Mass Effect: Andromeda

all I did was exit origin, fire up VPN, and open origin again. Game showed ready to play. Started it, closed VPN, and off I went.

Were you completely out of Origin?
 
Dahkoht said:
Watched the Cohh stream a little more this morning.

The facial animations and character faces overall are horrific , but the immediate game breaker for me is the running animation.

How can anyone , no matter how big of a fan , overlook the fact that every time you run the animation looks as if you are trying to half waddle , half run , the bathroom before you shit your pants.

Then , you TILT sideways to make a turn.

Seriously , the running animation might even be worse than the facial animations.

If this was a new game , new IP , and did not have the Mass Effect name , it would be getting properly raped in the reviews. 7/10 is generous as hell.
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You obviously haven't played earlier games in the series. Outside of combat Shepard runs like he or she shit his or her pants. If you have a conversation before running off, Shepard has his or her head bob oddly while looking the direction of the character you were talking to. Shepard's walk is a stupid slow run. The run is clearly running.......for the toilet with a turtle head poking out. I get that the animations suck in the new game. I really do but why in the FUCK have people forgotten how bad they were in the original trilogy. Go back and play those games again. A lot of the shit we complain about in Andromeda is par for the fucking course in the series. Look at this shit. Animation errors in the series ABOUND if you pay any attention to these games at all. I think the people throwing the biggest bitch fest about Andromeda are the people who played the original games once or twice and that was all. They think of these games through a certain nostalgic filter that blinds them to the quality issues that plagued the earlier games.

I member. That's for sure. I didn't spend countless hours building and fixing textures in ME3 because BioWare did a good job with the game visuals. Other people didn't spend time unfucking the trilogy and changing the course of stupid decisions EA/BioWare made with regard to the story. Some of the mods out there are akin to bad fan fiction loving scroat sacks getting pissy because their favorite character bit the farm while others were designed to fix fundamental flaws in the game's creative direction. The point is, we aren't seeing anything new with Andromeda's quality issues beyond a higher than usual rate of animation errors and hideous faces.

These games are massive in size, scope and are filled with technical challenges to overcome in development. In this case I think BioWare's ambition was beyond the scope of what they could achieve the way EA and BioWare as a subsidiary are run in the time allotted. What it boils down to is companies like CD Projekt Red don't bend over to line the pockets of share holders and EA does. Smaller studios often take a different approach to game releases. The smaller studios can take "the game will be released when it's done" approach rather than the larger conglomerates who take the "we are launching the game by this date ready or not" tact. There are pit falls to both methods. Many studios have over promised and have been unable to deliver a working game before that game became so dated that it has to be scrapped.

I'm sure there is plenty of blame to go around at EA/BioWare for the state of Andromeda. We can lay blame on the animation team, the management at BioWare etc. Over the last couple of years there was a lot of news about people leaving BioWare that worked on Mass Effect. Casey Hudson, etc. left. I'll wager EA and their handling of BioWare / Mass Effect as an IP was a huge part of that. It was the first red flag sent up and like the animation problems in the earlier trilogy, few people to have noticed it. Again, the vilification that BioWare is receiving over animation issues is justified but stop acting like this game is some how worse than the earlier games. They have lip-syncing issues, retarded run animations, spastic glitching, clipping errors and other problems that most of you seem to have either missed or forgotten. The point is that Andromeda deserves to be judged by the same standard as the earlier games. The earlier things BioWare got a pass on shouldn't be forgotten. Andromeda should be taken in the same context. Now, not having been through the whole game or story I can't speak to the weak writing beyond a few dialog issues encountered during the 10 hour trial period.

People tend to throw the term "weak" writing around flagrantly as if they know the difference between bad writing and a jacket made of pubic hair. You'd think the distinction would be obvious but it isn't. What people throw around as "bad writing" is often bad dialog. Yes, that's part of the bad writing but it shouldn't be confused with the overall story or even the content of side quest lines. Getting back to dialog specifically, I have a few things to say: People say awkward and stupid things in real life all the time. While some of it is cringe worthy, some of it actually makes the characters seem more human. Secondly, in regard to romance dialog / scenes It seems obvious Ryder isn't as suave as Shepard. The man (or woman) who had Asari throwing themselves at them in droves. I don't think this is a particular problem as changing the protagonist wouldn't make sense if they were exactly like the previous one.

My third point is that the process for these games has different writers working on different characters specifically. It isn't as though the person who writes the overall story does every side quest or character interaction. This was confirmed in many interviews regarding the past games. In other words what we've seen now isn't the totality of the writing in the game. It seems like a large game and as a result it deserves time for people to really go through it before making final judgments on it. Based on the 10 hours I went through, I'd say the MP is greatly improved from ME3. I'd also say that a 7/10 isn't unreasonable. So far the story is fine minus a few things here or there. But again it's too early to call it as far as I'm concerned. Professional reviews based on completed games should be taken with a grain of salt as always but those are far more valuable than the people throwing a fit on this forum who have cancelled pre-orders because they are butt hurt about something they read without actually playing any part of the game.
 
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Right... not making any excuses but a lot of this, honestly? It's nothing new. I had times in the previous ME games where I had to reload saves because some stupid glitch that never got fixed screwed me.

Mixed bag writing? Nothing new!


Not knocking pro reviews and they do have more value vs certain quarters of the Internet who have made it clear that Biowoare could have put out the all time masterpiece and it still wouldn't have been good enough... but I'm going to repeat something I said when I saw that first volley of sheer hate from RPS a week ago that fired off everything in this thread: It's called "deadline-itis."


I need to get something done to get it the hell out of my way so I can move on to something else. It doesn't matter how good the product is. <- This can be a wild card and an x factor.


Again, not making excuses here but "deadline-itis" can be an x factor for even the best reviews under the best circumstances and especially a type of game that demands taking some time vs run and gun/slash through it to get everything out of it.

If I have a game where some people can get hundreds of hours out of it and I blow through it in 8-12 hours, tops, to make a deadline there's no way that isn't some kind of a factor.
 
Viper87227 said:
all I did was exit origin, fire up VPN, and open origin again. Game showed ready to play. Started it, closed VPN, and off I went.

Were you completely out of Origin?
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Yes, but the first service I tried only had servers in Hong Kong and Japan- which I thought would be alright as I assumed* that the lock had to do with the international date line and not the specific nationality. I see I was wrong.

*(yeah, I know...)

Unfotunately, it looks like Origin is still enforcing the issue now even though I'm using a Korean endpoint. Origin now lists the game as 'Just released', but it is grayed out/unclickable, and trying to launch using the game .exe returns a message talking about a release date on the 22nd.
 
Q-BZ said:
Right... not making any excuses but a lot of this, honestly? It's nothing new. I had times in the previous ME games where I had to reload saves because some stupid glitch that never got fixed screwed me.

Mixed bag writing? Nothing new!


Not knocking pro reviews and they do have more value vs certain quarters of the Internet who have made it clear that Biowoare could have put out the all time masterpiece and it still wouldn't have been good enough... but I'm going to repeat something I said when I saw that first volley of sheer hate from RPS a week ago that fired off everything in this thread: It's called "deadline-itis."


I need to get something done to get it the hell out of my way so I can move on to something else. It doesn't matter how good the product is. <- This can be a wild card and an x factor.


Again, not making excuses here but "deadline-itis" can be an x factor for even the best reviews under the best circumstances and especially a type of game that demands taking some time vs run and gun/slash through it to get everything out of it.

If I have a game where some people can get hundreds of hours out of it and I blow through it in 8-12 hours, tops, to make a deadline there's no way that isn't some kind of a factor.
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Both Mass Effect 2 and 3 have crash bugs that occur in a specific spot almost each and every time for many people. (PC version only.) We have issues like that to contend with in the original trilogy without even talking about animation issues. BioWare specifically cut the quality of ME3's textures so the game would fit on two discs for the XBOX version. BioWare had no desire to do things differently on the other two platforms so they made the same version for all of them.

My point about the reviews is that, in theory the reviewers have played the whole game or at least most of it. There are only two things to keep in mind with this: 1.) ME will take flak simply for it being a popular series. It's cool to hate it. 2.) Tastes of reviewers vary. You'd have to look at that given reviewers taste in games and see how it aligns with yours before you can really take their comments at face value. Expanding on point #1, I think the internet memes snowballed the hate for this game out of control. It may very well end up taking more flak than it deserves all said and done.

Each game in the series deserves its criticism. ME1 had pacing issues. Many people hated the Mako and mineral mining aspects of the game. It didn't help that the UI was shit and the game's gear management was tedious at best. ME2 got knocked for a lack luster main story and having some of its RPG elements dumbed down too far. Planet scanning was also lame as fuck. ME3 got knocked for some bad quest lines, decisions that didn't pan out as they should (Rachni story is a good example of this), planet scanning, and most importantly its ending. It's fair to say Andromeda deserves the shit its getting for hideous heads and bad animation but it's got very solid gameplay so far. It's UI is pretty bad but it's more PC optimized and offers more PC settings than any Mass Effect game before it. It's always one step forward and two steps back with BioWare it seems.

A friend of mine put it this way: BioWare is the king of almost good ideas. They have lots of good ideas that don't quite pan out for one reason or another. Player choice, certain gameplay elements etc. Often times a minor tweak either quality or gameplay wise would have made those ideas pan out. BioWare always stops short of doing that.
 
Anyone else order Andromeda from CDKeys.com? When I click on the link to retrieve it says "This product is a Pre-Order, it will be available here on or slightly before the release date of 23rd March 2017."

It'd be nice to get the key so I can pre-load the apparent 50gb needed.
 
Dan_D said:
A friend of mine put it this way: BioWare is the king of almost good ideas. They have lots of good ideas that don't quite pan out for one reason or another. Player choice, certain gameplay elements etc. Often times a minor tweak either quality or gameplay wise would have made those ideas pan out. BioWare always stops short of doing that.
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So, so true. I would say that the Baldur's Gate games were pretty great. I don't think they'll ever equal any of those games. Origins is probably as close as they've gotten and it's a still a flawed game.

zamardii12 said:
Anyone else order Andromeda from CDKeys.com? When I click on the link to retrieve it says "This product is a Pre-Order, it will be available here on or slightly before the release date of 23rd March 2017."

It'd be nice to get the key so I can pre-load the apparent 50gb needed.
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Nada, still waiting for mine, too.
 
Dan_D said:
Andromeda deserves the shit its getting for hideous heads and bad animation but it's got very solid gameplay so far. It's UI is pretty bad but it's more PC optimized and offers more PC settings than any Mass Effect game before it. It's always one step forward and two steps back with BioWare it seems.

A friend of mine put it this way: BioWare is the king of almost good ideas. They have lots of good ideas that don't quite pan out for one reason or another. Player choice, certain gameplay elements etc. Often times a minor tweak either quality or gameplay wise would have made those ideas pan out. BioWare always stops short of doing that.
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I have heard others say in response to people who are complaining about the game that the Bioware studio that created Andromeda is not the same studio that made the Shepard trilogy which to me is interesting.
 
Looks like this game isn't reviewing too well, I think it'll finish with a score slightly over or below 80, just on it's name alone, certainly not on merit from what I've seen so far of the game
 
zamardii12 said:
Anyone else order Andromeda from CDKeys.com? When I click on the link to retrieve it says "This product is a Pre-Order, it will be available here on or slightly before the release date of 23rd March 2017."

It'd be nice to get the key so I can pre-load the apparent 50gb needed.
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That is the release date in Europe. Folks at GMG are in the same boat.
 
zamardii12 said:
I have heard others say in response to people who are complaining about the game that the Bioware studio that created Andromeda is not the same studio that made the Shepard trilogy which to me is interesting.
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Yeah. It was made by Bioware Montreal. It's the first game from the studio and previously the studio only did out-source work for Bioware Edmonton for Mass Effect 3. I believe they did the multiplayer for that game. The lead writer's only prior experience was acting as writer for Halo 4 and Destiny Rise of Iron, not exactly the guy I'd pick to lead the writing team for a big RPG franchise.
 
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Dumb question/observation: Bioware is supposedly working on some new co-op IP.

I have to wonder if having too many plates to spin at once is a possible factor here?
 
Commander Shepard said:
Stuff like that makes me wish I was born 600 years from now. :(
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Hah yep, but if you were born 600 years from now you would probably be like "man I with I could go back in time and live in the 21's century."


Man I started preloading yesterday and its going to take me about 2 weeks to dl it, so sad
 
shifty68 said:
Hah yep, but if you were born 600 years from now you would probably be like "man I with I could go back in time and live in the 21's century."


Man I started preloading yesterday and its going to take me about 2 weeks to dl it, so sad
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Take your PC or a flash drive to an internet cafe or somewhere with a faster connection and download it
 
Q-BZ said:
Dumb question/observation: Bioware is supposedly working on some new co-op IP.

I have to wonder if having too many plates to spin at once is a possible factor here?
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Shadow Realms? That got canceled a while ago. They're working on something else now, but it hasn't been announced what it is yet.

Bioware has three fully staffed studios so raw manpower isn't a big issue. The big factor with ME: A is probably just the team assembled for it. It's clear neither the studio nor the people in charge were the right people for this game. Mass Effect 3's lead writer, Mac Walters, was the one put in charge of Andormeda.
 
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zamardii12 said:
I have heard others say in response to people who are complaining about the game that the Bioware studio that created Andromeda is not the same studio that made the Shepard trilogy which to me is interesting.
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The original trilogy and Mass Effect Andromeda were both made by BioWare Austin. Multiplayer in ME3 was the domain of BioWare Montreal if I recall correctly. It was at the very least born of the cancelled multiplayer shooter project based on the Mass Effect IP that BioWare Montreal was working on. The real problem is that most of the talent that worked on the previous trilogy was gone by the time the company started work on Mass Effect Andromeda. This isn't as unusual as you'd think either because most developer positions are contract work. You work on a project and then move to another when you are finished. Leadership positions seemed to have stayed the same across more than one game but again, there was a lot of turnover during the making of this game.
 
Derangel said:
Shadow Realms? That got canceled a while ago. They're working on something else now, but it hasn't been announced what it is yet.

Bioware has three fully staffed studios so raw manpower isn't a big issue. The big factor with ME: A is probably just the team assembled for it. It's clear neither the studio nor the people in charge were the right people for this game. Mass Effect 3's lead writer, Mac Walters, was the one put in charge of Andormeda.
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Casey Hudson started on Mass Effect Andromeda. He was one of the leads on the earlier games. Mac Walters was the lead on this one. This is the same guy who was one of the major decision makers behind the shit ending of ME3. One of the other lead writers departed BioWare before ME:A's completion as did Casey Hudson.
 
Dan_D said:
The original trilogy and Mass Effect Andromeda were both made by BioWare Austin. Multiplayer in ME3 was the domain of BioWare Montreal if I recall correctly. It was at the very least born of the cancelled multiplayer shooter project based on the Mass Effect IP that BioWare Montreal was working on. The real problem is that most of the talent that worked on the previous trilogy was gone by the time the company started work on Mass Effect Andromeda. This isn't as unusual as you'd think either because most developer positions are contract work. You work on a project and then move to another when you are finished. Leadership positions seemed to have stayed the same across more than one game but again, there was a lot of turnover during the making of this game.
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Bioware Austin worked on them but the lead studio for the original trilogy was Edmonton and Montreal was the lead for Andromeda. Bioware Austin primarily works on The Old Republic, I believe they also did a bunch of the post-release content work for DA: I as well.
 
Derangel said:
Bioware Austin worked on them but the lead studio for the original trilogy was Edmonton and Montreal was the lead for Andromeda. Bioware Austin primarily works on The Old Republic, I believe they also did a bunch of the post-release content work for DA: I as well.
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That very well could be. I do know Austin is primarily responsible for SWTOR but it doesn't really matter. My point still stands. In the gaming development world, talent goes from one project to another. They don't sit around on the pay roll waiting for projects. There are some positions that are retained on a permanent or semi-permanent basis but the vast majority of people who actually did the work on the game are contractors. They are transient at best. This is why management, project leads and ultimately the company driving the business should be held accountable.
 
Dan_D said:
That very well could be. I do know Austin is primarily responsible for SWTOR but it doesn't really matter. My point still stands. In the gaming development world, talent goes from one project to another. They don't sit around on the pay roll waiting for projects. There are some positions that are retained on a permanent or semi-permanent basis but the vast majority of people who actually did the work on the game are contractors. They are transient at best. This is why management, project leads and ultimately the company driving the business should be held accountable.
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Agreed. The grunt workers and temps really aren't the ones at fault for games ending up like this. Heck even lead writers tend to jump from developer to developer when a project finishes. It's rare to see anyone besides project leads and producers staying on long term at a studio. Especially when we're talking about games that can have 3, 4, 500+ people working on them over the course of multiple years.
 
Derangel said:
Agreed. The grunt workers and temps really aren't the ones at fault for games ending up like this. Heck even lead writers tend to jump from developer to developer when a project finishes. It's rare to see anyone besides project leads and producers staying on long term at a studio. Especially when we're talking about games that can have 3, 4, 500+ people working on them over the course of multiple years.
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Expanding on the above point, animation errors of this magnitude never should have escaped the quality control / beta testing process. The studio / project management never should have let the game go forward to release in the state its in.
 
wow reviews are not all that good with people saying it's easily Bioware's worst game...most scores seem to be in the 6 or 7 range...forgetting about the animations the bigger deal is that the story and writing seem weak with combat getting the most praise...very disappointing
 
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polonyc2 said:
wow reviews are not all that good with people saying it's easily Bioware's worst game...most scores seem to be in the 6 or 7 range...forgetting about the animations the bigger deal is that the story and writing seem weak with combat getting the most praise...very disappointing
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Oh well.. I guess I'll be sticking with the Witcher 3 a little longer. I was worried that ME:A was going to prevent me from one hundred percenting it ..

Finished the main campaign with all side missions and am half way through Hearts of Stone. 120 hours in and still have Blood and Wine to contend with. And the animations don't SUCK!
 
my body and my new video card are ready
IMG_0924.JPG
 
polonyc2 said:
wow reviews are not all that good with people saying it's easily Bioware's worst game...most scores seem to be in the 6 or 7 range...forgetting about the animations the bigger deal is that the story and writing seem weak with combat getting the most praise...very disappointing
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I gotta feeling Origin will be busy tomorrow with refund requests. One of those requests will be mine.
 
Is it just my imagination or are the faces better after the the Origin update and Nvidia day 1 driver? I played a few hours and was actually fine with the faces, maybe a placebo effect or lowered standards. So far I'm on Eos and having fun with the game. I hate the way the character controls and the auto cover kind of sucks as I'm use to sticking to cover and being able to shift my body left/right just by moving. I'm using kb/m.
 
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So based off of recent mainstream gaming controversies:

Is this another Batman Arkham Knight situation? They did end up yanking that title for a time. Is that what needs to happen here? (Doesn't seem like it but I'm not playing it yet.)
 
no, that game had mechanical difficulties because it was a horrendous port that made it not run well or at all on some configurations. the complaints here have more to do with poor decisions regarding the character depictions and animations

some of that can be fixed with retexturing or something similar, possibly new animations. I would not expect any more than that. CD Projekt will do it on their games, years later, but sadly nobody else does at all.
 
So yeah. Updated drivers and now the game just ctds after a few seconds of gameplay. Tried mad max to see if it was me or the game. Mad Max runs awesome. So much for game ready in my case. lol

Rolling back to 378.78

GG..........
 
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Typical day one issues. Us early adopters do half the beta testing.

I think one of the reasons I loved ME1 so much was because I'd heard it was console only so I hadn't paid any attention to the game. The PC release didn't come out for another year and was much more polished as a result (plus Nixxes did an outstanding job on the KB&M controls and UI). I just happened on a used copy at a local store and thought "why not?" So, no real expectations going in. I enjoyed all three, but 1 is still my favorite to this day (controls the best on PC as well).

I pre-ordered Andromeda from Amazon for the cheaper price, plus I work evenings, so while most of you are already playing, it will basically be Weds morning before I can even start installing it. I'll be late to the lamentations.
 
Frraksurred said:
Typical day one issues. Us early adopters do half the beta testing.

I think one of the reasons I loved ME1 so much was because I'd heard it was console only so I hadn't paid any attention to the game. The PC release didn't come out for another year and was much more polished as a result (plus Nixxes did an outstanding job on the KB&M controls and UI). I just happened on a used copy at a local store and thought "why not?" So, no real expectations going in. I enjoyed all three, but 1 is still my favorite to this day (controls the best on PC as well).

I pre-ordered Andromeda from Amazon for the cheaper price, plus I work evenings, so while most of you are already playing, it will basically be Weds morning before I can even start installing it. I'll be late to the lamentations.
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I wouldn't call the PC port of ME1 more polished. Demiurge (Nixxes had nothing to do with it) added several new bugs and glitches during the port. I extensively played the 360 version before the PC port came out and outside of looking better and having better controls I'd say the 360 version is more polished.
 
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