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[kiphalfton]

Lately I've noticed, in my own gaming habits, that I no longer can play new RPGs that aren't featuring a big, open, immersive world to get lost into. I don't care how good the story is, the graphics, characters or even roleplaying systems.

I would rather replay games from Gothic, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout series that did open-world decades ago (with great success) than pay full price for games that lack ambition.

Another terrible take from another AAA developer. It's like they all, as a group, lost ambition and courage to push the limits of video games. I want planets in my space opera RPG, not corridors.

 

[StereoVsn]

They just looked at what they were doing next (Anthem and Dragon Age The Veilguard) and they were like, "Man, compared to all the shit we've been doing lately, Mass Effect Andromenda wasn't that bad."

I would much, much rather play Mass Effect Andromenda if I had to choose between that and Veilguard.

I would rather go and repaint my house vs playing any of these games. Andromeda is awful from writing to characters to storyline to even UX design.

Even combat got further simplified so you don’t have any control over your team mates.

 

[StereoVsn]

Keep lowering peoples' standards, and the last shitty thing you did doesn't look so bad by comparison.

Yep, the frog has now boiled enough that Andromeda is now “good game” or even a decent one.

 

[MujkicHaris]

I am not fluent in GIF communication. What is it that your are trying to communicate?

 

[kiphalfton]

I am not fluent in GIF communication. What is it that your are trying to communicate?

Sorry, not gonna explain everything to you and hold your hand like your beloved open world games do.

 

[Loomy]

This is a level headed take. Most things aren't as bad as their reception. Was Andromeda great? No. It was alright, underwhelming, and its existence as an ME game questionable. But people latched on to the vitriol around it.

Same with Veilguard. The game is probably an okay game. But all the conversation around it is probably worse than the game actually is.

Was Anthem as bad as the conversation around it? Yes. Yes it was. Bioware should feel bad for releasing a game that should still have been in early beta.

 

[chakadave]

Holy shit, the revisionist shit from these companies from CDPR to Bioware to Sony, to even smaller devs is fucking frustrating me to no end.
Its ok to have a game that just wasn't good.

Accountability is not the way this ideaology works. They have to blame the customer and certain demographics.

Besides visual(which is arguable because art is a thing) games recently have been in decline except for the rare exceptsions. (GB3, Helldivers, From and Nintendo).

 

[Karak]

And like, a completely unreasonable ask, but just putting it out there... a company could, like, learn from their mistakes and feedback, and make a better game afterwards?

Exactly. Obviously, we see this everywhere. Someone gets in trouble they slowly work back by subtly adjusting each sentence that discusses the incident until sometimes it somehow sounds like it didn't even involve them. Luckily, or unluckily my hate lasts forever so I don't forget that stuff and it won't stop me from checking out a company's next game. But it also wont stop me from mentioning it either.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

And like, a completely unreasonable ask, but just putting it out there... a company could, like, learn from their mistakes and feedback, and make a better game afterwards?

Sounds reasonable.

Especially from Bioware whose had a bad track record lately stemming from ME Andromeda and Anthem. They got another kick at the can with Veilguard, and another one as reports say they've been shifted to focus on the next ME game.

How many chances does a department get? Who knows. Some studios get shut down fast after a clunker, some stay alive. Bioware is one that seems to stay forever at EA. Will be interesting to see how the next ME game is. The thread last week has the dev claiming ME5 will be a mature game.

 

[SJRB]

This is a level headed take. Most things aren't as bad as their reception. Was Andromeda great? No. It was alright, underwhelming, and its existence as an ME game questionable. But people latched on to the vitriol around it.

Same with Veilguard. The game is probably an okay game. But all the conversation around it is probably worse than the game actually is.

Was Anthem as bad as the conversation around it? Yes. Yes it was. Bioware should feel bad for releasing a game that should still have been in early beta.

Buddy, you can't go around saying "the game is fine and it's all just vitriol" when there's 500000 hours of footage on why this game is in fact not fine.

 

[AJUMP23]

I played the opening and stopped, because I wasn't having fun.

 

[RodriGames40]

This might the the weirdest take I've read here on NeoGAF.

If the current AAA developers keep on refusing to innovate and build bigger, ambitious worlds then --- someone else will take their place.

Just give China a few years.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Pack it up.

It's over.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Just give China a few years.

Need to see how the final game shapes up in reviews, but the new Delta Force game coming soon looks better than any Battlefield game. And EA has had how many BF games the past 20 years?

 

[ReBurn]

I don't think Mass Effect Andromeda is a bad game. I think it's a subpar Mass Effect game, but it's an ok video game.

 

[Ovek]

Here’s the thing with Mass Effect Andromeda. The combat and gameplay loop were really quite good and were a significant improvement over Mass Effect 3. I didn’t even mind the open world “maps” as they made sense considering the whole path finder stuff. It fails and fails badly in the writing (shocking I know), it was fucking dreadful and a marked step down from even ME3 which had its moments but 80% of it was garbage.

 

[metareferential]

Andromeda was fun, if you forgot basically everything except the combat. Which is too bad, since that part alone was really fun.

Mass Effect is never coming back. It was dead after 2.

 

[Schmendrick]

I remember the time I played Andromeda very well.......the only reason i played that turd for as long as i did was that I expected it to become a real Mass Effect game aaaaaany moment now.
That was an utterly mediocre run of the mill game.....very much like another one they just released.

 

[Loomy]

Buddy, you can't go around saying "the game is fine and it's all just vitriol" when there's 500000 hours of footage on why this game is in fact not fine.

I mean, it's not 500000 hours, but I can also find footage of showing the game being fine.



Like it I said, it was alright and underwhelming. Technical issues out the gills when it launched, some character models were meh at best, and the writing was not great.

But when the game came out, people(some who had never played the game and were never going to play it) latched on to all the crappy animation and bugs and memed the fuck out of it. That pretty much killed any kind of civil conversation about the game.

The game, visually was great at the time. Some of the best environments in the series. The combat was amazing. That's something you couldn't really talk about over the noise at the time the game came out. Because everyone was dismissing the game based on animation and other tech glitches(fair criticisms, btw).

It was an alright game. Definitely better than the reception at the time. Time has shown that to be true.

 

[LordBlodgett]

This causes me to have less hope for future Mass Effect games. The first step to improving on anything is realizing it's true weaknesses. ME:A may have been initially mocked because of the bug-eyed technical issues, but the fact was the writing and story was nowhere close to ME 1 or 2. It looks like they really focused on polishing up the bugs this time around in Dragon Age Veilguard, since it seems to really have excellent technical polish and very few bugs. Unfortunately though, it also seems like the writing and story line is shit. Means they are not seeing reality...............

 

[Thebonehead]

These pricks need to watch that toxic positivity video. They just aren't listening.

 

[Hero_Select]

Here’s the thing with Mass Effect Andromeda. The combat and gameplay loop were really quite good and were a significant improvement over Mass Effect 3. I didn’t even mind the open world “maps” as they made sense considering the whole path finder stuff. It fails and fails badly in the writing (shocking I know), it was fucking dreadful and a marked step down from even ME3 which had its moments but 80% of it was garbage.

I think people are overly harsh on ME3.. A LOT of it is fucking amazing..

Curing the Genophage
Seeing Rannoch, especially if you romanced Tali
Thessia
The geth mission!
A lot of the missions/planets you do have a lot of spectacle to them that I really appreciated
I get that the story might not have hit all the notes but in general the story with your squadmates is great.

 

[Brakum]

Learned Not to Put in Open World in RPGs for the Sake of It​

I really need to become a game director. I knew this in advance

 

[Loomy]

This causes me to have less hope for future Mass Effect games. The first step to improving on anything is realizing it's true weaknesses. ME:A may have been initially mocked because of the bug-eyed technical issues, but the fact was the writing and story was nowhere close to ME 1 or 2. It looks like they really focused on polishing up the bugs this time around in Dragon Age Veilguard, since it seems to really have excellent technical polish and very few bugs. Unfortunately though, it also seems like the writing and story line is shit. Means they are not seeing reality...............

It's sad but true. We're now in a place where writing is a liability with Bioware. I'm replaying ME2 right now, and to be honest, that game benefits a lot from the world building done in ME1, which is fine and expected, but it also covers up a lot of the issues in the narrative for ME2. ME3, for whatever reason decided it was going to sprint to the end. Having said that...

I think people are overly harsh on ME3.. A LOT of it is fucking amazing..

Curing the Genophage
Seeing Rannoch, especially if you romanced Tali
Thessia
The geth mission!
A lot of the missions/planets you do have a lot of spectacle to them that I really appreciated
I get that the story might not have hit all the notes but in general the story with your squadmates is great.

This is also true. Endings are hard, and ME3 mostly sticks the landing. But the trilogy was shaping up to be an epic one, and anything less than stellar(which describes ME3) would have been seen as a bit of a letdown.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Truly a forgettable game, especially how great ME3 was.

 

[chakadave]

These pricks need to watch that toxic positivity video. They just aren't listening.

HR departments are a mistake.

 

[Barakov]

Most pundits pointed out Andromeda’s various technical issues and lack of polish as some of the main issues people had with it. However, according to BioWare’s John Epler, Andromeda was a better game than its reception suggested, even if it did deserve the reception it got.



Safe to say, Andromeda was not BioWare’s finest work, and the studio learned a lot from it, which included not shoehorning an open-world just to tick off a box from a checklist. This was something Epler mentioned that The Veilguard tried to avoid, and the learnings from Andromeda certainly helped with that decision.

BioWare Thinks Mass Effect Andromeda Was Better Game Than Reception Suggested; Learned Not to Put in Open World in RPGs for the Sake of It

BioWare thinks Mass Effect: Andromeda was a better game than what reception suggested; taught the studio not to shoehorn open-world.

mp1st.com

Andromeda was

.

Looks like this new Mass Effect is DOA.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Andromeda was awful, I only played it once and only finished it because I got very attached to the og trilogy.

I'm still hoping BioWare will close down and won't get a chance to completely massacre the Mass Effect IP in one last attempt.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Dragon Age: V feels very...mass effect andromeda.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

the sequel wouldve been great but hey, the internet's gotta hate. I will never forgive the hate mob for what they did with AC Unity, Andromeda and Days Gone. they are a big reason why we never got sequels to those games.

Surly you jest!

AC has had a new game almost every year since Unity.

Andromeda didn't get a sequel because the Montreal team dropped the ball so hard with Andromeda that there was nowhere to take it narrative-wise without another soft reboot. Anyway, we're getting a new ME soon.

And Day's Gone didn't have that much of a hate mob against it. It was more wanker gaming media folks who decided long before the game came out that it didn't need to exist because of TLOU, regardless of how good the end product actually was. Then combine that with the eminence of woke VG reviewers who spent more time in their reviews analyzing the toxic masculinity of Biker Gangs, than actually talking about the game, and you have a nice recipe for an undeservedly low MC score and a lot of turned off mainstream gamers.

 

[hussar16]

Well, that explains a lot about Veilguard. Good luck on that next ME game, it’s going to be just amazing!

And just to clarify, I disliked Andromeda from its lack of party control to its inane main plot story to its Saturday Morning Cartoon Big Bad to terrible character writing.

Not to mention it had awful UX, as one example, you had to go to orbit to read email. And let’s not forget dumb quests where you had to jump across multiple planets for inane shit and it all wasted time.

If BioWare thought the game was good aside from its technical issues, double oof.

Yea if these directors people in charge stil dont get it then we are screwed. The story and story design has to work around the locations not the other way around. Whatever tho iv long given up on bioware

 

[Perrott]

Nah, the game sucked. There was nothing interesting about the story at all from what I recall. Everything felt amateurish about it too.

Zero surprise there, considering that it was pretty much made by the team behind Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, who were put under the BioWare banner following a restructuring of EA Worldwide Studios in 2013.