Mass Effect: Andromeda

http://www.pcgamer.com/we-have-mixed-feelings-about-the-first-few-hours-of-mass-effect-andromeda/

James Davenport: Andromeda starts off in the worst way possible, barely introducing you to a brother and father you’re supposed to care about before putting them in grave danger, then handing you the Pathfinder torch in typical Bioware ‘you’re the chosen one’ fashion. First contact devolves into a gunfight within seconds, and the big alien threat are goofy rock-faced bad guys who we know next to nothing about other than their ships are big and make scary sounds. On top of it, the first real mission in distant space takes place on a planet that could pass for Arizona at a glance. There’s ancient alien technology there. It’s big, angular, and requires solving Sudoku puzzles to interact with. At four or so hours in, Andromeda hasn’t given me a single reason to keep playing. Where are the interesting characters? The intriguing side quests and story bits? So far, it feels like Mass Effect fan fiction. Even so, I want to keep going. Bioware tends to stumble with their beginnings, so I’m hoping everything eventually congeals in a way that finally hooks me.
 
Alright, that's about an hour of staring at their stupid EA Live Chat window and watching it do all of jack shit. I'll try again tomorrow, not exactly in a hurry.
 
Just letting everyone know. There is a point in the game you cannot go past. even if you aren't at 10 hours. Think of it as a demo.

I can get over some of the faults, because now the story is picking up.
 
KickAssCop said:
http://www.pcgamer.com/we-have-mixed-feelings-about-the-first-few-hours-of-mass-effect-andromeda/

James Davenport: Andromeda starts off in the worst way possible, barely introducing you to a brother and father you’re supposed to care about before putting them in grave danger, then handing you the Pathfinder torch in typical Bioware ‘you’re the chosen one’ fashion. First contact devolves into a gunfight within seconds, and the big alien threat are goofy rock-faced bad guys who we know next to nothing about other than their ships are big and make scary sounds. On top of it, the first real mission in distant space takes place on a planet that could pass for Arizona at a glance. There’s ancient alien technology there. It’s big, angular, and requires solving Sudoku puzzles to interact with. At four or so hours in, Andromeda hasn’t given me a single reason to keep playing. Where are the interesting characters? The intriguing side quests and story bits? So far, it feels like Mass Effect fan fiction. Even so, I want to keep going. Bioware tends to stumble with their beginnings, so I’m hoping everything eventually congeals in a way that finally hooks me.
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Hmmm I have found some interesting characters. Gotta keep playing more than 4 hours. Krogans ROCK
 
KickAssCop said:
http://www.pcgamer.com/we-have-mixed-feelings-about-the-first-few-hours-of-mass-effect-andromeda/

James Davenport: Andromeda starts off in the worst way possible, barely introducing you to a brother and father you’re supposed to care about before putting them in grave danger, then handing you the Pathfinder torch in typical Bioware ‘you’re the chosen one’ fashion. First contact devolves into a gunfight within seconds, and the big alien threat are goofy rock-faced bad guys who we know next to nothing about other than their ships are big and make scary sounds. On top of it, the first real mission in distant space takes place on a planet that could pass for Arizona at a glance. There’s ancient alien technology there. It’s big, angular, and requires solving Sudoku puzzles to interact with. At four or so hours in, Andromeda hasn’t given me a single reason to keep playing. Where are the interesting characters? The intriguing side quests and story bits? So far, it feels like Mass Effect fan fiction. Even so, I want to keep going. Bioware tends to stumble with their beginnings, so I’m hoping everything eventually congeals in a way that finally hooks me.
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Eh. I kind of disagree. While they don't give you much reason to think about your twin it's because they aren't the player character, they're the one you didn't pick. It's fine that the game doesn't spend time giving them a deep detailed backstory right off. Sibling=you should care and gives you a couple options to start building who your Ryder is. They give enough early on about the father to get a feel for who is and what your relationship with him is like. It's not super deep, but it's enough. He's not Anderson and I kind of appreciate that they didn't just make another Anderson character for this game, that would have felt cheap and lazy.

Not really sure if the complaint about the kett is valid. Of course you don't know much about them right away. They're a brand new species we've never seen, they're not going to give a massive info dump on the new enemy right away. Hell it's not like ME1 really explained the Geth either until you started talking to Tali and that took much more the 4 hours. And let's not get into how long it took to learn anything about the Reapers.

As for characters. My thoughts on them haven't changed at the end of the trial. Potentially interesting, but we'll see. There are a couple characters that will obviously become companions at some point that have my attention, but beyond that we'll see. He complains later about just walking into a room and having the characters tell you their life story, but that's what the series has always done. Heck it's a Bioware trope when it comes to character development, especially at this point.

One thing I do really like is that they got rid of the Paragon/Renegade system. You can also turn off any kind of notification the game gives you about what kind of reaction your dialog option will have. I rather like just picking an option that I feel fits the character or situation best instead of trying to balance a half-assed morality system or trying to very specifically pick just the right option based on little icons.
 
Just want to add that Combat is a HUGE step up from ME3. Thats a good thing. Love driving on the planet.

I have only played 6 hours, and I got to the point where the game says I cant go further, but I havent EVEN looked around the first planet they send you too. There is also 4 other planets it will let me explore.

So there is PLENTY to do in the game even if you get to the point of the story you can't go past.
 
Played a few hours last night. My first impressions are similar to others, I think:
  • Environments are very nice looking and generally larger than previous MEs
  • Character models are really, really off-putting. It's not that their bad in quality or textures, but the designers obviously made a stylistic choice -- and that choice is crap. I hesitate to even mention since you can't "unsee" it, but the humans look a bit like Jim Henson muppets.
  • Facial animation, while not as bad as FO4 or Deus Ex: HR, are really badly sync'ed
  • Voice acting is decent, although like in prior MEs IMO the female protag (Sara) is the better of the two (and much less annoying).
  • Dialogue is utter, sophomoric, clichéd crap. Bioware has really set the bar low to appeal to a dumbed-down mass market, from what I've seen so far -- and I'm really not expecting for it to improve. Long-gone are the days it seems of suble word-play, complex meaning and subtleness of DA:1 or 2 or the prior ME entries, and light years away from Bioware classics. This is EA drivel all the way, brah.
  • Combat is a bright spot, definitely tightened and more tactical paths than prior MEs
All in all, I'd equate it to a middling Michael Bay film: sort of fun if you don't think about it too much.
 
Brackle said:
Have you tried to disable SLI? I had to install the newest Nvidia drivers before it would even let me play.
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It was an issue with my memory settings in BIOS. It's just odd that everything worked outside of this game. I replaced my motherboard recently which accounts for this. The RAM I have is dicey on some X99 motherboards. I'm running the latest NVIDIA drivers because I've got 1080Ti's. I had no choice but to install the latest drivers. Disabling SLI was going to be my next step. On the performance front, with everything maxed the game runs fantastic. I haven't looked into SLI scaling. It runs decent on my Girlfriend's rig as well with everything on high at 2560x1600.

Her system specs:
  • ASUS Maximus VII Impact
  • Intel Core i7 4770K @ 4.5GHz
  • Corsair H80i
  • 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR 3 2400MHz RAM
  • Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD
  • Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM
  • EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780Ti 3GB
That tells me that the game is fairly well optimized performance wise.

Brackle said:
1 thing I will have to say is....the models fucking suck ass IMO. The Aliens look better than the Humans.....To me the mouth doesn't move properly on humans and some of the human models look like their arms are weird or too long, and some dont even have arm pits... This could be a bug of course since their is no Nvidia drivers, and who knows if there will be a day 1 patch.

Not saying the game sucks, but I expected better human models from Bioware.

Now back to the game.
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The models are somewhat all over the map. Some characters have excellent models while others are far less detailed and proportioned weirdly. What you are mainly complaining about sounds mainly like animation issues which I'll completely agree on. I'm not seeing anything that strange on the models other than a lack of texture detail which has always been a problem for background characters or minor NPC's in the series. On the animation front is where you find the real issues. BioWare has ALWAYS been terrible with animations. BioWare seems to have improved on many general animation and weapon animation type problems but taken a step back on facial animations. Some general oddities I've noticed are Turians standing oddly where they are all leaning back. Some don't touch the ground when they walk. Some characters have bad eye movement animations while others don't. Facial animations when characters are talking are bad in some cases to out of sync in others. Alec Ryder is an example of one character with decent facial animations that are always a second or so behind whatever he actually says. That's something that could be fixable in a patch down the road. One thing I haven't seen a lot of are the monumental clipping issues found in the previous games which only seemed to get worse as the series progressed. Also absent are cut scenes where characters hold weapons they don't actually have equipped.

As for expecting better human models, in general BioWare has improved on the poly count and quality of the models. It's mostly animations that are way off. Human animations are more difficult to do than alien ones. Alien animations are pretty solid. At least as good and better than what we had in the previous games.

Derangel said:
About three hours in. Here are some quick impressions:

The environments look amazing. It's a very pretty game. Not quite Battlefront level, but still very good. Probably on par with Mirror's Edge Catalyst, only a more full color palate.

Voice acting is decent. Some good voices, some meh voices. Nothing on the level of some of the standout VA in the first three games, but also nothing that's overly distracting and so far I haven't run across any voice that's "Oh that's just that famous actor doing their normal voice". Only one close to that is Natalie Dormer but that's mostly because I knew it going in otherwise I probably wouldn't have caught it right away.

Facial animations are....Not amazing. FemRyder's animation seems better than MaleRyder, but both are really off. Like Brackle said above, the mouths animate weird. The eyes look kind of dead as well. It's not too distracting if you're not focusing on it, but sometimes Bioware likes to cram the camera into the face of a human character and it becomes extremely noticeable.

Don't have much of an opinion on the party yet. None of them jump out as instantly recognizable or likable like the cast of the trilogy did, that that could change in time. Some of the side characters seem interesting so far though and they've avoided them just being carbon-copies of what we saw in the trilogy.

Combat is fun. Reminds me a lot of ME3, though I think the gun-play feels a little better here. Haven't tried MP yet, but so far I like what I've played of the single-player. Haven't had a chance to mess around with the class system yet.

No real opinion on the story yet. Too early in, but they have planted some interesting seeds. I'm certainly interested in where the story will go and how Ryder will shape things.

The writing has been mixed so far. Some works, some doesn't. For the most part it's okay. Nothing has jumped out as horribly bad so far but at the same time it's nothing amazing either. About on par with what you'd expect from modern video game writing.
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I'd agree with most of the above. For fans of BioWare's other games I think there is a lot to like here. Far more than there is to dislike. Be warned though, the Nexus is much like the Citadel in ME1 where its full of side quests and a fuck ton of dialog. The dialog in this game is far more expansive than it was in previous games. You can spend a lot of time just talking to people. So for anyone familiar, this game follows the same pattern of a really long beginning area / missions that are kind of slow to get through. The initial planet you go to is not bad. The environment is really alien and you really feel like an outsider exploring your surroundings and trying to survive them. That mission is long but that's ok. The Nexus on the other hand is really a lot like the Citadel. Despite being a physically smaller area it feels like there is more content in it.

The game has major menus and mechanical improvements over past games. The new dialog wheel is nice as it outlines what the tone of the response will be. Being consistent with the tone changes the automatic dialog in certain scenes to match your overall tone. Inventory management is like ME1's but done much better. It's nothing like ME3 in this regard. The PC options menu is the most expansive and complete I've seen in awhile. If I had anything to bitch about its the lack of more AA options. You get FXAA (which looks like no-AA even at 4K) and Temporal AA. Again performance is solid. Run controls, interactions and combat are a hybrid between ME3 and ME1's. Anything I've said that's like ME1 is only like ME1 in that it uses the same default key or resembles ME1 but make no mistake, its not the cluster fuck of a port that ME1 was. There are no load screens to speak of. Any loading is carefully disguised in most cases save for the Nexus Tram. Even so, the tram scene is really short. Weapon and armor models (and their textures) look pretty damn good this time around. New mechanics like scanning with the Omni-Tool are really nice. The amount of environmental interactivity is also improved.

As for the story, its too early to tell. In many ways the game feels more like ME1 than the other games do. You really feel like your exploring a totally alien place without anything familiar or safe to return to so far. For all you that liked exploring in the first game, I think you'll be pleased. There is lots of that here. I don't have any feelings about the squad mates. So far the Cora chick is the only one that I've interacted with to any significant degree. She seems likeable enough so far but I can't say more than that as of yet.

I'll post more impressions on the game as I get through more of it.
 
Tup3x said:
And the makeup they picked for their women....
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I've noticed most of the chicks are pretty homely in this game. I'm wondering if this was a conscious decision because of those dumb ass articles whining about objectifying women in games pop up every once in awhile. Those articles are fucking stupid because nearly everyone in a video game is practically a perfect specimen. In most games, the men have the body of a body builder or fitness model the same as any woman does.
 
Early info is making me hesitate on the pre-order, not something I expected from Mass Effect.
I hope this doesn't end up being a Bargain Bin game.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Early info is making me hesitate on the pre-order, not something I expected from Mass Effect.
I hope this doesn't end up being a Bargain Bin game.
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What specific concerns do you have? I'm enjoying the game despite the weird character models or facial animations. So far its definitely a Mass Effect game and has everything you'd expect in one from my experience so far.
 
Dan_D said:
What specific concerns do you have? I'm enjoying the game despite the weird character models or facial animations. So far its definitely a Mass Effect game and has everything you'd expect in one from my experience so far.
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It's all because of articles like that RPS piece from yesterday.

I respect RPS but this happens even the best of reviewers anywhere:

I really feel like that piece read like someone who was in such a grudge job hurry to meet a deadline or get on to something else and just wanted to get it the hell out of their way. That's totally how that piece reads to me. Whoever wrote that piece I'd like to have a more specific gauge on what kind of games they like and dislike. The piece has "deadline-itis" all over it IMO.


I'm actually encouraged coming into a thread like this and seeing a distinct lack of hate, whining, and angst past quibbles about character models and cut scene animations. Big whoop.

I couldn't be more confident in my Digital Deluxe Preorder. Bring it on!
 
Q-BZ said:
It's all because of articles like that RPS piece from yesterday.

I respect RPS but this happens even the best of reviewers anywhere:

I really feel like that piece read like someone who was in such a grudge job hurry to meet a deadline or get on to something else and just wanted to get it the hell out of their way. That's totally how that piece reads to me. Whoever wrote that piece I'd like to have a more specific gauge on what kind of games they like and dislike. The piece has "deadline-itis" all over it IMO.


I'm actually encouraged coming into a thread like this and seeing a distinct lack of hate, whining, and angst past quibbles about character models and cut scene animations. Big whoop.
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That's really all I have to complain about so far. BioWare does tend to have certain behavioral traits to its game design approach which ME:A does suffer from. As I said the Nexus is like the Citadel. Its early in the game and if you are a completionist who does all there is to do in one place and moves on you are in for the same kind of experience. Its got less quests to do than the original Citadel did but there is a lot more dialog. Its interesting to actually listen to though. Events from the previous games and novels are still mentioned. Some characters are even related to other characters from previous games. The game makes you at least choose the gender of Commander Shepard so he or she is likely to be referenced later. There are some throwbacks to the old games as well. I've encountered recordings from a character in the previous games, found a model of the Normandy SR-2, and of course the universe clearly looks like Mass Effect.

So far BioWare's improved on all technical aspects of the game aside from the facial animations. Overall anyone who thinks the models aren't improved needs to have their eyes checked. The armors, weapons, aliens and the people are usually improved. As I said, some human character models are very good while others are a little oddly proportioned. So far I've only seen this on civilians walking around the ship and Nexus. Some oddness with squad mates usually comes down to animation issues. They'll have movements that look less than natural. Like a T-800 exoskeleton that's about to have its flesh fall off. I've only seen one or two extreme cases of it which were unnerving but the game's content is good enough thus far that I find these issues easy to look past. The constant weapon and armor clipping, bad textures, and weapons in cut scenes that I didn't have equipped were far more distracting to me in the previous games. Texturing on some characters isn't as good as more prominent ones but that's normal for BioWare. It could also be that some of those characters were created 5 years ago in the development cycle. Naturally, as the developer got better with their tools and working with higher poly counts, the new game engine etc. things changed. General animations are probably better in this game. Again, the huge clipping issues in every scene are gone. They are still there but not like they are in every other BioWare game I've seen to date.

There are a lot of animation issues that people either never noticed or looked past in the previous games that are way worse than the ones in this game. The only area where I can really agree with the negative comments in this thread are the ones about facial animations. Even then, a lot of those look like lip syncing problems. They did a pretty good job with the game's interface, performance, and the environments are simply stunning. BioWare normally has ugly textures and they've stepped it up here. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement but they've done a good job. In almost any measurable way this game is better than the ones that came before it. At least visually, and technically. The jury is still out on the characters and the story.
 
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I think it's good that they did this early access concept as well. I'm not an Origin Access subscriber and I haven't had any reason to be but this is smart. You all can basically do an early run on this... they can get some feedback, and some degree or another of response will occur from here on out and they will.

That's good.

My expectations and hope for this sound like they are on track here in the early goings.

I'm getting "Mass Effect" all told and honestly if it's Dragon Age Inquistion the Mass Effect in space game then that will be good enough for me.

^^ If it's better than this I will be ecstatic.

I don't see muchmargin for me being disappointed the way this is starting to shapeup on feedback combined with what I think are realistic expectations by me. I don't expect to be disappointed at all quite frankly.

I'm looking forward to it. :)
 
I'm not a big fan of the Dragon Age series. For whatever reason I can't get into those. I have played Inquisition some and really only got it because it was pretty and I wanted to push my system at the time. Tons of people recommended it even though I didn't really like the first couple games (I own all three) and I eventually caved in. Mass Effect Andromeda is nothing like Dragon Age Inquisition beyond the similarities any of the previous games had to each other. Andromeda is to Dragon Age Inquisition as Mass Effect is to Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 to Dragon Age 2. There are similarities in that they are all BioWare games so familiar elements like the dialog wheel are present in all of their modern titles. Star Wars the Old Republic MMO even follows this same design.
 
This game is one of the best looking games I've ever seen. And it runs flawlessly on my 1080ti @ 1440p. This is awesome, lol.
 
I expected it to punish my system and it doesn't. It runs very smoothly, even maxed out at 4K.
 
GOD'SlittleSERVANT said:
You expected it to punish 1080ti SLI? lol
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At the time Dragon Age Inquisition came out it was very hard on video cards. The Battlefield games can be hard on GPUs when maxed out. I expected the same thing given that this is Frost Bite based. There are a few games out there that even a 1080Ti can't get 60FPS in at 4K maxed out. Ghost Recon Wildlands is one of them. I may have expected the game to be too demanding but thankfully it runs smooth.
 
I've had about three hours to play and my opinion so far pretty well aligns with everyone else...

The general premise bothers me (and has since the game was first announced). Am I to believe that every possible scrap of habitable land in the milky way has been exhausted? And even if so, sending people off on a 600 year trip means pretty much Krogan and Asari are the only races that will have people back in the milky way live to see the result. And even so, are they supposed to be able to communicate, or develop a means of meaningful transportation between the two? This isn't colonizing so much as completely starting over civilization, to no benefit of anyone staying behind. The whole thing seems silly to me but I've tried my best to ignore that and get lost in the fiction.

Thus far, the story itself is alright. Characters are bland and uninteresting, as is Ryder. I can't find myself giving a single shit about anyone around me. I hope that's more due to the fact that I'm only three hours in. The original ME trilogy had characters that as the story unfolded, I genuinely cared about their fate. I'm willing to give this one more time. While some people are not happy with the whole first contact = instant enemies thing, it doesn't bother me. Humans are a totally unknown entity dropping out of nowhere into the matters of a species that appears to be hostile by nature. I can buy into that. I've not had much opportunity to explore yet, but initial impressions make this thing this is where the game is going to get most interesting for me. I'm looking forward to seeing every explorable inch of the worlds Bioware created. Combat is very good, IMO. Feels better than any of the previous three games. I have no complaints there. Overall, I think I will enjoy the game quite a bit, but there is definitely a hump to get over for the first few hours.

I did run into a few technical issues. I have been running the game at 1440p, with a mix of high/ultra settings and the first few hours went great. Indoors framerate is silky smooth, and even the initial outdoor area ran great for me. Once I ended up on the deserty planet, it all went to shit. I can't imagine why this environment would be more taxing than the first one, which had a lot more vegetation and environmental effects going on. But where I'm at now, my framerate is unplayably terrible. I'm not actually monitoring it, but I'd bet it's under 20fps, with severe studdering on top of it. Seems like more of a technical issue to me than a lack of horsepower based on what others are saying.

Anyone know if the version we're playing includes the day-one patch? I couldn't find anything other than a few days ago Bioware "hoped" to have it out in time.
 
Dan_D said:
At the time Dragon Age Inquisition came out it was very hard on video cards. The Battlefield games can be hard on GPUs when maxed out. I expected the same thing given that this is Frost Bite based. There are a few games out there that even a 1080Ti can't get 60FPS in at 4K maxed out. Ghost Recon Wildlands is one of them. I may have expected the game to be too demanding but thankfully it runs smooth.
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Hmm, not sure if I should switch to 4k then or stick with my 1440p until the next card comes out.
 
GOD'SlittleSERVANT said:
Hmm, not sure if I should switch to 4k then or stick with my 1440p until the next card comes out.
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We are almost at a point where a single high end GPU can max out every game or nearly every game at 4K but not quite. Every time we close that gap with a piece of hardware new games will come out and move the bar somewhere else. I don't think any companies are going to intentionally produce a system crushing game like Crysis because doing so will leave it with less market penetration and lower sales than any company would like to see. At the same time, there are games that can push the boundaries of what's possible on the high end of the spectrum. I'd rather have a Crysis on my hands than an Arkham Knight though. One ran badly because the hardware of the day wasn't good enough to handle it well. The other ran badly because the fucking developer was totally inept.
 
After looking at the reviews I've moved this game from 'May get on GMG with 20% discount", to "bargain bin material, buy it on 80% off sale" category.
 
ashmelev75 said:
After looking at the reviews I've moved this game from 'May get on GMG with 20% discount", to "bargain bin material, buy it on 80% off sale" category.
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You do you, but that seems a tad premature. The embargo is not up for professional reviews. Regardless about how you feel about video game journalism, nobody that has access to the full version of the game is able to talk about it. Anyone who is playing right now is doing so with early access, where you are limited both by a 10-hour timer, and a hard locked point where you can no longer progress in the story. In other words, we're not yet sure how the long game plays out.

If a shit character creator and poor facial animations are enough to devalue a game to $12 or less to you, you must value those things pretty highly. If the story or character depth never flesh out, then there is a legitimate complaint to be had, but like I say, nobody really has an answer to that yet. Likewise, we don't yet know how much gameplay to expect in a single playthough. If this turns out to be a 50-100 hour experience on a thorough play though, I can overlook minor issues at any price point (provided I'm still having fun over those 50-100 hours).
 
Viper87227 said:
I've had about three hours to play and my opinion so far pretty well aligns with everyone else...
The general premise bothers me (and has since the game was first announced). Am I to believe that every possible scrap of habitable land in the milky way has been exhausted? And even if so, sending people off on a 600 year trip means pretty much Krogan and Asari are the only races that will have people back in the milky way live to see the result. And even so, are they supposed to be able to communicate, or develop a means of meaningful transportation between the two? This isn't colonizing so much as completely starting over civilization, to no benefit of anyone staying behind. The whole thing seems silly to me but I've tried my best to ignore that and get lost in the fiction.
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I think this is exactly a case of starting our civilizations over - think complete Hail Mary. When they started this they knew something stomped all advanced life out every 50K years, but nothing much else. You can certainly poke holes further than that, but this is not 'A mote in god's eye' or any other hard science fiction that could be real~ish...

ashmelev75 said:
After looking at the reviews I've moved this game from 'May get on GMG with 20% discount", to "bargain bin material, buy it on 80% off sale" category.
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It's worth remembering that there is going to be a huge early patch, and probable changes- I know someone will mod out the mining cutscene somewhere alone the line (hope it's day one!). If you love the ME universe it's worth getting as far as I can see, just from the multiplayer. Perfect, No. Darn fun? Yes.
 
Viper87227 said:
I've had about three hours to play and my opinion so far pretty well aligns with everyone else...

The general premise bothers me (and has since the game was first announced). Am I to believe that every possible scrap of habitable land in the milky way has been exhausted? And even if so, sending people off on a 600 year trip means pretty much Krogan and Asari are the only races that will have people back in the milky way live to see the result. And even so, are they supposed to be able to communicate, or develop a means of meaningful transportation between the two? This isn't colonizing so much as completely starting over civilization, to no benefit of anyone staying behind. The whole thing seems silly to me but I've tried my best to ignore that and get lost in the fiction.

Thus far, the story itself is alright. Characters are bland and uninteresting, as is Ryder. I can't find myself giving a single shit about anyone around me. I hope that's more due to the fact that I'm only three hours in. The original ME trilogy had characters that as the story unfolded, I genuinely cared about their fate. I'm willing to give this one more time. While some people are not happy with the whole first contact = instant enemies thing, it doesn't bother me. Humans are a totally unknown entity dropping out of nowhere into the matters of a species that appears to be hostile by nature. I can buy into that. I've not had much opportunity to explore yet, but initial impressions make this thing this is where the game is going to get most interesting for me. I'm looking forward to seeing every explorable inch of the worlds Bioware created. Combat is very good, IMO. Feels better than any of the previous three games. I have no complaints there. Overall, I think I will enjoy the game quite a bit, but there is definitely a hump to get over for the first few hours.

I did run into a few technical issues. I have been running the game at 1440p, with a mix of high/ultra settings and the first few hours went great. Indoors framerate is silky smooth, and even the initial outdoor area ran great for me. Once I ended up on the deserty planet, it all went to shit. I can't imagine why this environment would be more taxing than the first one, which had a lot more vegetation and environmental effects going on. But where I'm at now, my framerate is unplayably terrible. I'm not actually monitoring it, but I'd bet it's under 20fps, with severe studdering on top of it. Seems like more of a technical issue to me than a lack of horsepower based on what others are saying.

Anyone know if the version we're playing includes the day-one patch? I couldn't find anything other than a few days ago Bioware "hoped" to have it out in time.
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I feel like they should have had the reason for them leaving to be something more than "we're explorers so we're exploring" and instead tie directly into the conflict of the ME trilogy. Have them all leave due to the Reapers and wanting civilization to survive in case the combined races failed to stop the Reapers. It would give the whole mission a lot more weight. Even though as players we'd know what happened as a result of the Reapers the characters wouldn't and it's something they could call back to. Instead it's just an obvious attempt at a soft reboot, mostly disconnected from everything before. The set up does the game no favors and makes it really hard to connect to the new galaxy right away.
 
found of then internets
Bioware doesn't exist anymore.

DA:O was a surprise success that took 6ish years to make and almost everyone working at Bioware to put out the door. EA had no faith in it, and suddenly it was one of their top selling franchises. So they did what EA does to highly successful franchises, and asked Bioware to make another one. Except for this new one, they wanted it started and finished in under a year, as they had a dream of an annual RPG franchise. Mind you that's hard enough to pull off for FPS games which are relatively simple to make with multiple teams. Bioware was expected to put together a full length AAA RPG in 6-7 months while also putting out the last of the DA:O DLC.

This killed the company. Huge swathes of people up and quit. They couldn't handle the stress. They couldn't handle what they were expected to do. Every single major program director and creative lead left the company during this year period where they were developing DA2. Go look at LinkedIn profiles for the major people that worked on DA:O, and more then half of them suddenly leave Bioware in 2010. The combat director quit and wasn't replaced for months, so they had no real lead directing what the combat should have been during that period. Major story beats and combat ideas got forced into the game in the final months of 2010 not because they were good, but because the game needed to ship in a few months and it needed to get out the door. To help the DA team actually finish DA2 in a somewhat annual fashion, they drew most of the ME2 team off ME, throwing them into this grinder as well.

By the time DA2 launched, around half if not more of the original "Bioware" was gone. Go through the credits of DA:O, ME1, or ME2 and start LinkedIning people, none of them work for Bioware anymore. Most left between 2010 and 2012.

It's been a pretty steady drain since then. Compare the credits list of Inquisition to the credits list of DA:O or DA2. It's almost an entirely new team, and it's a team that Bioware specifically hired to replace the losses from DA2. It's why so many styles have changed since then, why the gameplay changed so steadily, and why they chose to try so many new things. Because Inquisition wasn't made by the DA:O team trying their hand at open world game design. It was maybe 1/6th of the guys that even touched DA:O/DA2 suddenly getting an influx of new blood, most of it Bioware fans finally getting a chance to work for the company they loved, that had great new ideas for what they wanted out of future Bioware games.

It's the same for the ME team. The brain drain has been bad, and the development of Andromeda has apparently picked off massive chunks of the team. The lead writer of the group was the lead writer for Halo 4, and he apparently clashed with a lot of the senior writers/main writers of previous ME games. A whole bunch of favorite ME writers have quit the company, and on various development forums have mentioned it was due to creative differences with the former lead writer. Gameplay leads have been leaving the ME/Bioware teams at a pretty steady pace since the game was developed as well. The story had to be picked up mid completion as the lead writer got forced out/quit and replaced, which likely doesn't mean great things for the narrative ( which we are also seeing here. ). Andromeda has currently had the great slow drip of Bioware talent since the dark days of 2010 when DA2 "killed" the company. They've been forced to cycle talent multiple times during the development of Andromeda, not just in management ( which has seen multiple complete turnovers ), but also among the rank and file people working on the game.

This isn't to say Andromeda can't be great, or that it won't live up to the hype. I'm personally hoping it does because I need something to play right now. But if it's good, it'll be good on it's own merits and it's own merits alone, rather then because "it's a Bioware game, I like Bioware!". Because Bioware doesn't exist anymore, it's a completely new entity and needs to be treated as such. People really need to be viewing this as "EA'S NEW ACQUISITION, BIOWARE VICTORY'S FIRST RPG. HOPE IT'S GOOD." rather then "Bioware always makes quality. I know what I'll get here.". As it is right now, EA is propping up Bioware's corpse with a new studio and hoping people don't notice while they keep using it as their RPG house.
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Derangel said:
I feel like they should have had the reason for them leaving to be something more than "we're explorers so we're exploring" and instead tie directly into the conflict of the ME trilogy. Have them all leave due to the Reapers and wanting civilization to survive in case the combined races failed to stop the Reapers. It would give the whole mission a lot more weight. Even though as players we'd know what happened as a result of the Reapers the characters wouldn't and it's something they could call back to. Instead it's just an obvious attempt at a soft reboot, mostly disconnected from everything before. The set up does the game no favors and makes it really hard to connect to the new galaxy right away.
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DWolvin said:
I think this is exactly a case of starting our civilizations over - think complete Hail Mary. When they started this they knew something stomped all advanced life out every 50K years, but nothing much else. You can certainly poke holes further than that, but this is not 'A mote in god's eye' or any other hard science fiction that could be real~ish...
.
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A reaper tie-in seems far fetched to me. The arks left after the events of Mass Effect 2. This means that we're still at a point in the game where the reapers haven't started a war yet, and the vast majority of people don't believe them to exist. Also, lets assume that these arks, and the technology to power them, took a while to create. That pushes us even farther away from the reapers being perceived as a threat. Also, what game did we even find out that the reapers operate on a cycle? Prior to the war with the reapers, wouldn't the prominent belief still be that all the advanced tech was prothean, not reaper? Was their any knowledge of other advanced races from previous cycles prior to the protheans? Based on where this is supposed to fall in the timeline, I don't see the angle for this as running away from a threat. I see it more as going, just for the sake of going. Which again brings me back to my point that this is no benefit to anyone left behind (and really wouldn't be even if it was based on the reaper invasion).

I'm trying not to get caught up in it and just enjoy the environment, but it just puzzles me. Given the size of a galaxy, and the amount of existing lore, there's no reason they couldn't build a larger, open-world(ish) game without a far-fetched exodus to another galaxy. There's a lot of history left unexplored. How cool would a game surrounding the first contact war have been? Or even something without humans at all, going further back to when the relays and citadel and whatnot were discovered? Or a game set during the prothean era?
 
Viper87227 said:
I'm trying not to get caught up in it and just enjoy the environment, but it just puzzles me. Given the size of a galaxy, and the amount of existing lore, there's no reason they couldn't build a larger, open-world(ish) game without a far-fetched exodus to another galaxy. There's a lot of history left unexplored. How cool would a game surrounding the first contact war have been? Or even something without humans at all, going further back to when the relays and citadel and whatnot were discovered? Or a game set during the prothean era?
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If you have C-team working on the game and rushing it to release, well, you gotta cut corners somewhere.
 
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