crafting. Fuck MMOs and how they have ruined nearly all modern RPGs.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on March 10, 2017, 12:27:24 PM
Launch trailer has dropped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6PJEmEHIaY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6PJEmEHIaY)

There have also been several videos dribbling out over the past month detailing combat, characters, etc.  They're all on the youtube page for the trailer, if you're interested.

Anyone else getting excited for this?  Or is everyone still nursing hurt feelings over Three?  I had said I wouldn't let myself get excited, but -- yeah -- I'm looking forward to it.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on March 10, 2017, 01:20:03 PM
Anyone else getting excited for this?  Or is everyone still nursing hurt feelings over Three?  I had said I wouldn't let myself get excited, but -- yeah -- I'm looking forward to it.

I haven't played an EA game since they moved them all to Origin. Just not interested in their bloatware/ spyware on top of Steam's bloatware.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 10, 2017, 01:34:11 PM
Super-mega-extra-hyped. Annndddd... my laptop died and itvis now on its way to California for some 10 to 25 business days repairingm. Fuck my gamer life.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on March 10, 2017, 01:49:13 PM
Anyone else getting excited for this?  Or is everyone still nursing hurt feelings over Three?  I had said I wouldn't let myself get excited, but -- yeah -- I'm looking forward to it.

I love the series and Bioware in general, but I'm going to wait a bit on the reviews. While I played through DA:I and ME:3 completely at launch, they both were probably the weakest entries in the series. Bioware just isn't a sure thing anymore.

Anyone else getting excited for this?  Or is everyone still nursing hurt feelings over Three?  I had said I wouldn't let myself get excited, but -- yeah -- I'm looking forward to it.

I haven't played an EA game since they moved them all to Origin. Just not interested in their bloatware/ spyware on top of Steam's bloatware.

Origin is fine. It's not odious enough to hate. I've gotten over launchers/proprietary store fronts. Nothing is standalone anymore.  :geezer:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 10, 2017, 04:02:41 PM
I'm pretty excited for it. Signed up for EA Access for a month since you get 10% off games. The money it saved when pre-ordering ME:A offset the $4.99 for a month of Access and you get to start playing ME:A on the 16th (although only for a total of 10 hours).

Despite ME3's issues I loved the multiplayer. DA:I wasn't great but seems like a good blueprint to start with for something like ME:A. I wasn't a fan of DA:I's combat but that shouldn't be an issue with an ME game, and aside from that DA:I's main weaknesses were the a large number of dull side-quests and the characters weren't very interesting. Both of these seem fixable but we'll see.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Kail on March 10, 2017, 06:01:28 PM
I haven't played an EA game since they moved them all to Origin. Just not interested in their bloatware/ spyware on top of Steam's bloatware.

Pretty much my feelings on the matter.  I can't really claim that Origin is any different than Steam or Battle.net or Uplay or Gog Galaxy (though that one is at least optional) all of which are running on my PC as I type this, but it's just one more reason to put off buying it until later when there's still so much cool stuff out there that I don't have to jump through that hoop for.

It's like downloading a mobile game, and for the first screen they ask you your name, you type it in, and they go "Sorry, that name is taken, try another one!"  Yeah, I could do that... or I could play any one of the thousand other games I have here.

I still haven't played ME 2 despite having it sitting in my Steam library for 7 years.  Thought the first one was fun while it lasted, but it didn't feel like "my story" and I wasn't really that invested in the setting or the plot.  So I suppose I'm probably not the target audience anyways.  It's not going to be hard to turn me away from buying the new one.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Kageru on March 10, 2017, 07:03:03 PM

The advantage of steam is mostly that it's a shop-front open to many vendors and capable of allowing new developers to find a market. So closed shop fronts like origin just aren't that interesting or something to encourage... but mostly very little on the triple-A front has been remotely tempting enough.

I saw a little bit of gameplay, it looks very much like a console shooter and I would not be that surprised it ends up being another open world game with some story missions amid lots of fighting and gathering. The old Bioware is gone and the new Bioware needs to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the console market to make back that triple-A budget. 


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on March 10, 2017, 08:22:04 PM

The advantage of steam is mostly that it's a shop-front open to many vendors and capable of allowing new developers to find a market. So closed shop fronts like origin just aren't that interesting or something to encourage... but mostly very little on the triple-A front has been remotely tempting enough.

Yep. Plus I just don't feel like messing with a thousand storefront apps. I don't bother with gog, origins, GMG or anyone else's stuff unless they give a steam code.  I resisted Steam until it was the only way of getting PC games, too. Nothing in a long, long, long time has been worth that second storefront. I only tolerate Blizzard's because it's an MMO patcher, which is a different animal.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on March 10, 2017, 08:25:32 PM
There's nothing forcing you to use GOG Galaxy. The only thing I use it for is reinstalling Witcher 3, but only because it's less cumbersome than downloading several GB worth of standalone installers.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Hawkbit on March 10, 2017, 08:32:59 PM
Is there any reason to get the Deluxe or Super-Deluxe versions of this? It looks like it only adds multiplayer boosts and a skin/armor. Unless I'm missing something...


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: lesion on March 10, 2017, 08:48:53 PM
Origin is fine. It's not odious enough to hate. I've gotten over launchers/proprietary store fronts. Nothing is standalone anymore.  :geezer:
I've had two Origin accounts silently hacked (as in no e-mails sent at all, no indication of password/hints changing), and it's the only service I've ever had that happen with. It's also entirely possible that their non-automated customer support is a phone sitting in a locker at a train station.

Love the Mass Effect series (and Battlefield for that matter) but fuck their shitty shit.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 10, 2017, 08:55:26 PM
Is there any reason to get the Deluxe or Super-Deluxe versions of this? It looks like it only adds multiplayer boosts and a skin/armor. Unless I'm missing something...
Deluxe adds:

Pathfinder Casual Outfit
Scavenger Armor
Pathfinder Elite Weapon Set (4)
Pet Pyjak
Digital Soundtrack
Multiplayer Deluxe Launch Pack


Super Deluxe adds Deluxe plus:

Multiplayer Super Deluxe Booster Packs


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on March 10, 2017, 09:43:24 PM
Origin is fine. It's not odious enough to hate. I've gotten over launchers/proprietary store fronts. Nothing is standalone anymore.  :geezer:
I've had two Origin accounts silently hacked (as in no e-mails sent at all, no indication of password/hints changing), and it's the only service I've ever had that happen with. It's also entirely possible that their non-automated customer support is a phone sitting in a locker at a train station.

Love the Mass Effect series (and Battlefield for that matter) but fuck their shitty shit.

Sorry to hear that. Through pure luck, I haven't been hacked since UO/Everquest (UO was my fault, I let someone borrow my account and they decided to steal it). In both cases, I was able to convince support to give me the account back and put a special lock on it.  :awesome_for_real:

I wouldn't even have an Origin account if it wasn't for the exclusives. Same with uPlay, although that only exists because someone gave me a key for The Division.

I'm just afraid that this will be as uninspiring to play as DA3. Recently, I tried to replay ME3 (which I actually liked sans ending), and all I could see were flaws. Flaws everywhere. ME2 is still the pinnacle of modern Bioware, IMO.

edit: I really can't type tonight.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 10, 2017, 09:54:19 PM
Can't say I've ever had any issues with Origin. I launch my games and login and that tends to be the extent to which I have to interact with it.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 10, 2017, 10:12:26 PM
I've had issues with Origin; mainly an account getting hacked through a game I've never played, downloaded or bought (the Star Wars MMO; keep getting e-mails about how the name and password on my Origin account are getting changed, almost immediately after I find ways to change them to something else; even going so far as to add two-step verification, tying it to a different e-mail account or doing it through a different computer). Used their customer support system four times to try and get it fixed, which has accomplished fuck and all, so I basically just gave up on the account, despite ME2, ME3 and DAI being tied to it. My second Origin account, from way back when which only has one game on it (Sims 3; had it gifted and used it to try out Origin when it first started) hasn't been hacked, amusingly.

As for ME:A... eh. I'm torn on whether I'll grab it. On the one hand.. I do enjoy the games (ignoring the retarded fuckery at the end of ME3 and the Cerberus bullshit they double down on, then doubled down on again.. man, fuck Kai Leng and everything tied to him), and the multiplayer tends to be a lot of fun even without using a mic -- and I tend to avoid multiplayer games/modes like the plague.

On the other hand.. there's a lot of red flags going up on this game. Apparently a lot of bugs on the builds they've had people play (bugs/crashes that had devs saying 'oh.. that's odd' when waved over to show it to them) at PAX. Additionally it looks like the facial animations have taken a step backwards from the original trilogy, which is more sad than anything else. Not entirely thrilled with some of the game design decisions and how annoying or bland a number of characters seem to be; primarily Peebee and the Deus Ex AI attached to you.

I'll probably end up pre-ordering it a day or so before the launch, depending on people respond to the 10 hour early access, since if I get it at launch.. I might as well pre-order for the bonuses.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Samprimary on March 10, 2017, 10:26:11 PM

I've had two Origin accounts silently hacked (as in no e-mails sent at all, no indication of password/hints changing), and it's the only service I've ever had that happen with. It's also entirely possible that their non-automated customer support is a phone sitting in a locker at a train station.

"Hello and to thanking you the success at "Boy Ware" customer support of the services. My name is .. er, *mumble* ... Greg. How to assist you today?"

"I can't access my Origin account."

"I see sir yes that is very unfortunate. Do you have an Origin account number?"

"I have an email attached to the account."

"I see sir again yes I apologize. I will be transfer you to accelerate desk."

"Wait,.."

*mangled manual transfer sounds*

*dialtone*


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on March 11, 2017, 11:45:12 AM
Can't say I've ever had any issues with Origin. I launch my games and login and that tends to be the extent to which I have to interact with it.

I have on my work computer. It's naturally behind a firewall and corporate network but Steam, Blizzard.net and every other storefront I've tried to play with? No problem. Origin? It lets me download patches on that computer, lets me buy games on that computer, it lets me login and see what games I have and at one point, it let me install those games. Patching those games? NOPE. It won't do it. It continually gives me some error about firewalls that if you Google, has been an Origin problem FOR YEARS. Opening ports? Nothing. Once the games are patched, I can play them if I want (I've at times had to go through an anonymizer or put my computer on the DMZ to download patches) but patching them regularly? Not a fucking option. Origin's "support" was utterly useless consisting of a few knowledgebase articles (that did nothing) and trading some emails back and forth that did nothing. I just fucking stopped trying on that computer. And this has been going on for like 2-3 years now meaning it's a known fuckup they can't or won't fix. I CAN PATCH YOUR SHITTY STOREFRONT WHY CAN'T I PATCH YOUR GAMES THROUGH IT? THE FUCK?

It just showed why Steam really should just be renamed "WE R PC GAMES, BITCHES" and all others should just suck Gabe Newell's micropeen.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: rk47 on March 12, 2017, 08:58:48 PM
Game looks really fugly too. Might skip.
RIP Bioware.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 12, 2017, 10:52:35 PM
The female characters look fugly but the rest of the game looks nice.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Teleku on March 12, 2017, 11:39:39 PM
Yeah, I'm very much in "wait and see" mode with Bioware now.  If reviews make it out to be robot jesus, I might possibly pirate it.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 13, 2017, 03:07:37 AM
System requirements are out.

'Recommended' specs for 1080p/30 at 'high detail': 16 GB RAM, CPU with 8 Threads (Core i7 4790 or AMD FX 8350), 64 Bit Windows, AMD Radeon RX 480 or Geforce GTX 1060 and 55 GB of disc space. Minimum specs for 720p/30 at 'low' are 8 GB RAM, Core i5, GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon HD 7750.

According to EA ME: Andromeda supports 4k but no recommended spec is published. There's also no recommended spec for @60fps or for 'maximum'. Seems like this game is an absolute resource hog.

I bought a new PC two weeks ago and barely match the recommended specs (Kaby Lake Core i7; Geforce GTX 1070). Seems like not that many people will be able to actually play that game on PC.

[edit:] Most of the issues stem from the fact that the new Mass Effect runs on Frostbite.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 13, 2017, 05:05:34 AM
My computer is getting fairly dated at this point (been.. 4 years or so since I built it and I haven't upgraded anything since) and I barely meet the minimum specs in a couple areas, but I'm not too concerned. So long as I can get a decent frame-rate I'm not that picky about graphic fidelity -- the design they've gone for with the characters is far more concerning to me, personally. Some look decent. A couple look good. Most look bad. And the animations and lighting don't help.

The 'wtf?' design decisions keep coming, as well. They add an in-depth (for Mass Effect, at least) crafting system and a return of inventory. Yet, none of your squad-mates have 'gear'. You can't change their armour or even their weapons (the latter of which simply scale based on the level of your character). So, they added an entire crafting/resource/inventory system for the player character while ignoring the squad-mates. Ostensibly they did this to help the squad-mates have 'iconic' looks and be more 'individual'. ME:A will actually have the least amount of squad-mate customisation of any Bioware game ever (even DA2 had more, albeit only slightly). Ironically, the squad-mates still suffer from the 'Avenger' bug, as well (which is where they have the Avenger gun replacing their equipped weapons in cut-scenes -- a bug that dates back several games in the Mass Effect franchise) -- despite having a locked weapon (i.e.; the Krogan squad-mates can only use his version of the Ruzad shot gun).

I expect the game to get great reviews (because reviews are, well, less about reality and more about knob-polishing) and the game will have a decent sized group of fans that will defend it to the death regardless of how good it is. Outside of that? I'm expected 'slightly above average' at best for this game.

And I'll still probably get it at launch because the multiplayer alone could be worth it and it might be amusing to see what other lessons they failed to learn from their earlier games.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 13, 2017, 05:33:35 AM
Ostensibly they did this to help the squad-mates have 'iconic' looks and be more 'individual'.

This is code for: 'it would be too hard/too costly to model all of those combinations and we're already late as fuck so we couldn't be bothered'


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: rk47 on March 13, 2017, 06:48:29 AM
Why even have companions?
I'm guessing even if they all die, all you're missing are just bullet catchers.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on March 13, 2017, 07:02:39 AM
Why even have companions?
It's kinda the point of a Bioware game.

On the other hand, Bioware hasn't been Bioware for so long I'm not able to generate any excitement for this game. Can't even Steam sale it. I don't think I managed to finish the 3rd one and I didn't even like the 1st Dragon Age, soo.....I still like TOR, though, so that's something.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: MahrinSkel on March 13, 2017, 10:48:03 AM
Since it sounds like I am at least a couple of upgrade cycles from having the hardware to run it decently, my "is it worth it?" decision is remarkably easy.

--Dave


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: rk47 on March 13, 2017, 04:31:33 PM
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/RJ/w6jeUUR.jpg)

 :why_so_serious:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: MahrinSkel on March 13, 2017, 04:35:16 PM
Da Fuq?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 13, 2017, 05:10:31 PM
Someone stole their guns!

No wonder they're losing to the Kett.

Also, they look really close to the early concept art of Quarians that got rejected (pre-ME1). Not a fan of the Angaran design at all.

Heh, was reading the BSN forums to see how people are defending Bioware over not letting players change armour skins/types and weapons for our squad-mates (not even to the degree of ME2 or ME3), which has boiled down to; 'it removes the character agency of the squad mates if Ryder (the player) tells them what to wear/use.'. I.e.; it hurts the feelings of pixels. If it wasn't so stupid it would be hilarious.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 13, 2017, 06:58:32 PM
Why even have companions?
I'm guessing even if they all die, all you're missing are just bullet catchers.

That's pretty much been true with the companions in any ME game for me. Even back to the first game when you could change out their weapons and armor, at best they were still just additional power usages that could get knocked out, and who provided dialogue in the non-action bits. I don't ever look back fondly on the squadmate inventory management of ME1.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on March 14, 2017, 05:40:41 AM
Gameplay-wise, ME1 squadmates were little more than warm bodies to keep Shepard from going down as quickly. In ME2 I mostly used them as armor strippers and biotic combo enablers since they do only like 45% of your damage and are hideously inaccurate unless they're using DLC weapons. In ME3 (which I'm playing now), they're a bit more useful, and I've heard you can spec/gear some of them in utterly broken ways and turn them into mission-soloing gods.

Also isn't Andromeda being done wholly by the Montreal team? As in, the team responsible for ME3's multiplayer and little else? Everything reeks of "B-team."


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on March 14, 2017, 11:34:22 AM
I had thought that the ME3 multiplayer was the best part of the game.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 14, 2017, 12:08:03 PM
It was.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on March 15, 2017, 05:33:21 AM
So Rock Paper Shotgun have looked at the first few hours of the game.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/14/mass-effect-andromeda-review-opening-hours/

John Walker is not kind.

Quote
I had, by purpose or distraction, not found out anything about Mass Effect Andromeda [official site] before playing its review build, beyond that it was set in a whole new galaxy. Ooh goody, I thought! A sci-fi RPG series I completely loved, but with a fresh start, baggage shed, and the extraordinary potential of a setting in a galaxy entirely unlike our own.

Yeah, about that. The first few hours of Andromeda are a gruesome trudge through the most trite bilge of the previous three games, smeared out in a setting that’s horribly familiar, burdened with some outstandingly awful writing, buried beneath a UI that appears to have been designed to infuriate in every possible way.

I had gone in assuming this would be more BioWare pleasure. So far – and let’s be clear, there’s lots of room and time for it to pick up and turn things around – the first few hours have been just awful.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 15, 2017, 05:53:26 AM
John Walker also didn't like Witcher 3. Most of the other impressions I've seen (including another one from RPS from a different writer) seem fairly positive so far. The EA Access thing starts on the 16th though so there will likely be a lot of impressions coming out soon.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on March 15, 2017, 05:58:21 AM
https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/5zhdst/mea_spoilers_i_played_20_hours_of_mea_heres_my/

Yeah, and here's a thing from a guy that basically says the exact opposite of Walker.

I've still got a preorder in for this, so I guess I'll see for myself how it is before long.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on March 15, 2017, 07:26:34 AM
My pre-order is in. Going with the XBone because its the kind of game Id rather be comfortable on the couch for. I'm mixed on the squad customization thing. The gamer in me wants it, but god was it tedious in DA:I to try to keep your whole squad up to date.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Comstar on March 15, 2017, 05:38:24 PM
I just watched Giant Bomb do a stream of the 1st planet, and their conclusion matches the RPS hit piece.

Maybe it gets better later, but only if you enjoyed the Hinterlands of Dragon Age 3.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: drogg on March 15, 2017, 06:25:05 PM
pcgamer concurs with rps: http://www.pcgamer.com/we-have-mixed-feelings-about-the-first-few-hours-of-mass-effect-andromeda/


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 15, 2017, 07:05:27 PM
I've dropped some time into the trial and.. well, if it wasn't the multiplayer I'd cancel my pre-order. Here's my list of issues so far;

The facial animations remain bad (and not just in terms of being badly done; facial animations often don't match the tone of dialogue -- for example, femRyder smirking/smiling while discussing something depressing/sad, mainly because that's just her resting face animation and they did nothing to alter it during key times). The dead-eye stare issue remains heavily present.

There are some general animation issues as well, from moonwalkers to NPCs that slide around, some that will actually teleport to turn and face you and a lot of clipping issues that show a general lack of QAing models (the number of Turians with an eye poking through their right eye-lid is.. sad).

The character creator is trash; it is the worst CC they've had in a Mass Effect game, which are not exactly known for stellar CCs. You only get a set of presets that you can tweak slightly. So, if you want the nose from preset face #2 on preset #4.. you can't. You can only slightly adjust the size of the nose. Or the height of the eyes. There is no changing of complexions (at all) within each preset; each preset has one complexion and that is it. Also, Bioware remains utterly incapable of decent facial hair and the options for it are very limited. Number of hair-styles is surprisingly limited and gender-gated (including for some styles that make no sense to be). On the positive side you can make some pretty fucked up clowns due to the shitty make-up and scar choices. Oh, and you can't modify the default Ryder appearance preset at all.

The writing is.. very un-even. At times it is absolute garbage. Other times it is good (but almost never better than that). Usually it yo-yos between wildly. You can really tell a team of writers went at this and that there was almost no effort to edit them for style, tone or sense of place.

Voice acting is similar. Some good performances. Most, however, fall into the range of either being terrible or 'reading it off a page because I'm bored', including from some notable names. A lot of tonal issues with the VAs.

If you're the kind of person that cares about lore and consistency.. don't play this game. They hand-wave a lot of the lore from the Trilogy away and aren't even always consistent within this game.. and I'm not that far in.

Plot is.. well, dumb, from what I've seen. Worse than the Trilogy, easily. There's just no.. 'oomph' to it, nevermind the logic-issues with the plot and how forced it feels. No emotional hits whatsoever.

Squad-mates are.. by and large bland, uninteresting or merely re-treads of what has been done before in Mass Effect. The lack of customization options is.. irksome. Not being able to change/modify their weapons to adjust for play-style or specific threats and no additional out-fits means you're stuck with their appearance.. even if they make no god damn sense. Easily the least amount of party customization in any Bioware game I can recall; all you can do is their skills as they level up -- nothing else.

Character models are ugly. Well, not really. Most are actually passable.. if you're in an area that Bioware decided didn't have to lit by horrific fluorescent light. A lot of the graphical issues with NPCs, and to some degree their animations, could have been mitigated with proper lighting and shadow usage, but instead they often go for a very harsh, washed out lighting scheme.

The camera direction for cut-scenes if badly done. A lot of 'jumping' that feels awkward and poorly timed.

Decent amount of 'pop-in' on graphical details (and even NPCs in places like the Hyperion, Nexus and occasionally on the Tempest) I expected it with my computer (since I only have a 680), but I've seen a lot of it in videos from people with high-end machines.

The removal of tactical pause and being able to direct squad-mates in their usage of powers is annoying.

Horrific AI. I had one enemy hop over a piece of cover, taking cover for half a second or so on each side before hopping back over to do the same thing on the other side for three minutes straight. Literally; my squad was dead, he was the last enemy.. and I just watched him do it for three minutes before I killed him. Had another enemy run away from me, as he was the last one alive, to the other side of the colony outpost and take cover.. then get out of cover and run to the other side of the colony to take cover. Never fired a shot.

Had a couple path-finding issues.. but open world, I expect it.

Fell through the world once already.

The scanner is annoying as shit. You want to scan stuff to get research points (or because you absolutely have to do it to advance the quest), but the process is annoying as hell. This is in part because of how slow it is, both in terms of moving around and it 'catching' targets to scan. Given the amount of scanning they expect you to do.. after the first couple times I was already beyond tired of it.

Galaxy map has a bunch of positives, but one huge negative; it's slow. I mean going from one place to another is slow because you're forced to go through a dumb animation of the ship swooping to the target (seen in first person view; you don't even get to keep the bridge view and take advantage of all the windows they put in...). Considering they got rid of the animation to get into the Nomad because it was annoying to do it everytime and slowed things down I was surprised by the decision to keep this in.

Positives? Once I got settled in combat.. I actually didn't mind it. Sure, I hated the loss of tactical pause, but the actual combat felt better to me than ME3. AI is a joke, but, when it was 'decent enough' the combat felt good. Nomad controls were also pretty good. Not having a gun on the damn thing feels stupid but it controls very well.

I'll probably hit up multiplayer tomorrow. I hope it's good because right now it might be the only thing that saves the game for me if the single player doesn't get better quickly.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on March 15, 2017, 09:56:33 PM
The removal of tactical pause and being able to direct squad-mates in their usage of powers is annoying.

I was already pretty dead set against this game before read this. Now? Fuck a bunch of that. Mass Effect was never a good enough shooter to remove tactical pause.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 15, 2017, 10:40:37 PM
As long as my squad mates aren't getting me killed I don't think I'm going to have an issue with no pause. ME 3 MP didn't have pausing (obviously) and some of us have already stated we thought that was the best part of the game so the shooty bits of ME 3 were very solid. As long as Andromeda is no worse in that area I don't think I'll care much.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Samprimary on March 15, 2017, 11:39:54 PM
Mass Effect: The Hinterlands


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on March 16, 2017, 06:53:06 AM
The removal of tactical pause and being able to direct squad-mates in their usage of powers is annoying.

I was already pretty dead set against this game before read this. Now? Fuck a bunch of that. Mass Effect was never a good enough shooter to remove tactical pause.
Wow. Yeah. Underscoring what I said about Bioware isn't Bioware anymore. Makes sense the MP team wouldn't understand the old Bioware SP basics.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on March 16, 2017, 08:01:38 AM
Pre-ordering from GreenMan may have been a mistake.  I paid $20 less, but they don't distribute codes till the European release date. :oh_i_see:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on March 16, 2017, 09:34:33 AM
Man, it looks like this is going to be the first Bioware game since Baldur's Gate that I don't buy on opening day. Somewhere, Margalis is chortling.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jade Falcon on March 17, 2017, 05:38:08 AM
Multi player seems ok so far. Controls seem awkward compared to ME3 multi player but that could just be because I'm getting back used to it.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: tmp on March 17, 2017, 05:40:35 AM
Heh, was reading the BSN forums to see how people are defending Bioware over not letting players change armour skins/types and weapons for our squad-mates (not even to the degree of ME2 or ME3), which has boiled down to; 'it removes the character agency of the squad mates if Ryder (the player) tells them what to wear/use.'. I.e.; it hurts the feelings of pixels. If it wasn't so stupid it would be hilarious.
... What BSN forums? Didn't they shut the official forums down like couple months back, and deleted everything that was there?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 17, 2017, 06:02:55 AM
Multi player seems ok so far. Controls seem awkward compared to ME3 multi player but that could just be because I'm getting back used to it.

Hardest part in adjusting for me was the changes in cover in that for the most part you don't really stick to cover anymore. I ended up playing so much of the multiplayer that I didn't actually have time to make it to the end of the single player content they let you go through. It's hard to judge the game off what I did go through. Obviously the soulless looking characters are a bit distracting and some of the line deliveries from a few of the characters are a bit flat. Story-wise it's just to early for me to tell. I'm liking the set-up but it does go on a bit long (not nearly as long though as if you tried to get all the side quests done before leaving the Citadel for the first time in ME1).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jade Falcon on March 17, 2017, 06:45:38 AM
Cover almost feels like a hindrance, it doesn't feel like your in a strong point like ME3 had where your group could hold off waves. There always seems to be something coming up behind me now. Mouse and KB might alleviate that with being able to scan around easier then with the xbox controller. The biggest thing that jars me about the character models is the eyes seem to big for the heads, I keep waiting for them to pop out of my ryders face when she goes into conversation mode.   


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on March 17, 2017, 08:10:40 AM
I'm enjoying it so far. The sky is falling early reviews are exactly what I expected - way overblown. If you go in looking to pick the game apart you'll certainly find things to complain about, but none of it is that bad.

Character Creation is sub par for a modern game, though I did appreciate that you can make very racially diverse characters. The expressions and lip sync are a bit laughable. I'm only a short ways in, but so far two of the three squad mates come across as interesting. First Bioware game in a while where the generic male companion you start with doesn't suffer from Carth-itis. And he's actually proven useful in combat, lobbing grenades at guys behind cover.

Its decently pretty on the XBox, with only a few minimal occasions of pop-in so far. The lighting is bad and ugly unfortunately. Space scenes are really good looking.

The space scanning bits are still annoying, but I cleared a whole cluster in under ten minutes. That would have taken an hour in ME2. Inventory system is passable. They moved your selection wheel to the button beside the start button, because the top buttons are mapped to powers now. They went with the ammo/clip approach, but there's no chasing fallen clips. Just run up to an ammo container to restock.

Crafting seems very indepth, because it appears they expect you to simply craft the type of weapon you plan to use rather than scouring the galaxy for one. Two mods slots per weapon, plus special mods you can bake in to things when you craft them. I noticed a nod to ME1 in an ammo mod that changes your gun to a cooldown system instead of clips.

Character progression is wide open, but you do pick an archetype to focus on. I like that I can build a stealth sniper, but dip in to Biotics a bit if I want to.

It feels a lot like DA:I, but unlike that game - the combat is actually fun.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 17, 2017, 08:40:09 AM
... What BSN forums? Didn't they shut the official forums down like couple months back, and deleted everything that was there?

There's basically a fan-run version now. Slightly better than the old BSN forums in terms of content. Very slightly. Even gets the occasional Dev posting there.

I've now finished by 10 hours. Did everything possible before hitting the gating in the single player, and about four hours in the multiplayer.

All my previously noted issues remain. Had to add a couple more;

-- No quick-saving, during actual Priority missions you can't manual save, so you're stuck with auto-saves which can lead to having to re-do more bits than you'd like if you die/crash/exit.

-- A lot of 'talk-over', in that multiple dialogues can trigger at once and talk over each other, or out-right cancel an earlier dialogue. You can miss a lot of banter if you don't stop when it starts as there is a lot of banter -- party banter in particular is far heavier than in DA:I (so I gather, I always had the banter bug in DA:I so I never got much there at all).

-- Some audio issues; dialogues can sometimes skip the first few words audibly, so you need the sub-titles to read what wasn't said -- not very common, but common enough to be a bit annoying. There's an audio bug in the multiplayer that can make it hard to hear where enemies actually are (can sound like they are right beside/behind you when they aren't).

Multiplayer was fairly fun, however. I'm not the biggest fan of the jet-pack addition to the game, but it works fairly well in multiplayer, especially in giving it a different feel than ME3's multiplayer while also keeping what made ME3's multiplayer so fun. Fewer waves, but they tend to be harder than in ME3, which is another good change, imo.

All in all.. I have to admit I'm enjoying the game, but in the single-player especially there are so many small to medium issues that it does take you out of the game quite often to shake your head and wonder how they missed some of these issues. Game definitely needed another 3-6 months in the oven but the core of the game is decent enough to enjoy -- especially if you aren't a logic nazi or lore nerd.

This is, of course, barring any surprises beyond the gating in the single player. We all remember Kai Leng and the ending to ME3, so there's still some heavy potential for 'wtf!?'.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 17, 2017, 01:28:43 PM
My first reaction is surprise: maybe I don't remember Mass Effect 3 that much, but this does not look like a technical improvement in any department over that 5 years old game. 5 years, that's surprising. Not that I care too much as it still looks and dounds great, but it gives away a bit of a feeling that they might have worked on a budget not as large as its predecessors'.

Aside from that, I love the premise (a colony ship in truly unexplored space where we are the aliens) but I also admit that the first few hours left me lukewarm. Nothing particularly bad, but other than a few moments here and there I didn't feel anything particularly grabbing. And I am mostly referring to the characters I've met so far and the "screenplay" and "editing" of the "movie" I am playing. It's all a bit bland to me. For fairness, this happens to me with a lot of new TV shows as you still have to familiarise with the characters and learn to love or hate them, so I am pretty sure I will eventually like this game more than enough, but it is undeniable that so far I was hoping to be much more interested. And this is coming from someone who loved Mass Effect 3.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 17, 2017, 01:45:10 PM
My first reaction is surprise: maybe I don't remember Mass Effect 3 that much, but this does not look like a technical improvement in any department over that 5 years old game. 5 years, that's surprising. Not that I care too much as it still looks and dounds great, but it gives away a bit of a feeling that they might have worked on a budget not as large as its predecessors'.

Aside from that, I love the premise (a colony ship in truly unexplored space where we are the aliens) but I also admit that the first few hours left me lukewarm. Nothing particularly bad, but other than a few moments here and there I didn't feel anything particularly grabbing. And I am mostly referring to the characters I've met so far and the "screenplay" and "editing" of the "movie" I am playing. It's all a bit bland to me. For fairness, this happens to me with a lot of new TV shows as you still have to familiarise with the characters and learn to love or hate them, so I am pretty sure I will eventually like this game more than enough, but it is undeniable that so far I was hoping to be much more interested. And this is coming from someone who loved Mass Effect 3.

Just as an aside; Andromeda had roughly double the budget of Mass Effect 3 (including marketing).

Personally, a lot of my issues/annoyance/disappointment with Andromeda come from the fact I really enjoyed the original trilogy (with the exception of Kai Leng and the ending of ME3) and I'd been hoping for a return to the roots of the series with Andromeda.. and it just doesn't fair well.

There's some amusing side-by-side comparisons of NPC animations from ME1 and ME:A out there that really highlight how lack-lustre that aspect is in ME:A, nevermind some of the questionable design decisions that went for in ME:A.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 17, 2017, 03:51:55 PM
My first reaction is surprise: maybe I don't remember Mass Effect 3 that much, but this does not look like a technical improvement in any department over that 5 years old game. 5 years, that's surprising. Not that I care too much as it still looks and dounds great, but it gives away a bit of a feeling that they might have worked on a budget not as large as its predecessors'.

I think the character models and animations aren't as good, but the environment seems much improved (playing on a PC I built last year so I can run the game with pretty good settings). We don't really get to experience too much in the way of open planets to explore in the trial time, but in theory the areas are much bigger in scope than the corridors when spent much of the last two games going through.

I read somewhere that some of the reduced customization options are due to the mocap. Personally I'd rather they had just stuck with what they did in previous games.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 17, 2017, 04:20:47 PM

I think the character models and animations aren't as good, but the environment seems much improved (playing on a PC I built last year so I can run the game with pretty good settings). We don't really get to experience too much in the way of open planets to explore in the trial time, but in theory the areas are much bigger in scope than the corridors when spent much of the last two games going through.

I read somewhere that some of the reduced customization options are due to the mocap. Personally I'd rather they had just stuck with what they did in previous games.

As I understand it, the customisation issues are based on a couple things; squad customisation was limited due to 'making them more independent and their own people' as well as making squad AI easier to do and improve it (failed, imo, as I didn't see any real increase in squad AI proficiency). The Ryder facial customisation decisions and issues stem from deciding to use facial scanning technology instead of face parts being blended together; largely to get better looking presets and Ryders, as well as decrease the difficulty in attaining custom characters that don't look like shit (as past CCs from Bioware have made such things a bit difficult for a portion of the player base). Again, I think they failed in their goals.

The worlds themselves are easily the best looking of what they've done in the past. There's some lighting issues in certain locations (Nexus!), but the graphical quality of the worlds? I really liked them. It did, however, create a stark contrast between the great looking world and the not-so great looking characters stand out even more.

Considering the Bioware studio involved (the Montreal team, which only really did ME3's Omega DLC in the past) I'm not surprised at the end result.

They have, however, changed the streaming embargo for the game (for those with preview/press copies) today. Starting tomorrow they are able to stream beyond the SP-early access gating point (the vault).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 17, 2017, 05:03:26 PM
Having played a few more hours, and after having extensively explored the first planet, I can safely say this is No Man's Sky with story and without the procedural voodoo.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on March 17, 2017, 05:04:40 PM
Also playing the trial. Too early to say anything about the meat of the game but it seems to run well enough even on my ancient rig (Phenom II 955, 8Gb, GTX660 Ti). Lots of jaggies and other visual noise in the effects though. Playing on mostly medium settings. 






Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 18, 2017, 05:53:42 AM

I think the character models and animations aren't as good, but the environment seems much improved (playing on a PC I built last year so I can run the game with pretty good settings). We don't really get to experience too much in the way of open planets to explore in the trial time, but in theory the areas are much bigger in scope than the corridors when spent much of the last two games going through.

I read somewhere that some of the reduced customization options are due to the mocap. Personally I'd rather they had just stuck with what they did in previous games.

As I understand it, the customisation issues are based on a couple things; squad customisation was limited due to 'making them more independent and their own people' as well as making squad AI easier to do and improve it (failed, imo, as I didn't see any real increase in squad AI proficiency). The Ryder facial customisation decisions and issues stem from deciding to use facial scanning technology instead of face parts being blended together; largely to get better looking presets and Ryders, as well as decrease the difficulty in attaining custom characters that don't look like shit (as past CCs from Bioware have made such things a bit difficult for a portion of the player base). Again, I think they failed in their goals.

Yeah, I was just referring to the customization in the character creation. The companion stuff I'm ok with so far. You can allocate their skill points which is enough for me. All the crafting stuff for Ryder's gear seems micromanagey enough that I'd hate to have to figure all that out for the rest of the characters also. I didn't really pay too much attention to what my companions were doing in combat enough to notice if the AI improved or not. For now at the very least they seemed sturdy enough that I haven't seen them get knocked out yet in combat. I don't know how good they'll be at detonating combos though.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Strazos on March 18, 2017, 06:16:53 AM
Yeouch, a lot of not-terribly-encouraging views so far.

DA:I did not grab me at all. I have ME3 installed, but never got far, having played the MP far more.

I was not much of a fan of DA2...so that makes the last really good Bioware game, what, ME2?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jade Falcon on March 18, 2017, 06:45:12 AM
Ya just before EA assimilated them.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 18, 2017, 05:08:50 PM
Inventory UI seems crap again. Maybe it's functional (is it?) but it's ugly as hell, one of those things that is uninspired at best, and uninspiring. Like, it feels a chore to have to open the inventory. And the map too. I mean, am I doing it wrong? Do I really have to hit ESC twice to close to map and return to the game? Idiots.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 18, 2017, 06:58:58 PM
Inventory UI seems crap again. Maybe it's functional (is it?) but it's ugly as hell, one of those things that is uninspired at best, and uninspiring. Like, it feels a chore to have to open the inventory. And the map too. I mean, am I doing it wrong? Do I really have to hit ESC twice to close to map and return to the game? Idiots.

Yeah, the UI is.. special. A lot of minor issues that just make you scratch your head. It comes across as a bad console-based UI, imo.

Game is in desperate need of another 3-6 months to solve a number of the problems. Thankfully the multiplayer is pretty fun (even when you suck at it like I do).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on March 19, 2017, 02:15:50 AM
The UI is pretty bad, especially the codex and quest log. It's like a directory tree but without a tree view, so you mostly have to guess where you are. I say mostly because there's a tiny ellipsis in the corner if you're in a subfolder.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 19, 2017, 03:21:11 AM
UI is definitely a mess. Even trying to check the quest log and look at different sections like the main quests, side quests, etc... is a pain in the ass which seems to require you to click were it says journal at the top to go back to the quest menu and then click on a different category of quest rather than just have tabs. It doesn't even come across as UI developed with consoles in mind because I can't imagine it functioning well in that capacity either. The devs have mentioned taking some inspiration from Witcher III when it comes to a lot of the side quests, but on a technical and UI level it feels inspired more by the first Witcher game.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on March 19, 2017, 06:33:11 AM
Played through the trial. Main story progression is gated pretty quick. Side quests are nice, but the mining/crafting is mostly disabled so after finding the one boss monster there's not much point to it. Still, you can see the promise of the colony building mechanics, hopefully it's not a bait & switch thing.

For quests, one semi reasonable way is to use the map as your quest log. That seems to be the only place where everything you can do in an area is displayed at the same time and you can switch focus simply by clicking.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on March 20, 2017, 07:03:53 AM
Finished the ten hours over the weekend. Here is the list of all the game breaking bugs and quirks that have made me regret preordering:

none

Yeah, I'm an unabashed fanboi. This game has some flaws (much like the first 3) but it appears to be giving me what I wanted, which is a Mass Effect game. Honestly though, for all the annoying quirks, if I could change just one - give me some new eye graphics that don't make the characters look like Chucky Dolls.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on March 20, 2017, 11:59:18 AM
PSA: if you use a VPN to login from Asia the game will unlock now. Especially good for us Euros who otherwise will have to wait until Thursday.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Kageru on March 20, 2017, 01:15:39 PM

Watched some streaming of the gameplay and it looked pretty average. Writing was bland, animations were bad, the combat has severe consolitis and lacked weight (but had lots of flash) and the gameplay was ultimately little challenges to fill up a "planet is done" bar. Jumping puzzles to scan the thing followed by space puzzles to power up an ancient artefact that is extremely visible, does exactly what you need it to do, and was never activated by the races present is just shallow busywork compared to the plot of the first.

It is very hard to imagine it gets substantially better later when it's opening is so weak.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: tar on March 20, 2017, 01:21:27 PM
PSA: if you use a VPN to login from Asia the game will unlock now. Especially good for us Euros who otherwise will have to wait until Thursday.

Hmm. Good to know, thanks. Shoulda started preloading earlier I guess...


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 20, 2017, 04:42:28 PM
Even the 8/10 reviews make this seem like a bad game. The general consensus is "Dragon Age: Inquisition in Space" but with more bugs and technical issues and worse writing. The comparison to DA: I is enough for me to probably not buy this.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 20, 2017, 09:36:27 PM
The shooting is pretty good with the right weapon. Get a Mattock and you'll feel the satisfying weight of every single shot. And things become pretty cool once you get inside the vault in the lake. Still too soon to tell how good it is (or isn't). Dragon Age Inquisition in space is not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't feel right regardless. After all, this game is all about exploring uncharted and truly alien lands. Speaking of exploration, I am not sure I enjoy the Mako: the terrain is too messed up to drive around and instead of zipping left and right with my 6 wheel drive space jeep I keep ending up stuck and frustrated. Mmhmh.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 20, 2017, 11:33:02 PM
The Jank is strong with this game. Any of you on the fence should probably wait. I'm not even going to try the single player until they fix the skin tones (http://www.oneangrygamer.net/2017/03/mass-effect-andromeda-patch-might-allow-gamers-to-make-white-people/26336/) in the character creator.

Combat in MP feels very awkward at the moment -- I'm too used to the tight gameplay of The Division right now. I'm not sure this switch to being a pseudo-cover shooter is a good thing.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Khaldun on March 21, 2017, 10:40:44 AM
Please tell me that's some kind of satire.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on March 21, 2017, 10:52:55 AM
It is more or less not possible to make a custom female Ryder who is anything whiter than "ambiguous ethnicity."

Male Ryder can do white just fine with certain faces.

If you want a female Asian Ryder, boy are you in luck though. The game does those very well.

That said, the author behind Trippy's link is a giant prick with some kind of anti-SJW axe to grind.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: MahrinSkel on March 21, 2017, 11:22:13 AM
On the one hand, I care about not being able to make a white character about as much as I cared about not being able to make anything but in most games. On the other hand, seeing the salt from people who bitch about such things is great.

And on the gripping hand, only idiots define themselves by the video game character they play.

--Dave


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: TheWalrus on March 21, 2017, 12:14:51 PM
Yeah. Like I give a fuck what the character looks like. (Long as it's not 8 bit.) Story let downs really piss me off though.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on March 21, 2017, 12:15:33 PM
So, I just got my game key in email and registered it on Origin.  When the download started, it said the game would be playable at 41%.  Did anyone try launching before the download had completed?  If so, how did that work out?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on March 21, 2017, 04:37:55 PM
For once it actually works, so good job EA on that at least.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on March 21, 2017, 06:52:57 PM
I cannot believe that the player's ship in this game is called the Tempest.

It is the worst pun.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on March 21, 2017, 08:08:45 PM
20 hours in and this is definitely DA:I in space. Right down to doing area missions to earn points to unlock perks. If you didn't like Dragon Age's exploration of zones, don't bother. So far, the writing is mediocre. Nothing horrific, just nothing thats super compelling either. Combat is a big step up from Dragon Age - that was what ultimately made me put DA down.

Just kind of drives me nuts with all the reviews about how this is Bioware's worst game ever. Makes me realize just how over-rated some of their games were. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fanboi and loved most of them, but hardly any of them deserved the 90+ ratings they were getting at the time. They were all enthralling games with tons of flaws. No one reviewing this one seems to remember that.

My favorite so far is a Swedish site that gave Andromeda a 50/100. The same guy gave the new Zelda 100/100 and No Man's Sky 80/100. And they have an impact on Metacritic ratings...

They did patch in some graphic and cutscene improvements. Characters look less... dead now. Catchlights and reflections in eyes are important, ok.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Special J on March 22, 2017, 07:25:06 AM
It's a Mass Effect game so I wasn't going to be able to resist.  Got as far as the Nexus on my first go.

Had a pretty fun time running around and shooting things on the first mission so I think I'll find the combat pretty enjoyable.  I didn't much like DA:I combat, this seems better.

I know much is being made of the animations, but I don't find it's as bad as it it is being made out to be (at least so far).  But with two exceptions:

- Addison. Wow she bad. Badly animated, badly scripted, bad voice work, bad editing.  I've run into some of the awkwardness people talked about and it hasn't bugged me much, but she makes cringe.

- Face editor.  A step back from previous games.  The ones I've made just seem unnatural.  Luckily some vids showing up on youtube that have some better results so I might roll a better one up and start over before I get in too deep.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on March 22, 2017, 09:58:01 AM
Addison is the worst I've seen in terms of 'wtf, how did that get okayed?', but I'm not that far into the game so far (just finished Eos), and most npcs are better than that. None are what I'd call 'good', though.

I'm enjoying the game, just not nearly as much as I've enjoyed previous Mass Effect games. I really miss the tactical pause in combat.

I do like the strike team aspect, since they're determined to tie single player and multiplayer together somehow this seems like a pretty good way to do it. Of course, multiplayer is still fun (I've only had time to play three matches since launch, though).

I am surprised their Archives site (where you can upload/download your custom Ryders for others to see and use in character creation --  the new face codes function, basically) isn't up and running yet, though. It was supposed to go live on the 21st at the latest. That'll help those who want good looking(ish?) Ryders and suck at using the character creator (or are just too lazy to).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on March 22, 2017, 03:19:07 PM
Im on to the second settleable planet and I'm enjoying myself. Game's far from perfect, but its keeping me interested.

It seems like there was a flag set to npcs to determine whether or not they were important enough to bother animating. Those with low importance just stand there and mouth out words. The ones that matter are certainly passable.
Don't have a clue how Addison made it out of QA though - utterly laughable. Have yet to see another what I would call an important npc anywhere that bad though.

It gets really obvious how much of an exact copy of DA:I this is when you get to the war table cryo pod assignment table, and pick your perks.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Riggswolfe on March 23, 2017, 05:37:03 AM
The game is fun to play but my god...the animations, especially on the faces are just awful. Ryder in particular seems to be badly facially animated. Like, when I got the Tempest, my Ryder was supposed to look excited/awed. I think. Instead Ryder looked like a person in the midst of a slowly developing stroke where part of the mouth was already paralyzed. I've also seen movement animations that are awful from characters looking like they have had severe neck injuries so can't turn their head, to other characters walking like both arms are dislocated and a hot poker was shoved up their rears. Cora did this right after I woke up to be told "Gratz, you're a Pathfinder now!"

I will say, Ryder's voice acting is pretty bad good and I haven't encountered any bad voice-acting. I also second that Liam is the first starter male companion that isn't painfully bland and/or annoying.

I just finished Eos. I do like the general story of this game but those animation issues are so bad it is painful. And the character creator seems half made and the skin tone thing is annoying. As it being unable to tweak eyebrows or eye shape.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on March 23, 2017, 02:09:43 PM
Content is lower quality for sure, even without the technical issues. But I do like how the game world is unfolding in this. Locations seem tobe evolving quite significantly, which is how it should be in a game about planetary colonization.   


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Special J on March 26, 2017, 08:19:40 AM
Done with Eos main quest and am working on Voeld.  I enjoy this game way more when I'm not on the Nexus. The Nexus just sucks.  It's boring, the NPCs are bland or unlikeable, and lots of animation fails are concentrated here.  Unlike the Citadel, going through there and talking to people is just a slog.  I just want to get through it and back to exploring.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: El Gallo on March 26, 2017, 09:27:56 AM
If you purposely tried to make the worst PC UI imaginable, you could not come up with a more miserable one than Andromeda's.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on March 26, 2017, 09:34:07 AM
Everyone seems to have a different thing that upsets them.

Personally, I hate the way all the Turians's eyeballs clip thru their eyelids during conversation closeups.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Maledict on March 26, 2017, 12:06:02 PM
The fact that outside of Peebee there's only one Asari face is just... embarrassing. There's even a scene where you are talking to two of them - and they have the same face. Or walking down a corridor and there are four identical asari.

Something went very wrong during this games development cycle and I'd love to know what it was. The early, early previews talked about proceduraly generated worlds with 100+ planets so I'm guessing they wasted a lot of time and energy on that. I really, really wish Bioware hadn't listened to the people who think ME1 was brilliant and the other games a massive step down. There's a reason Me2 is still the most praised and successful of the series.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on March 27, 2017, 03:37:27 PM
Players: ME1 was great!

Bioware: We hear you. Here's DA:I with a ME reskin.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: schild on March 27, 2017, 07:41:10 PM
Dunky's ME Andromeda video is great.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Furiously on March 27, 2017, 08:31:59 PM
I'm 5 planets in. My review, it's an ok game. There are occasional interactions that seem almost real.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Furiously on March 27, 2017, 11:06:41 PM
And done..... it's should have been better. A lot better. I'd liken the game to Lost. Lots of cool stuff that went no where. Lots of lose ends, lots of horrid facial animations and lots of time spent staring at the loading screens.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Fabricated on March 28, 2017, 03:47:51 AM
Dunky's ME Andromeda video is great.
I was about ready to say that.

Even with games that aren't great you can tell he's having fun at some point- he even enjoys parts of The Last Guardian. He can barely muster a joke in his Andromeda review that ISN'T just showcasing actual game footage of the game.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on March 28, 2017, 04:34:19 AM
I feel myself stalling out on it a bit now. Even the multiplayer isn't feeling as sticky for me as it did in ME3. I can forgive a lot of the game's technical faults, but I'm just not feeling very invested in any of the characters and the new alien races are nowhere near as interesting as any of the ones from the trilogy. It's not a bad game but there's too much other stuff I could be doing at the moment. I'm sure I'll continue to play it a bit here an there but it's not my main focus as far as games go.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on March 28, 2017, 05:21:41 AM
I hadn't looked up anything at all on this game and just spent 30 minutes watching Dunky's review and then the 5 years + $40M = Mass Effect Andromeda video.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU)

Wow. This just looks terrible.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on March 28, 2017, 07:22:50 AM
I hadn't looked up anything at all on this game and just spent 30 minutes watching Dunky's review and then the 5 years + $40M = Mass Effect Andromeda video.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU)

Wow. This just looks terrible.

This. Those videos... that any of that is in the actual game is amazing to me. Some of those fuckups are just inexcusable. The faces are horrifically bad and graphical shit like wonky stupid animations are not even remotely ok for a AAA game. Graphics should be the least of their worries.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on March 28, 2017, 09:12:22 AM
Even as a Bioware fanboy, I can't get myself to buy this one.  This need a "Witcher 1/2" style apology patch/version. At that point it'll probably just be what I was afraid of: DA:I in space.  :oh_i_see:



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 28, 2017, 10:29:06 AM
My biggest problem with Mass Effect Andromeda is that it feels to me lot more like SWTOR than Mass Effect.


Other than that, I feel exactly as Velorath. I enjoy it, it's OK, but none of the attachment that I used to have for all the previous three. Bummer.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on March 28, 2017, 01:32:22 PM
That default femshepwhomever...  :uhrr:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 28, 2017, 01:48:08 PM
SisRyder and BroRyder are the two protagonists. BroRyder looks fine. SisRyder is...special...especially considering the model she's supposedly based on.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 28, 2017, 11:50:27 PM
especially considering the model she's supposedly based on.


Who?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: rk47 on March 29, 2017, 02:17:56 AM
(http://thegg.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/mass-effect-andromeda-face-model.jpg)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on March 29, 2017, 09:58:52 AM
I'm still mystified how any artist or art director could look at FemRyder and think "This is fine."


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 29, 2017, 10:15:14 AM
I agree. And I like my FemRyder



(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/Sara%20Ryder.jpg)


but I just don't understand how they could not notice that the eye animations are messed up as they constantly do that thing where it looks like they are about to pop out.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on March 29, 2017, 11:36:52 AM
I'm still mystified how any artist or art director could look at FemRyder and think "This is fine."

Even art directors can fail upwards.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 29, 2017, 11:48:27 AM
More importantly the Director of ME:A was Mac Walters, the Lead Writer on ME3.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 29, 2017, 12:51:23 PM
I'm still mystified how any artist or art director could look at FemRyder and think "This is fine."

Well if you've never seen a woman up close or talked to one ... :rimshot:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 29, 2017, 12:54:58 PM
but I just don't understand how they could not notice that the eye animations are messed up as they constantly do that thing where it looks like they are about to pop out.

Noticing it and knowing how to fix it are two different things, unfortunately.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on March 29, 2017, 01:07:38 PM
More importantly the Director of ME:A was Mac Walters, the Lead Writer on ME3.


"It's not coding or management so it must be art!"

 :uhrr:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on March 29, 2017, 01:57:34 PM
I'm still mystified how any artist or art director could look at FemRyder and think "This is fine."

Well if you've never seen a woman up close or talked to one ... :rimshot:

My wife would disagree with you.  :why_so_serious:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on March 29, 2017, 01:58:01 PM
More importantly the Director of ME:A was Mac Walters, the Lead Writer on ME3.


Is he legally blind?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 29, 2017, 04:58:44 PM
I'm still mystified how any artist or art director could look at FemRyder and think "This is fine."

Well if you've never seen a woman up close or talked to one ... :rimshot:

My wife would disagree with you.  :why_so_serious:

I was talking about Mass Effect's artists, not you.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on March 29, 2017, 08:43:06 PM
Guys, I think in the future we'd be more accepting of an emotionless female retard saving the universe.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 29, 2017, 08:57:55 PM
It would be less weird somehow if they had fucked up the male Shepherd's model as badly as the female one. Male Shepherd looks fine though while Femshep looks like the modeler fell face forward onto his keyboard.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: rk47 on March 29, 2017, 09:52:18 PM
Anyone noticed the head-snap animation everytime you're in conversation and the focus kept changing between speakers?
That shit was unreal. They're like voice-activated androids. 5 Participants take turn staring at the speaker, usually insta-gazing 120 degrees like a robot..  :why_so_serious:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Special J on March 30, 2017, 10:25:52 AM
Peebee? Where you at?
(https://screenshotscontent-t5001.xboxlive.com/00090000011a0434-dfe8f66d-6b39-48ad-a3ea-1396b7efee09/Screenshot-Original.png?sv=2014-02-14&sr=b&si=DefaultAccess&sig=GeMfa8k6rDYRMriG4yBURSTI7nnwfleEOqirUB1Zgfo%3D)

Oh there you are. Welp.
(https://screenshotscontent-t4002.xboxlive.com/00090000011a0434-4c042b4f-84c2-43ce-b2b6-3a7b7ebcdb1e/Screenshot-Original.png?sv=2014-02-14&sr=b&si=DefaultAccess&sig=tzjiojuzZHbVnU%2FxJNwuZ%2Bm6bA7GlbUEqLRvonu35bg%3D)

The best part is she does the lower arm & hand gestures while her upper arm is frozen.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 30, 2017, 10:36:46 AM
Why is that Asari looking like a 90's goth kid?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on March 30, 2017, 10:50:48 AM
A better question is why is there only one Asari face other than Peebee (the one above) and the doctor:

(https://i.redd.it/328lmxf4n0oy.jpg)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 30, 2017, 11:01:41 AM
Why is that Asari looking like a 90's goth kid?

80's. It's a "tribute" to Pris from Blade Runner.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on March 30, 2017, 01:44:16 PM
A better question is why is there only one Asari face other than Peebee (the one above) and the doctor:

(https://i.redd.it/328lmxf4n0oy.jpg)

That's just fucking lazy.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Khaldun on March 30, 2017, 01:49:34 PM
I can't really muster the desire to play this.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on March 30, 2017, 02:05:59 PM
Why is that Asari looking like a 90's goth kid?

80's. It's a "tribute" to Pris from Blade Runner.

It's missing the bleached blonde hairsprayed 80's do and distressed pantyhose for that. Also a sense of style. It's also a tribute that will be lost on almost all players of the game. Blade Runner came out in 82. None of the people playing or making the game were born when that movie came out.

TL:DR it just looks ridiculous


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on March 30, 2017, 07:00:39 PM
TL:DR it just looks ridiculous

That is a fact.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Riggswolfe on March 31, 2017, 05:20:44 AM
More importantly the Director of ME:A was Mac Walters, the Lead Writer on ME3.


That explains so much. That'd be like letting Damon Lindeldof(sp?) direct Prometheus 2.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on March 31, 2017, 10:37:10 AM
(http://thegg.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/mass-effect-andromeda-face-model.jpg)

(http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170329144328-ronaldo-madeira-airport-bust-tease-super-169.jpg)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on March 31, 2017, 11:02:31 AM
Touche.  :why_so_serious:


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Maledict on March 31, 2017, 11:07:42 AM
It's worth noting that male Ryder doesn't look anywhere near that good in game. He looks fucking awful to be honest - half the time he appears stoned. The picture used in that comparison is in no way reflective of how he appears in game.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sir T on March 31, 2017, 06:07:20 PM
Just adding to the general WTF after watching those videos, but...

How the hell did she not notice she was crosseyed from the first scene? Did they not play through their own game?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: rk47 on March 31, 2017, 06:53:04 PM
(http://i.makeagif.com/media/4-01-2017/-5-ne6.gif)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on April 01, 2017, 04:43:04 AM
The only good Ryder is the Asian female preset.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on April 01, 2017, 08:18:33 AM
The only good Ryder is the Asian female preset.
The last one is okay too. All of the semi-decent custom non-Asian female faces I've seen are based on that one. Another bonus is her facial animations are apparently not as janky as default SisRyder (more evidence to some that default SisRyder was intentionally fucked up).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on April 01, 2017, 10:25:33 AM
Found this article interesting.

https://www.vg247.com/2017/03/24/former-bioware-animator-explains-why-animations-in-mass-effect-andromeda-are-the-way-they-are/ (https://www.vg247.com/2017/03/24/former-bioware-animator-explains-why-animations-in-mass-effect-andromeda-are-the-way-they-are/)

The gist of the article is that they generated most of the animations with an algorithm.  Important character/story moments were tuned by an animator, but low priority conversations were never re-touched.  This resulted in the lip-synch only, dead-eyed stare so prevalent thru the game.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on April 01, 2017, 10:38:05 AM
So they were too cheap to animate a high-priced AAA title properly. How typically EA. I guess the next step is to get rid of the Bioware name and incorporate them into the hive.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sir T on April 01, 2017, 10:43:01 AM
That's EA's MO after all.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on April 01, 2017, 10:52:51 AM
Yep. Once EA buys a studio they're doomed. They may last a few more years but they're always destroyed in the end. It makes me sad.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Maledict on April 01, 2017, 10:58:22 AM
To be fair, Bioware have been working on this for **5** years. That's an astronomical length of time in the industry. During that time period, EA also funded Bioware to develop an entirely new IP which they ended up cancelling as it wasn't working out - Shadow realms. I don't think this one can be lamed on EA.

(also, we know from early interviews that Bioware spent a lot of time on procedural generated stuff that hasn't worked out - they talked about 100s of worlds, and of being able to fly your ship into the atmosphere to land. They also spoke a lot about new tech to make the alien NPC faces varied and distinct, which clearly didn't pan out. Seems like they wasted a good length of time developing tech that didn't work and so had to rush the game together at the end)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on April 01, 2017, 11:12:24 AM
Fair enough. But that's just the kind of screw up that EA uses as a reason to take away a studio's name. How long did Maxis last after the latest Simcity fiasco?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Special J on April 04, 2017, 06:46:57 AM
Went on for some multiplayer.  Here's how my session went:

1. 2 players drop, mission failed
2. Died & fell down a pit. Can't get out next wave. I drop out.
3. Full Extraction YAYYYY!
4. Ok this group's going well, despite connecting to a new host twice we're cruising to Wave 6^^^^Crash to dashboard

Fuck this.



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on April 04, 2017, 07:42:52 AM
You left out:

5. Host has shit connection and everybody but him is rubber banding
6. Some asshole has his mic activated and is blasting 100 db of static


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Special J on April 04, 2017, 08:36:02 AM
Oh yes! Those have happened too.

Did you say rubber banding (https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/ResonantParadox/video/29202155/embed)?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 04, 2017, 08:49:46 AM
How much of it is Frostbite? There now has been a host of EA games that had glaring issues post release after switching over to Frostbite. Some of it is probably due to the learning curve that comes from switching to a whole new framework and set of toolkits. You don't get that sort of brokenness though with Unreal, IDtech or Unity.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on April 04, 2017, 08:52:57 AM
I don't think it's Frostbite. While DICE has always had a little bit of launch trouble, I don't think they've had nearly as much since creating Frostbite. Now another dev house trying to LEARN Frostbite might have issues related to documentation, but I don't think the engine is going to be the main problem.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Special J on April 04, 2017, 10:43:58 AM
If you'd like to add some extra derp to your character, go talk to Drack in the galley.  The lighting there is interesting.

(http://images-eds.xboxlive.com/image?url=MSVnmBUo_fHjbLYMjAEUQ0kJDVkmZx_70LaGGhu40ZcLKaBYGy3P3H55jqkLlp8oFvrPyx9t3wKXxOKGnH0cMOvBlsXA._ZiAi_6EY0rH7_ky39qsEglX2NBiTn6lbu1uKa6r_2afIdsv6CoSExlUthmabJKzykncw.EFcBsz4TSSafJ9JWkxxKSpzuEPm21xsJuqCbzgPpOJXlyg3_z7xdx0R7xJfnt8sKvyZ_C8VL6LmXSyDi2KgqyLNPeDziBatK8vsc89bT98ci0JOBvZLk3IbQ8H2Fxec5DA6tYjNg-&format=png&h=640&w=1138)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 04, 2017, 07:48:24 PM
Went on for some multiplayer.  Here's how my session went:

1. 2 players drop, mission failed
2. Died & fell down a pit. Can't get out next wave. I drop out.
3. Full Extraction YAYYYY!
4. Ok this group's going well, despite connecting to a new host twice we're cruising to Wave 6^^^^Crash to dashboard

Fuck this.



You left out:

5. Host has shit connection and everybody but him is rubber banding
6. Some asshole has his mic activated and is blasting 100 db of static



While I'm not loving the multiplayer, I haven't really had many technical issues after the first week or so. Mostly my issues have been trying to do APEX missions and ending up in a group that has the same map and enemy selected but isn't doing the mission (it will say custom game rather than the name of the mission). Also the problem where you're trying to disarm a device and you'll get interrupted for no reason.

For the mics I just mute everybody. I haven't looked since I don't use a mic with this game, but I'm guessing there's no push-to-talk setting. The only thing I ever feel the need for a mic for is when a group goes to the extraction point right at the start of the last round. Also when I'm cloaked trying to disarm a device and someone who isn't cloaked is standing right next to me "defending" which is really just drawing more enemies to the area and getting me hit by stray blasts.

Problems aside I think I probably have around an 80% success rate, even in Gold. Kett seem to be the hardest enemy and most failures are due to Hack or Upload areas getting overrun by Ascendants and Fiends


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on April 04, 2017, 08:33:11 PM
I haven't really gotten into the multiplayer; still only completed three matches. Since then I've had a number of issues with games just dropping, crashing, lagging, or otherwise being unplayable.

Also, they revealed their announcement today (which they announced the announcing a couple days ago), which boils down to; 'um, yeah.. patch Thursday, a couple fixes to some really stupid shit we did, and we plan to try to fix some other really stupid shit we did over the next two months'.

Andromeda could have been a good game, even with some of the brain-dead design decisions baked into it and the shoddy plot/writing.. if it had been delayed 3-6 months for proper QAing, animation touch-ups and adding a bit more thought to the pacing of dialogues.

Hell, apparently they didn't allow in-house animators who offered to touch up human animations to do so.. because management didn't think it would be necessary due to their facial scanning technology and EA Bucharest handling the human/Asari animations.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Strazos on April 05, 2017, 03:16:52 AM
This whole thing seems like a clusterfuck - so sad that no longer are BioWare games the sort that I can blindly buy with confidence. DA2 was meh, I barely touched DA:I at all, and I'll probably go back and play ME3 eventually. ME1 and 2 were great, as was DA:O, as well as the older Baldur's Gate games and KotOR.

What the fuck happened?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 05, 2017, 03:21:20 AM
EA happened


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on April 05, 2017, 03:21:40 AM
EA happened. Followed by the exit of the Bioware founders. Followed by the exit of their best employees.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 05, 2017, 06:42:47 AM
It's easy to blame EA, but really how many development studios do maintain a consistent quality over the course of a couple decades especially when it comes to developers that can't can go years without releasing a game (unlike Blizzard, Valve, or Rockstar and even they have had some bad games/internal drama). James Ohlen, who was a key part of most of their early successes through KOTR ended up in Austin as Lead Designer on SWTOR and then was the director on that Shadow Realms game that got canceled. Casey Hudson got hired by MS to be creative director of Microsoft Studios. The Doctors retired. To some extent this just feels like the way things go in the games industry outside of the rare instances of guys like Miyamoto sticking with one company for 40 years.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Tebonas on April 05, 2017, 07:14:41 AM
Precedent.

Its not just Bioware. Its every studio EA bought at least since Origin.

Maybe those creative types don't want to work in a strict corporate environment and it isn't EA specifically? I wouldn't know enough to speculate here. But EA is the common variable in all those franchises becoming shitty.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on April 05, 2017, 07:52:46 AM
EA is a known shittycompany to work for from even outsider knowledge. From high hours with low compensation to drive for market value over other concerns. If Your company gets bought and you stick around it's because you weren't skilled enough or mobile enough to leave. Talent doesn't stay there because suits make the money, like other corporations.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 05, 2017, 09:14:51 AM
It's easy to blame EA, but really how many development studios do maintain a consistent quality over the course of a couple decades especially when it comes to developers that can't can go years without releasing a game (unlike Blizzard, Valve, or Rockstar and even they have had some bad games/internal drama). James Ohlen, who was a key part of most of their early successes through KOTR ended up in Austin as Lead Designer on SWTOR and then was the director on that Shadow Realms game that got canceled. Casey Hudson got hired by MS to be creative director of Microsoft Studios. The Doctors retired. To some extent this just feels like the way things go in the games industry outside of the rare instances of guys like Miyamoto sticking with one company for 40 years.

EA has a documented history of buying and then screwing up companies. There exist on the record statements by former employees and owners of companies EA has purchased (e.g. Origin, Westwood, Maxis even Bioware) in part even court documented statements that describe in detail exactly how EA shits all over its acquisitions and how the EA company culture makes it so that the acquisitions can no longer produce great games but only shitty bug ridden messes that are focus tested and market researched to hell and back.

Shitty pay, psychotic, dysfunctional corporate culture, long hours, focus on cost cutting, efficiency and bottom line, creative development driven by suits and market research, focus testing and current hot trends only. A focus on cheap and young wide eyed rookies (cost less and stick around longer because they are lured with the promise of 'breaking into the industry') over experienced talent and a perchant for shutting down everything that even slightly underperforms. You don't have to look too hard to find ample material about just how toxic EA can be.

EA has been the focus of a host of law suits by former employees and former studio over everything from shady business practices and misconduct to breach of contract and mistreatment of employees (EA spouse and the ensuring string of lawsuits serve as an example).

What usually happens is that the original owners are forced out or bought out, key talent leaves because "fuck that shitty corporate culture" or gets replaced by rookies to 'cut costs', project timelines get 'streamlined' and bugets get cut and when the end result doesn't perfom well the whole studio gets shut down.

Bioware is simply the last studio in a long line of others that suffers because of EA


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on April 05, 2017, 11:18:00 AM
It's definitely the EA curse, but probably also the drain created by having to do such a huge budget MMO in SWOTR. Not only does even a live, F2P MMO drain a lot of good company resources, I'd guess MMO development and maintenance wears even harder on a creative type than the shitty EA culture. Combine the two? Recipe for nothingness.

Hell, I'm surprised DICE has been able to make a good game since then - BF4 was awesome (for the genre) but I haven't given a shit about any of the ones they've released since. So maybe their decline is in full effect.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on April 05, 2017, 11:30:15 AM
Dice is in good shape, so far. BF1 is good.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Rasix on April 05, 2017, 02:55:53 PM
You know it's bad when my friend at work that has a N7 shirt, N7 jacket, along with tons of other Mass Effect merchandise, cancelled his pre-orders (he bought one for his brother too) when I told him to take an actual look at how bad the initial impressions were.  His final comment (I kind of wanted to see his reaction to it, so I tried to goad him into buying it  :why_so_serious:), "I'm not paying for crap."

I had really low expectations for this, and I usually cave to my inner fanboy. But it's going to take me a long time to get anywhere near this title.

Now, continue with the EA bashing.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 05, 2017, 03:09:06 PM
Precedent.

Its not just Bioware. Its every studio EA bought at least since Origin.

Yeah, I get it. Way back in the day EA bought a lot of dev studios people really liked and shuttered them after trying to exploit the IP's so in the case of Bioware it fits a narrative people already have in their head and it provides an easy answer without any critical thinking. This is of course despite the fact that most of the acquisitions that people are remembering took place in the 90's under what was mostly, if not entirely different executive team. It also ignores major successes some of these studios released post-acquisition (The Sims, Ultima Online), and the fact that many of the key figures involved in these shuttered studios like Garriott and Molyneux have since become punchlines without any help from EA.

Meanwhile, you know what other publishers have gotten reputations for exploiting IP's, treating their studios and key personnel poorly, or buying studios or dev teams and then ruining them? The answer is: Most of them. There's what happened between Activision and the IW founders, Ubisoft's treatment of Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets (which also includes buying the studio he went to after leaving Ubisoft and then firing him), Microsoft buying up Bungie (a much-loved studio which had a heavy focus on making Mac games) and then having them make nothing but Halo games for the next decade, also the large number of studios that MS has shut down, most of Blizzard North's key people leaving supposedly partly because of Vivendi, Ken Levine laying off most of the Irrational Games team after Bioshock Infinite released because he felt like working on something smaller, the rumors of poor working conditions for the Rockstar team that made Red Dead Redemption, whatever happened between Konami and Kojima, all the studios that THQ dragged down with it, etc...

That's not even getting to all the developers/publishers that imploded on their own with no outside help like Interplay and Ion Storm, or the Blizzard North guys that made Flagship Studios, released Hellgate: London, and then promptly went out of business. Bioware remaining an independent studio wouldn't have guaranteed its success. Part of what made it open for a purchase was that they had partnered with a private equity fund which invested $300 million dollars into the partnership. The partnership also included Pandemic which maybe wasn't the best fit. This was also around the time Jade Empire released which wasn't a huge seller. Dragon Age was stuck in a long development cycle having been started at the end of 2002 (and didn't see release until 2009). They had their publishing deal with MS for Mass Effect which I'm sure helped keep them afloat for a while, but even if EA hadn't bought them somebody else would have. Possibly MS, and I can't imagine that would have ended any better for Bioware in the long run.

I don't have any particular affection for EA (or for any publisher outside of maybe Nintendo if you just look at the software side of the company). I don't think "game studio not that good anymore 20 years later" requires much of an explanation though. We're actually having the start of a pretty good year in major releases so far with stuff like Zelda and Horizon, but overall in the last several years how many releases from major publisher has anyone here been excited about? We can't blame EA for Fallout 4, Halo 5, Final Fantasy XV, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or the last five or so Assassin's Creed games.

Edit: Also the "blame EA" thing ignores the fact that Bioware had already started transitioning on their own away from a PC game focus where all their success had been up until that point to developing more for consoles starting with KOTOR and Jade Empire. Some of you may recall that Bioware didn't even develop the PC port of the first Mass Effect and that port was released half a year later than the console version.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Merusk on April 05, 2017, 06:47:41 PM
You would have a point if:

1) There did not exist other creative industries that could maintain quality 20 years later or after founders left.

2) There were not other GAME companies who have maintained quality for as long, including after founders left.

3) There was not a well-documented history of one company in particular screwing things up harder than most and more consistently than the other big publishers they are competing with.


You have this odd history of saying "EA's not any worse than other companies."  We've had this conversation before. I remain befuddled by it.

The only thing I can agree with is that game companies tend to be run by idiot man-children leading to squabbles and internet-level petty arguments that destroy them.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sir T on April 05, 2017, 07:26:35 PM
EA has way too much of a track record at this stage for the "EA effect" to be dismissed out of hand with "both sides do it."

I played DA:I for 2 hours and then gave up after the umteenth time of my character swinging at thin air for 5 seconds. I don't know what the hell they did to the combat in that game but it sucked. Also my character looked completely ridiculous with shiny plastic hair and shinier lip gloss. I'd rather dig out DA and actually try and finish it this time. Which actually isn't a bad idea, come to think of it.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 05, 2017, 09:20:08 PM
You would have a point if:

1) There did not exist other creative industries that could maintain quality 20 years later or after founders left.

2) There were not other GAME companies who have maintained quality for as long, including after founders left.

3) There was not a well-documented history of one company in particular screwing things up harder than most and more consistently than the other big publishers they are competing with.


You have this odd history of saying "EA's not any worse than other companies."  We've had this conversation before. I remain befuddled by it.

The only thing I can agree with is that game companies tend to be run by idiot man-children leading to squabbles and internet-level petty arguments that destroy them.

Other creative industries are not the same as the game industry. If you'd like though we can go into the parallels with the film industry at a similar time the each industries lifespan and look at rises and declines in various studios outputs over the span of two decades but that's going to be a much longer conversation.

Personally I'd say that people here have an odd history of saying "EA is the worst" because they're still upset over shit that happened 20-25 years ago when the truth is, "yes, the game industry as a whole is shitty to the people who actually make games" and EVERY major publisher has very public shit you can point to that shows it. Point to all the major game companies that have maintained quality for decades. Point to game development studios, especially PC focused ones that have remained independent since the 90's, have survived and continue to be relevant, please because I'm having trouble thinking of many examples and the exceptions are being far outweighed by the rule. Even the ones I'm thinking of still have key personnel from the early days in place. And one of those makes most of its money as a digital store these days.

I listed about 8 or 9 examples of shit other game companies have done and I could spend the next several hours here listing a lot more, like rumors of internal conflict causing the departure of Amy Hennig and other key people from Naughty Dog, or former Valve employees suggesting that the corporate culture wasn't quite how the Valve handbook paints it to be, or just about anything that has ever come out of Bobby Kotick's mouth. The best some people can throw back is "but Bullfrog, Westwood, Maxis, and Origin!". The shift that's gone on in the industry from the 90's heyday of developers that specifically made PC's games, to now when everything is developed for PC and Consoles would cause me to guess that none of those studios would be around now in the form that we know them anyway. I feel like people are envisioning some alternate reality where if EA didn't exist that we'd somehow still be getting Ultima and Populous games right now instead of disasters like Molyneux's Curiosity.

My thing that EA is not worse than most other game companies is because to lay the blame for Bioware's decline squarely on their shoulders is lazy. It ignores every other bit of context about working conditions in the industry as a whole and how the market has changed in the last 20-30 years. It's a one-line answer that provides zero insight and it looks at things in a vacuum rather than examining the factors that caused these studios to get bought up in the first place and the fact that most of these studios had niche audiences to begin with that we just happened to be a part of. I mean, is the implication that EA did not give them the time or the money to complete the project properly? I'm pretty sure that the game had more of both than most of Bioware's previous projects.  Did EA nefariously go back in time and somehow get Bioware to hire Mac Walters years before EA would acquire Bioware? I could see maybe blaming EA for rushing DA2 but most of the issues with ME3, DA:I, and ME:A all seem self-inflicted by Bioware. ME3 in particular largely had issues at a story level and I don't think EA execs were rewriting the script.

You want to know how Bioware could have completed this game properly with the time and budget they had and still been able to polish all the animation? They could have dropped about half the side quests and dialogue from the game. There's a ton of bloat that I've been spamming the space bar to get through when I can get myself to actually play the game. They thought they were doing Witcher 3 side quests but completely missed the mark and the vast majority could have been trimmed from the game to make an overall better product. It's purely a case of quantity over quality, and again I think it's a decision that came straight from Bioware. I don't imagine there was a mandate from EA that they had to have hundreds of hours of dull side quests.

But whatever, it's all EA's fault. They also killed Crytek, LucasArts, Silicon Knights, Troika, all the celebrities that died last year, developed AIDs in a lab, and are probably anally raping all our mothers right now.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: rk47 on April 06, 2017, 12:23:53 AM
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/sochi/sochi-bear-crying.gif)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on April 06, 2017, 07:42:04 AM
ME3 in particular largely had issues at a story level and I don't think EA execs were rewriting the script.

To be fair, there could very well have been story beats that were mandated by EA execs for any number of reasons, or script rewrites necessitated by EA corporate. Also, many of the more technical glicthiness of the game could be explained by an overly ambitious release schedule dictated by corporate. Bioware's wounds are definitely self-inflicted, but I'm pretty sure given the track record of other companies swallowed up by a conglomerate like EA, they weren't all self-inflicted.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on April 06, 2017, 08:35:21 AM
From what's out there in terms of leaks (such as from Liam Robertson) it looks like EA actually isn't to blame for Andromeda -- that lies squarely on Bioware (Montreal in specific, but there's enough to go around). This is especially true when it comes to the state of the animations. Both are, however, apparently to blame about how bad most of the female characters look due to a culture/sensitivities within Bioware and EA about creating female characters (in particular) that look too attractive.

I'd wager most of the blame here goes to the management of Bioware and Bioware Montreal in particular, especially considering who they are (Mac Walters of ME3 ending fame being one of them).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on April 06, 2017, 09:27:31 AM
We should make a game where overweight homely mixed-race gender-neutral characters sit around giving each other positive encouragement in a safe space.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Maledict on April 06, 2017, 10:09:50 AM
From what's out there in terms of leaks (such as from Liam Robertson) it looks like EA actually isn't to blame for Andromeda -- that lies squarely on Bioware (Montreal in specific, but there's enough to go around). This is especially true when it comes to the state of the animations. Both are, however, apparently to blame about how bad most of the female characters look due to a culture/sensitivities within Bioware and EA about creating female characters (in particular) that look too attractive.

I'd wager most of the blame here goes to the management of Bioware and Bioware Montreal in particular, especially considering who they are (Mac Walters of ME3 ending fame being one of them).

There is literally *no* evidence that female characters were altered in any way based on attractiveness. None. It's a conspiracy theory put about by the same people moaning that the game had been ruined by SJWs designing it (ignoring the fact that gay male relationships in the game have been treated like shit and are clearly a bad afterthought).

The fact is ALL the characters look bad. Male Ryder is a stunning model IRL, but looks like he has significant health issues in this game.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on April 06, 2017, 10:22:14 AM
The fact is ALL the characters look bad. Male Ryder is a stunning model IRL, but looks like he has significant health issues in this game.
Not bad enough, though, to exclude him from the primary ME:A ad which leaves out SisRyder completely.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 06, 2017, 10:31:11 AM
Which isn't new because that was the marketing MO for all previous ME games as well. The dual cover for 3 (with FemShep inside) was a minor revolution


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Mandella on April 06, 2017, 10:31:51 AM
You know it's bad when my friend at work that has a N7 shirt, N7 jacket, along with tons of other Mass Effect merchandise, cancelled his pre-orders (he bought one for his brother too) when I told him to take an actual look at how bad the initial impressions were.  His final comment (I kind of wanted to see his reaction to it, so I tried to goad him into buying it  :why_so_serious:), "I'm not paying for crap."

I had really low expectations for this, and I usually cave to my inner fanboy. But it's going to take me a long time to get anywhere near this title.

Now, continue with the EA bashing.

I'll be the counterpoint. Most of my employees are playing the game right now (or were last week) and having a blast. When I asked about the terrible character animations and such the response was, "Oh yeah they're really funny!" and then went back to talking about the worlds to explore and the fun combat (apparently everybody doesn't hate the DA:I model).

*Shrug* I haven't played yet, and by the time I get to it there will have been patches and mods that will probably correct the buggier issues anyway so I'll never be able to judge fairly, but I strongly suspect I'll have fun playing it too.

When I get around to it.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: MahrinSkel on April 06, 2017, 10:53:10 AM
Physical unit sales are down compared to ME3, but physical media is down across the board, direct digital seems to have finally matured. So nobody knows for sure except EA, and if it were doing badly, they would act like it was doing well.

So until EA's next quarterly report, we don't have a clue.

--Dave


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Teleku on April 06, 2017, 11:04:45 AM
The fact is ALL the characters look bad. Male Ryder is a stunning model IRL, but looks like he has significant health issues in this game.
Not bad enough, though, to exclude him from the primary ME:A ad which leaves out SisRyder completely.
Just a random question:  Why is everybody calling the female main character SisRyder?  Whats it mean?

Makes sense picking one character to advertise with though, as you sort of need a running narrative for that stuff.  I thought it was odd they suddenly bothered trying to advertise with a FemShep on ME3, especially since as far as I can tell there was no default FemShep through the series to associate with.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on April 06, 2017, 11:09:02 AM
There are two Ryders, a brother and a sister.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on April 06, 2017, 11:27:21 AM
Twins in fact. It's funny, the game generates DadRyder based on which preset you choose, but not the sibling. That one you have to create yourself or it uses the default model. So my AsianFemRyder has a caucasian twin who looks like an asshole. I hope he doesn't wake up because that'll be awkward.

 


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on April 06, 2017, 11:36:15 AM
I've been calling them 'Bro-der' and 'Sis-der'.

Mainly because I have an unnatural affinity for weak-ass puns.
 


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: kaid on April 06, 2017, 12:06:24 PM
You know it's bad when my friend at work that has a N7 shirt, N7 jacket, along with tons of other Mass Effect merchandise, cancelled his pre-orders (he bought one for his brother too) when I told him to take an actual look at how bad the initial impressions were.  His final comment (I kind of wanted to see his reaction to it, so I tried to goad him into buying it  :why_so_serious:), "I'm not paying for crap."

I had really low expectations for this, and I usually cave to my inner fanboy. But it's going to take me a long time to get anywhere near this title.

Now, continue with the EA bashing.

I'll be the counterpoint. Most of my employees are playing the game right now (or were last week) and having a blast. When I asked about the terrible character animations and such the response was, "Oh yeah they're really funny!" and then went back to talking about the worlds to explore and the fun combat (apparently everybody doesn't hate the DA:I model).

*Shrug* I haven't played yet, and by the time I get to it there will have been patches and mods that will probably correct the buggier issues anyway so I'll never be able to judge fairly, but I strongly suspect I'll have fun playing it too.

When I get around to it.


I have been playing it and enjoying it. Sure there are some wacky animation issues from time to time although most of the time it looks fine and the game feels very mass effect. It certainly is not on the rails or lacking in stuff to do as some people complained in the past. The worlds are so far pretty damn big. I have put probably 20 or so hours into it so far and only finished eos and voeld so plenty of game there. I can't say how the story flows yet as I am not that far into it but so far it has been interesting and my companions have been enjoyable so far. I do kinda miss not being able to specific a power for them to use but so far they seem useful enough in fights.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: jakonovski on April 06, 2017, 03:41:02 PM
BTW, the new patch hit today and it fixes a lot. Eyes are much better now, no longer lifeless, like a doll's eyes.

 

 


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 07, 2017, 03:15:05 AM
I still wonder what they were thinking and why nobody with authority stepped in and stopped what they were doing. I mean when the original Mass Effect from 2007 has better animations (I'm not being hyperbolic, there are comparison videos) than your current game something is seriously wrong. I don't mean that the animations in ME 1 were great because they weren't, they were actually pretty shit at times too but if you can't even clear that bar then how on earth can you deem this to be not only fine but actually shippable?

This game has been in development for five years, why has no one stepped in years ago and stopped what they were doing? What kind of dysfunctional Project hierarchy do they have?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 07, 2017, 04:16:01 AM
I still wonder what they were thinking and why nobody with authority stepped in and stopped what they were doing. I mean when the original Mass Effect from 2007 has better animations (I'm not being hyperbolic, there are comparison videos) than your current game something is seriously wrong. I don't mean that the animations in ME 1 were great because they weren't, they were actually pretty shit at times too but if you can't even clear that bar then how on earth can you deem this to be not only fine but actually shippable?

This game has been in development for five years, why has no one stepped in years ago and stopped what they were doing? What kind of dysfunctional Project hierarchy do they have?

I've been kind of curious about the overall structure of the studios and how they interact with the rest of EA. From what I can tell Aaryn Flynn is in charge of the two Canadian studios and he's been with Bioware since BGII apparently. Above that it gets a bit harder to figure out as it looks like it changed a bit throughout development of ME:A with the hierarchy being restructured as recently as last September. Right after the Doctors left there was a guy named Matthew Bromberg who had been GM of the Austin studio for a year who got bumped up to being in charge of Austin, the two Canadian studios, and the now defunct Victory Games (they worked on a Command & Conquer game that never came out) and Waystone Studio (worked on DawnGate, a MOBA which lasted six months in open beta and was axed). Prior to joining EA Bromberg was apparently CEO of Major League Gaming at some point. After the restructuring Samantha Ryan is now in charge of Bioware (I assume Flynn and whoever is in charge of the Austin team report to her and Bromberg may be gone now for all I know) as well as Maxis and EA Mobile. She reports to DICE co-founder Patrick Söderlund who is ultimately in charge of all the EA studios.

It's hard to tell to what extent anyone other than Flynn actually oversees what's going on at Edmonton or Montreal. Edmonton is supposedly working on a new IP as was Austin until Shadow Realms was canceled. Austin is still working on SWTOR as well and I was actually surprised to see that Drew Karpyshyn had returned in 2015 after having left in 2012. It's hard to believe that nobody at EA had any idea about the state of the game. Whoever was in charge of the marketing didn't seem to want to show much gameplay prior to a couple months before release. Maybe people at EA assumed it just needed a bit of last minute polish or maybe they were only being shown the more polished bits. The patched made some stuff look better so maybe at this point Edmonton is being forced to come to Montreal's rescue.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 07, 2017, 04:43:04 AM
Look I get the economic realities of a publisher pushing out a broken game to cut its losses and recoup at least some of the investment. It's EA basically saying "it's been five years and 50 million, we won't throw good money after bad anymore and we need to get at least some of the cost back". It's an acknowledgement that the end result is so fundamentally broken that fixing it would take months and a significant amount of money the sale of the game probably wouldn't be able to recoup. The expected hit to PR and Reputation is actually smaller than the additional investment.

I also get that not all of your initial ideas work out and that you can actually go off in a wrong direction for a significant amount of time before realizing that it was a stupid idea in the first place, especially at the start of a new project when the direction and the tech is in flux.

What I don't get is letting this continue for five years. A competent director could have seen where this is going two years or more ago at a point when the first vertical slices were alvailable and where shit would have been either orders of magnitude easier to fix or a shift in development focus would have been much less of an Investment and cost driver. Even if they could not have seen this that early, they could at least have reshifted development focus of the final six to nine months away from adding features to fixing the most egregious stuff. Cut some content and some of the collectathon elements and put them out as DLC instead, reallocate resources from adding features to fixing bugs.

The way you're describing this it almost seems like the team either has no leadership and oversight (due to either disinterest, excessive workload too far removed from the team) or leadership is only leadership 'by name' and doesn't have the actual authority to determine the direction of the game or the management structure is so bad that the teams are actively lying to/withholding information from Management to present a more favorable outcome than is actually there.

Seems to be more of a failure of management and leadership to me


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 07, 2017, 05:23:28 AM
Well yeah, it's certainly hard to blame the regular employees of what is a fairly inexperienced studio. Again, stuff like bad animation is something I could conceivably see people expecting to get taken care of at some point down the line. A lot of games don't look great until far along in development I'm sure. The game isn't terrible and you can see that there's a foundation there that would have looked solid enough to not be too alarming the first few years. Things just didn't come together well. I mean yes, somebody somewhere should have realized that the UI was horrible. You'd think that would be fixable without too much trouble. And somebody should have noticed that Stephen Hawking could do better line readings than they were getting out of a lot of the voice actors. I know the studio is based in Montreal and all but I'm sure they aren't all native French speakers there. The biggest issue they should have noticed early on was that they were putting too much focus on making a shit-ton of dull fluff side quests and a bunch of uninteresting dialogue from minor NPC's.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that maybe the problems start with Mac Walters. He feels like the Steven Moffat of Bioware in that he's a guy who maybe works well enough in a support capacity but then he ends up in charge because other people left and he was next in line and it maybe isn't a role he's actually suited to. Certainly he seems like the guy most directly responsibly for space ninja and starchild from ME3. As it stands, with Ohlen and Karpyshyn in Austin having put years of work into SWTOR maybe it's no surprise that there are more people playing and enjoying that right now than ME:A as it has more of the Bioware flavor about it.

I can't imagine EA was overly concerned with what was going on during development though. Despite people complaining about ME3 online the ME franchise had still been doing well critically and commercially prior to ME:A's release as did DA:I. It's possible that Bioware just enjoys a lot of autonomy within the company because they generally produce results EA could be happy with. Maybe that changes now or maybe they're more forgiving because they had the C-team on this one while Edmonton is hopefully working on the next big thing. At the very least they can't be happy with having to put out post-launch fires for two ME games in a row now.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Special J on April 07, 2017, 07:36:59 AM
Haven't looked myself since the patch, but here's a side by side comparison of pre and post patch Addison.  Significantly better animation.  Still won't save you from the dialog, but I did notice some of the worst was removed altogether.  I wonder if anything was done with Asari randos.

Jump to 1:09 to skip past the commentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TUO-GNI1U8


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on April 07, 2017, 09:00:03 AM
What is Casey Hudson doing these days? I meaan, really doing?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Riggswolfe on April 07, 2017, 10:13:33 AM
What is Casey Hudson doing these days? I meaan, really doing?

Hopefully staying the fuck out of RPGs. He is at least half responsible for the abortion that was the ending of ME3.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 07, 2017, 03:04:46 PM
What is Casey Hudson doing these days? I meaan, really doing?

At the time he got hired by MS he said his focus was going to be on HoloLens.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Falconeer on April 08, 2017, 11:41:06 AM
I don't care if he supposedly fucked up the ending of Mass Effect 3, since as far as I can remember he is also responsible for everything that is good across three Mass Effect games up to that point. Unless we start selectively deciding that "he didn't do that, but he certainly did that".


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 09, 2017, 04:06:14 AM
Drew Karpyshyn was lead writer for the first two games I believe (and then moved to the Austin studio for SWTOR) so I think his absence in particular was the reason for the drop in quality story-wise after ME2.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on April 09, 2017, 11:34:09 AM
Karpyshyn also commented on this board that they had sort of written themselves into a corner.  They really didn't have a real motivation for the Reapers beyond inscrutable killing machines.  One possible storyline was hinted at on the Tali recruitment mission in ME2, where a formerly stable sun was being destabilized due to dark energy; it would later be revealed that the dark energy was a side effect of using the mass effect relays.  The Reapers were harvesting the races to gain enough diversity in thought patterns to try to find a solution to the oncoming dark energy apocalypse.  But that storyline was scrapped because they thought it was silly that no one would think to just turn off the relays.  Karpyshyn commented that he was glad he was the one wasn't the one who had to resolve it

I think the real problem with ME3's ending came from the WAY it was developed.  And this was all from a disgruntled anonymous leak, so take it with a grain of salt.  All the story points and conversations were developed collaboratively, with the whole writers room hammering on a concept till it was ready.  According to the leak, Casey Hudson and one other guy went away for a weekend and came back with the Star Child ending -- end of discussion, this is it.  They were under incredible time pressure from EA, so they had to have SOMETHING.  I think we all wish it had been something a little better.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on April 09, 2017, 11:43:49 AM
The dark energy relays story would have been a massive improvement over what ME3 turned out to be.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ironwood on April 09, 2017, 11:45:44 AM
Drew Karpyshyn was lead writer for the first two games I believe (and then moved to the Austin studio for SWTOR)

This explains a LOT about the swtor expansions I just played. 


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on April 09, 2017, 12:29:31 PM

I think the real problem with ME3's ending came from the WAY it was developed.  And this was all from a disgruntled anonymous leak, so take it with a grain of salt.  All the story points and conversations were developed collaboratively, with the whole writers room hammering on a concept till it was ready.  According to the leak, Casey Hudson and one other guy went away for a weekend and came back with the Star Child ending -- end of discussion, this is it.  They were under incredible time pressure from EA, so they had to have SOMETHING.  I think we all wish it had been something a little better.

That "one other guy" was Mac Walters. The guy in charge of Andromeda. Also, I'm fairly sure that leak was eventually confirmed as fact by Walters himself at a panel, but I can't remember enough details to verify that.

Personally, I would have much rather had the Dark Energy plot line than what we got.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 09, 2017, 04:42:28 PM
I don't buy that explanation. They didn't have incredible time pressure. They maybe screwed up so majorly that they left themselves with no time in the end but they had plenty to begin with.

They had more than four years between start of initial development of 2 and release of 3. By the time development on 2 started  they knew that they would be making a third installment. Each release had 2 1/2 years of dev time and they had enough time and writer resources to not only plot out the main story but also several story DLC packages for each game.

Casey additionally had enough time available to promote the shit out of 2 and then 3 promising all kinds of egregious bullshit. In fact the main source for most of the backlash regarding 3 is Hudson. Hudson rode the hype train so hard that he ended up promising the world to an already overhyped crowd. He was the one restating over and over again that "every choice matters", that there would be "meaningful conclusions" and he was the one taking a jab at Deus Ex and other games claiming that ME 3 would not end with an Ex Machina ending or only consist of "pressing a colored button".

This is not the case of an overworked writer's room 24 episodes into a season that has only five days each week to come up with a script or risk screwing up the shooting schedule. There was plenty of time, were plenty of talented writers and plenty of ways to not write themselves into a corner or screw up so badly to need and 'fix' the end at the last minute.

Alternatively they could have just shut the fuck up and not fueled the irrational hype of a zealous fan base even more by talking out of their collective asses. Or they could have simply not transferred most of the experienced talent mid development to help with their pipe dream and not sunk 100 million dollars and risked the future of two franchises for a lackluster Star Wars MMO.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on April 09, 2017, 04:55:39 PM
Been trying to play the multiplayer today and holy shit.. constant DCs. Literally unplayable. Eleven attempts spread out through the day and not a single match even made to the 7th wave before I got a disconnect. Never had the issue before (and my internet is working perfectly fine otherwise), plenty of other people seem to be having the issue as well.

Oh, and Fiend sync kills from across the map -- literally. I think I'm just going to put the game down and play something that isn't a heaping pile of buggy shit.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Velorath on April 09, 2017, 06:10:43 PM
Been trying to play the multiplayer today and holy shit.. constant DCs. Literally unplayable. Eleven attempts spread out through the day and not a single match even made to the 7th wave before I got a disconnect. Never had the issue before (and my internet is working perfectly fine otherwise), plenty of other people seem to be having the issue as well.

Oh, and Fiend sync kills from across the map -- literally. I think I'm just going to put the game down and play something that isn't a heaping pile of buggy shit.

I get the feeling there might be some server issues going on. When I launched the game today it wasn't able to connect at the title screen. I ended up playing some single player instead and would occasionally get a message about not being connected.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jade Falcon on April 10, 2017, 01:05:22 PM
Must have been I couldn't even get my strike teams to connect, it kept kicking me back to login. Around 11 est it stabilized and I got a few rounds of mp in.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Riggswolfe on April 14, 2017, 06:39:59 AM
I don't care if he supposedly fucked up the ending of Mass Effect 3, since as far as I can remember he is also responsible for everything that is good across three Mass Effect games up to that point. Unless we start selectively deciding that "he didn't do that, but he certainly did that".

Read the full story and also realize what Casey's role actually was. You're giving him both too much and too little credit.


I think the real problem with ME3's ending came from the WAY it was developed.  And this was all from a disgruntled anonymous leak, so take it with a grain of salt.  All the story points and conversations were developed collaboratively, with the whole writers room hammering on a concept till it was ready.  According to the leak, Casey Hudson and one other guy went away for a weekend and came back with the Star Child ending -- end of discussion, this is it.  They were under incredible time pressure from EA, so they had to have SOMETHING.  I think we all wish it had been something a little better.

That "one other guy" was Mac Walters. The guy in charge of Andromeda. Also, I'm fairly sure that leak was eventually confirmed as fact by Walters himself at a panel, but I can't remember enough details to verify that.

Personally, I would have much rather had the Dark Energy plot line than what we got.

Not only was it confirmed but there is a making of thing out there where you can see a picture of the literal napkin they scribbled the ending on to as they were talking. And as someone said elsewhere, a lot of the backlash for the ending of ME3 happened in direct response to Casey spending months telling everyone about how choices mattered and the ending would be directly affected by those choices. And, of course, in the ultimate irony, bashing other games with endings that only had cosmetic differences then being one of two guys directly responsible for making that exact kind of ending.

I will say, that Andromeda avoided that trope. Though it partly did so by having no meaningful choices at all. I think there was exactly one choice I paused for like 30 seconds on and went "Eh, I'll do this one."



Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sir T on April 19, 2017, 05:44:31 AM
Personally I think one of the biggest problems with ME3 is that AFAIK it literally forced you to do hours of MP in order to get the "best" ending.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Bunk on April 19, 2017, 07:21:32 AM
They patched that issue out when they updated the ending. It was quicker to get the best ending by doing a bit of MP, but not needed.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Trippy on April 19, 2017, 07:27:53 AM
You didn't need to play that much MP to get enough points (multiplier) to get the "best" ending*. Also I'm not sure why you are complaining about having the play the best part of the game.

* original game without exntended cut, expansions and apps


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jeff Kelly on April 19, 2017, 07:38:38 AM
Literally hours was actually about 30 minutes for six games you didn't even need to win. I also second the notion that MP was probably the best aspect of 3. I think the game is pretty bad but I put hundreds of hours into the MP.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: HaemishM on April 19, 2017, 09:53:13 AM
Yeah, it wasn't that you had to play the multiplayer (because I didn't play any MP). It was that the endings you got all sucked monkey balls.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sir T on April 19, 2017, 10:25:43 AM
Yeah fair enough :)


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Yegolev on April 20, 2017, 11:03:53 AM
Didn't read thread.  Does this game suck?


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Hawkbit on April 20, 2017, 11:43:32 AM
It's "checking off boxes" the game. It doesn't suck, but it's so bland it may as well.

I keep playing it and thinking I should be doing more with my life.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on April 20, 2017, 02:08:00 PM
At $90 bucks Canadian I'm definitely waiting until it's fully patched and worth playing before I take the plunge.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Fabricated on May 11, 2017, 11:56:17 AM
In case you're wondering how well Andromeda went over:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/10/15616726/bioware-montreal-restructuring-mass-effect-on-hold

Quote
At least some of the team at BioWare Montreal, the studio behind Mass Effect: Andromeda, is being retasked to other projects. Kotaku reports, citing anonymous sources, that the studio is being “scaled down” and that the Mass Effect franchise is going on “hiatus.” Reached for comment, studio director Yanick Roy spun things somewhat differently.

“Our teams at BioWare and across EA put in tremendous effort bringing Mass Effect: Andromeda to players around the world,” Roy said in a statement provided to Polygon. “Even as BioWare continues to focus on the Mass Effect: Andromeda community and live service, we are constantly looking at how we're prepared for the next experiences we will create.”


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Khaldun on May 11, 2017, 01:46:52 PM
Though doesn't EA do this to every studio it takes over? It buys them for an IP, starves them of resources while they produce the next version of the IP, then kills the studio because it's disappointed with the outcome.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Jade Falcon on May 12, 2017, 06:55:27 AM
EA always seems more ham fisted about these scaling back after launch but isn't this pretty much business as usual after a product launches?  Drop the production team back to support and move everyone else to other things.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on May 12, 2017, 08:00:35 AM
They'd be much more popular if they held back from doing that for a few months longer when they release a AAA title as flawed as Andromeda.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Maledict on May 12, 2017, 08:28:26 AM
Though doesn't EA do this to every studio it takes over? It buys them for an IP, starves them of resources while they produce the next version of the IP, then kills the studio because it's disappointed with the outcome.


Nah, as shitty as EA are this isn't on them at all. After the disaster that was ME3s ending (which was entirely on Bioware's writing), EA gave them funding for the free additional ending and multiple DLCs. Bioware spent *5* years in development on this game with EA funding them, and they had this mess to show for it. If I were in EAs shoes I'd be making the same decision, which is hard to say as a diehard ME fan. Bioware fucked up with this game and the blame is on them - they apparently wasted at least a year proto-typing a No Man's Sky style of game before scrapping all of that.

Listening to vocal minority of fans who wanted ME1 back, instead of the general gaming public that still thinks ME2 was the best game in the series, was a huge mistake for Bioware I think.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on May 17, 2017, 07:17:19 AM
50% off at GMG right now. That was quick.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on May 17, 2017, 08:45:11 AM
Huh. I guess it's an American only sale. I really need to get a VPN account.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Sky on May 17, 2017, 09:20:17 AM
Email code tied to the account.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: koro on May 19, 2017, 04:58:07 PM
Though doesn't EA do this to every studio it takes over? It buys them for an IP, starves them of resources while they produce the next version of the IP, then kills the studio because it's disappointed with the outcome.


Nah, as shitty as EA are this isn't on them at all. After the disaster that was ME3s ending (which was entirely on Bioware's writing), EA gave them funding for the free additional ending and multiple DLCs. Bioware spent *5* years in development on this game with EA funding them, and they had this mess to show for it. If I were in EAs shoes I'd be making the same decision, which is hard to say as a diehard ME fan. Bioware fucked up with this game and the blame is on them - they apparently wasted at least a year proto-typing a No Man's Sky style of game before scrapping all of that.

Listening to vocal minority of fans who wanted ME1 back, instead of the general gaming public that still thinks ME2 was the best game in the series, was a huge mistake for Bioware I think.

Every current and former Bioware employee I've seen post in places and talked to myself have always said EA was very hands-off with pretty much anything Bioware did. Signs point to Bioware Montreal biting off more than they could chew in a fit of hubris, and EA gave them enough rope to hang themselves.

About the only thing I could potentially see laying at the feet of EA themselves is if they mandated Frostbite as the engine.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Maledict on May 20, 2017, 03:17:10 AM
Frostbyte is mandated by EA, so there's that. But on the other hand, I think Dragon Age actually looks better most of the time and that's a cross gen game from 3 years ago. It really does feel like Bioware Montreal were just not up to the task of making a full game - they produced some sub-par DLC for the original series, plus the original fantastic ME3 Multiplayerr, and then were allowed to have a go at a full scale game for god knows what reason.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Strazos on June 25, 2017, 07:12:50 AM
Speaking of which, I'm finally playing through ME3. I played a bit of the MP at launch, but for whatever reason drifted away from the SP game.

It's not bad, but I'm doing this after patches and DLC. I even got a few MP matches in, which is kind of funny. Luckily, there's also an online app which allows me to plus up the war readiness rating.

Surprisingly, the graphics (from a 2012 game) don't seem bad, playing at max settings. We'll see how disgusted I am with the ending.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Reg on June 25, 2017, 08:20:43 AM
It's really not a bad game. Not quite as good as ME2 but a lot better than Andromeda. I'm playing Andromeda now and I honestly don't give a shit about any of the companions. Horrible writing and not what I expect from a Bioware game at all. Jesus, the characters in Baldur's Gate are better and more likeable.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Father mike on June 25, 2017, 09:38:15 AM
If you like the whole Krogan shtick, Drack's loyalty mission is pretty awesome.  But other than that, yeah, the companions range from 'meh' to downright unlikable.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Fabricated on August 01, 2017, 03:45:05 PM
And EA sticks the boot in. We're done here.

http://www.pcgamer.com/bioware-montreal-is-being-merged-into-ea-motive/

Quote
BioWare Montreal was relegated to a "support studio" role back in May, following the tepid reaction to Mass Effect: Andromeda, a reduction in status that saw a number of its employees moved to the also-Montreal-based EA Motive. During a conference call earlier this month, however, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed something deeper was going on when he said that the entire studio had actually been moved into Motive's offices.

"We're building out a new studio in Montreal, as we've told everyone. And we've hired over 100 people into that studio that are brand-new to EA. This is to build the new IP around Jade Raymond's team that she's been building," Jorgensen said. "It's a wonderful new addition to our team. And we brought our BioWare Montreal team into that same facility. So they now all sit in one new studio together."

And if you get the feeling that maintaining two studios in one building isn't a situation that's likely to last—especially when one of them has recently been downgraded to a supporting role—well, you're on to something. EA confirmed in a statement sent to Techraptor that BioWare Montreal is being folded entirely into Motive.

"The teams in EA Worldwide Studios are packed with talent, and more than ever, we’re driving collaboration between studios on key projects. With multiple major projects in development in Montreal, we are merging BioWare Montreal with Motive Studios. This is an ongoing process, but there are many exciting roles and opportunities for everyone on the team," EA said.

"BioWare continues its work on new titles – including the highly-anticipated game, Anthem. What’s coming next for BioWare is very exciting, and we’re thrilled to have Casey Hudson returning to lead the studios in Edmonton and Austin.”

EA Motive, founded by former Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond, is currently working on Star Wars Battlefront 2, as well as an untitled Star Wars project being developed in conjunction with Visceral.
It's not really "everyone's fired!" but the studio is effectively no more.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Fabricated on August 19, 2017, 04:24:50 PM
No Single-Player DLC either.

http://www.pcgamer.com/bioware-is-dropping-support-for-mass-effect-andromedas-single-player/


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Ceryse on August 19, 2017, 06:44:50 PM
It's for the best. Game was a mess in so many ways. Even the multiplayer was a step down from ME3, which is sad considering these were the guys who did the ME3 multiplayer. Bioware will be in serious trouble if Anthem and DA 4 don't do well (personally I have zero interest in either; DA:I killed any interest I had in that franchise and Anthem's game style has no appeal to me).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: kaid on August 24, 2017, 09:23:32 AM
It's for the best. Game was a mess in so many ways. Even the multiplayer was a step down from ME3, which is sad considering these were the guys who did the ME3 multiplayer. Bioware will be in serious trouble if Anthem and DA 4 don't do well (personally I have zero interest in either; DA:I killed any interest I had in that franchise and Anthem's game style has no appeal to me).

I enjoyed the multiplayer but I was having a LOT more rubber banding issues in it than I ever did on ME3 which made for some frustrations.


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Morat20 on September 11, 2017, 05:48:03 PM
Multiplayer....ugh.

Can't remap powers was a major PITA that was trivially solveable. (Doubly so because, as best I can remember, the same power would be mapped to different buttons on different classes.).


Title: Re: Mass Effect Andromeda
Post by: Yegolev on September 12, 2017, 08:11:44 AM
I had tremendous fun in DA:I multiplayer.