Official Thread Mass Effect: Andromeda

Rate Mass Effect Andromeda

  • 5/5

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • 4/5

    Votes: 5 26.3%

  • 3/5

    Votes: 12 63.2%

  • 2/5

    Votes: 2 10.5%

  • 1/5 My face is tired

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    19
Got my feet wet tonight. I should just be doing the main missions and the companion missions, correct?

The game feels a bit janky. It certainly doesn't feel as tight as Mass Effect 2 or 3. It also seems to missing the tone as well. The combat feels pretty good but I can't seem to equip the incinerating ammo. It's checked as a consumable but enemies are not actually setting on fire.
 
yankeessuck said:
It is well worth the $20. The criticisms were justified but the improvement from patches just show it needed more time. EA sabotaged their own game and maybe the future of the franchise.
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Ive played through the game twice, once without the majority of patches, and once again with them.

I don't think the game was in as bad of a shape as people made out to be. Some crazy facial animations, the worst I had encountered were a few quests with flags that wouldn't trigger, and the game crashed twice on a few planets.

Now, design flaws on the other hand... Why couldnt all rpg's (and that's a very loose interpretation of an RPG) just have a decent stats menu?! It's the crux of your genre! If you don't want to alienate people with too many numbers, then don't f***ing offer them 2,000 different guns, all with the same name, with barely different stats. Have the same item, that you pour exp into.
 
Bellybama said:
Ive played through the game twice, once without the majority of patches, and once again with them.

I don't think the game was in as bad of a shape as people made out to be. Some crazy facial animations, the worst I had encountered were a few quests with flags that wouldn't trigger, and the game crashed twice on a few planets.

Now, design flaws on the other hand... Why couldnt all rpg's (and that's a very loose interpretation of an RPG) just have a decent stats menu?! It's the crux of your genre! If you don't want to alienate people with too many numbers, then don't f***ing offer them 2,000 different guns, all with the same name, with barely different stats. Have the same item, that you pour exp into.
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In terms of the face thing the only thing that really bugs me at this point is the Asari having the same face other than Peebee with little to no attempt to differentiate them.
 
Bellybama said:
Ive played through the game twice, once without the majority of patches, and once again with them.

I don't think the game was in as bad of a shape as people made out to be. Some crazy facial animations, the worst I had encountered were a few quests with flags that wouldn't trigger, and the game crashed twice on a few planets.

Now, design flaws on the other hand... Why couldnt all rpg's (and that's a very loose interpretation of an RPG) just have a decent stats menu?! It's the crux of your genre! If you don't want to alienate people with too many numbers, then don't f***ing offer them 2,000 different guns, all with the same name, with barely different stats. Have the same item, that you pour exp into.
Click to expand...

The problem with Andromeda is the story telling. The game fails in that at the end of the day you don't really give a damn about the characters. There is no attachment.
IMHO that is the root issue. It is especially disappointing considering that the original trilogy had such memorable and fleshed out characters that made you want to care.
The lack of character development along with the technical issues really gave the game a rather shallow feel.
 
The Living Tribunal said:
The problem with Andromeda is the story telling. The game fails in that at the end of the day you don't really give a damn about the characters. There is no attachment.
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Ummm... Really? That's your complaint?

Mass Effect has never felt MORE like a team, imho. Read the comments on here.

The personal quests, the relationships, both romantic and plutonic, the culture and the history, is more developed than ever before

I'm not buying what you're selling, I'm sorry

in regards to character development, This game was close to achieving what it took 3 games over a decade to capture.
 
Andy said:
Well, at least they got it out in time. :txbrolleyes:

Good reminder of why game delays are sometimes (often?) a good thing -- for the game, for fans, for the developers, and for the future of the franchise. Take your time and do it right.
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I don't think it had to do with time, honestly. They fixed it because of the outrage. Everything I've seen for it makes it look like all the troubles they had made them want to just push it out the door. I particularly dislike using the term lazy, but there were a number of things that seemed, well, like lazy efforts. Like they had their feet up until the rage monster entered the cage and all of a sudden whirled into action.
 
The Living Tribunal said:
The game fails in that at the end of the day you don't really give a damn about the characters. There is no attachment.
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Bellybama said:
In regards to character development, This game was close to achieving what it took 3 games over a decade to capture.
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Wow, that's two diametrically opposed opinions on a very important issue (very important to me, anyhow).
 
Frozpot said:
I don't think it had to do with time, honestly. They fixed it because of the outrage. .
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Well, the outrage, or the ridicule/backlash at least, was there months before they released it. Talking just about the facial animation issues. Granted, they had bigger problems than that -- overall design, internal politics (that Kotaku piece was interesting) -- which time wouldn't have healed.
 
I'm going to take the middle ground between Tribunal and Belly.

To Belly's point, Andromeda tries to make you care about your squad, thus the loyalty missions. Most of those are handled pretty well and make you feel something toward your squad mate. To Tribunal's point, the problem was for me, outside of the loyalty missions, you didn't really have a reason to care about your squad. There's not a whole bunch of banter between the squad outside of story missions and loyalty missions. You may hear a few thing here and there but nothing really memorable.

For example, by the end of ME1 I felt some sort of way about Liara, Garrus, Wrex and to a lesser extent Ashley. By the end of Andromedia, the Kett could have killed my entire crew and I really wouldn't have cared. Now FOR ME PERSONALLY, this could be a symptom of writing or could have been I was so burnt out with the game for all the other problems it had that I grew indifferent by the games end.
 
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wshowers said:
By the end of ME1 I felt some sort of way about Liara, Garrus, Wrex and to a lesser extent Ashley. By the end of Andromedia, the Kett could have killed my entire crew and I really wouldn't have cared.
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lol. Well that's not good! :laugh:

Testament to ME1, when you said those names, I immediately had a sense of the "person" each one of them was.
 
Andy said:
lol. Well that's not good! :laugh:

Testament to ME1, when you said those names, I immediately had a sense of the "person" each one of them was.
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But like I said I don't know if that was bad writing or just indifference on my part due to everything else that way wrong with the game. I played from Day 0 ( trial period) to completion before all these patches. There were and still are alot of poor game play decisions. But at $20 and if you skip all the plentiful padding quests you'll more than get your money's worth.

Side note:
Andy Did you play Dragon Age Inquisition? I can't remember if you did or not.
 
Bellybama said:
Ummm... Really? That's your complaint?

Mass Effect has never felt MORE like a team, imho. Read the comments on here.

The personal quests, the relationships, both romantic and plutonic, the culture and the history, is more developed than ever before

I'm not buying what you're selling, I'm sorry

in regards to character development, This game was close to achieving what it took 3 games over a decade to capture.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but I can't agree with that in any way.
If you want to see character development and storytelling done right in a single game play the Witcher 3. Period.

There was not one point in playing Andromeda did I actually care about my squad. They gave no reason to.
 
wshowers said:
But like I said I don't know if that was bad writing or just indifference on my part due to everything else that way wrong with the game. I played from Day 0 ( trial period) to completion before all these patches. There were and still are alot of poor game play decisions. But at $20 and if you skip all the plentiful padding quests you'll more than get your money's worth.
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That's good. I'm planning on getting to it eventually. Beating up punks in Yakuza at the moment. I've been interested in the topic of game characters lately, though, so the comments caught my eye.

Side note:
Andy Did you play Dragon Age Inquisition? I can't remember if you did or not.
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I did, yeah. I think I enjoyed it more than most people did. The game seems to get a lot of grief now. It had its issues, but I thought it was pretty good.

Sorry to hear there's very little banter in ME:A. That is one of the things I like about Bioware games. Good banter.
 
Andy said:
That's good. I'm planning on getting to it eventually. Beating up punks in Yakuza at the moment. I've been interested in the topic of game characters lately, though, so the comments caught my eye.



I did, yeah. I think I enjoyed it more than most people did. The game seems to get a lot of grief now. It had its issues, but I thought it was pretty good.

Sorry to hear there's very little banter in ME:A. That is one of the things I like about Bioware games. Good banter.
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The only reason I brought DA:I up was that ME:A copies the way DA handled its side quests. So if you enjoyed those side quests then by all means do the side quests in ME:A.
 
The Living Tribunal said:
The problem with Andromeda is the story telling. The game fails in that at the end of the day you don't really give a damn about the characters. There is no attachment.
IMHO that is the root issue. It is especially disappointing considering that the original trilogy had such memorable and fleshed out characters that made you want to care.
The lack of character development along with the technical issues really gave the game a rather shallow feel.
Click to expand...

I'd disagree entirely. I'd say it's a much more valid complaint to suggest that the story telling was poor because you don't give a s*** about the main story or the rest of the universe, but the one thing I think they did nail is the squad development and interactions.
 
There are a few places where the banter in Andromeda helps in giving you more perspective. The conversations between Peebee and Cora for instance.
However even there they don't really make you feel anything towards them as characters.

Rather should I say the writing during these brief moments lacks character. In comparison refer back to Mordins loyalty mission in ME2. If you take Garrus with you he talks about fighting in hospitals and restaurants only if they are classy.
Completely random and hilarious banter that helps develop the kind of kickass suave character he is. After that I wanted him in my squad all the time. Nobody in Andromeda gave me that kind of moment. Rather only in the loyalty missons did you get to see more of their personality and after that nothing. This is all my opinion. I just think the game has issues with writing that really damaged good character development to the point where I didn't care at all about the characters themselves.
 
wshowers said:
The only reason I brought DA:I up was that ME:A copies the way DA handled its side quests. So if you enjoyed those side quests then by all means do the side quests in ME:A.
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I don't remember feeling anything in particular about the DA:I sidequests. I remember lots of people complaining about them. I remember the thread titled, "Leave the F*cking Hinterlands." Iirc, they were just simple fetch/kill-quests. I didn't mind -- I'm used to that in RPGs. Otoh, they didn't add much to the experience. They seemed like padding/filler, like what is being described with ME:A.

I'll probably play a few and see how they feel. The general consensus seems to be "skip them," and that's what I'll probably end up doing. I used to be a completionist when it comes to RPGs (at least in terms of the quests), but there are too many open-world games with unnecessary padding now.
 
Andy said:
I don't remember feeling anything in particular about the DA:I sidequests. I remember lots of people complaining about them. I remember the thread titled, "Leave the F*cking Hinterlands." Iirc, they were just simple fetch/kill-quests. I didn't mind -- I'm used to that in RPGs. Otoh, they didn't add much to the experience. They seemed like padding/filler, like what is being described with ME:A.

I'll probably play a few and see how they feel. The general consensus seems to be "skip them," and that's what I'll probably end up doing. I used to be a completionist when it comes to RPGs (at least in terms of the quests), but there are too many open-world games with unnecessary padding now.
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I played a fair few of the side quests including the fetch ones. They kind of happen organically as you go through the game. They arent particularly imaginative but I didn't think they took from the game.
 
D-V-ANT said:
I played a fair few of the side quests including the fetch ones. They kind of happen organically as you go through the game. They arent particularly imaginative but I didn't think they took from the game.
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If I really like a game, I'll do every thing I can do, no matter how pointless. Like in Skyrim, I explored every map location, did everything I could find to do. I just want to extend the experience. But if I'm not really "into" the game, I'll leave a lot undone.
 
Free Trial, available on all platforms. It's a 10 hour trial, so pretty beefy.


 
I wonder if Flynn's departure had anything to do with Andromeda's troubles. Probably not, but it's hard not to speculate.

I also wonder what Casey Hudson's return means for the future of Mass Effect. I guess we'll have to wait and see. He'll probably be pretty busy with Anthem.
 
Tried the trial and the game runs pretty badly from the little I have played so far. Also it just isn't grabbing me like the former games did.
 
EA seeking fan feedback on what went wrong with Andromeda:

Mass Effect: Andromeda publisher EA has now sent out a survey to players to get their feedback on the game and what may have gone wrong. The survey asks how likely the player is to recommend the game to a friend (on a scale of 1 to 10) and gives them 400 characters to explain the reason for choosing that number.

Although 400 characters isn’t a lot of room – and isn’t helpful for those who want to wax lyrical about the game’s faults – it at least shows a willingness to listen by EA and BioWare. According social media posts, fans have responded to the survey complaining about the game feeling “phoned in,” in addition to it having an open-world that doesn’t feel enjoyable to explore and spend time in. And, of course, participants in the survey make mention of the title’s poor facial animations.

It’s currently unclear exactly how soon EA and BioWare will be able to act upon this fan feedback. Sources out of BioWare Montreal, which made the game, say that the studio has suffered from huge layoffs following the poor reception of Andromeda. Work was set to begin on a sequel as soon as that game released, but the reception showed that they would need to go back to the drawing board, the entire Mass Effect franchise was put on hiatus.

https://gamerant.com/mass-effect-andromeda-problems-ea-survey/undefined
 
I still think this reception was a bit overblown but moot point now. I'm not sure if this enhances my point or makes it worse, but having gone through about 50 hours without finishing the game, I think it deserves another go. Andromeda 2, why not.

I filled out that survey. Too much of it was about multiplayer item packs. Otherwise I said the same thing I've been saying for awhile. Good game hampered massively by its technical issues and its lack of the "production value" of the conversations in past games. Especially on the ship, everyone does the same intro; slowly turn around and blip their invisible omni tool out. and then theres a bunch of other small things like the asari faces, how every salarians eyes are deep black, how messed up turian and krogan eyes get in conversations, the fish mouthiness of some characters... the list does go on. tiny things that really pile up.

So at its base it's a good game, but severely lacked polish. I'm kinda regurgitating the point though.

Maybe they failed to make the deadlines and it was becoming too expensive, maybe they got an unfair shake and weren't allowed more time. Either way it's back into cryo with it. Hopefully this hiatus won't last 600 years.
(complaints about lame jokes may be forwarded to my inbox)
 
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