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Mass Effect: Andromeda - EA/Origin Access trial coming March 16th - 10 hour trial

Nemesis_

Member
Okay, some more detail.

Has anyone had this issue with capturing things on the Xbox DVR? I don't know how to fix it, have tried deleting and recovering my profile. It's really fucking weird. I'm on an Xbox One S, running on HDR, though I think that means nothing anyway.

masseffectandromeda44fkjq.png
 

Dubz

Member
Does the plot revolve around gathering a team of different alien classes to help destroy the evil antagonist? Hope not.
 
As someone who majored in animation, I can tell you that the average dropout could easily produce better work than what Bioware has done for this game.

It's honestly that incredibly poor. They must have outsourced for cheap. There's no other explanation.
 

Gudji

Member
This game is starting to grow on me. Yesterday I was playing with mouse and keyboard, today I played with a controller for the first time and I think the experience is much much better, it's like day and night!

I'm enjoying combat a lot more and also unlocked a new profile (infiltrator)... my only concern now is regarding the narrative and characters. Also there are a ton of glitches and stuff like that, lacks a bit of polish in some areas. I hope they fix those in the future.

Also MP is amazing when you're not lagging or rubberbanding.
 
I saw Michael Gamble state that this issue has been found, fixed, and will be included in the next patch. But yes, very disorienting currently.

Oh thank God. I thought I was going insane in MP last night when I kept hearing those mech things walking behind me, would spin my camera thinking I was about to die only to realize there wasn't an enemies within 200 feet of me.
 

Zesh

Member
Enemies feel like bullet sponges on Insanity. It takes like a full clip of Predator headshots to kill a Chosen.
 

Kneecap

Member
I think there is a STRONG possibility that Bioware shut down their forums because they knew this was coming.

Yeah, now that you mention it, the timing is suspicious. Thanks for this hypothesis. And, although I believe that a lot of EA input went into the decision to close the BW forums, I think you're on to something.
 

Gamezone

Gold Member
I don`t get the dialogue system in this game. With the renegade and paragon options gone, where are the benefits? In the previous games you unlocked new dialogue options by being good or bad, so what`s the deal with the new system? Are there any hard choices in Andromeda so far?
 

cripterion

Member
Maybe don't cheese the fight then? I did that on hard myself and it was pretty thrilling. Looked for a pocket to defend ordered my squad to stay there and then shot at the fiend after cleaning up the rest of the Kett.

I would not need to if the AI was competent. There's nothing fun about having to go fight on the roofs or open air if I have to revive my stupid teamates everytime and die in the process.
 
Lots of interesting impressions. I've bought every Bioware game day 1 since OG Mass Effect, but not this time. The weird character designs and broken animation are impressively bad for such a big budget game, but I'd put up with those if the writing was good. Which it clearly isn't. Aside from absurd lines (my face is tired - his heart was broken before it exploded) almost every dialogue I've witnessed has been stilted and amateurish. Not sure what's happened to Bioware's writing stable. They were never amazing, but they used to be solid. This stuff is like it was lifted out of a YA novel or an early 2000s CW show. Lots of awkward exposition, everyone is an oversharer, forced out of place Whedon-lite snarky "humor." Some suggest that in a post W3 world standards for writing have increased, perhaps unfairly. Yes, W3 was not just solid but good-to-great in the writing department. But an RPG shouldn't be expected to rise to that level. Solid would be acceptable with interesting characters and plotting.

I play this kind of big RPG for story and character, so competent 3rd person shooting in pretty but paint-by-numbers sci fi environments isn't going to do it for me.

No time anyway with trying to finish Automata before P5. If the story ends up getting a much better rap than I'm expecting I'll revisit down the road....
 

Lt-47

Member
I don`t get the dialogue system in this game. With the renegade and paragon options gone, where are the benefits? In the previous games you unlocked new dialogue options by being good or bad, so what`s the deal with the new system? Are there any hard choices in Andromeda so far?

Forcing people to always chose either good or bad dialogue to get a magic solve everything special dialogue was a terrible system.
That being said there's no hard choice in the game so far. But the Origin access in one big prologue so it's hard to know what will happen later. I would take few meaningful choices over tons of useless one any day of the week, so I hope Bioware has step-up their game in that regards.
 

Squire

Banned
I'm surprised we're implying they use the "chosen one" trope exactly as they did way back in KOTOR.

Inquisition was more of a deconstruction of it because it took a logical approach to it and actually had the player themselves having to comment on whether they bought into the concept or the implications of it themselves.

Andromeda has people questioning your authority thirty minutes in because it's actually Alec who's the archetypal "chosen one". Scott/Sara are young and not at all trained for the role.

Alec is revealed to be quite fallible to many characters. Cora is out of a job. Ryder is not all knowing or powerful and no one in the initiative seems to subscribe to that idea even if they'll advocate that you deserve a chance to succeed/learn on the job. I get not liking the trope on the paper, but there are a lot of twists on it here - too many to just sweep under the rug as "Welp, Same ol' BioWare!" Again, the same applied to Inquisition. If you don't find it much more compelling, you can at least acknowledge the tangible differences to being a Grey Warden or an N7.
 

olag

Member
To everyone who's been playing the game:

What are your impressions regarding the squad based gameplay compared to previous titles? Does the favourites system and the lack of a power wheel encourage a more solo run and gun gameplay style or does the game still offer some tactical options where your squad mates are effective ?
How is the exploration compared to DAI?

Any responses would be appreciated :)
 

ajanke

Member
8 hours in on he PS4 pro. This feels like mass effect to me. Really enjoying it so far outside of some graphical and performance issues.
 

TLS Lex

Member
I'm surprised we're implying they use the "chosen one" trope exactly as they did way back in KOTOR.

Inquisition was more of a deconstruction of it because it took a logical approach to it and actually had the player themselves having to comment on whether they bought into the concept or the implications of it themselves.

Andromeda has people questioning your authority thirty minutes in because it's actually Alec who's the archetypal "chosen one". Scott/Sara are young and not at all trained for the role.

Alec is revealed to be quite fallible to many characters. Cora is out of a job. Ryder is not all knowing or powerful and no one in the initiative seems to subscribe to that idea even if they'll advocate that you deserve a chance to succeed/learn on the job. I get not liking the trope on the paper, but there are a lot of twists on it here - too many to just sweep under the rug as "Welp, Same ol' BioWare!" Again, the same applied to Inquisition. If you don't find it much more compelling, you can at least acknowledge the tangible differences to being a Grey Warden or an N7.

This tbh. From what I've played it seems like the dialogue will evolve naturally to give you the same kind of choice Inquisition did (I was/ wasn't meant for this) and surrounding characters will either give you a hard time for being the pathfinder or not, depending on your choices. I'm excited to see how that aspect of it plays out.
 
The only dialogue tree I will accept is one where I can say I LIVE FOR THIS and then ski down a forest with no snow after backflipping off of a satellite tower
 

JeffG

Member
Okay, some more detail.

Has anyone had this issue with capturing things on the Xbox DVR? I don't know how to fix it, have tried deleting and recovering my profile. It's really fucking weird. I'm on an Xbox One S, running on HDR, though I think that means nothing anyway.

Its a bug

It has been logged with EA answers website
 
I don`t get the dialogue system in this game. With the renegade and paragon options gone, where are the benefits? In the previous games you unlocked new dialogue options by being good or bad, so what`s the deal with the new system? Are there any hard choices in Andromeda so far?

Define "hard" choices. There's a couple of branching decisions so far, where you get to decide the fate of a couple of minor characters, but we're too early to see if that has implications further down the line or if later decisions have more impact.
 

Lt-47

Member
To everyone who's been playing the game:

What are your impressions regarding the squad based gameplay compared to previous titles? Does the favourites system and the lack of a power wheel encourage a more solo run and gun gameplay style or does the game still offer some tactical options where your squad mates are effective ?
How is the exploration compared to DAI?

Any responses would be appreciated :)

It's clearly a one man game. You companion can be effective but you have little control over them. That being said I completed the trilogy on insanity without ever caring much about my party, they were just a bunch of bonus power for you to use. So I can't say I miss it, but I know other will.

Haven't played Inquisition so all I can say is that the exploration reminded me a lot of the Witcher 3. It's not as good as in CDProjeckt game but the inspiration is clear
 

StereoVsn

Member
So I sprung for and Completed the 10 hour trial. Pretty much all of it was single player.

Performance on my PC (4790K, 16GB RAM, 980TI, SSD) is hit and miss. I play on 3440x1440 and with some of the settings turned down it's okish in places and usually runs around 55-60fps but sometimes performance just ranks for no explicable reason.

Good:
- I liked the planetary vistas quite a bit.
- View outside the Tempest was quite good

Bad:
- Facial animation is just horrible. Pretty much every single NPC or party or the male MC (went with default male) is horrible. Animations are out of tone, reactions are mostly a miss, it's just mind boggling that his is being released in such state
- Motion animation - quite mediocre
- Writing quality is banal and just not well done. This includes character conversations, banter and storyline
- Combat is just TPS now. There are no meaningful squad commands, squad AI is bad so the whole "we didn't want to interrupt combat flow with power wheel" PR from Bethesda is BS. Relying on AI for combo setups is mostly a miss.
- Scanning takes way too much time. That animation that you go through.
- Interface is horrible. Whoever came up with that shit should be fired along with those who approved it for the PC.
 

VAD

Member
3hours until the end of the trial and I must say it's Mass Effect alright. Exploring planets with the Nomad feels like and upgraded version of exploring with the Mako. The galaxy feels vast and begs to be discovered. Will buy the full game.
 
Made a little more progress. 3 hours of trial left.

I'm really impressed with the sidequest design. Mechanically, it's nothing revolutionary, but they've done an extremely good job of weaving them into the greater narrative arc. The
Saboteur
and
Murder Mystery
side quests were basically "go place, scan thing, maybe some fighting" but because of how they were set and presented and (in the former's case especially) concluded, they felt like they had actual narrative weight.

Good to hear. I don't expect Witcher 3 level side quest, but at least they aren't simple mindless ones.
 
I would not need to if the AI was competent. There's nothing fun about having to go fight on the roofs or open air if I have to revive my stupid teamates everytime and die in the process.
It's a tough fight, lots of enemies and the fiend hits hard. Your teammates should not be invincible. Wouldn't say companion AI is particularly great but it's entirely passable. I've only ever had both die on very rare occasions.
 
Made a little more progress. 3 hours of trial left.

I'm really impressed with the sidequest design. Mechanically, it's nothing revolutionary, but they've done an extremely good job of weaving them into the greater narrative arc. The
Saboteur
and
Murder Mystery
side quests were basically "go place, scan thing, maybe some fighting" but because of how they were set and presented and (in the former's case especially) concluded, they felt like they had actual narrative weight.

Totally agree, theyre complete opposite of what that rps article made them sound like
 

nOoblet16

Member
Okay, some more detail.

Has anyone had this issue with capturing things on the Xbox DVR? I don't know how to fix it, have tried deleting and recovering my profile. It's really fucking weird. I'm on an Xbox One S, running on HDR, though I think that means nothing anyway.

That's the DVR's way of telling you game's running sub 1080P and the black area is area that would've been filled if it was 1080P :p

I'm only joking
 

LogicStep

Member
Playing on PC:

Game is amazing

Looks amazing

Lip sync on point

Animations are fine, the goofy ones that people are making fun of come across as cartoony and fun to me

Combat is fun

Multi player is fantastic

Some positive impressions there.
 

olag

Member
It's clearly a one man game. You companion can be effective but you have little over them. That being said I completed the trilogy on insanity without ever caring much about my party, they were just a bunch of bonus power for you to use. So I can't say I miss it, but I know other will.

Haven't played Inquisition so all I can say is that the exploration reminded me a lot of the Witcher 3. It's not as good as in CDProjeckt game but the inspiration is clear

Thanks for the impression.

The move to ignore you squad mates is definitely a shame as I rather enjoyed having control over the companion abilities during battle so I cant say Im thrilled about that. Your comparison to the witcher 3 does give me hope that they've learnt their lesson and improved the exploration, so I guess Ill wait for more impressions before making decision whether to buy.
 
It's a tough fight, lots of enemies and the fiend hits hard. Your teammates should not be invincible. Wouldn't say companion AI is particularly great but it's entirely passable. I've only ever had both die on very rare occasions.

Real talk, I go down more on Insanity than my squaddies lol. They'll occasionally get cut off and cornered and go down, but as long as they avoid that, they do alright.

Who needs snow anyways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMqADdsVmwQ
And one of more homemade quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjXS4bvuDK8

(yes, there are people that do that in real life)

I would welcome Riddick in ME though.

THat can't possibly be good for the skis.
 
Anyone fuck with strike team stuff yet? I tried to do that first one as multiplayer from my sp game, it loads you into no, we beat it, I end up back at the main menu, resume sp game and it didn't register that I beat it.
 

cripterion

Member
It's a tough fight, lots of enemies and the fiend hits hard. Your teammates should not be invincible. Wouldn't say companion AI is particularly great but it's entirely passable. I've only ever had both die on very rare occasions.

I have no qualms on them dying, but when they have cover everywhere around and they do not use it and with the bad command system it doesn't make it fun. After that fight I've only Cora die on Kett/Remant fights cause she charges in like a biotic moron.
We cleared the rest with Liam. I only died when I went to revive them during the fiend fight. I shouldn't have to babysit them, they're supposed to support me lol.

Anyone fuck with strike team stuff yet? I tried to do that first one as multiplayer from my sp game, it loads you into no, we beat it, I end up back at the main menu, resume sp game and it didn't register that I beat it.

Same thing for me but I think you got some rewards to redeeem somewhere.
 
Totally agree, theyre complete opposite of what that rps article made them sound like

Honestly, part of me really thinks that it's just down to willingness to engage. I could absolutely see people thinking like the RPS article if they go into it ready to ignore all the story framing. Strip that out, and the quests so far are pretty rote, but if you let yourself get caught up in it even a little (and it's not hard), they're a lot more compelling than they'd otherwise be.
 

Zemm

Member
Really? From what i read people are estimating a low to mid 80 on MC.

That's what I'm thinking too, after playing the trial low 80's, which would be a massive step down from the other ME games.

ME - 91
ME2 - 96
ME3 - 93

Even with harsher reviewing, that would be quite the drop.
 

Gojeran

Member
How do you change which consumable items appear in your weapon wheel? Playing a pure biotic on insanity and it's been rough for sure. Been cheesing the fuck out of some fights to make it through. I'd like to be able to use disrutor ammo for shielded enemies but all that ever appears in my weapon wheel is fire ammo and shield boost? How do you control or change which items are available to use? Also so far on insanity I can say I really miss squad control :/ the AI is not great for combos at all. I think I'll mostly end up being an army of one and pumping up my AI passive so they can do some weapon dmg without dying.

Edit: playing on PC with kb/m controls.
 
When you start going further in to Eos and you hit radiation level 3, is this the trial's way of telling you it's a trial and you can't go that far or is there a way to go out further that I'm missing?
 

Gamezone

Gold Member
The problem with Andromeda is that the game doesn't improve on anything in my opinion. It's Mass Effect, and that's all good, but it hasn't evolved as much as it should since Mass Effect 3, like Mass Effect 2 did over the first game. I'm probably going to play it until I've completed everything.
 

asariN7

Member
As a big ME fan, Im very upset with Bioware right now.The amount of unpolished animations
and dem fuckin dead eyes from a triple A studio in 2017 is fuckin mind-blowing.I bet that half of the development time they spent on what positions they should fuck this time.Guess I'll wait for reviews to see how the story and the dialog is throughout the entire game.
Thank God for Persona 5 releasing next month.
 

Jarmel

Banned
That's what I'm thinking too, after playing the trial low 80's, which would be a massive step down from the other ME games.

ME - 91
ME2 - 96
ME3 - 93

Even with harsher reviewing, that would be quite the drop.

ME3 was super inflated.
 

oneils

Member
I'm curious has anyone us d the dual shock 4 on the pc version? If so was it pretty much plug and play or do you have to use some sort of software to make it work?
 
I have no qualms on them dying, but when they have cover everywhere around and they do not use it and with the bad command system it doesn't make it fun. After that fight I've only Cora die on Kett/Remant fights cause she charges in like a biotic moron.
We cleared the rest with Liam. I only died when I went to revive them during the fiend fight. I shouldn't have to babysit them, they're supposed to support me lol.
Cora has 2 abilities both with a close combat focus, don't take her with you when you want to take cover and take potshots.
How do you change which consumable items appear in your weapon wheel? Playing a pure biotic on insanity and it's been rough for sure. Been cheesing the fuck out of some fights to make it through. I'd like to be able to use disrutor ammo for shielded enemies but all that ever appears in my weapon wheel is fire ammo and shield boost? How do you control or change which items are available to use? Also so far on insanity I can say I really miss squad control :/ the AI is not great for combos at all. I think I'll mostly end up being an army of one and pumping up my AI passive so they can do some weapon dmg without dying.

Edit: playing on PC with kb/m controls.
Only before a mission or a forward station when free roaming under layout.
 
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