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Early impressions from RPS for ME:A. It's... not good

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
I don't know the guy or his opinions, but if his actual descriptions of the writing, quests and gameplay are remotely accurate, I know I probably wouldn't like the game. Guess we gotta resort to ad hominem to discredit the writer though, because rebutting his points is too hard.
 

Lister

Banned
UI design is a spectacle of bad choices,

Side quests feel like something from a 2004 Korean MMO


I chuckled at these.

Genuinely curious how this all turns out.

I belive the UI issues if DA:I is anythign to go by. It was horrendous, especially on PC where it refused to take advanatge fo the superior input method or typicla viewing method either.

I was hopign they'd learn something from that game, but I guess not.

As for quest,s I'm sitll holding out on Shinobi's comments on those, saying that he was describing "tasks" and not proper sidequests.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Some games deserve a 10, just not many of them, 10s are given out like candy which makes scores pretty pointless in general. Like, I could never give a game 10/10 when it drops to 20fps every time you enter combat.
 

Flipyap

Member
5A5nueN.jpg


I tend to live my human life the way we human beings do: eating, defecating, saying human things. Not a lot of infiltrating the organics' society by wearing a disgusting meat suit.
 

IKizzLE

Member
This thread solely exists to push ones agenda. Man, the review thread for this game will probably be the best of 2017. So many people will be butthurt no matter the scores.
 

zelas

Member
Some games deserve a 10, just not many of them, 10s are given out like candy which makes scores pretty pointless in general. Like, I could never give a game 10/10 when it drops to 20fps every time you enter combat.
How dare you?! I'm gonna ddos you so hard.
 

Ivory Samoan

Gold Member
As much as everyone is entitled to an opinion piece, it's pretty badly written and the fact that RPS already had a very glowing 5 hour review a bit ago from Holly, well, I guess it evens them out -/+ = neutral.

It's quite at odds with the majority of the previews, so there's that to consider: I think it's a game that you need to play yourself to know if you'll like: divisive games are some of my favourite for some reason too... so I'm looking forward to playing this in a few hours on Access :)
 

Griss

Member
This "one guy's opinion" wouldn't mean anything to me if those worries weren't already in place from everything we've seen in the prerelease marketing. But those worries are there, therefore I take this negative opinion far more seriously than I otherwise would. Pretty simple.

Some of his examples of the writing and dialogue sound absolutely awful, as does the initial setting up of the character as 'The Special One' etc.

We already know that the faces, facial animation and animation in general are poor. It's not looking great, is it?
 

GavinUK86

Member
lol something something rock paper shotgun something lol. the trashiest game site ive ever had the displeasure of reading.

i was genuinley interested in why someone thought it was bad until i actually realised it was an rps article.

also, why does this need it's own thread?

can i make a thread for every positive article? that'll flood the main page if we can.

i guess a lot of us will find out tomorrow with the early access.
 

dinoroar

Banned
John Walkers' ganna Walk

Edit: I have nothing intrinsically wrong with him, I don't think he's in the wrong line of work and I'm not saying his biased. His opinions and mine rarely have a cross-section and I really don't like the style of his writing, I've always had a particular problem with his interview with Peter Molyneux.
Every one is entitled to their opinion
 
An RPG where your character isn't special or "the one", would be terribly boring. And when important events happen without your input or involvement because of how unimportant you are, you'd question why you would even invest in a fictional world where your purpose in that world mirrors the mundaneness of your ordinary everyday life. I've read those fantasy and sci-fi novels where you follow a bit character during an interesting period of time, and it's generally not rewarding at all.
 

Gestault

Member
I want more perspectives before I start formulating too strong a preconception, but I'll say this much:

Bioware has to prove a LOT to me after the handling of the fourth Mass Effect novel (Deception), and the similarly flawed handling of characters brought over from that line of books in the third game. If a studio can't handle basic charicterization of significant characters, the fruits of their labor isn't worth my time.

Weirdly enough for me, the big warning flare re: potential writing issues in ME:A among all the RPS impressions is this:

[The female captain] is there, right up front. With a deft hand she begins by correcting your grammar from ”who" to ”whom", and then in the same conversation says ”less" when she means ”fewer".

It's minutiae, but minutiae is the spice of good writing. Caring enough about the detail in a charater the author has decided should be this way sure as heck deserves to be followed up on in the writing.
 

shark sandwich

tenuously links anime, pedophile and incels
I was so emotionally invested in this game being great, and now this asshole is threatening to derail my hype train. PLEASE GAF!! Tell me some reasons why I can safely ignore this preview.

We need to pick this shit apart word by word until we find some awkward wording, some logical inconsistency, ANYTHING that will allow us to discard this from the list of canonical, valid impressions.
 

Nielm

Member
Not surprising.

I don't think Andromeda will be a critical failure. However, I do think you have to take into account the promotional stuff that's been released so far, and many people are expecting it to disappoint.

"buried beneath a UI that appears to have been designed to infuriate in every possible way."

This was one of my biggest worries. The UI looks aesthetically poor, I was hoping it wouldn't be unintuitive too.

"It's so very, very bizarre to be playing a BioWare game where the characters are so empty and dull."

They've always seemed this way to me. I doubt we will get characters half as good as Tali, Liara, Mordin, Wrex or Garrus.

"some of the most dreadful writing. I cannot emphasise enough how poor it's been."

Well, this isn't really surprising. I hope this is exaggeration, but it might not be.
 

Lunar15

Member
This game hasn't looked good to me, but this preview seems really, really knee-jerky. A game like this is gonna need time to sink in, especially since the writer seems to be looking for character relationships.
 

lumzi23

Member
LOL, that is because someone removed Shepherd and put Jacob in his place. I merely used these gifs to show some of the weird glitches that very much are a part of Mass Effect.

Still you are using something isn't strictly from the game as made by Bioware. It is creating a misunderstanding.
 

Anno

Member
This "one guy's opinion" wouldn't mean anything to me if those worries weren't already in place from everything we've seen in the prerelease marketing. But those worries are there, therefore I take this negative opinion far more seriously than I otherwise would. Pretty simple.

Some of his examples of the writing and dialogue sound absolutely awful, as does the initial setting up of the character as 'The Special One' etc.

We already know that the faces, facial animation and animation in general are poor. It's not looking great, is it?

This is my takeaway. There's plenty of footage out there between preview streams and their own marketing to corroborate what John has said about the writing and set up for the story. It's not like he hasn't given examples.

Mostly I share his disappointment that what should be a really cool and exciting premise doesn't look like it'll be taken advantage of. Hopefully it's just a slow beginning and things pick up down the road.
 

Kumquat

Member
ME3 got plenty of good scores from more independent outlets too.

Good Game gave it double tens, and it's not like they were trying to make a profit via advertising.

That is mostly a shit post. ME3 was a 9/10 for me personally. Mainly the only thing that let me down was the ending. I don't trust IGN or Gamespot. We all know why for IGN and Gamespot has the Jeff G fiasco. While I'm not a fan of the dude who wrote this the dialogue examples to me were very telling and it's not something that is just conjecture. That is the dialogue and it scares me for the rest of the game.
 

Paches

Member
Watching the Easy Allies stream yesterday of the first opening couple hours, it felt pretty rough, I could see this getting a mixed response from people.
 

ironcreed

Banned
It's an EA/Bioware game, so the user score will be at like 3.

No doubt. The negativity has become almost a meme at this point and many have already made up their mind before even playing it. They are going to of course play it anyway, but will be ready to hate on every little thing they can find.
 
As for quest,s I'm sitll holding out on Shinobi's comments on those, saying that he was describing "tasks" and not proper sidequests.
I like to be fully transparent when I describe things so people don't come back and say I misled them. I haven't done many sidequests personally. I stated that from several reviewers I've spoken to that are deep in the game, more than myself, sidequests come into their own later and some have multiple quest lines that can span multiple areas/planets.

I also described a few side activities on the very first prologue planet that *felt* more fleshed out to me as opposed to DAI's fetch quests because they actually had narration by the characters and you learn/investigate some interesting things that provide neat info vs "Collect 10 ram hides for the soldier" in DAI for example.

Some more examples: I've also been going through a Turian murder mystery on the Nexus that spanned multiple conversations with the Nexus director, then a witness, the suspect's wife, etc and that's now asking me to go to Eos to find and investigate the remains.

Also been following up leads on someone sabotaging electrical grids on the Nexus and now I have to find out what's going on and why.

These things feel more compelling to me than a lot of the junk in DAI lol.

There's still the "tasks" that are simpler in nature. One injured soldier asked if I could place a pendant next to where he lost his brother on a planet, but even that felt more fleshed out than DAI 'sidequests' because he talked a bit about how close he was to his brother. I'm enjoying them personally.

So I can only speak for myself. Hope that helps :)
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Meh. Other impressions from Kotaku and Eurogamer are very positive and seem more in line with what I like about Bioware games.

As long as the writing is up to par for them I'll be hooked as the characters and dialogue are the main appeal to these types of games for me. Combat looks fun as well, improving upon what I loved in ME2 and 3.

I never soured on DA:I so I have few worries about this. Already have the deluxe version Preloaded on my PS4 Pro.
 

Weetrick

Member
Jokes on you losers! John Walker is laughing all the way to the bank right now. He's probably halfway to Tahiti in his private yacht from the click bait money he's getting off this article!
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Literally every other impression is positive.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1346773

Rock, Paper, Shotgun: After five hours with it, Mass Effect Andromeda looks to live up to its predecessor


I went into the Andromeda preview feeling trepidatious. I came out excited and anxious to play more. Most important is that it feels like Mass Effect, and it looks like it’s building on the best aspects of the previous games. Speaking with Condominas, it’s clear this is their aim. “The trilogy had a narrative constraint, but when we start from scratch, when we don’t have that story anymore, our first reflex was to say ‘what are the best elements of all three games that we can bring and put together’. So obviously the exploration, the Nomad, all those notions are from Mass Effect 1; the loyalty missions from Mass Effect 2 and the character bonding; and the more action based gameplay of Mass Effect 3. We tried to bring all that together. But they were three different games, suddenly having to balance that into a single game… It takes five years.”

So the same website goes from "it's good!" to "it's bad!"?

Reading more about the guy who wrote the bad impressions on RPS, it seems like he's known to be harsh on a lot of praised games...take it as you will.

Well whatever, the early access will be telling enough to everybody.
 
Bioware has never been good at UI design. The crafting interface in DAI was a crime.

And yeah the writing here... did what few good writers Bioware still had all leave?

And yeah sometimes people change opinion, especially going from a tightly controlled press showing to actually having extended hands-on time with the game. This isn't that shocking guys.
 

LNBL

Member
I like to be fully transparent when I describe things so people don't come back and say I misled them. I haven't done many sidequests personally. I stated that from several reviewers I've spoken to that are deep in the game, more than myself, sidequests come into their own later and some have multiple quest lines that can span multiple areas/planets.

I also described a few side activities on the very first prologue planet that *felt* more fleshed out to me as opposed to DAI's fetch quests because they actually had narration by the characters and you learn/investigate some interesting things that provide neat info vs "Collect 10 ram hides for the soldier" in DAI for example.

Some more examples: I've also been going through a murder mystery on the Nexus that spanned multiple conversations with the Nexus director, then a witness, the suspect's wife, etc and that's now asking me to go to Eos to find and investigate the remains.

Also been following up leads on someone sabotaging electrical grids on the Nexus and now I have to find out what's going on and why.

These things feel more compelling to me than a lot of the junk in DAI lol.

There's still the "tasks" that simpler in nature. One injured soldier asked if I could place a pendant next to where he lost his brother on a planet, but even that felt more fleshed out than DAI 'sidequests'. I'm enjoying them.

So I can only speak for myself. Hope that helps :)

That indeed sounds a lot better than the Inquisition side quests
 
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