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[Smiley90]

Also is it just me or is the actual arch enemy (okay 2nd biggest enemy) in this game

Spoiler

Spender

? Without him fucking shit up multiple times like half the plot doesnt happen.

 

[everyday math]

Uhhh something you wanna tell me Drack?

 

[painey]

I had that happen, and when I talked to him the camera was on his suit the whole time, so Ryder was literally talking to a shiny yellow medal piece of armour.

 

[HariKari]

Uhhh something you wanna tell me Drack?

Had that happen as well, think it's a very easily repeatable bug.

 

[texhnolyze]

Uhhh something you wanna tell me Drack?

Lol. That reminds me of a glitch when I talk with Jaal right after the mission on planet Voeld. He was in the squads room talking with Liam, then when I approach him the game just teleported us to his room above. It seems that I was supposed to approach him by the door, but he shouldn't be in the squads room in the first place. Maybe there's two of him at that time.

 

[Vengal]

That sucks dude. I'm prolly going to do her Loyalty deal tomorrow and now I'm afraid it'll get bugged.

Damn I'm still wondering if Vetra has anything tied to her quest wise because I'm on mission four (haven't went to the planet yet) and she's just been saying the same shit for the past 3 missions.

Yeah I'm legit torn on what to do at the moment. I tried rolling a save back two hours of gametime and the bug is still present. I'm unwilling to go further beyond that.

There are multiple bugs associated with Cora's loyalty mission according to the EA help site so you may want to read up on them before you proceed. I'm lucky enough to be the only one expierencing my bug right now though...

 

[BigTnaples]

I quite like the open planets, so far.

That being said I have a deep disdain for when people contest the notion of empty planetoids and negative space is the wrong direction for this franchise. As I noted in an earlier post, while I feel Andromeda does open environments fairly well, I don't feel it evokes an atmosphere of Mass Effect 1, though occasionally hits the ballpark.

Much of this is due to the emphasis of filling these open planetoids with stuff to do. Irrespective of the subjective quality of this content, or how much I'm enjoying them as is, it does deteriorate the sense of scale and wonder of discovery in the context of the setting.

I don't mind people having a preference that leans against negative space, seeing it as pointless and devoid of engaging game systems, but I'm so at odds with the vocal deterrence away from this kind of game design that it drives me batty. I'm fascinated by the ways in which designers can evoke emotion and immerse players into their worlds, convey themes and concepts, through interactivity. And I feel that with negative space, even if it's empty and "pointless", it can work wonders towards conveying the intended feeling.

There's a moment in the very original Mass Effect where you scan a planet, an anomaly is detected, you land in your Mako on this empty, aimless, dull green terrain. Illuminated with a bright blue sky you drive around in the absolute nothing to find your "anomaly", which is nothing more than a half buried Prothean pyramid to be activated for a whimsical paragraph of text.

It feels poignant. So much emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness, yet this tiny discovery of unique, hand tailored individuality no matter how small and simple to be found. Yes, you drive across stretches of "boring" terrain, with nothing to do and no real distinct visual stimuli. But I love that. That's a planetoid. It's huge and oppressive in its nothingness, its existence so romantically oblivious to your presence, stretches of dirt and dust and sky perhaps unseen by any sentient eye for millennia. And here you find this little fragment of something unnatural, something that is a sign of intelligence beyond your own, alone in this cosmos. It really feels like an uncharted world, and the sense of scale is magnificently conveyed because of the nothingness.

I wish Mass Effect would teeter back towards this kind of design. Yes, these hand tailored interactive moments are absolutely essential and part of the series strength. But here's the thing; if I have an objective to find and explore a crashed star ship, its interior neatly hand crafted and unique, make me work through the nothingness with my own agency to find it in the first place. Have me scan a random planet in a random system and my computer bleep with an anomaly detected. No specifics, unable to pinpoint the precise location, only that something unusual and odd and worth investigation is hereamidst stretches of snow or sand or primordial grass or whatever else. Have me land on this barren terrain, mountainous and stretched, the local radar picking up where the thing is but still not what it is or context. Let me roll over a snowy mountain to finally see in the middle of a vista a giant crashed starship half buried in the snow. And let me manually drive all the way up to it, through the nothingness, to breach the door and explore the hand crafted interior within.

This is what I want from Mass Effect, even if I know I'll never get it.

Fantastic post. Couldn't agree more.

 

[Son Of Sparda]

That moment when you finally get new banters on a planet, yet SAM decides that it's time remind you for the 600th time, that weather is bad.

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

That moment when you finally get new banters on a planet, yet SAM decides that it's time remind you for the 600th time, that weather is bad.

My wife just started the game and she loves getting every last detail out of these games and its driving her mad that shes missing possibly unique conversations cause SAM keeps interrupting.

 

[MegaSackman]

Uhhh something you wanna tell me Drack?

Took the same picture. Also Vetra conversation was broken and invisible, and Peebee was facing in the wrong direction (she was supposed to lean on the table)

Question: At any time Angara's homeland

Spoiler

(Havarld or something like that) becomes a main quest? Because I followed the whole quest on Voeld and now I have to go to Aya but Havarld is still unexplored.

 

[Ushay]

Uhhh something you wanna tell me Drack?

I am so glad I'm holding off playing this until later this year,

 

[Son Of Sparda]

My wife just started the game and she loves getting every last detail out of these games and its driving her mad that shes missing possibly unique conversations cause SAM keeps interrupting.

Honestly, it's one of the stupidest things that I've seen in the game thus far. Like, didn't anyone during the development thought that this will get incredibly repetitive and annoying after the few first warnings? I mean, seriously.

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

Honestly, it's one of the stupidest things that I've seen in the game thus far. Like, didn't anyone during the development thought that this will get incredibly repetitive and annoying after the few first warnings? I mean, seriously.

Its another thing that kinda leaves you scratching your head. Now that the Crowbcat video is out theres a whole new topic of essentially shitting on the game for every misstep. I have had a few things happen but overall very much still enjoying the game as a whole package.

 

[Sterling's_Gold]

I quite like the open planets, so far.

That being said I have a deep disdain for when people contest the notion of empty planetoids and negative space is the wrong direction for this franchise. As I noted in an earlier post, while I feel Andromeda does open environments fairly well, I don't feel it evokes an atmosphere of Mass Effect 1, though occasionally hits the ballpark.

Much of this is due to the emphasis of filling these open planetoids with stuff to do. Irrespective of the subjective quality of this content, or how much I'm enjoying them as is, it does deteriorate the sense of scale and wonder of discovery in the context of the setting.

I don't mind people having a preference that leans against negative space, seeing it as pointless and devoid of engaging game systems, but I'm so at odds with the vocal deterrence away from this kind of game design that it drives me batty. I'm fascinated by the ways in which designers can evoke emotion and immerse players into their worlds, convey themes and concepts, through interactivity. And I feel that with negative space, even if it's empty and "pointless", it can work wonders towards conveying the intended feeling.

There's a moment in the very original Mass Effect where you scan a planet, an anomaly is detected, you land in your Mako on this empty, aimless, dull green terrain. Illuminated with a bright blue sky you drive around in the absolute nothing to find your "anomaly", which is nothing more than a half buried Prothean pyramid to be activated for a whimsical paragraph of text.

It feels poignant. So much emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness, yet this tiny discovery of unique, hand tailored individuality no matter how small and simple to be found. Yes, you drive across stretches of "boring" terrain, with nothing to do and no real distinct visual stimuli. But I love that. That's a planetoid. It's huge and oppressive in its nothingness, its existence so romantically oblivious to your presence, stretches of dirt and dust and sky perhaps unseen by any sentient eye for millennia. And here you find this little fragment of something unnatural, something that is a sign of intelligence beyond your own, alone in this cosmos. It really feels like an uncharted world, and the sense of scale is magnificently conveyed because of the nothingness.

I wish Mass Effect would teeter back towards this kind of design. Yes, these hand tailored interactive moments are absolutely essential and part of the series strength. But here's the thing; if I have an objective to find and explore a crashed star ship, its interior neatly hand crafted and unique, make me work through the nothingness with my own agency to find it in the first place. Have me scan a random planet in a random system and my computer bleep with an anomaly detected. No specifics, unable to pinpoint the precise location, only that something unusual and odd and worth investigation is hereamidst stretches of snow or sand or primordial grass or whatever else. Have me land on this barren terrain, mountainous and stretched, the local radar picking up where the thing is but still not what it is or context. Let me roll over a snowy mountain to finally see in the middle of a vista a giant crashed starship half buried in the snow. And let me manually drive all the way up to it, through the nothingness, to breach the door and explore the hand crafted interior within.

This is what I want from Mass Effect, even if I know I'll never get it.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Son Of Sparda]

Its another thing that kinda leaves you scratching your head. Now that the Crowbcat video is out theres a whole new topic of essentially shitting on the game for every misstep. I have had a few things happen but overall very much still enjoying the game as a whole package.

Yeah, same here. I've had some eye rolling moments and some really funny glitches, but overall the game is really fun.

Unpolished. Unoptimized. Yet very fun.

*I liked exploration in ME1*

+1

 

[HariKari]

Its another thing that kinda leaves you scratching your head. Now that the Crowbcat video is out theres a whole new topic of essentially shitting on the game for every misstep. I have had a few things happen but overall very much still enjoying the game as a whole package.

The issues don't trip me up in the moment so much as they make me annoyed at what could have been.

 

[Carlius]

lmao this happened to me

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

The issues don't trip me up in the moment so much as they make me annoyed at what could have been.

I 100% agree, its just crazy to see the actual enjoyment from people who havent even played the game take turns shitting all over it. Its very juvenile, my expectations were not met by a long shot but the game is nowhere near a total piece of shit or waste of time.

 

[Aspiring]

I do like this game especially in the slow moments. Has a real mass effect vibe but other times makes me wanna give it up. I think itso the levels. I have only done Eos but the open world i hate but once I got into the vault loved it.

But for me personally that no patch could fix is that I LOVED the milky way and I loved the whole cast and crew from the trilogy. I find myself wanting Shepard or some continuation of the story but instead I get a game that pretends it never happened. An example was when, I think it is Kesh, was telling me about the genophage and how there was no cure.... instead over 600 years they have become almost immune..... I COULD HAVE THROWN MY CONTROLLER AT MY TV. The game just disregards all this cool shit i did and im meant to just forget. And I can't.

Do people think this will set up a new trilogy or always be played in Andromeda? I really want this to just go down as a side Story and give me a real Mass effect 4 following the events of 3. Let me rebuild the milky way and the problems that come with it.

 

[wesleyshark]

Pull + Annihilation + Lance is so incredibly overpowered in single player I love it. Don't even need to fire weapons lol.

 

[HariKari]

I 100% agree, its just crazy to see the actual enjoyment from people who havent even played the game take turns shitting all over it. Its very juvenile, my expectations were not met by a long shot but the game is nowhere near a total piece of shit or waste of time.

I think it's a game that shouldn't be rewarded, even if it has moments of brilliance. This isn't how AAA games should hit the market. EA shouldn't be shoving games out the door like this. This game, if it had another 6-12 months, could be on par with the other games in the series. There's clearly a polished core there. You know you're getting a scene that has had some developmental attention because the camera locks in and the dialogue is usually good. But there isn't nearly enough of that. For as fun as some of the moments are, there are a ton of badly written moments.

There's only so much money to go around at publishers nowadays. These big franchises need to be good and need to land, given the budgets. I probably won't get another Deus Ex game for a long time, and I don't want that to happen to Mass Effect. I'm not going to hold it against people that they skipped the game. It's pretty understandable at this point. EA needs to do things right and give this game some serious post launch support. They fucked up here like they did with BF4.

It can be fun but also worthy of scorn at the same time.

 

[Brockxz]

That moment when you finally get new banters on a planet, yet SAM decides that it's time remind you for the 600th time, that weather is bad.

I never have understood the reason why developers make games to cut of dialogs if some other VO starts unless that is some kind of technical limitation why they do it. For this game I pretty much stop when new banter starts so nothing interrupts it. That makes me kind of move and stop all the time but at least I hope I won't miss something funny or interesting.

I 100% agree, its just crazy to see the actual enjoyment from people who havent even played the game take turns shitting all over it. Its very juvenile, my expectations were not met by a long shot but the game is nowhere near a total piece of shit or waste of time.

I agree. I have played already for 25 hours and I really love the game and I think most of those shitting on game are those who never even have played it.

 

[Pakoe]

I quite like the open planets, so far.

That being said I have a deep disdain for when people contest the notion of empty planetoids and negative space is the wrong direction for this franchise. As I noted in an earlier post, while I feel Andromeda does open environments fairly well, I don't feel it evokes an atmosphere of Mass Effect 1, though occasionally hits the ballpark.

Much of this is due to the emphasis of filling these open planetoids with stuff to do. Irrespective of the subjective quality of this content, or how much I'm enjoying them as is, it does deteriorate the sense of scale and wonder of discovery in the context of the setting.

I don't mind people having a preference that leans against negative space, seeing it as pointless and devoid of engaging game systems, but I'm so at odds with the vocal deterrence away from this kind of game design that it drives me batty. I'm fascinated by the ways in which designers can evoke emotion and immerse players into their worlds, convey themes and concepts, through interactivity. And I feel that with negative space, even if it's empty and "pointless", it can work wonders towards conveying the intended feeling.

There's a moment in the very original Mass Effect where you scan a planet, an anomaly is detected, you land in your Mako on this empty, aimless, dull green terrain. Illuminated with a bright blue sky you drive around in the absolute nothing to find your "anomaly", which is nothing more than a half buried Prothean pyramid to be activated for a whimsical paragraph of text.

It feels poignant. So much emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness, yet this tiny discovery of unique, hand tailored individuality no matter how small and simple to be found. Yes, you drive across stretches of "boring" terrain, with nothing to do and no real distinct visual stimuli. But I love that. That's a planetoid. It's huge and oppressive in its nothingness, its existence so romantically oblivious to your presence, stretches of dirt and dust and sky perhaps unseen by any sentient eye for millennia. And here you find this little fragment of something unnatural, something that is a sign of intelligence beyond your own, alone in this cosmos. It really feels like an uncharted world, and the sense of scale is magnificently conveyed because of the nothingness.

I wish Mass Effect would teeter back towards this kind of design. Yes, these hand tailored interactive moments are absolutely essential and part of the series strength. But here's the thing; if I have an objective to find and explore a crashed star ship, its interior neatly hand crafted and unique, make me work through the nothingness with my own agency to find it in the first place. Have me scan a random planet in a random system and my computer bleep with an anomaly detected. No specifics, unable to pinpoint the precise location, only that something unusual and odd and worth investigation is hereamidst stretches of snow or sand or primordial grass or whatever else. Have me land on this barren terrain, mountainous and stretched, the local radar picking up where the thing is but still not what it is or context. Let me roll over a snowy mountain to finally see in the middle of a vista a giant crashed starship half buried in the snow. And let me manually drive all the way up to it, through the nothingness, to breach the door and explore the hand crafted interior within.

This is what I want from Mass Effect, even if I know I'll never get it.

This is better written than a major part of ME:A.
I fully agree as well.

 

[Freeman76]

I think it's a game that shouldn't be rewarded, even if it has moments of brilliance. This isn't how AAA games should hit the market. EA shouldn't be shoving games out the door like this. This game, if it had another 6-12 months, could be on par with the other games in the series. There's clearly a polished core there. You know you're getting a scene that has had some developmental attention because the camera locks in and the dialogue is usually good. But there isn't nearly enough of that. For as fun as some of the moments are, there are a ton of badly written moments.

There's only so much money to go around at publishers nowadays. These big franchises need to be good and need to land, given the budgets. I probably won't get another Deus Ex game for a long time, and I don't want that to happen to Mass Effect. I'm not going to hold it against people that they skipped the game. It's pretty understandable at this point. EA needs to do things right and give this game some serious post launch support. They fucked up here like they did with BF4.

It can be fun but also worthy of scorn at the same time.

The fact that every piece of footage we saw was from PC in the run up to release and nobody was aware of the shit performance on consoles needs looking at for sure. DF????

 

[orichalcos]

After 60 hours: i am done with the story line.

Epilogue:

Spoiler

Hello Quarian Ark. I knew it.

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

I quite like the open planets, so far.

That being said I have a deep disdain for when people contest the notion of empty planetoids and negative space is the wrong direction for this franchise. As I noted in an earlier post, while I feel Andromeda does open environments fairly well, I don't feel it evokes an atmosphere of Mass Effect 1, though occasionally hits the ballpark.

Much of this is due to the emphasis of filling these open planetoids with stuff to do. Irrespective of the subjective quality of this content, or how much I'm enjoying them as is, it does deteriorate the sense of scale and wonder of discovery in the context of the setting.

I don't mind people having a preference that leans against negative space, seeing it as pointless and devoid of engaging game systems, but I'm so at odds with the vocal deterrence away from this kind of game design that it drives me batty. I'm fascinated by the ways in which designers can evoke emotion and immerse players into their worlds, convey themes and concepts, through interactivity. And I feel that with negative space, even if it's empty and "pointless", it can work wonders towards conveying the intended feeling.

There's a moment in the very original Mass Effect where you scan a planet, an anomaly is detected, you land in your Mako on this empty, aimless, dull green terrain. Illuminated with a bright blue sky you drive around in the absolute nothing to find your "anomaly", which is nothing more than a half buried Prothean pyramid to be activated for a whimsical paragraph of text.

It feels poignant. So much emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness, yet this tiny discovery of unique, hand tailored individuality no matter how small and simple to be found. Yes, you drive across stretches of "boring" terrain, with nothing to do and no real distinct visual stimuli. But I love that. That's a planetoid. It's huge and oppressive in its nothingness, its existence so romantically oblivious to your presence, stretches of dirt and dust and sky perhaps unseen by any sentient eye for millennia. And here you find this little fragment of something unnatural, something that is a sign of intelligence beyond your own, alone in this cosmos. It really feels like an uncharted world, and the sense of scale is magnificently conveyed because of the nothingness.

I wish Mass Effect would teeter back towards this kind of design. Yes, these hand tailored interactive moments are absolutely essential and part of the series strength. But here's the thing; if I have an objective to find and explore a crashed star ship, its interior neatly hand crafted and unique, make me work through the nothingness with my own agency to find it in the first place. Have me scan a random planet in a random system and my computer bleep with an anomaly detected. No specifics, unable to pinpoint the precise location, only that something unusual and odd and worth investigation is hereamidst stretches of snow or sand or primordial grass or whatever else. Have me land on this barren terrain, mountainous and stretched, the local radar picking up where the thing is but still not what it is or context. Let me roll over a snowy mountain to finally see in the middle of a vista a giant crashed starship half buried in the snow. And let me manually drive all the way up to it, through the nothingness, to breach the door and explore the hand crafted interior within.

This is what I want from Mass Effect, even if I know I'll never get it.

Sigh, this is so true. I want to play mass effect 1 again now lol.

 

[Neolombax]

I was on the fence for this game for quite some time, and I'm glad I decided to buy it anyway. 6 hours in, there is enjoyment to be found for sure. My opinion largely echoes what has been said in this thread. Playing on the PS4, the game suffers from a lot of framerate drops especially in big fire fights. Hopefully they manage to patch this up and improve the stability.

MP from what I've managed to play was fantastic fun...until the game decides to disconnect and not reward me anything...sigh

 

[GTR R35_Supra RZ]

I am so glad I'm holding off playing this until later this year,

You're loss, games beyond amazing, period.

 

[comshoplesce]

How are sales numbers? Any info after 1 week or so?

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

You're loss, games beyond amazing, period.

Shhhh people are putting out 15 minute videos solely consisting of the issues so the 40 hour experience is absolute shit dont ya know.

 

[ResidentDante]

I quite like the open planets, so far.

That being said I have a deep disdain for when people contest the notion of empty planetoids and negative space is the wrong direction for this franchise. As I noted in an earlier post, while I feel Andromeda does open environments fairly well, I don't feel it evokes an atmosphere of Mass Effect 1, though occasionally hits the ballpark.

Much of this is due to the emphasis of filling these open planetoids with stuff to do. Irrespective of the subjective quality of this content, or how much I'm enjoying them as is, it does deteriorate the sense of scale and wonder of discovery in the context of the setting.

I don't mind people having a preference that leans against negative space, seeing it as pointless and devoid of engaging game systems, but I'm so at odds with the vocal deterrence away from this kind of game design that it drives me batty. I'm fascinated by the ways in which designers can evoke emotion and immerse players into their worlds, convey themes and concepts, through interactivity. And I feel that with negative space, even if it's empty and "pointless", it can work wonders towards conveying the intended feeling.

There's a moment in the very original Mass Effect where you scan a planet, an anomaly is detected, you land in your Mako on this empty, aimless, dull green terrain. Illuminated with a bright blue sky you drive around in the absolute nothing to find your "anomaly", which is nothing more than a half buried Prothean pyramid to be activated for a whimsical paragraph of text.

It feels poignant. So much emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness, yet this tiny discovery of unique, hand tailored individuality no matter how small and simple to be found. Yes, you drive across stretches of "boring" terrain, with nothing to do and no real distinct visual stimuli. But I love that. That's a planetoid. It's huge and oppressive in its nothingness, its existence so romantically oblivious to your presence, stretches of dirt and dust and sky perhaps unseen by any sentient eye for millennia. And here you find this little fragment of something unnatural, something that is a sign of intelligence beyond your own, alone in this cosmos. It really feels like an uncharted world, and the sense of scale is magnificently conveyed because of the nothingness.

I wish Mass Effect would teeter back towards this kind of design. Yes, these hand tailored interactive moments are absolutely essential and part of the series strength. But here's the thing; if I have an objective to find and explore a crashed star ship, its interior neatly hand crafted and unique, make me work through the nothingness with my own agency to find it in the first place. Have me scan a random planet in a random system and my computer bleep with an anomaly detected. No specifics, unable to pinpoint the precise location, only that something unusual and odd and worth investigation is hereamidst stretches of snow or sand or primordial grass or whatever else. Have me land on this barren terrain, mountainous and stretched, the local radar picking up where the thing is but still not what it is or context. Let me roll over a snowy mountain to finally see in the middle of a vista a giant crashed starship half buried in the snow. And let me manually drive all the way up to it, through the nothingness, to breach the door and explore the hand crafted interior within.

This is what I want from Mass Effect, even if I know I'll never get it.

Prior to ME:A I played ME1 almost to completion (god damn checkpoint save at the end set me an hour back the day before ME:A released, so I'm letting it rest until I want to go back!) and I really get your post here. You sum up a lot off the feelings I had for ME1.

Yet, I don't agree on everything. The open planets in ME:A really bring back this atmosphere from the first for me (although a little more colourful and less dark in it's feeling storywise and visually) and the "stuff to do" is what I felt was missing on the open planets in ME1. I've just fallen in love with Andromeda and it really appeals to me what it's doing. Sure I can see the animation complaints, the stiff and sometimes cheesy dialogue and rough physics at times, but all in all it's just so perfect for my sci-fi exploration needs.

 

[Shouta]

Finished.

The game is pretty solid. I'd put it ahead of base ME3 (I haven't played the DLC) and a bit behind ME2. The game reminds me a lot of what I liked about ME1, my favorite ME game. The focus on exploring and tasks other than just fighting the big bad was pretty welcome, even if we ended up fighting a big bad.

Biggest thing with the game for me is that I feel like it's a lot of wasted potential. Considering they had a colonization setup with the story, just going with the standard open-world gameplay felt uninspired. Taking advantage of the setting would have been way more interesting. Doing something like Dark Cloud and allowing you to shape outposts directly by laying it out as you like while you meeting requirements they have would have been amazing. It'd go a long way in breaking up all the running around you do and it'd get closer to making you feel like you're actually colonizing a place.

Story was OK but felt like they were really were trying to setup another ME trilogy with how obvious some of the elements match-up. The Angarans were OK too but I was a little disappointed it's basically another Turian and Quarian style humanoid and invoked the aliens from Avatar. I'm interested enough in seeing where the story goes though so I guess it did its job, heh.

Characters seemed kind of bland at the start but the more I got into the game, the more I felt they were pretty good. They're a lot more low-key than the cast of the previous ME games for sure though. Drack is most definitely the best of the bunch. I thought he was just gonna be another Krogan when he first shows up but he definitely isn't at all. I might actually like him more than I do Wrex.

I'd say Peebee and Liam are the worst, even factoring in the NPCs. I don't know what they really aiming for with Peebee and Liam is just a straight up hot mess. They both had really awesome Loyalty missions though.

 

[Lime]

I quite like the open planets, so far.

That being said I have a deep disdain for when people contest the notion of empty planetoids and negative space is the wrong direction for this franchise. As I noted in an earlier post, while I feel Andromeda does open environments fairly well, I don't feel it evokes an atmosphere of Mass Effect 1, though occasionally hits the ballpark.

Much of this is due to the emphasis of filling these open planetoids with stuff to do. Irrespective of the subjective quality of this content, or how much I'm enjoying them as is, it does deteriorate the sense of scale and wonder of discovery in the context of the setting.

I don't mind people having a preference that leans against negative space, seeing it as pointless and devoid of engaging game systems, but I'm so at odds with the vocal deterrence away from this kind of game design that it drives me batty. I'm fascinated by the ways in which designers can evoke emotion and immerse players into their worlds, convey themes and concepts, through interactivity. And I feel that with negative space, even if it's empty and "pointless", it can work wonders towards conveying the intended feeling.

There's a moment in the very original Mass Effect where you scan a planet, an anomaly is detected, you land in your Mako on this empty, aimless, dull green terrain. Illuminated with a bright blue sky you drive around in the absolute nothing to find your "anomaly", which is nothing more than a half buried Prothean pyramid to be activated for a whimsical paragraph of text.

It feels poignant. So much emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness, yet this tiny discovery of unique, hand tailored individuality no matter how small and simple to be found. Yes, you drive across stretches of "boring" terrain, with nothing to do and no real distinct visual stimuli. But I love that. That's a planetoid. It's huge and oppressive in its nothingness, its existence so romantically oblivious to your presence, stretches of dirt and dust and sky perhaps unseen by any sentient eye for millennia. And here you find this little fragment of something unnatural, something that is a sign of intelligence beyond your own, alone in this cosmos. It really feels like an uncharted world, and the sense of scale is magnificently conveyed because of the nothingness.

I wish Mass Effect would teeter back towards this kind of design. Yes, these hand tailored interactive moments are absolutely essential and part of the series strength. But here's the thing; if I have an objective to find and explore a crashed star ship, its interior neatly hand crafted and unique, make me work through the nothingness with my own agency to find it in the first place. Have me scan a random planet in a random system and my computer bleep with an anomaly detected. No specifics, unable to pinpoint the precise location, only that something unusual and odd and worth investigation is hereamidst stretches of snow or sand or primordial grass or whatever else. Have me land on this barren terrain, mountainous and stretched, the local radar picking up where the thing is but still not what it is or context. Let me roll over a snowy mountain to finally see in the middle of a vista a giant crashed starship half buried in the snow. And let me manually drive all the way up to it, through the nothingness, to breach the door and explore the hand crafted interior within.

This is what I want from Mass Effect, even if I know I'll never get it.

Currently replaying the first Mass Effect for the hundredth time and I feel this so much. This is what hit me back in 2007 with the ambient synth music blasting, the sound of the Mako's engine rolling on the surface of these uninhabitated worlds, the hostile nature of the atmosphere seen via the space suits and helmets, and the starry sky above me. Thanks for writing this, EatChildren, and it also puts into perspective what was gutted and taken away in ME2 and ME3.

 

[MagicWithEarvin]

I quite like the open planets, so far.

That being said I have a deep disdain for when people contest the notion of empty planetoids and negative space is the wrong direction for this franchise. As I noted in an earlier post, while I feel Andromeda does open environments fairly well, I don't feel it evokes an atmosphere of Mass Effect 1, though occasionally hits the ballpark.

Much of this is due to the emphasis of filling these open planetoids with stuff to do. Irrespective of the subjective quality of this content, or how much I'm enjoying them as is, it does deteriorate the sense of scale and wonder of discovery in the context of the setting.

I don't mind people having a preference that leans against negative space, seeing it as pointless and devoid of engaging game systems, but I'm so at odds with the vocal deterrence away from this kind of game design that it drives me batty. I'm fascinated by the ways in which designers can evoke emotion and immerse players into their worlds, convey themes and concepts, through interactivity. And I feel that with negative space, even if it's empty and "pointless", it can work wonders towards conveying the intended feeling.

There's a moment in the very original Mass Effect where you scan a planet, an anomaly is detected, you land in your Mako on this empty, aimless, dull green terrain. Illuminated with a bright blue sky you drive around in the absolute nothing to find your "anomaly", which is nothing more than a half buried Prothean pyramid to be activated for a whimsical paragraph of text.

It feels poignant. So much emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness, yet this tiny discovery of unique, hand tailored individuality no matter how small and simple to be found. Yes, you drive across stretches of "boring" terrain, with nothing to do and no real distinct visual stimuli. But I love that. That's a planetoid. It's huge and oppressive in its nothingness, its existence so romantically oblivious to your presence, stretches of dirt and dust and sky perhaps unseen by any sentient eye for millennia. And here you find this little fragment of something unnatural, something that is a sign of intelligence beyond your own, alone in this cosmos. It really feels like an uncharted world, and the sense of scale is magnificently conveyed because of the nothingness.

I wish Mass Effect would teeter back towards this kind of design. Yes, these hand tailored interactive moments are absolutely essential and part of the series strength. But here's the thing; if I have an objective to find and explore a crashed star ship, its interior neatly hand crafted and unique, make me work through the nothingness with my own agency to find it in the first place. Have me scan a random planet in a random system and my computer bleep with an anomaly detected. No specifics, unable to pinpoint the precise location, only that something unusual and odd and worth investigation is hereamidst stretches of snow or sand or primordial grass or whatever else. Have me land on this barren terrain, mountainous and stretched, the local radar picking up where the thing is but still not what it is or context. Let me roll over a snowy mountain to finally see in the middle of a vista a giant crashed starship half buried in the snow. And let me manually drive all the way up to it, through the nothingness, to breach the door and explore the hand crafted interior within.

This is what I want from Mass Effect, even if I know I'll never get it.

Word for word, how I feel about the exploration in ME1. Probably gonna do a playthrough on PC with mods installed.

 

[Ovek]

A quick question just how many exiles got booted of the Nexus?

I mean I do seem to have slaughtered hundreds by now without a hint of remorse from Sarah or anyone else for that matter, well Peebee moans about violence every now and again.

You would have thought killing any native Milky Way race would be a bit of a big deal... you know being stuck in Andromeda and all.

 

[Brockxz]

A quick question just how many exiles got booted of the Nexus?

I mean I do seem to have slaughtered hundreds by now without a hint of remorse from Sarah or anyone else for that matter, well Peebee moans about violence every now and again.

You would have thought killing any native Milky Way race would be a bit of a big deal... you know being stuck in Andromeda and all.

The better question is how do they intend to keep the population alive after all this.To maintain healthy genetic diversity and establish enough different alleles to allow for sustainability of the species. For humans i think it was something about 10k+ but for other species it can be a lot more or less. It is strange to see they arrive there and a lot of have died pretty much in the first days.

 

[Shrike Alvaron]

Man, screw the haters, I'm really enjoying this. It IS flawed, and VERY rough around the edges, but that hasn't stopped me from continuing to want to play more nonetheless. Obviously everyone will talk about how bad facial animation is but I think it's more apt to say that the larger problem is the LACK of facial animation in most conversations. It is a bit distracting, but since I tend to read subtitles that helps me from being too bothered. Other than that there's various bug, (though the only serious one so far was when I got locked in a room on the Tempest and the door wouldn't open needing me to reload a save that fortunately was less than a minute prior. I feel that music is way too sparse as well and it makes the ambiance feel a bit off when running around the Nexus or exploring a world, though I feel that it's fine on the Tempest (I don't think the Normandy really had music either, did it?). There's some presentation issues as well that annoy me, like on the Eos outpost I always hear these "ghost voices" coming from nowhere, the shuttles and Kett dropshops look ABYSMAL when "flying" with no weight to them, Ryder's always mentioning Kett and Remnant before I can even see them while driving, those random encounters with the aforementioned enemies feel awful since they're just out in the middle of nowhere with no cover or anything other than the Nomad...

Still, none of those are really bad enough to throw me off. Just as in the prior games I love running around talking to people, particularly my crew. The crew is great, and I think I like the Tempest more than the Normandy now even. The absence of random no-name NPCs on the ship makes it feel so much more intimate and personal, and the interactions between crew that you can overhear as you walk between rooms in the Tempest is great. I just got Jaal and had this scene with him and Liam naked and it's like... Yes, some of the writing in the game is bad, but even when it's bad it can make me laugh so who cares? Maybe I just have lower standards.

I also love Ryder's personality, or at least the one I give him. It seems like the game does shove you towards making him the sort of laid back casual joker sort of guy, and that's fine because I'm loving playing like that. It's such a contrast to Shepard that it may throw people off, but I feel it works well here even if it does sort of undermine the impending problems the Initiative are facing. It feels very... Saturday morning cartoonish, and that's a bit of a welcome reprieve from the doom and gloom so present in not just video games but ANY media these days.

The game certainly isn't perfect and that's reflected in its scores, personally I had been thinking I'd give it a 7 before but it's risen up to an 8 for me now as I've grown more attached to the characters in particular. It's certainly a Mass Effect game though and I feel that anyone who likes the series, particularly ME1, really should give this one a try sometime. It's not like a 7 is a bad game anyway, people are really blowing that out of proportion.

 

[wesleyshark]

34hrs in and I'm at 39% completion.

The writing has been incredibly sloppy at times, but I have to say some of these quests do feel like classic mass effect.

The lovely scenery of the planets certainly help, as well. I get the same feelings of exploration and discovering new worlds like I did in ME1.

 

[Impulsor]

So, I get that this game has bugs, because it does. I have encountered several of them.

But other thatn the bugs, sometimes really weird bugs... the game feels like an improved mass effect 3 for me. It has loads of content and it has me coming back for more.

I've only explored two planets, other than the "tutorial" one, and not fully either and I'm liking it a lot.

 

[wesleyshark]

I love how massive the exploration areas are. Feels like you're actually putzing around a planet instead of being confined to a tiny squared off zone.

 

[Indrid Cold]

Man the number of quests that just end or have no pay off is sad. What happened to

Spoiler

movie night

? Can't have a

Spoiler

drink with kesh

after the

Spoiler

beer run

etc.

Anyway finished the game. Not sure what to make of it. For a game that took 5 years it feels very unpolished at points. Drack was awesome but the rest of crew are okay to meh with cora/liam being the worst imo.

(Epilogue)

Spoiler

legion better be stowed away on that damn quarantine ark somehow lol

 

[cripterion]

I completed the game yesterday.
I actually liked it despite the poor writing, the recycled faces (I was actually surprised at some of the unique human faces towards the end of the game), the samey gameplay (go to new planet, meet important person, do the missions, little bases, main mission, vault, install outpost, etc...).
I wish we got more of what the last missions were made of and that we could have explored more different planets.

Spoiler

It's also a huge shame they didn't let you team with your sibling, I mean I even got a lvl when I controlled Sara lol

If there's DLC I'll definitely be on board but like DA : Inquisition, there's no way I do a 2nd playthough.

 

[jakonovski]

A quick question just how many exiles got booted of the Nexus?

I mean I do seem to have slaughtered hundreds by now without a hint of remorse from Sarah or anyone else for that matter, well Peebee moans about violence every now and again.

You would have thought killing any native Milky Way race would be a bit of a big deal... you know being stuck in Andromeda and all.

This stuck out to me as well. The game is just not interested in its story and setting, to the amount we expect from a Mass Effect game. I'd wager this issue of slaughtering your own came up during development and somebody said "who cares, it's just a game".

 

[patapuf]

I've been enjoying myself overall but there's many small nitpicks that stop me from fully loving the experience.

The fact i can only equip 3 powers at once is probably what bugs me the most.

I really dislike that it takes forever to do anything on the galactic map. The effect is neat the first time but it gets really tiring quickly.

I can't run over people with the Nomad.

And the game just doesn't seem to fully commit to the setting. People don't act like they are on horribly irradiated planets, big swathing problems like the wheather or food production seem to be solved by button presses, the whole exile thing is not told or shown in a believable way at all, ect. It's not something that usually bothers me but now that i've noticed it, i see it everywhere. The few times they try to adress the problems that could arise in this situation it feels very surface level.



But the combat is fun and the overall atmosphere still hits often enough that i'm enjoying myself. I just wish it was better. Especially the writing.



Edit: I'm also starting to really hate SAM. Both storywise and because he always, always talks to me.

 

[Roussow]

Slowed my pace way down and stopped doing primary/ally missions to 100% Eos, just to see what it takes, some of it was good, some of it was dull, I might save doing the equivalent on Voeld until I've got some better Nomad upgrades at the very least.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

After 60 hours: i am done with the story line.

Epilogue:

Spoiler

Hello Quarian Ark. I knew it.

My thoughts on the ending:

DLC:

Spoiler

Quarian Ark.

Next game:

Spoiler

The Benefactor/Illusive Man, Jardaan.

 

[EatChildren]

Ehnomaleh ohn saansors

 

[PayOffWizard]

I'm about 10 ish hours in and really enjoying the combat. Incinerate > charge > melee > shotgun repeat is surprisingly fun. Not needing to use cover to 'stop & pop' is a big improvement and my Backlash skill is super handy when enemies don't die to my death combo.

 

[Turdburger]

My biggest problem with this game lies in the premise.

Something about discovering a bunch of cliche evil two-legged aliens shooting guns in a totally new galaxy just annoys the hell me.

I'm not sure why. It just feels lazy.

But Mass Effect is a cover shooter, so the only way it works is with bipedal humanoid aliens shooting guns! And there has to be both synthetic and organic bad things to shoot!

This game feels like the original trilogy, specifically ME1, simply transposed into a new key, or a "new galaxy". It's the same metaphoric melody, or formula, as the original.

I wish they had used the opportunity to start over with this IP to take risks and do something different while keeping the same importance on the characters, politics, exploration, and RPG elements of the original games.

The setting and plot of this game just feels corny and lazy. The characters are all nonchalant and seemingly ignorant to the situation they're in. It feels too "homey" and comfortable. Not foreign and mysterious like it should. If the game had told me it took place in a rebuilt Milky Way post ME3 rather than some other galaxy, I wouldn't notice the difference.

Part of that is the writing, and part of that is because the game is simply trying too hard to be familiar with its structural similarity to the original trilogy, specifically ME1.

And to make it all much worse, the execution of that corniness was terrible (animations, bugs, etc.).

This isn't what I want from a Mass Effect game anymore. I want an immersive Sci-Fi story with great characters that takes itself seriously. Not this half-baked garbage.

 

[Rellik]

God damn, that (big enemy)

Spoiler

Architect

was huge. I avoided most of the media on this game so it was a complete surprise to me.