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Rumour: Small new Mass Effect: Andromeda details

No they didnt. They retconned them to make sense. ME1 Cerberus and ME2 seem like entirely different organizations.

Wait cerberus existed in ME1? Been too long since I last played it. Heck I even played them out of order, ME2 > ME1 > M2 again and didn't notice.

Mostly their execution. They're not just xenophobic, they're evil loonies. Blatantly unethical splinter group in ME1, "oh we're not so bad, we're helping people" in ME2, "We tricked you we were evil all along WAHAHAHAHA" in ME3, and you have to play along with it in ME2. There's a difference between xenophobia (Ashley) and a group that turns an entire colony (of humans) into cyborg zombies for the cause of human supremacy.

As for why Cerberus has an army in ME3, there was some shit about them using Reaper technology to abduct and brainwash humans. No one ever questions the ethics of blowing the heads off of indoctrinated civilians or ever even mentioning that it happened because that's just what ME3 is I guess.

I agree about ME3, not only where they executed poorly there, they were 90% of the enemies but also boring.

But I really liked the concept of using trillions of space dollars to make themselves look good in the public eye and Shepard and the Illusive Man mutually using each other. Just wasn't particularly fleshed out.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Strike Team missions, going by the survey leak, are a combination of Inquisition, Peace Walker, and Mass Effect 3. They're randomised, time sensitive objectives you send out AI squads on to ideally complete and return with loot/XP/currency. But they're not static, so like Peace Walker can go up in skill and have their loadouts improved. Some Strike Missions are marked as "Active", which can be played manually instead of via AI. And that basically integrates ME3's multiplayer into the single player, as the characters you use when playing multi are crossover from the multiplayer component, and can be played as co-op.
 
Sure, but not usually a main, super-sexy female character. Liara was both, past that was a secondary character (if I'm remembering correctly—stupid sexy Garrus temporarily switched me to the other side), and DAI's lesbian-only char was someone definitely not made to me "male fanservice".

I'd just love to see a character you instantly assume to be a male love interest be a female one instead.




It's not about people not being okay with it, it's with my thinking that a lot of male players would be PISSED if such a hot character wasn't made for them. I mean, look at how much complaining there was over DAI due to there not being "enough" choices for straight males.

And to be clear, I'm not trying to be mean to the guys playing ME! I just think it'd be funny to subvert the expectations of such a character.

I think it would be funnier if she rejected every advance made on her, male or female. No matter how your protagonist acts or looks she has zero interest. Would turn Mass Effect's weird approach to relationships on it's head.
 

DedValve

Banned
Strike Team missions, going by the survey leak, are a combination of Inquisition, Peace Walker, and Mass Effect 3. They're randomised, time sensitive objectives you send out AI squads on to ideally complete and return with loot/XP/currency. But they're not static, so like Peace Walker can go up in skill and have their loadouts improved. Some Strike Missions are marked as "Active", which can be played manually instead of via AI. And that basically integrates ME3's multiplayer into the single player, as the characters you use when playing multi are crossover from the multiplayer component, and can be played as co-op.

Hmm...I guess I'll have to see this in action. I'll probably ignore it even though I adore the Multiplayer.
 

Zolo

Member
Why would that cause raging? Lesbian romances have been a part of the series since the first game.

You also don't go into Mass Effect to romance humans. You go into it to romance hot alien babes
/hunks
. ;)

I think it would be funnier if she rejected every advance made on her, male or female. No matter how your protagonist acts or looks she has zero interest. Would turn Mass Effect's weird approach to relationships on it's head.
Reminds me of the bounty hunter character in KOTOR 2.
 

CGwizz

Member
Yes bioware, wait until it gets more leaks before you show a proper trailer, at this rate we get the entire game leaked before the release >.>
Whats next ? Entire script leaked?
I would prefer 100 times knowing this in a trailer than from leaks after leaks. Bioware have some rats in their company leaking shit left and right. Buy a cat to hunt those rats.
 

CGwizz

Member
Why people is saying frostbite might be bad? Watching star wars at 60 fps i think mass effect is fine, that part where the faces are super good is the best part i read. Mass effect 2 had amazing face at the time, those aliens looked so good *.*
 

Squire

Banned
Cerberus, a pro-human group which wants to conquer areas for the human race, being in this game in any way actually makes sense. They can make this very interesting.

Yeah, I said the same thing in the ME community thread last night.

I think people are taking their statement of intent to separate this game from the original trilogy too literally. Cerberus is an interesting piece of the fiction. I think you could come up with more interesting reasons to include them then not to.
 
If the new galaxy navigation system is something akin to what E:D does, I'll be in heaven. Manual spaceship controls, landing and stuff, AND the whole package of plot, character development and shit? Just hook it straight to my veins!
 

Phamit

Member
The game being on frostbyte after just like DAI I wouldn't be too confident in that tbh

Battlefront is also on frostbite and Hair Looks Fine

Star-Wars-Battlefront_xboxdynasty_1445358850_3.jpg


With No Old gen and a different Art style the hair in ME probably going to look way different
 

bati

Member
The game being on frostbyte after just like DAI I wouldn't be too confident in that tbh

I think the issue in DAI was with Bioware, not the engine. They sure used frostbite but the game played more like the previous Dragon Age games than anything DICE made. Even the animations were as janky as in Aurora times.

-------

In regards to the game, everything I've read so far about it points to the dev team using the same structure for the game as DAI team did so I'm expecting a lot of similarities between the two games. I even went back and watched the trailer again and those desert maps/planets really remind me of the arid areas in DAI. That said, it's still Mass Effect and I believe that lore alone can carry a game, as long as the writing is at least somewhat competent. I'll reserve judgement on that until I actually play the game but judging from the names they've given us so far (Tempest, Pathfinder, etc) it sounds like they're going for the strong but fairly generic theme.
 

Lime

Member
Battlefront is also on frostbite and Hair Looks Fine

http://www.xboxdynasty.de/images/media/screenshot2/Star-Wars-Battlefront_xboxdynasty_1445358850_3.jpg[MG]

With No Old gen and a different Art style the hair in ME probably going to look way different[/QUOTE]

Bioware has never been technically proficient. Janky animations, extremely low texture resolution, no controller support at all. Look at DA:I and its hair as another example or complete lack of female animations in cutscenes.

Dice is a different developer and the ones responsible for creating the frostbite toolsets.

Therefore I don't expect ME:A to match a game like Battlefront in presentation.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I felt Inquisition's only real rendering issues were the animations and the hair. And the art itself maybe, but that's subjective. The actual geometry count, texture resolution, and abundance of rendering effects were great. Environments look fantastic, most enemies and characters have tons of detail, and the texture quality on average is very high. Outside of the actual animations the faces themselves too are generally very detailed and nice looking, as it swaps in the high quality models during cutscenes.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
So what would the deal be with space exploration? First-person-only indicates the exploration area will either be really small (one solar system or a few nearby solar systems), or they're doing some Elite-style procedural generation, and I seriously doubt the latter.
 
Battlefront is also on frostbite and Hair Looks Fine

Star-Wars-Battlefront_xboxdynasty_1445358850_3.jpg


With No Old gen and a different Art style the hair in ME probably going to look way different

Unless dice sends over their guys to work on it I'll stay cautiously pessimistic.

Side-content, but yeah, they're in there.

That's why Shep recognizes them as a named group in the beginning of ME2.

I thought I did most of the side stuff, was really disappointed when the advanced class didn't transfer to ME2. Well I'm gonna replay it soon on my XBO.
 
Why people is saying frostbite might be bad? Watching star wars at 60 fps i think mass effect is fine, that part where the faces are super good is the best part i read. Mass effect 2 had amazing face at the time, those aliens looked so good *.*

BioWare's lingering technical issues and DAI being cross-gen (with its requisite limitations and issues) have made people worried.
 

Squire

Banned
I felt Inquisition's only real rendering issues were the animations and the hair. And the art itself maybe, but that's subjective. The actual geometry count, texture resolution, and abundance of rendering effects were great. Environments look fantastic, most enemies and characters have tons of detail, and the texture quality on average is very high. Outside of the actual animations the faces themselves too are generally very detailed and nice looking, as it swaps in the high quality models during cutscenes.

Yeah, Inquisition looks great. I think the art in particular really comes into its own because now its actually supported on a technical level that wasn't there at all in DA2.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Let us all remember Bioware's last example of their excellent work on rendering hair on next gen systems

 
Why people is saying frostbite might be bad? Watching star wars at 60 fps i think mass effect is fine, that part where the faces are super good is the best part i read. Mass effect 2 had amazing face at the time, those aliens looked so good *.*
Yeah the ME2 faces/aliens were pretty damn good at the time.

It is true.
How do you know for sure?

Let us all remember Bioware's last example of their excellent work on rendering hair on next gen systems
DA:I's hair is the worst part of the graphics by far (especially the facial hair), but those first two pictures definitely have ultra low settings applied or something - didn't even look that bad on consoles. Might be the 360 version (lol why'd they even bother)
 
What RPG elements did 1 have that 3 didn't have?

I would like to know as well. Minus the mako (which was abysmal), what else is missing? Inventory, leveling, and combat all felt better in ME 3. I didn't much care for the "exploration" in the first game either. Most of the side planets just feel like reskinned versions of each other.
 

Phamit

Member
Bioware has never been technically proficient. Janky animations, extremely low texture resolution, no controller support at all. Look at DA:I and its hair as another example or complete lack of female animations in cutscenes.

Dice is a different developer and the ones responsible for creating the frostbite toolsets.

Therefore I don't expect ME:A to match a game like Battlefront in presentation.

I used Battlefront as an example to show that it's not the fault of frostbite and also didn't meant to say that ME:A is going to look like Battlefront. Even if they never have been technically proficient, they still improved with more powerful hardware. The biggest issue in Inquisition was the hair, don't know why they shouldn't make improvements there
 

JeffZero

Purple Drazi
I honestly think doing a multi-race playable narrative would be far easier than BioWare/some think, as all it requires conditionally is that the core narrative and setting do not pander to racial motivations. It's not complicated; just don't revolve the story around racial tensions, conflict, and development, and don't wrap it around a cast of characters with deeply ingrained racial traits. Contextual dialogue would be required, but a cast of essentially nobodies embarking on a mission not about Race WarZ avoids much of the tougher logistical issues when building a narrative to accommodate racial perspectives. Numerous other games can and do get away with it frequently. It's a staple of old RPGs. BioWare can do it, fuck they did it with Dragon Age. They simply chose not to in Mass Effect because they (unfortunately) prefer the alternative.

If Cerberus is back I'm going to put something through a wall.

Y'know, that's... a pretty fantastic answer. Admittedly I still prefer space opera to involve racial tensions, conflict, and development, but that's coming from someone who can't help seeing space and thinking "time to pen thinly-veiled allegory!" It's the lifelong Trekkie in me.

But yeah, good response. You've given me something to think about. BioWare probably can pull it off in Mass Effect, under the right circumstances.
 
I would like to know as well. Minus the mako (which was abysmal), what else is missing? Inventory, leveling, and combat all felt better in ME 3. I didn't much care for the "exploration" in the first game either. Most of the side planets just feel like reskinned versions of each other.
I enjoyed the Mako and the side planets my first time around but I'd argue that isn't even an RPG aspect. Weapon variety is improved, weapon modding is expanded, leveling and class system is better realized, still has the shitty paragon/renegade speech system that 1 had. Mechanically 3 is fine, it was the writing that really hurt it in comparison to 1.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Dice is a different developer and the ones responsible for creating the frostbite toolsets.
This one I would like to note is not exactly true. Their game may end up looking worse, but they definitely work on the engine:

biowarea2sy3.png


Let us all remember Bioware's last example of their excellent work on rendering hair on next gen systems
And this in particular was a bug with allowing mesh quality and shader quality to be set to separate values, which is why they locked those to the same value later.

It was also a cross-gen game, which Battlefront clearly benefits a lot from not being one.

From Lime's screenshots in the screenshot thread, the hair was at least reasonable when properly aligned:


Though some of them were pretty rough at times:

 
It's always good to get more info. I do hope the "Pathfinder" has a name at least like Shepard and isn't just called the "Pathfinder" like the "Inquisitor".

I really need to run through all three of my Dragon age games.
 

TheChaos

Member
Bioware has never been technically proficient. Janky animations, extremely low texture resolution, no controller support at all. Look at DA:I and its hair as another example or complete lack of female animations in cutscenes.
That's a deliberate decision. It would take waaaaay too much work to program two animations for every cutscene ever.
 
It's always good to get more info. I do hope the "Pathfinder" has a name at least like Shepard and isn't just called the "Pathfinder" like the "Inquisitor".

I really need to run through all three of my Dragon age games.

I'd rather have a more specific military title like "Admiral" as opposed to Pathfinder.
 
I would like to know as well. Minus the mako (which was abysmal), what else is missing? Inventory, leveling, and combat all felt better in ME 3. I didn't much care for the "exploration" in the first game either. Most of the side planets just feel like reskinned versions of each other.

Yeah, ME3 actually had much more in-depth experience and leveling mechanics than 1.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
I gotta wonder if they'll go with voice commands. With the new cameras and headphones, voice commands wouldn't be too bad. I played ME3 with a Kinect and I had a few good moments with my Kinect. Which was sorta rare.
 

Lime

Member
This one I would like to note is not exactly true. Their game may end up looking worse, but they definitely work on the engine:

biowarea2sy3.png



And this in particular was a bug with allowing mesh quality and shader quality to be set to separate values, which is why they locked those to the same value later.

It was also a cross-gen game, which Battlefront clearly benefits a lot from not being one.

From Lime's screenshots in the screenshot thread, the hair was at least reasonable when properly aligned:



Though some of them were pretty rough at times:

Thanks for the correction, Niro. I still think Bioware aren't perfect when it comes to technical aspects, like I mentioned with the lack of controller support, low res textures, animations. But it's good to know that Bioware has contributed to some of the frostbite toolsets and it hasn't only been Dice who've been vertically distributing their toolsets across the EA studios.

And like Eatchildren said, DAI was a big step up so hopefully MEA will likewise be an improvement.
 
I don't come to Mass Effect to bang humans, so I'm not too worried about hair simulation. As long as Frostbite can accurately render exotic dextro-amino acid sweat beading upon that exquisite chitinous shell, I'll be fine.
 
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