Colbert
Banned
Inventory management, wide variety of gear and weopons, weapon and gear mods, skill point system....
Mass Effect: Andromeda - Game Informer Details (Combat, story, more) [Up: All Info]
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Inventory management, wide variety of gear and weopons, weapon and gear mods, skill point system....
anexanhume
Member
They added a collector's in addition to the normal deluxe edition they do. I don't see the problem?
I enjoy the trailer, but that's subjective.
We can't discount the amount of information on-hand from Game Informer, however. We got a lot.
If I remember right mass relays are a lot like stargates from StarGåte series. They have limited range and you can reach only so many relays / worlds from your origin point. There is large network of them and if you want go super far you need to hop from relay to relay to relay... Exception being super relays like Citadel or that mega relay used to reach Collector system, those have exceptional range. Also if I remember right mass relay tech was never reverse engineered by races meaning new ones can't be build. Brings up interesting question, how to link MW to Andromeda in a fashion that allows near instant travel like relays do?
I guess it's time to hit ME Wikia for some lore.
We got a lot information from pay-to-access source instead of devs delivering all of that in their "Mass Effect community day event".
I enjoyed Inquisition's main plotline and its cast and I had fun roaming its sprawling world. I do have significant qualms with its extremist padding, the relative brevity of its main quests relative to Origins, and its somewhat anticlimactic endgame (which has since been halfway-redeemed via Trespasser, but praising a DLC for such feats is a bit of a controversy in and of itself, admittedly).
If Andromeda has Inquisition's overall quality, I think GAF is going to explode, but personally I'll be somewhat satisfied. What I'd like more is to see the team truly learn from the excessive tendencies on full display in 2014's release and give us more meaningful content the whole way through, but I'm not going to get my hopes up that it'll do a tremendous job of that.
You're right, yeah. I guess I don't mind overmuch. But I see the distinction.
As long as I have access to ALL my abilities Im sure I will be able to tolerate the lack of an ability wheel. *Looks angrily at DAI*
John Kowalski
Banned
Inventory management in ME1 is the kind of hellish nightmare that awaits the evilest of men and women.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Juxtaposing these two posts is funny to me. NOT SO STRAWMANNN
ME3 does all of that much better than ME1, other than inventory management, which it ditched because seriously why would you even want to bother with that? ME1's inventory system gave people cancer.
ME3 skill points had MONUMENTAL effect, ME1 skill points were miserably incremental.
ME3 had gear that was actually diverse, ME1 had a handful of genuinely different weapons and armors and then a ton of reskins.
ME3 gear mods could dramatically alter the look and function of the weapons, up to and including their weight. ME1 gear mods were mostly small percentage changes to various values, other than the ammos, which were, admittedly, pretty cool.
JeffG
Member
I am sure that the purpose of the "Mass Effect community day event" is to get people to talk about it.
and in that...they succeeded
It may annoy you(and others) that you didn't get appetite satiated, but that is your problem (not theirs)
Other than inventory management and gear mods, all of this is in ME3.
So, still not seeing your point, sorry.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Gear mods were in, though. You could equip extended magazines, stabilizers, bayonets, scopes, all sorts of cool shit.
I would lie if I said that lack of gameplay footage didn't bother me little, but not enough to get my panties up to bunch. I like it that, no matter of outlet, they dropped hard info in good quantity to us go through on top of that cinematic trailer. A lot of given info sounds good and got me more interested to see how it's executed [read: gameplay videos].
So yes, N7 Day got job done in getting eyes on MEA. Lack of gameplay and pushing it to December was just surprising for me.
That's more like weapon mods. He did actually separate those.
Gear mods = armor mods I think. Like extra shields and melee damage. To be frank, Bioware simply moved that into the skill tree, so it's technically still there, but work differently.Pretty much all of this was in ME3 except for inventory management (not huge loss there).
If no pausing is a trade off for finally being able to map more than three of my powers to use in real time on console, it is infinitely worth it. Take the Adept class for example: if you mapped singularity, warp and pull for quick use, every time you wanted to use a throw, shockwave, cluster grenade or your bonus power you were forced to pause the game and use the meny. That was not a satisfying way of using your powers (and everyone were forced to do it if they wanted to use more than three powers), throwing grenades were outright awful using it.
Using powers on the fly with the press of a button >>> using powers by pausing the game, interrupting the action, and scrolling through a meny wheel and pressing A/X.
I'm assuming the power mapping will work in the same way as the power system in Dragon's Dogma, i.e. hold a button to select a second set. Seeing as Dragon's Dogma is the best playing action RPG this side of Dark Souls (especially when it comes to power use) I expect people to be exited for this change, maybe Mass Effect Andromeda will be for power based sci-fi action rpgs what Dragon's Dogma were for power based fantasy action rpgs.
I mean just imagine how much worse Dragon's Dogma would have been if you only could use three powers at a time and the rest was mapped to a meny (There is a reason the warrior was the worst class). I expect that be the case in reverse for Mass Effect Andromeda.
Finally, the pausing in Mass Effect didn't make the game smarter, more challenging or more tactical, if that's what you are looking for in a Mass Effect game you should have played the multiplayer.
Using powers on the fly with the press of a button >>> using powers by pausing the game, interrupting the action, and scrolling through a meny wheel and pressing A/X.
I'm assuming the power mapping will work in the same way as the power system in Dragon's Dogma, i.e. hold a button to select a second set. Seeing as Dragon's Dogma is the best playing action RPG this side of Dark Souls (especially when it comes to power use) I expect people to be exited for this change, maybe Mass Effect Andromeda will be for power based sci-fi action rpgs what Dragon's Dogma were for power based fantasy action rpgs.
I mean just imagine how much worse Dragon's Dogma would have been if you only could use three powers at a time and the rest was mapped to a meny (There is a reason the warrior was the worst class). I expect that be the case in reverse for Mass Effect Andromeda.
Finally, the pausing in Mass Effect didn't make the game smarter, more challenging or more tactical, if that's what you are looking for in a Mass Effect game you should have played the multiplayer.
I'm all for removing the pause screen for powers in favour for hot keys, I just have this horrible image in my head that it means we equip our powers before each mission and there are only two slots (one on each bumper). Rest of the changes sound amazing though, by having no binary choices and loading screens, they've fixed some of the series biggest problems already.
Also glad people are calling out the "Mass effect 1 = an RPG, and the rest are shooters" people. Mass Effect 2 might have been, but Mass Effect 3 had essentially the same systems as the first game (minus the meaningless exploration and crappy inventory). The games have always been third person shooters with RPG elements, it's just future installments got better at the shooting parts and people mistook that for moving away from its roots.
Also glad people are calling out the "Mass effect 1 = an RPG, and the rest are shooters" people. Mass Effect 2 might have been, but Mass Effect 3 had essentially the same systems as the first game (minus the meaningless exploration and crappy inventory). The games have always been third person shooters with RPG elements, it's just future installments got better at the shooting parts and people mistook that for moving away from its roots.
No, but you really should play 3!!
Darkstorne
Member
Completely agree with this. Mass 1 is still my favourite for the story, but Mass 3 absolutely nailed the skill system and weapon/armour customization imo. Mass 2 failed in absolutely every way except companions, and I HATE that companion quality was enough for most people to look past the atrocious story, atrocious skill system, and atrocious weapon/armour customization. Easily the worst game in the series, by a country mile.
Absolutely not. The events of MEA are disconnected from those of the OG trilogy, so you can jump right into this game withour fear of missing out anything.
ME2 is my favorite ME game btw. Kill me.
TC McQueen
Member
No, this starts off before ME3 happens and then jumps 600 years in the future past that, in another galaxy, so nothing from ME3 will affect the story.
Darryl M R
Member
So no pause button at all in the game? Meh I'll deal--Destiny wasn't that hard to get use to.
JeffG
Member
I hope they bring the "tinting" ability for armour color that DA:I adopted. That would add a nice touch to the customization
shinobi602
Member
So, you don't equip specific powers for your squadmates here, but you can level up their abilities. They have more upgrade options than previous games. In Mass Effect 2 and 3, the squad were extra 'power batteries'. They were useless as entities but were valuable for an extra shot or overload.
Now that most powers are cooldown based, everything is different. You need a squad member who's AI plays it's role, which based on my conversations, they do. From what I'm told, you can't finish a mission without your squad here, while in the trilogy they were mostly just baggage.
There is a pause button, read the OP again.
SargerusBR
I love Pokken!
Game is a soft-reboot. You can probably play it without knowing anything about the franchise.
Seems like an improvement, as you said another shot of overload was basically all they were good for. As long as you can hotkey five or more powers to the controller the difference between you using a power or you telling a squadmate to use a power is minimal.
Hmm, I'm a little confused. So your squadmates have powers but use them on their own? You can't tell them to? I remember one of the squadmates has a biotic shield/AOE barrier...can you tell them to use that, does their AI use it automatically, or both?
Come on man, it's not the same. It's like if there was a Baldur's Gate 3 that did away with the pause system, oh but if you open your inventory screen it pauses!
It's not the same.
shinobi602
Member
Both. You can tell them to use their powers, but not which.
That's a little disheartening to me but I'll get used to it.
In what world is this even slightly comparable to BG losing it's pause.
Lets hope the AI is smart then.
Ok. Not going to jump to conclusions, but that sounds problematic on the face of it. If I have a squadmate who has an AOE barrier, I really need to be able to tell her exactly when to use it.
Because in previous Mass Effects you can pause the game, select your powers, select your squad mates powers and select all your targets? Just like in Baldur's Gate. What don't you understand here?
It won't be
That Baldur's Gate's gameplay necessitates a high level of control over time and space such that RTwP is necessary, whereas Mass Effect's gameplay plays just fine on the highest difficulty in real time, suggests the comparison isn't apples to apples.
The pausing in BG is integral to even stand a chance at that game, it isn't in ME. It isn't in any game where you only control one character.
Sodding_Gamer
Member
BossDarkseid
Member
The combat in Baldur's Gate and cRPGs is typically built and balanced around you periodically pausing the game to micro-manage your positions, abilities and attacks. Mass Effect is not, and plays and is typically balanced around constantly active combat. Insanity etc plays just fine this way.
Not that hard to understand
I like the style of play, to stop and think about my actions. The reason why I like real-time with pause systems has nothing to do with difficulty.
Same here. Not sure what's so hard to understand. The pausing in ME exists for a reason, otherwise... well it just wouldn't be there.
Props to those who can do without, good for you.
Son Of Sparda
Member
I wonder how many of the assets from DA:I will make it over to ME:A. I know it's cost beneficial but I hope they don't go overboard with it and mostly use unique assets for ME:A.
BossDarkseid
Member
But from a design standpoint, it kinda does.
You may prefer to pause every now and again (to be honest I quite like to in more hectic combat situations, esp in ME3 to set up a biotic explosion or just to gave Javik grenade a group of Cerberus troops) but the combat parts of the games were always more towards the action side of things so its kind of a natural evolution
I'd still be interested in the pre-release Mass Effect though where it was arguably way more tactical orientated, with you moving squad members about in a pause screen and affecting the environment with powers and so on. Would have been fun.
There's some good in there, lotta joke questions. I'm surprised how laid back Mac is.
Also I knew devs hated the save import.
Yea the whole desert footage including that Rhino-like monster looked like something taken 1:1 from DA:I. The desert even has this same slightly comicy look to it.
BossDarkseid
Member
Aren't those pillars hexagonal?
I mean even from those pics apart from the shape of individual pillars they don't look like "Oh we'll just take this group here..."
I imagine the benefit of using Frostbite as a company wide engine now means they high quality titles can use assets in some fashion to make content creation easier and quicker. I doubt they'll use THAT many though, not everything is that applicable. I always liked the look of those pillars though...- Status