FearlessBelgian
Member
Always more action is always more bad for RPG genre...
Open world is a mistake too , a big mistake...
Open world is a mistake too , a big mistake...
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Why the bad vibes on Mass Effect Andromeda?
- Thread starter Caipirinha
- Start date
I honestly feel like they're not doing much new even though they're going into a completely new galaxy. There'll be the not-Citadel, the not-Mako, the not-Normandy, the not-Garrus, the not-Wrex, the not-Liara, the not-Collectors, and so forth. What's the point of wiping the entire fiction away if they're just copying what was already there before?
Maybe they are actually doing something new, but right now it seems to do a The Force Awakens where everything from the old games are referenced (i.e. banking on nostalgia and memorability). Instead of creating something new and exciting, the unclear and vague marketing just tells me that this will be the same Mass Effect with the same type of characters, combat, and vehicles as from before.
Mass Effect is the only AAA sci-fi RPG out there and I really like what they went for in the first game in terms of direction, style and atmosphere, but with Bioware since KOTOR they've pretty much always just produced these jack-of-all-trades RPGs and instead of improving or iterating on their flaws, they just completely scrap their concepts and throw in some new half-baked idea as replacement.
Anyway, I think Eatchildren has pretty much laid out why and where the general perception of the game is at the moment.
Maybe they are actually doing something new, but right now it seems to do a The Force Awakens where everything from the old games are referenced (i.e. banking on nostalgia and memorability). Instead of creating something new and exciting, the unclear and vague marketing just tells me that this will be the same Mass Effect with the same type of characters, combat, and vehicles as from before.
Mass Effect is the only AAA sci-fi RPG out there and I really like what they went for in the first game in terms of direction, style and atmosphere, but with Bioware since KOTOR they've pretty much always just produced these jack-of-all-trades RPGs and instead of improving or iterating on their flaws, they just completely scrap their concepts and throw in some new half-baked idea as replacement.
Anyway, I think Eatchildren has pretty much laid out why and where the general perception of the game is at the moment.
MisterShine
Member
While I do get there's a potential of this all occurring, considering we've seen like a grand total of 10 minutes of the game I don't think this is an accurate assessment.
Though I would say it is entirely Bioware's fault if people are getting this kind of impression of Andromeda. They should be leading with all the things that make it different, instead of the things they think fans will recognize and connect to.
SchrodingerC
Member
Now that was never going to happen. I'm sure the Tali fanboys would riot if Bioware didn't give them a shot of her face. That tease from ME2 was not gonna go un-rewarded.
Poetic.Injustice
Member
Bad animation and lip sync are just a modern staple of RPGs. You will have to cut corners when doing animation work for thousands of lines of dialogue.
I haven't player The Witcher 3 but I'd classify it as an exception, not the rule in that department.
Where Bioware have really dropped the ball is in the storytelling aspect with their lack of focus on characters and plot.
I haven't player The Witcher 3 but I'd classify it as an exception, not the rule in that department.
Where Bioware have really dropped the ball is in the storytelling aspect with their lack of focus on characters and plot.
It's the fall from grace.
It's one thing to have always been mediocre, it's another thing to have once been great.
This is what I've been thinking the whole time too. When people say that animation looks terrible, what are they comparing it to? Uncharted 4? No open-world RPG with thousands of lines of dialogue and hundreds of NPCs is going to have animation that good.
What do you think of the supermodels in FFXV and Witcher 3?
Not much of a fan of FFXV designs.
While yes Witcher 3 had plenty of beautiful characters (mostly the women were,the men weren't excessively pretty),I thought it did a really good job of making them look naturally beautiful.
DA: I has a plastic surgery/modern super model look to it that just clashes horribly with the time period.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Besides the Witcher 3 but it's the gold standard for a reason.
I'm glad you like Mass Effect, but I'm sorry - I'm not following what you're saying here. What did we show that was busywork? Why do you think there might not be a complete story?
MMO fetch quests aren't an issue when they are completely optional. Every single open world game does it. The main issue with DAI was that there were few actual story missions and they were gated behind the terrible fetch quests. It felt really unrewarding as it felt like most of the game was padding. You had to fill an Inquisition Power bar or whatever to progress.
Sure it is. We have as many developers in Edmonton working on it than we do in Montreal.
Uno Venova
Banned
People think it's reasonable to have 'bad vibes' on a game months away because of a 2 second shot of poor animation?
I'm two-thirds through the critical path. It flows nicely IMO. Just story chapter after story chapter, with a good number of optional side quests.
Seeing how bad ME2 and ME3 were and how bad DA;I was I have little faith in Andromeda being anything more than mediocre. Looks pretty but most of the games have. I kind of wish they would have done a totally different game with similar themes to the first trilogy.
I ll end up buying Andromeda eventually, i know this of my self. Not day one ofcourse, it is neither wise of me as a consumer nor my trust is earned by them. And i keep my fingers crossed that this time i ll get to play a great Bioware game, it has been a long time since.
From what i have seen Andromeda looks good, it is going to be a visually rewarding experience. However i have doubts about how the story progresses, modern Bioware suffers from mediocre writing. And i particularly do not like the new Asari companion at all. She seems out of place, uninteresting and annoying and i also do not like her stupid looks.
Also, they need to work on their sidequests, i hope we will not have the ME3 method of getting them.
Anyway, I hope for the best, i fear for the worst.
From what i have seen Andromeda looks good, it is going to be a visually rewarding experience. However i have doubts about how the story progresses, modern Bioware suffers from mediocre writing. And i particularly do not like the new Asari companion at all. She seems out of place, uninteresting and annoying and i also do not like her stupid looks.
Also, they need to work on their sidequests, i hope we will not have the ME3 method of getting them.
Anyway, I hope for the best, i fear for the worst.
Davey Cakes
Member
The only game in this series that I've played is the first Mass Effect. Everything I've heard about the rest of the series has made me wary. It's always sounded like a bunch of wasted potential.
I liked the first game a lot. It wasn't perfect but it was a nice starting point as a next-generation step up from the KOTOR games. Everything since has seemed so lukewarm from the gaming community. I just don't know.
Andromeda seemed like a perfect chance to reboot things after the divisive second and (especially) third games but it'll be a huge disappointment if it's a misstep.
I liked the first game a lot. It wasn't perfect but it was a nice starting point as a next-generation step up from the KOTOR games. Everything since has seemed so lukewarm from the gaming community. I just don't know.
Andromeda seemed like a perfect chance to reboot things after the divisive second and (especially) third games but it'll be a huge disappointment if it's a misstep.
Personally nothing they've shown so far has captured my imagination, and if anything weird crap like funky character designs and corny samey Bioware dialog have dampened it
That plus they keep saying it's so close with no real specifics makes me question how clear the vision behind it is.
I didn't hate Mass Effect 3, but I thought "Ehh this is not an improvement" relative to ME2, or even offering an alternate approach that was (in my opinion) comparable valid like ME1 to 2. I'm worried this is going to continue the downward trend.
That plus they keep saying it's so close with no real specifics makes me question how clear the vision behind it is.
I didn't hate Mass Effect 3, but I thought "Ehh this is not an improvement" relative to ME2, or even offering an alternate approach that was (in my opinion) comparable valid like ME1 to 2. I'm worried this is going to continue the downward trend.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I simply can't critique the open planets of Andromeda without seeing more of how they play and, more importantly, experience them for myself. I liked aimlessly wandering in Inquisition, but I loathed the MMO-like fetch questing structure and weak pacing between story chapters. Meanwhile I adored The Witcher 3 and did literally everything. I get bored with modern Elder Scrolls and Fallout despite not really having a huge abundance or emphasis on MMO-like questing. Yet I did absolutely everything Sleeping Dogs and would probably do it again. Some people hated Mass Effect 1's drab empty nothingness planets of repeated assets and base templates, yet I adored and missed them terribly in both sequels.
I just don't know. I can't know. Obviously Inquisition warrants caution but still; I couldn't possibly know how the game flows and paces, quest structure, and balance between side stuff and main game stuff and even what any of that constitutes as.
I just don't know. I can't know. Obviously Inquisition warrants caution but still; I couldn't possibly know how the game flows and paces, quest structure, and balance between side stuff and main game stuff and even what any of that constitutes as.
facetheslayer92
Member
Thanks for clearing this up.
All they have shown if action gameplay. For me really to be interested in another mass effect, I want to see more on the story, characters, and choices you make. They have shown none of that. I have plenty of games out there where I can shoot things. I want to see the next gen step in terms of personal story telling and choices.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
I have no faith in Bioware anymore
Yeah that seems to be it.
Before gameplay was shown off I was also really worried they were scared of what they had.
W3 does not look natural to me.
Astral Dog
Member
It looks like a lame spin off and not the continuation of the tetralogy
Bronetta
Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Ill get Andromeda if the multiplayer is good. ME3 story might have been a disappointment story wise but the mp was reallly good. Ive checked out of the story so the mp will have to sell me.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
They literally went in and gave Yennefer more flaws like skin marks and an older appearance instead of a porcelain doll look because it looks more naturalistic:
Repeats aside there's a great amount of diversity in the Witcher 3's character models when it comes to the character designs of women, some look tired, some have skin marks and other various flaws, some have nice hair, some don't, some have eye bags, different face shapes, hell there's even nude scenes with old women in them, who'd have thunk? I found a video to showcase this but, gets really creepy in the end so not gonna link it. :|
The sorceresses magically enhance their looks, so there is actually a certain perfection to be expected.
Scanning is automatically going to trigger some people as being busywork, though I'm withholding judgment to see how Andromeda uses it. We also saw mineral collection in the latest trailer.
Obviously some people are just pulling assumptions and assertions out of their rear, but you guys are also fighting against some of the information from that huge survey leak awhile ago which detailed meta-systems, and meta-systems signals busywork to some.
For example:
Strike missions can be done automatically or personally. That makes it sound like the missions aren't actually unique content. So, busywork.
The leak said BioWare was aiming for 100 planets. Even BioWare can't fill 100 planets with unique content. So it sounded like a lot of planets would feel like ME1's optional planets, which I personally thought were dull and devoid of unique content. Now it's entirely possible the design philosophy's changed on that. I think Mac said something in a recent interview about how there's a handful of planets with a lot of story, NPCs, quest chains etc. That sounded great. We don't know how much of the game that constitutes, though. Are there a handful of planets with a lot of narrative care and then 80 planets that feel more throwaway? Or have you guys refocused on a handful of optional planets to provide a tighter, more memorable experience?
The leak said something about upgrading your capabilities through colonies, etc and that this allows you to explore deeper into the galaxy. This could be construed as similar to Dragon Age Inquisition's content gating, where you can only open up new planets once you fill your meta meters high enough. Or it could be the case that these new planets are simply too tough in terms of enemies and environmental hazards and that progressing will allow you to tackle these challenges organically. We don't know since we haven't been shown.
"Establishing colonies" is going to remind people of Fallout 4's settlements which some vehemently hate and would consider "busywork."
Personally I have been hearing a lot of great things from your actual marketing push. Like you guys saying there aren't any "collect 10 goat meat" quests or how the design philosophy for compelling narratives on planets was focusing on fleshing out NPCs and factions, etc. I'm hearing all the right things. But a lot of it has also been pretty vague and so you're going to get both the concerned and the concern trolls complaining loudly about the possibility of Andromeda's scope exceeding its capability to deliver memorable, unique side quests, which was DAI's big failing.
To illustrate two paradigms from BioWare itself, we can look at Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 3 had excellent side quests. Grissom Academy, Turian bomb mission, Asari Monastery, Aralakh company. Those side quests were so good that people forget they are side quests. Then ME3 had the fetch quests from the Citadel that you solved by scanning drive-bys on planets. Now it's obviously unreasonable to expect Grissom Academy level side quests to litter every planet in Andromeda. But I still think you can separate ME3's side quests and fetch quests by design philosophy and a feeling of the quest being unique and mattering. It's a quest you tell your friends about. So naturally I'm left wondering just how much of Andromeda's optional exploration is going to feel like ME3's side quests or its fetch quests.
The scope of MEA itself is going to make this a tough job for you guys. Each previous ME game was...what? 40 hours for a complete playthrough with all optional content? It doesn't sound to me like MEA is going for that compact, tight completionist playthrough. It sounds more like it's going for DAI's completionist playthrough time. Now if you can truly fill MEA with 100 hours of great content then more power to you but it hasn't been demonstrated as possible in the AAA space except for a Polish developer that can accomplish it off cheap labor, government money, and years of crunching by an exhausted staff.
Andromeda is my most anticipated game next year so I'm definitely interested in seeing how Andromeda's optional content feels in terms of design philosophy. I'm not worried about the story, characters, or combat at all.
UnemployedVillain
Member
They literally went in and gave Yennefer more flaws like skin marks and an older appearance instead of a porcelain doll look because it looks more naturalistic:
I personally don't think either look unrealistic, but they both look like supermodels lol. Those "flaws" are incredibly minor
They're supposed to, for more reasons than just appealing to an audience. If anybody has been prettified vis-a-vis the descriptions in the book, it would be Geralt.
Orochinagis
Member
I am just worried about combat, so far is just feel dull and spamm abilities till is dead. like Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition without the tactical mode
Can we stop with this shit for like an hour, please ?
Monochromaticx
Member
Because DAI was boring
Also, there were really cool scenes in the mass effect trailer so stop posting that damn gif already.
Also, there were really cool scenes in the mass effect trailer so stop posting that damn gif already.
Atomic Odin
Member
Its funny really. On one hand they would tell anyone who'd care to listen that Andromeda has absolutely nothing to do with the previous trilogy, how they want to wash their hands of the previous canon after writing themselves in a corner with ME3.
And yet by the looks of it all the familiar tropes (both ME & bioware in general) look like they will make it in the game again, including bland facial expressions.
Hello? This is Hailun!
Member
> But all of a sudden it seems everyone is predicting the game to be a massive disappointment..
Hilariously bad animations and what looks to be dumb and hamfisted combat. And everything else looked generic as fuck or a rehash from the last 3 games.
Hilariously bad animations and what looks to be dumb and hamfisted combat. And everything else looked generic as fuck or a rehash from the last 3 games.
M.W.
Member
Post gifs of these cool scenes.
Ragnar Blackmane
Member
Honest response?
- Bioware's continuous simplyfication of their RPG formula. In ME3 they simplyfied so many RPG elements and cut out so much content that even the second game had that it was way more 3rd Person Shooter than RPG. Heck, that you could play the game in "Action Mode" that replaced all dialogue with cutscenes so you could just focus on shooting things is pretty telling.
At times it felt more like I was playing an arena shooter simply because pretty much all the missions, no matter how promising the onset was, was literally "land there, run around and interact a bit with the environment, then fight Cerberus/Reapers."
You fight nothing but the same Cerberus and Reaper goons over and over again, for the entire game. No various alien mercenaries, no rogue soldiers, no Collectors, no angry Krogans (which were always fun to fight), no Rachni outside of one or two reaper versions, nothing. That one mission where you land at a Asari cloister that went radio silent and no one is responding anymore and all the characters are puzzling what was happening there? I simply thought "it can't be Cerberus so it is definitely reapers". No big surprise, I was right. There were no surprises anymore. Every mission was like tha:t If you played two or three rounds of Multiplayer before getting into the SP campaign you have literally fought all you can ever face. And no, 3 token missions against the Geth (whom I have been facing in the previous games in army sized contingents, with exactly the same roster) wasn't enough to mix that up.
Also only having one hub (that you fully explored in a matter of half an hour - with little change from beginning to the end) was an insult after Mass Effect 2 and the much, much more elaborate hub in ME1.
All in all combined it didn't feel like I was playing in a living, breathing Sci-Fi universe full of variation and wonder anymore.
Hope they manage to change these elements again for the better, but I'm not optimistic that we will see a big return to more RPG and variation focused gameplay at least on the levels of ME2. Sure the ME3 MP was fun (probably more so than the main game, hah), but that doesn't prevent them from doing a varied campaign. It literally felt like they developed the ME3 MP first and then did all the SP missions based on that instead, particularly when it came to enemy variety.
- ME3 ending: Nothing to say there really, burned me pretty hard.
-Dragon Age Inquisition and the introduction of massive, extremely boring filler content for the sake of "open world" and introduction of extremely annoying F2P mobile game style elements (cough, War Table, cough) and in your face microtransactions. After Dragon Age and Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and Witcher 3 I expect more. "100 planets!!!1111111111111111" doesn't inspire confidence in that matter. I value interesting, well designed content at a high density (see Mass Effect 2) over a high but meaningless number of virtual traversable square kilometers.
- New Mass Effect with a new setting and you still can't play as Turian or Krogan or anything other than a human for that matter. Come on, I don't want to play "human with authority becomes Jesus and saves the galaxy against evil threat" all over again (I already did that for 3 games). Playing as Turians or Krogans in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was awesome and there is so much potential in a character creator with the various alien species even if simply for class diversity as every species clearly favours a certain type of the existing classes in the game. Instead we are going to play with a human that out-techs Salarians and is outpsying Asari again. And that's before tapping into the huge storytelling potential taking the various animosities between the various alien races into account (imagine playing as Turian and having to deal with Krogans diplomatically). Or a Salari main character with dialogue options similar to Mordin and who has to face the fact that he is likely going to die in less than 10 years because of his low life expectancy. Heck, one alien race in addition to humans would have been enough for me, just not the same old stuff again. Bioware managed to do that with various races in Dragon Age (heck, all of them even with individual game starts and story), why not Mass Effect?
- Bioware's continuous simplyfication of their RPG formula. In ME3 they simplyfied so many RPG elements and cut out so much content that even the second game had that it was way more 3rd Person Shooter than RPG. Heck, that you could play the game in "Action Mode" that replaced all dialogue with cutscenes so you could just focus on shooting things is pretty telling.
At times it felt more like I was playing an arena shooter simply because pretty much all the missions, no matter how promising the onset was, was literally "land there, run around and interact a bit with the environment, then fight Cerberus/Reapers."
You fight nothing but the same Cerberus and Reaper goons over and over again, for the entire game. No various alien mercenaries, no rogue soldiers, no Collectors, no angry Krogans (which were always fun to fight), no Rachni outside of one or two reaper versions, nothing. That one mission where you land at a Asari cloister that went radio silent and no one is responding anymore and all the characters are puzzling what was happening there? I simply thought "it can't be Cerberus so it is definitely reapers". No big surprise, I was right. There were no surprises anymore. Every mission was like tha:t If you played two or three rounds of Multiplayer before getting into the SP campaign you have literally fought all you can ever face. And no, 3 token missions against the Geth (whom I have been facing in the previous games in army sized contingents, with exactly the same roster) wasn't enough to mix that up.
Also only having one hub (that you fully explored in a matter of half an hour - with little change from beginning to the end) was an insult after Mass Effect 2 and the much, much more elaborate hub in ME1.
All in all combined it didn't feel like I was playing in a living, breathing Sci-Fi universe full of variation and wonder anymore.
Hope they manage to change these elements again for the better, but I'm not optimistic that we will see a big return to more RPG and variation focused gameplay at least on the levels of ME2. Sure the ME3 MP was fun (probably more so than the main game, hah), but that doesn't prevent them from doing a varied campaign. It literally felt like they developed the ME3 MP first and then did all the SP missions based on that instead, particularly when it came to enemy variety.
- ME3 ending: Nothing to say there really, burned me pretty hard.
-Dragon Age Inquisition and the introduction of massive, extremely boring filler content for the sake of "open world" and introduction of extremely annoying F2P mobile game style elements (cough, War Table, cough) and in your face microtransactions. After Dragon Age and Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and Witcher 3 I expect more. "100 planets!!!1111111111111111" doesn't inspire confidence in that matter. I value interesting, well designed content at a high density (see Mass Effect 2) over a high but meaningless number of virtual traversable square kilometers.
- New Mass Effect with a new setting and you still can't play as Turian or Krogan or anything other than a human for that matter. Come on, I don't want to play "human with authority becomes Jesus and saves the galaxy against evil threat" all over again (I already did that for 3 games). Playing as Turians or Krogans in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was awesome and there is so much potential in a character creator with the various alien species even if simply for class diversity as every species clearly favours a certain type of the existing classes in the game. Instead we are going to play with a human that out-techs Salarians and is outpsying Asari again. And that's before tapping into the huge storytelling potential taking the various animosities between the various alien races into account (imagine playing as Turian and having to deal with Krogans diplomatically). Or a Salari main character with dialogue options similar to Mordin and who has to face the fact that he is likely going to die in less than 10 years because of his low life expectancy. Heck, one alien race in addition to humans would have been enough for me, just not the same old stuff again. Bioware managed to do that with various races in Dragon Age (heck, all of them even with individual game starts and story), why not Mass Effect?
Dito, couldn't have said it better myself.
Atomic Odin
Member
I recently finished a ME3 playthrough with the expanded galaxy mod installed. And though it cannot change the fundamental aspect of enemy variations and everything, it was a nice experience overall especially when you could take out your ME2 crew for missions in main game, get to choose a lot of Normandy crew, some dialogue changes and the added missions.
The little things it added, created the whole war atmosphere much better than the base game.
The little things it added, created the whole war atmosphere much better than the base game.
