EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Fans submit questions, Mac Walters (Creative Director) answers them the best he can. Quite in-depth and long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM2yW3pgiHg
Worth a watch, but here are some cliff notes.
Worth a watch, but here are some cliff notes.
- Things to improve in open worlds based on lessons learned from Dragon Age: Inquisition and other games like The Witcher 3; importance of balancing quest density and integration. Each planet has its own unique story unfolding, many of the side quests intertwining through that plot and/or the main narrative, instead of just being "go and grind".
- Reiterates the importance of strong characters driving much of the narrative beats. EG: not just two factions fighting, but context behind the characters running each faction.
- Still a lot of mystery to uncover as that's core to Mass Effect, but deliberately being tight lipped to prevent spoiling things.
- Blend of focus; some planets more story heavy, others gameplay. Some about the Nomad, others more on-foot exploration.
- RE: "It's just like Dragon Age: Inquisition" commentary; tried to correct a lot the criticism they've heard regarding Inquisition's worlds. Not just grinding, pushing more meaningful quests, etc.
- Won't compare planetary zone size to anything from Inquisition, but notes that most have been built around the Nomad's speed to give an indicator of size.
- Sarah and Scott Ryder are in their "mid 20s", their first big adventure.
- Story is about "becoming a hero"; unproven characters getting together and bonding.
- If you choose to use the default name Sarah/Scott sometimes it will be name dropped in the dialogue.
- Some hints and nods to familiar canon stuff from the trilogy, but otherwise a fresh start and clean break from Shepard's arc.
- Exploration is a core theme of the game, thus reduced time sensitive pressure in the main plot. The stakes aren't as high as the trilogy's Reaper plot.
- Didn't want to repeat character conventions from the trilogy, eg Peebee being somewhat of an opposite to Liara.
- "Peebee" is shortform for her full name, which will be revealed lately.
- How your characters are able to understand the Andromeda languages will be explained.
- For every species that has multiple genders, they will be represented in Andromeda.
- Implies Vetra (female Turian squadmate) and Peebee have interesting character dynamics.
- Krogan; state of genophage addressed in the game.
- Old tensions between Milky Way species remain.
- Not talking about Quarians yet.
- Nexus is a "multi-species" effort, unlike the species centric arks. Ark crew can still be multi-species.
- Native controller support for PC version.
- No day/night cycles on planets, however "different states" for some of the planets.
- Encourages keeping saves. Consider Andromeda a series, but not building this as a focused trilogy. Key elements (Pathfinder, Ryders, etc) will appear in the next game. Don't consider it a technical issue, having learned from the previous trilogy. More about vision; not locking themselves into a critical multi-game story arc.
- Codex is no longer narrated due to size due to a combination of entries from the original trilogy and new galaxy entries. Codex entries can evolve based on new discoveries.
- Feel the original trilogy's soundtrack inspired some scifi. Wan't some familiar ties but also want to "leapfrog ahead", bringing the OST style forward into something new and not too self referential.
- Describes the soundtrack composition and technology as a combination of traditional "scored" stuff and procedural-like broken up musical elements that play based on what you're doing in the game.
- RE: trailers and teasers. Believes a lot of content within the game should be experienced by playing the game, no teasing or spoiling beforehand.
- Consider the current state of production as the "polish and balance" phase.
