Gwardinen

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Gwardinen

  1. Posted

    I recommend watching it on YouTube. I remember it being a pretty well shot scene. Certainly it stuck with me long enough... though I imagine the impact will be lessened if it's not you making the decision for your version of Shepard.

     

    This week is a horrible stressful mess of work for me, but knowing that Andromeda early access starts next Thursday is helping me pull through it!

  2. Posted

    So my original ME trilogy playthrough is as a renegade, which means:

     

    Spoiler

    I shot him. After everything we'd been through in ME2, after him becoming such a favourite companion of mine, when his conscience compelled him to undo his crimes (justified or otherwise), I shot him in the back. I watched him try with his dying breath to free the people he felt he'd wronged, and fail, because of me.

     

    It was totally fucked up and one of the few times a game has ever made me feel genuine regret. Which itself might actually be an argument for the system pushing you into choices, but ultimately that was kind of a fluke of numbers and interesting content aligning. Hopefully Andromeda will (like the Witcher) manage to get me to make difficult choices without needing it to be backed up by +2 Renegade points popups.

  4. Posted

    There are a couple of things in some of the newer videos that have me pretty interested. In this one I really like the idea of setting up a few builds that can be swapped between in combat depending on the situation you're facing:

     

     

     

    And in this one my main "oh shit that's neat" moment was when they showed stuff out of the window that reflects the position the ship is currently at. That's Star Trek as fuck and I love it.

     

     

  6. Posted

    Huh, fair enough. It's just unfortunate that I happened to accidentally stumble into the most boring outcome. Hopefully things will work out better in the rest of the game!

     

    That said, I'm also moving incredibly slowly through the game. I don't know what it is about it but I really struggle to play long stretches. It may have something to do with the tension I feel between wanting to experience the writing and world and absolutely not wanting to experience another isometric CRPG in any systemic way. I honestly think I'd enjoy this game more if it was a choose your own adventure book.

  9. Posted

    My concern is my CPU - it was causing me some problems in Dragon Age: Inquisition so I'm worried about it again here. That said, I totally don't have the money to replace it, especially because at this point I'd also need a new motherboard.

     

    Still, I'm hoping BioWare is a bit more savvy with the Frostbite engine now that they've released one game with it and Andromeda might run a little better. Certainly there are other games (even the gorgeous Battlefield 1) with that engine that play absolutely fine on my computer.

  11. Posted

    Does anyone know whether the game is still designed around doubling down on a particular alignment to get special conversation options? I've been playing through the ME3 DLC that I never got a chance to check out and it's reminded me that sticking to either Paragon or Renegade all the time is boring for me. The problem is that, systemically, if you don't build up enough points in one particular direction you will be locked out of certain conversation options (that are usually the best ones). Is there any information available on how this stuff will work in Andromeda?

  12. Posted

    I'm not posting this in an attempt to get you back into the game necessarily, especially if you think it's healthier for you not to play it, but I will throw up some brief explanations for the sake of posterity.

     

    The Valkyrie's shoulder pin relies on a particular mechanic that class has, called the "dodge block". When the Valkyrie dodges, her guard automatically changes to the direction of her dodge. This allows her to dodge into an attack and block it. When this happens, if you immediately hit the heavy attack button (the timing window is fairly small) she'll perform the shoulder pin.

     

    Regarding guard break countering; currently the way it works is you have to hit the guard break button just as the opponent's guard break animation hits your character. However, this is pretty difficult and actually penalises you for seeing the guard break coming and countering too early. For that reason it's been said that in the next patch the behaviour will be reverted to how it was in the beta, which allowed countering as soon as the opponent's animation began.

  13. Posted

    On 18/02/2017 at 0:19 AM, Brannigan said:

    Most things point to 60s/70s but there are things way out of place, like the interrogator's ipad thing.  From what I've read they're purposefully making it somewhat ambiguous. 

     

    I thought that was just a notebook? Otherwise why did he need the pen?

  15. Posted

    I would agree with that. It's well enough made and the shooting is pretty on point, but it all feels a tad purposeless. The story doesn't seem particularly interesting and I certainly have no affection for the characters. My intuition says if you can get a group of four people you like together to zigzag around the world in some kind of madcap military caper it'll be an entertaining experience (because there just aren't enough AAA games that allow you to play the whole campaign in coop, let alone open world ones), but that playing it alone is probably not worth it.

  16. Posted

    If anyone else is interested there's an open beta from Thursday through to Sunday. You can preload it on Uplay now. Unfortunately I will be away most of the weekend, but I thoroughly recommend trying the game!

  18. Posted

    I'm also in this, for the record, if anyone's interested in playing together! My Uplay name is Kuruvar. Sadly all my keys are already spoken for (although FYI a lot of people, including some of my friends, are having difficulty redeeming invitations at the moment).

  22. Posted

    I am also considering signing up to the Origin Access in March for this. I have two extra reasons, however;
     

    1) It also allows you to play Battlefield 1 for 10 hours, and I've heard the campaign for that is not terrible.

    2) I was actually "given" Mass Effect Andromeda as a Christmas gift, by way of a preorder. Unfortunately the person who preordered it for me selected the slow shipping option, so I probably won't actually have my copy until a few days after release.

  25. Posted

    I couldn't agree more that Tarkin and Leia would have been just as effective if they had been mere glimpses or just hadn't turned around. I genuinely thought that's what was going to happen! When you first see Tarkin, you just see a CGI reflection in the window and I actually thought in the cinema "ha, that's a clever trick to get a nice cameo in" and then he turned around and was directly on screen for a super long time and I wondered what the fuck was going on.

     

    I also agree that the first part of the film is bizarrely rushed. They legitimately have flyovers with text of planet name on screen for at least 4 or 5 different locations within the first 10 minutes, many of which are never returned to. It's incredibly weird. In an odd sort of way the ending is also in a rush - but this time it's in a rush to tidy up continuity by murdering all of the main characters. It's not like I didn't see that coming, but actually watching it was a little strange. It's kind of like how player character death in the Call of Duty series started out surprising and affecting and by this point is de rigueur. Which is obviously a problem when you leave the deaths of your primary protagonists until the very end, ie. the least surprising and affecting spot.

     

    All of that said, though, in overview I did enjoy the film. The performances were good, the writing was at least decent and the set & costume design and CGI (apart from Tarkin and Leia, who in fairness were very accomplished pieces of CGI, it's just we're not there yet) and all of that stuff was excellent. Also, while the "everyone's a shade of grey!" stuff was a little in your face, particularly early on, it was nice to see a Star Wars film that isn't just pristine demigods fighting despicable demigods.