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Mass Effect Andromeda - Thumb Drive Engaged!

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Mass Effect 2 (maybe the others as well) also had weird, hidden away tutorial videos.

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1 hour ago, Gwardinen said:

I see what you're saying and it definitely has some moments of "that's not what I meant to do at all", but I'm not sure I entirely agree that just throwing in a crouch button would be better. I really like the idea of a context sensitive cover system that doesn't require the dedication of a crouch button that can be used for other things - and the actual necessity of taking my thumb off the stick to press it. It's just unfortunate that the implementation is sometimes a little weird here.

 

What I will say is that the game seems to be suggesting that you should be spending less time hunkering down than in previous entries in the series anyway, due to its high mobility jetpack dodging stuff. However to contrast with that at the start of the game you are pretty damn squishy, so I'm not sure how realistic that ideal is.

 

From a design perspective, I suppose this argument might work but from a technical perspective this would just mean that an explicit cover system should never have been implemented.  The creation of an explicit cover system has to be put in to solve a problem, otherwise it simply isn't worth the cost.  On the design front, I don't think it solves the problem of giving the player a means to avoid damage as well as just allowing the player to change their stance would.  Also on the button point, you still have to do the same thing in order to dash away from an engagement, and there's no reason it couldn't have been one of the stick buttons if that were a significant concern or just made an alternate function of the dodge button (tap to crouch, hold to dodge).  On the technical side things get much more hairy, particularly because now the host in a multiplayer game has to do a ton of work in evaluating the environment around a player and the math generally gets a lot more complicated.  The whole thing just feels undercooked, which after having played a bit more today seems to be a complaint I'm having with the game generally.

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I'm getting on MP to burn through the rest of my time if anyone is around.

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Oh wow. I was watching Giant Bomb's archived stream, and the bizarre faces everyone makes...

I can stand bad/no animations, but it's downright distracting whenever faces try to emote in Andromeda because they make weird expressions that are either impossible to read or have nothing to do with what's happening.

 

SETcxPi.gif

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I think the animations are an easy (and funny) target, but what really bothers me is how utterly uninterested I am in any of the dialogue that's happened in any of the videos I've seen.

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52 minutes ago, Twig said:

I think the animations are an easy (and funny) target, but what really bothers me is how utterly uninterested I am in any of the dialogue that's happened in any of the videos I've seen.

 

This is something I've noticed as well.  In particular, the first 20 minutes or so of the game wavers between a feeling of going off to explore the unknown to almost sitcom type dialogue.  Obviously this is a pretty common problem in narrative heavy games, but given this series' pedigree the issues are all that more noticeable.  In particular (SP spoiler):

 

 

The first contact with the kett is such a huge missed opportunity.  That feeling of being the first one to meet up with an alien species only lasts about 2 minutes, and is then is rendered almost completely irrelevant by what you lean upon reaching the nexus

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59 minutes ago, Twig said:

I think the animations are an easy (and funny) target, but what really bothers me is how utterly uninterested I am in any of the dialogue that's happened in any of the videos I've seen.

 

Yeah, from what I've seen a lot of the dialogue just seems real sloppy. 

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2 hours ago, itsamoose said:

 In particular (SP spoiler):

 

  Hide contents

The first contact with the kett is such a huge missed opportunity.  That feeling of being the first one to meet up with an alien species only lasts about 2 minutes, and is then is rendered almost completely irrelevant by what you lean upon reaching the nexus


Yeah I was briefly really excited by the possibility of that

Spoiler

 

first contact situation, especially because they'd explicitly talked about the rules for it (well, one rule - don't shoot first), and in fairness they do give you that choice of whether to stick to that and hope for the best or go in guns blazing. However that's it, and after that all kett are tagged hostile immediately and any possibility of an interestingly delicate first contact is out the window.

 

That said, I get why they did that. They want the very first mission to set up the primary antagonists, like ME1 did (and frankly like most fiction does), and they need to set the stakes with everything going wrong from minute 1 of being in Andromeda. It's just a shame that that means you miss out on the possibility of a more intriguing first contact experience - hopefully they'll make good on that possibility with other species down the line.

 

 

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I think this is gonna be a reverse titanfall for me on Origin. I demanded people buy it so I have someone to play an amazing game with. This will be the game that I will patiently wait to go on sale (in about 6 weeks I reckon), but more importantly through a couple of rounds of patches, and hope someone's around for when I get to multiplayer. It doesn't sound like it's a complete travesty, it's just [Mediocre Star Trek Serial] to Mass Effect 2's [Good Star Trek Serial].

 

 

I have to finish Dragon Age anyway, and that has good facial animations. 

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19 hours ago, Twig said:

I think the animations are an easy (and funny) target, but what really bothers me is how utterly uninterested I am in any of the dialogue that's happened in any of the videos I've seen.

 

I think this is the most daming critque a new Mass Effect could probably have thrown against it.

 

After playing a bit, and seeing some of the single player i think I'm probably going to wait for a sale as well. Maybe i'll pick up my Mass Effect 2 run I was doing prior to Andomeda's release. 

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It shouldn't be surprising that a new studio can't deliver the same standard as a well established one. I understand if Edmonton wanted to work on something new. This just feels like a shame though, the series deserves better. It's not like EA can respond by giving them more time for the sequel. They got five years for this one.

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31 minutes ago, eot said:

It shouldn't be surprising that a new studio can't deliver the same standard as a well established one. I understand if Edmonton wanted to work on something new. This just feels like a shame though, the series deserves better. It's not like EA can respond by giving them more time for the sequel. They got five years for this one.

 

That's always been a weird sentiment to me. It's been 5 years since the release of ME3, but it hasn't necessarily been a 5 year dev cycle.

 

One could, and I might, argue that now there's a new piece of a franchise that isn't being stacked on top of existing games, you can give them as much time as they need. I think their announcement in 2015 with literally nothing but stills, devs talking,  and over the shoulder shots of people looking at computers sped them up honestly. I don't think, say, 6 more months fundamentally fixes some issues people have with the game, but man it looks like it needs that fine grain sandpaper.

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It all kind of reads to me like EA was the problem here. It all seems like a misguided attempt to remake ME1 instead of whatever the team actually wanted to do.

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38 minutes ago, Badfinger said:

 

That's always been a weird sentiment to me. It's been 5 years since the release of ME3, but it hasn't necessarily been a 5 year dev cycle.

 

One could, and I might, argue that now there's a new piece of a franchise that isn't being stacked on top of existing games, you can give them as much time as they need. I think their announcement in 2015 with literally nothing but stills, devs talking,  and over the shoulder shots of people looking at computers sped them up honestly. I don't think, say, 6 more months fundamentally fixes some issues people have with the game, but man it looks like it needs that fine grain sandpaper.

They announced development in late 2012, so they probably started a bit before that. Let's say 4.5 years then, it's somewhat beside the point. With DA2, and to some extent ME3 (which was supposed to come out in 2011), there was an issue with EA forcing short development schedules. Both DA:I and ME:A appear to be reactions to that. In this case it doesn't seem to have paid off, and that worries me because this team combined with a short dev cycle bodes even worse for the series.

 

25 minutes ago, Vulpes Absurda said:

It all kind of reads to me like EA was the problem here. It all seems like a misguided attempt to remake ME1 instead of whatever the team actually wanted to do.

That could certainly have been an issue, but it doesn't explain poor writing or wonky animations in my opinion. I think the phenomena of fresh satellite studios making worse games than the main studios is quite well established. I don't say that to crap on the Montreal studio, making games like this is insanely hard. It just doesn't surprise me. Off the top of my head I can't really think of any studio that's knocked it out of the park with their first game. Maybe some upstart led by very experienced designers and producers.

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I don't think all the issues would be fixed if EA had let them do whatever but I'd bet it would be more of it's own thing. It might not have been Bioshock 2 (The only good one I WILL FIGHT YOU~sorry force of habit) but it could have been better.

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Maxed out the time on my account in MP over the weekend.  I'm very sad that the Drell didn't make it to the Helios Cluster.  I miss my little space ninja lizards in MP.  Really hoping that expansions bring in some of the old races, the Vorcha, Volus, Batarian and Drell were all some of my favorite MP characters (yes, even the Volus, because they were hilarious). 

 

Edited to add: Oh, and the game unlocks tonight at 11pm central, 9pm Pacific for those of you who didn't do the trial. 

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The companion app (Android/ios) launched worldwide this afternoon.  It's called Apex HQ  The most useful thing about it is being able send out your Strike Teams (AI teams who run missions for you) without having to go into the game.  There seem to be about 8-9 missions a day, 3 of which you can run yourself as an MP match if you want, and the rest are AI only.  You get SP resources for them, but then you also get "Mission Funds" which are quite necessary for MP.  Mission Funds let you buy Gear (persistent stat boosting equipment that can be equipped, not the one off boosters that are consumables), let you buy Respec Cards for MP characters and let you buy consumables like rockets, medigel, etc.  The gear is time gated, each piece of gear is only available 2-3 weeks at a time.  I assume they'll be rotated in and out, so they'll be back eventually, but getting those mission funds built up now will be super useful for the early gear that is on sale.  There's two pieces now.  One boosts reserve ammo and the other boosts shields/melee damage. 

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One little goof-up that I don't think I've seen mentioned yet: On the first planet you get to, it's raining, but the raindrop maps don't get applied to the characters' helmets, they get applied right to the faces. It looks like everyone's wearing some sort of sauna suit and sweating themselves to death.

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I started up single player briefly last night, played til you land on the first planet.  And I'm definitely seeing what people mean with the criticisms.  Just the opening few sections are very...inconsistent in terms of quality of voice acting, animations, performance.  I was particularly surprised at how poorly the Character Creation tool ran.  I fucking had it lag up on me multiple times. 

 

I've never been a Breckon type player of skipping past stuff in games, I've always wanted to see and hear all the story/lore stuff.  But I found myself wanting to skip past stuff last night and just get to something actually happening.  Which...probably not a good sign for a Bioware game?

 

On MP, I have successfully completed a single Silver mission now!  Wooo!  I'm pretty sure that's a couple of weeks faster than I was able to do a Silver in ME3MP.  I would say for anyone looking to try and get into some silvers, both the Human Vanguard and Kroguard (if you have him) are probably easiest kits to make the jump at around level 10ish.  Between Charge, Nova and Melee, they can compensate for their underpowered guns. 

 

Oh, and I bought the Juggernaught thingie from the Gear store, it's a 10 percent shield bonus and 75 percent melee bonus.  Doesn't appear to have any levels, just a one off purchase.  The ammo one is apparently a 75 percent increase to reserve ammo.  So gear looks like it's going to be really valuable for some builds, not just a nice bonus. 

 

I also discovered that your AI Strike Teams can get negative traits for failing missions.  I know have an AI person who is afraid of Outlaws and gets a penalty for going on Outlaw missions.  I had just been throwing both my teams at every mission, but I may back off sending them on Golds for awhile, it could be really bad to pick up a second negative trait on one. 

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Got some narrative dissonance with Harper that's extremely reminiscent of Jack in ME2. She's a biotic commando who can rip apart an APC with her powers and was sent to an asari military unit after scaring her superiors. She's barely done anything helpful in combat and is the only squadmate I've had that's been downed during a fight. Mechanically, she's just as inexperienced and low-power as you, but of course she's narratively ready to give you shit for not being a "real" Pathfinder.

 

FUCK FOREVER the galaxy map. I kind of enjoyed tooling the Normandy around the map in previous games. I also didn't really mind scanning planets. But the whole fly-through that happens EVERY SINGLE TIME you do anything is such a tedious waste. Select a planet. Spend a good 5-10 seconds doing nothing as you get a first-person swoop from current location to the destination. Fly just close enough for a dramatic orbital pose, then have to BACK THE FUCK UP again because scanning requires a view of the whole planet. Then there's maybe a 25% chance that there's actually something to scan, and you didn't just waste a bunch of time.

 

I do like the feel of the combat so far. I've found the cover system to be pretty intuitive, though the one thing I wish it would do is automatically switch shoulders when coming up to a corner that you could otherwise aim around. Probably a side effect of not being a full locked-in mode.

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I'm really torn on that flying animation because I think it looks neat (apart from the aforementioned having to zoom back out on a planet thing which is amusingly dumb) and goes to the whole flying around exploring the frontier theme, but I'm also dead set against unskippable videos in games - the landing and takeoff videos on planets bother me the same way. Anything, no matter how good, becomes annoying when you're forced to see it over and over again. Also, yeah, it's just one of the reasons I don't bother going to planets that don't have quests on. I'm definitely triaging content in Andromeda like I did in Inquisition; there's a lot of filler there (though not quite as much as DAI, because god damn) and it's best if you identify early how much of it you want to engage with. For example, I'm not doing the scan 50 planets quest. I don't think there's any chance of it paying off narratively or mechanically enough to justify the amount of time and boredom it would require to complete.

 

Regarding Vanguards in MP: how the fuck do you survive in close range? I haven't really tried a Vanguard yet but as any other character if I end up right up in the grill of enemies I am doing my damnedest to GTFO because you are actually pretty squishy at low levels. I did happen to find a Turian Soldier character in a crate, though, which ameliorates that problem somewhat with Fortify. Weirdly the one I crave is the Krogan Engineer.

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50 minutes ago, Gwardinen said:

 

Regarding Vanguards in MP: how the fuck do you survive in close range? I haven't really tried a Vanguard yet but as any other character if I end up right up in the grill of enemies I am doing my damnedest to GTFO because you are actually pretty squishy at low levels. I did happen to find a Turian Soldier character in a crate, though, which ameliorates that problem somewhat with Fortify. Weirdly the one I crave is the Krogan Engineer.

 

I've got the Krogan Engineer, he's basically a Krogan version of the Human Engineer from ME3.  I've only played a round, but I liked what I saw.

 

As for Vanguards, Charge will recharge their shields half full, or all the way full with an evolution.  A key to vanguarding is to have low enough cool down to be able to take just enough of a beating until you need to charge again.  With Nova (on the Human and Krogan guards), you get another power that lets you stagger enemies in a group around you, buying you more time to wait until Charge is ready.  Humans gets an evolution in their fitness tree that lets them recharge shields with melee attacks, and recharge shields when low on health.  Krogans get Rage, giving them more  damage resistance when headbutting things to death. 

 

Basically it's all about stacking various ways of regenning shields, cooldowns, damage resistance and screaming YEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAW a lot.  Vanguarding is my favorite MP class :)  The Drellguard in ME3 was one of the hardest but most rewarding classes to play.  All the squishiness of a Drell, but a powerhouse from hell thanks to 'nades and the best passive damage tree in the game. 

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I present the first screenshots in a series I call "Galaxy Pap."

 

Blighted Waste

58d206bf09b09_MassEffectAndromeda03_21.2017-19_56_19_04.thumb.png.1d2783fd9d26b239b591a1728b0dee3d.png

 

Tedious Horizon

58d206e1b2911_MassEffectAndromeda03_21.2017-20_39_25_16.thumb.png.eec326c346e4d53ad0bba083396849dc.png

 

Rock Breaking

58d206cd673d4_MassEffectAndromeda03_21.2017-19_59_48_08.thumb.png.34dc13a240e1db2d0e109bf9bb3d39dd.png

 

Nothing to Scan Here

58d206d589540_MassEffectAndromeda03_21.2017-20_02_00_12.thumb.png.c2edd29fcf63bb67b22ec960b04fddc5.png

 

Time Sink

58d206db96bfb_MassEffectAndromeda03_21.2017-20_02_35_13.thumb.png.e2143b7e3ccde280d566aa27f73a6e7e.png

 

Blank Space

58d206e9641b9_MassEffectAndromeda03_21.2017-20_41_07_17.thumb.png.bab213f7922f4f54ef3a907f2fa1b41c.png

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Haha, I still haven't got to the planet exploration stuff, I'm moving slow through SP.  I got to the Nexus this evening, and then switched over to MP because I had a stressful day and wanted to murder things, not talky talk. 

 

I got my first UR, saved up for a Premium Pack and a Hurricane dropped :wub:   It's much more satisfying than the Charger. 

 

Some of the APEX missions are tough with characters that are still just in their teens.  Tried a Silver tonight with the modifier of +100 percent shields, -75 percent health.  It meant that once your shields broke, you were toast.  So many chain revives, didn't even make it through Wave 3. 

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This game is like one UI polish pass away from me kind loving it. A lot of the side stuff is pretty, uh, there. The side stuff exits and is a thing. But I sorta dig the B-movie plot and really like the characters. It helps that I had my expectations adjusted going in for sure though. It also helps that I remembered how 3 tried to make you feel bad for all of humanity by having Shepherd dream about a kid she couldn't save and how bad that was and I think I'll take a good episode of Sliders over more of that thank you.

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