Mass Effect: Andromeda

Picked it up at $13, at that price it's a steal imo. Too bad I won't be able to play it until my internet is back up, those fuckers at Comcast haven't touched my down wires from Irma since the 10th.
 
Blade-Runner said:
Definitely don't recall that, and I would be somewhat surprised considering that ME2 was more much more well received. Are you sure you're not thinking of Titanfail 1 which was discounted to $5 after 9 months? MEA still handily beats that by a good 3 months.
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I do. I don't remember Mass Effect 2 selling for $5, but I picked it up for $10 after it was just over a year old. That's the game that got me into the series. A friend of mine told me to skip one and that two was so much better. I picked up Mass Effect 1 for $5 and played through it anyway, albeit after I was 75% of the way through ME2. I completed ME1 and then started ME2 over with the save game from ME1. ME2's Dr. Pepper promotion was still going on when I got into the series as I was able to get all the DLC helmets and what not from 20oz. Dr. Pepper bottles sold in convenient stores at that time.

I paid full price for all of Mass Effect 2's DLC. That's one of the games that's given me the most enjoyment in my 2 decades of PC gaming. I must of played through that game 16 or 17 times now. At $5 or $10 the game is absolutely worth it. I'd argue that, if you are really into the game the DLC is still worth paying almost full price for it. Most of the DLC is actually worth playing for Mass Effect games. See the chart I created below:

Mass Effect 1 DLC
  • Bring Down the Sky - Worth it? Yes.
  • Pinnacle Station - Worth it? Only if you can get it to work. I never have.

The point is somewhat moot with ME1 as the PC versions usually come with both DLC's. I've always had trouble making Pinnacle station work. Surprisingly, it's similar to the Citadel DLC extra content like the combat simulator and it gives Shepard an apartment just as the Citadel DLC for ME3 does. Of course the Citadel DLC does much, much more than those things. I've seen the Pinnacle Station content, I just haven't played it.

Mass Effect 2 DLC
  • Zaed the Price of Revenge - Worth it? No. (I think it's worth it for access to Zaed, but not necessarily his mission.)
  • Kasumi Stolen Memory - Worth it? Yes.
  • Lair of the Shadow Broker - Worth it? Fuck yes.
  • Project Overlord - Yes.
  • Firewalker - Worth it? No.
  • Arrival - Worth it? Yes.
Mass Effect 3 DLC
  • The Extended Cut - Worth it? It's generally free and essential. The ending still sucks but sucks less with this.
  • From Ashes - Worth it? Yes, but only because it adds a lot to the story despite the single hour long mission. The Jaavik character is also essential to the story and really does add depth to that story. The character is also fucking hilarious at times. It was clear this was part of the base game and then segmented as a cash grab for people who didn't buy the deluxe edition.
  • Leviathan - Worth it? Yes.
  • Omega - Worth it? Yes.
  • The Citadel - Worth it? Fuck yes it is. It is quite possibly the best DLC content produced for any game.
Obviously, I didn't include ME3's multiplayer DLC which is all optional, but free. All of the DLC's add weapons, weapon mods and sometimes characters into the game which add to the game beyond their story content.
 
I don't know if this has changed but I think I used a saved game from the internet with From Ashes and it worked, I didn't use Bioware points. And to bring back a character if they didn't survive ME2. Or ME1.

I think for Shadow Broker there was no other way but it was fun.
 
singe_101 said:
I don't know if this has changed but I think I used a saved game from the internet with From Ashes and it worked, I didn't use Bioware points. And to bring back a character if they didn't survive ME2. Or ME1.

I think for Shadow Broker there was no other way but it was fun.
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From Ashes is the only one of the bunch that was clearly integrated into the game from the very beginning. The rest were clearly added on with varying degrees of integration.
 
Q-BZ said:
Complete BS. Absolutely should have been some kind of in game content.
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It was obviously part of the original plan. Sadly, the bastard overlords at EA decided not to bother with the game. Despite selling well, the backlash about animations and other issues made them rethink that. Usually, sales and potential profits are all that motivate EA. Sadly, they don't see the value in continuing with this game.
 
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Dan_D said:
It was obviously part of the original plan. Sadly, the bastard overlords at EA decided not to bother with the game. Despite selling well, the backlash about animations and other issues made them rethink that. Usually, sales and potential profits are all that motivate EA. Sadly, they don't see the value in continuing with this game.
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Has to have been more than animation backlash. Something else must have been going on behind the scenes. Sounds like poor management in general, and a lack of a clear vision from the get go. Which is why back in 2013 or so when we first heard of the game I said I wish they would either:

1) Make a similar game to ME, but an entirely different universe. Nothing carries over, just the gameplay and game concepts.
2) Don't bother.

They just didn't do the series justice with this title. But it was still decent. I suppose I am happy to have seen something and get a bit of a taste of Mass Effect, but at this point I'd like to see the first game remastered. The combat and graphics could use a big overhaul.
 
Remix? Same start as ME2 but no Lazarus Project was undertaken by Cerberus. Play as Garrus against mercs, etc. and maybe the end is annihilation for the major species, but it would be fascinating.

Or Liara becomes a Spectre and it negates the DLC story?

Edit: I forgot about Alenko or Williams, didn't like them. Either one could be made a Spectre earlier and have an inferior campaign against the collectors.

It's like Batman (1989), Batman: The Animated Series and Nolan era Batman movies all being good in different ways, and the villains.
 
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Flogger23m said:
Has to have been more than animation backlash. Something else must have been going on behind the scenes. Sounds like poor management in general, and a lack of a clear vision from the get go. Which is why back in 2013 or so when we first heard of the game I said I wish they would either:

1) Make a similar game to ME, but an entirely different universe. Nothing carries over, just the gameplay and game concepts.
2) Don't bother.

They just didn't do the series justice with this title. But it was still decent. I suppose I am happy to have seen something and get a bit of a taste of Mass Effect, but at this point I'd like to see the first game remastered. The combat and graphics could use a big overhaul.
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The game had tons of issues behind the scenes. Some of which we do know about. The game also sold well, but wasn't the massive commercial success the rest of the series has been. The controversy, bad publicity and the lukewarm reception by even hardcore fans has told EA that they wouldn't get their money's worth investing in single player DLC. It's as simple as that. The franchise is popular enough to give it another shot, but EA has to figure out what went wrong and how to make the next one a success. It has no idea how long this will take, hence the hiatus of the franchise. We will see another Mass Effect again. Whether or not that comes in the form of a new story, bringing back Shepard or continuring Andromeda is up in the air right now.
 
Finally got around to finishing this game tonight. The folks saying this is at least better than Mass Effect (the first one) are totally right. It kind of drags in the middle, and I frankly didn't find the Andromeda Initiative to be a cause I felt to be worth dying for, but if you can get past the bland side quests that take up a lot of the second act, it's actually a pretty good Mass Effect game.

Also, the ending of this game is WAY better executed than Mass Effect 3.
 
RazorWind said:
Finally got around to finishing this game tonight. The folks saying this is at least better than Mass Effect (the first one) are totally right. It kind of drags in the middle, and I frankly didn't find the Andromeda Initiative to be a cause I felt to be worth dying for, but if you can get past the bland side quests that take up a lot of the second act, it's actually a pretty good Mass Effect game.

Also, the ending of this game is WAY better executed than Mass Effect 3.
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The ending of this was kind of lame. But so was ME2. ME3 wasn't lame but felt fairly off. ME1 was the only one that had a superb ending, IMO.
 
Flogger23m said:
The ending of this was kind of lame. But so was ME2. ME3 wasn't lame but felt fairly off. ME1 was the only one that had a superb ending, IMO.
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True; there weren't any surprises in this one, but it was at least well done. Unlike ME3, where it just sort of... ends, this one has a little epilogue where you can go around and talk to all the people you met. Like I said, I thought it was well executed, even if it's not otherwise spectacular.

The epilogue thing is something that really would have saved ME3, I think. Everyone cried that "whaa, your choices didn't matter," but I always thought that the real problem was that because Shepard died, the player just never found out if they mattered or not. If they'd had a little epilogue thing like Andromeda has, where the survivors of the battle are sitting around in the scorched ruins of London mourning the dead and having a drink, that would have gone a long way, I think. Maybe they could have made the player play that part as Liara and/or Garrus. I don't think it was possible for either of them to die.

Also, I was disappointed that at no point do you get to actually shoot the Archon yourself. I know if I were Ryder, I'd have put a bullet or two in his head, just to be sure.
 
Flogger23m said:
The ending of this was kind of lame. But so was ME2. ME3 wasn't lame but felt fairly off. ME1 was the only one that had a superb ending, IMO.
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What's even more lame is when they give the open Quarian hook (you stayed around for this, yes?) and then EA pulls the plug and we're all supposed to buy some damned book or comic book to get what we should have been playing.
 
Q-BZ said:
What's even more lame is when they give the open Quarian hook (you stayed around for this, yes?) and then EA pulls the plug and we're all supposed to buy some damned book or comic book to get what we should have been playing.
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This is perhaps the worst outcome from the Andromeda mess: that the story arcs the community most wanted to explore in game are being left completely undeveloped by EA and are instead being explored in books.
 
Just picked this up on the Origin Sale. I know it got a lot of flack, which is why I held off so long - but can't go wrong for $9.99.
 
delita said:
Just picked this up on the Origin Sale. I know it got a lot of flack, which is why I held off so long - but can't go wrong for $9.99.
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It's a better game than people give it credit for. Game play wise, it's great. There are the usual bullshit fetch quests and stuff to artificially lengthen the game, but you don't have to do all of that crap. If you stick to the main story or you do have the patience for that kind of shit, it's a solid game. A lot of the issues that were present at launch have been resolved and what wasn't fixed by the devs, some of the modding community has taken care of. Modding the game is pretty easy and it can improve the quality of life in the game. Thinks like shorter doors on Kadara, shortened departure cut scenes and that sort of thing go a long way towards improving the flow of the game.
 
Dan_D said:
Thinks like shorter doors on Kadara, shortened departure cut scenes and that sort of thing go a long way towards improving the flow of the game.
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I know the devs are all proud of their scenes but seriously - have a toggle in settings that after 1 full length launch there is an option to just have a 2 second version or none at all. The doors should open near instantly - why in gods name don't they lol.
 
Also grabbed it for 9.99 off Amazon, finally an acceptable price. Real question is whether I will ever have time to play it....at least there seems to be a decent modding community actually fixing up EA's shlop in the mean time.
 
Blade-Runner said:
Also grabbed it for 9.99 off Amazon, finally an acceptable price. Real question is whether I will ever have time to play it....at least there seems to be a decent modding community actually fixing up EA's shlop in the mean time.
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I will reiterate (since the thread was necroed), that the game was not only fully playable but also completable in its release state. I beat it before the first patch.

In its current state you have to look hard for issues. I recommend doing a mental dump beforehand and going in clear-headed with the intent to enjoy the game. It's your money, get the enjoyment you paid for!
 
JayteeBates said:
I know the devs are all proud of their scenes but seriously - have a toggle in settings that after 1 full length launch there is an option to just have a 2 second version or none at all. The doors should open near instantly - why in gods name don't they lol.
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It was originally thought that the cinematic landing and takeoff sequences were to hide level loading. However, that's not the case. There is a mod to shorten these sequences. If there is a particular story reason why the scene has to be longer, the mod doesn't change that. There are occasions where you are forced to wait if it's going to go into a conversation directly after the takeoff scene or something like that. With the mod the take off and landing sequences are probably 70% shorter.

Blade-Runner said:
Also grabbed it for 9.99 off Amazon, finally an acceptable price. Real question is whether I will ever have time to play it....at least there seems to be a decent modding community actually fixing up EA's shlop in the mean time.
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Honestly, I got my money's worth out of the game at full price. I've played through it three times and will go through it again at least another time or two I'm sure. I really enjoy the combat and the story isn't bad. There are a lot of little things I missed the first couple times I went through it.

The modding community has fixed a couple of remaining bugs through mods, but not hardly any glaring issues remain. Mostly what's been fixed are stupid decisions BioWare made such as the Kadara port doors taking 5 times longer to open than any other doors in the game and shit like that. A lot of what I mentioned earlier are quality of life type mods I recommend. The shorter take off and landing sequences mod, Kadara door mod, and Nomad speed boost, are such mods. I also like increasing the weapon ranges to something more realistic and improving the Tempest store selection so you don't have to go to individual merchants on planets to buy things. You still have to go to some Merchants for quest items or certain mods for weapons but that's rare.

If you start playing it and you are enjoying it but aren't blown away enough to go through it multiple times, you might also consider the mod that makes all the research costs go down significantly so you can research and craft more items. This way you can play around with weapon crafting and make the armors and stuff you might want to try. Weapon crafting lets you do some awesome things with the weapons and you can craft better items than what gets dropped. For example, the stock N7 Valkyrie hits pretty hard but its basically a burst fire gun. Set that fucker up for full auto and you can eliminate that bullet sponge feeling that the higher difficulty settings tend to provide. Another example is taking the hard hitting M-98 Widow and adding the bioconverter mod and stacking Kinetic coils so that the gun auto reloads by taking a small percentage of your health rather than being a single shot weapon. This allows for improved fire rate and mitigates the guns short comings. You just have to be careful using it as it drains your health. But even on Insanity, you can usually drop most things with a single headshot from that weapon. The Ishary is similar.

IdiotInCharge said:
I will reiterate (since the thread was necroed), that the game was not only fully playable but also completable in its release state. I beat it before the first patch.

In its current state you have to look hard for issues. I recommend doing a mental dump beforehand and going in clear-headed with the intent to enjoy the game. It's your money, get the enjoyment you paid for!
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I completed the game in it's release state as well. I did occasionally find the earlier animations distracting and even hilarious at times. Now, it's as good as any other game if not better. There are far fewer clipping issues and cut scenes with weapons you don't have. Some people will still tell you that the earlier games had better facial animation but I disagree. The difference is that it's more noticeable now. The original games, if you watch them have very little facial animation and the head models are much lower quality. This is just how it was. The thing is, that comes off more natural because you aren't into that uncanny valley territory with those games. With the newer games, the head models are infinitely more complex and are animated with much greater potential complexity. The problem is that the algorithms that govern these are sometimes less than perfect and when you combine that with higher quality models, the effect is much more noticeable and even unsettling on some level.

More hand tuning of the animations would have helped, but it's where costs were cut during development. It's a huge game with a lot of dialog and cut scenes. A ton of animators would have been needed to fix the animations in the allotted development time.
 
Really good to know about the mod community- I missed that entirely. I also beat it before any major patching happened (other than the skin shader one), and think it was really bashed a bit more than needed. Not amazing but a solid foundation, and if EA wasn't FOX level stupid it was poised to have a decent shelf life with fairly minor tweaking and a couple of DLC.

All IMHO/YMMV, of course.
 
Other then the jungle planet where you can't see a damn thing due to the foliage and need to make huge detours because of the structures I rather enjoyed the game, luckily that was one of the shorter parts of the game.
 
I might need a 2nd run through with Scott and some mods. I finished with Sarah quite a while ago, not the best but a solid game with some quirks.
 
Need some help......

I ran this game for the first time this afternoon. I guess it auto detects HDR support. Game looks great. Only problem is I quit out and now my color profile is total shit and I don't know WTF to do to get it back to what it looked like before. I'm using a Samsung TV. Everything is all washed out and terrible looking. I spent a lot of time getting the color right on this thing, how the hell do I fix it? Restarting didn't do it.

EDIT: Nvm. I figured it out. I have to go turn off HDR and advanced color when I quit out of the game apparently. Dunno why it won't automatically do it.
 
delita said:
Need some help......

I ran this game for the first time this afternoon. I guess it auto detects HDR support. Game looks great. Only problem is I quit out and now my color profile is total shit and I don't know WTF to do to get it back to what it looked like before. I'm using a Samsung TV. Everything is all washed out and terrible looking. I spent a lot of time getting the color right on this thing, how the hell do I fix it? Restarting didn't do it.

EDIT: Nvm. I figured it out. I have to go turn off HDR and advanced color when I quit out of the game apparently. Dunno why it won't automatically do it.
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I'm glad you figured it out, this seems to be an issue related to the tv not the game.
 
Colonel Sanders said:
That's what happens when snowflakes get triggered over skin color choices in the character creator and set the internet on fire over it...
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Since I don't even know what you're referring to, I don't think the Internet was "set on fire" over whatever it is you're talking about. The Internet was "set on fire" over the bad animations, character models, plot, pacing, and every other complaint about this game. I think those multiple factors had more to do with it than your singular issue.
 
Fix Me said:
Since I don't even know what you're referring to, I don't think the Internet was "set on fire" over whatever it is you're talking about. The Internet was "set on fire" over the bad animations, character models, plot, pacing, and every other complaint about this game. I think those multiple factors had more to do with it than your singular issue.
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What he's talking about was an issue. It wasn't just a skin tone problem but the fact that all the presets were hideous for both males and females. The character creator was shit among other failings. To some extent these issues remain. The character creator still sucks although new presets have been added which are less bad and you can finally create a white person if you want to.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I will reiterate (since the thread was necroed), that the game was not only fully playable but also completable in its release state. I beat it before the first patch.
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Just because it was playable and completable does not mean it was in an acceptable state for a AAA $60 game. I don't pay full price for half baked products regardless of whether its a video game.
 
Blade-Runner said:
Just because it was playable and completable does not mean it was in an acceptable state for a AAA $60 game. I don't pay full price for half baked products regardless of whether its a video game.
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I agree!

That's why I didn't make that claim :D
 
Blade-Runner said:
Just because it was playable and completable does not mean it was in an acceptable state for a AAA $60 game. I don't pay full price for half baked products regardless of whether its a video game.
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No one said it shipped in an acceptable state. We said it shipped in a playable enough state to be completed. Nothing more.
 
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