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Mass Effect: Andromeda |OT| Ryders on the Storm

I've been avoiding all content on this game completely since the trailer in November. So I have no idea who any of the squadmates are except the Asari (or one of them? no idea). I don't want to look them up but I don't want to miss one so I'll ask - are any of the squadmates missable? Or otherwise avoidable for a long time? It's important to me to get them all asap!
You'll be happy to know they give you all of the squad mates rather quickly and it'd be impossible to miss any of them.
 

Nemesis_

Member
I wonder if they're going to bother with single player DLC for this. I see potential, but worry it'll just be multiplayer stuff.
 
I'm a few hours in and I'm kind of liking it so far. Character models and animations are complete shit, and custom character appearance options are beyond disappointing, but as a Mass Effect game, I'm liking it so far. Still early and that could change though.
 

nOoblet16

Member
Trying to find the last generator to take down a shield on part of the Eos mission. Get into Nomad.

Press triangle to get out. Woops. Wrong button. LEFT THE ENTIRE PLANET.

Time to drive all the way back there...
how do you summon the Nomad lol

I don't understand why people are having this issue of ending up back in the ship instead of getting out of the Nomad, you have to hold the triangle/Y button for a good while to get back to the Tempest and there's an icon with a bar that says "return to Tempest". Compared to pressing square/B where you instantly get out of the Nomad. I mean if you press a button and your character isn't out then you would know right away that it's the wrong button.
 

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.
I don't understand why people are having this issue of ending up back in the ship instead of getting out of the Nomad, you have to hold the triangle/Y button for a good while to get back to the Tempest and there's an icon with a bar that says "return to Tempest". Compared to pressing square/B where you instantly get out of the Nomad. I mean if you press a button and your character isn't out then you would know right away that it's the wrong button.
It's because you enter the Nomad the same way you leave the planet, apparently. I didn't bother reading the text.
 
Trying to find the last generator to take down a shield on part of the Eos mission. Get into Nomad.

Press triangle to get out. Woops. Wrong button. LEFT THE ENTIRE PLANET.

Time to drive all the way back there...
how do you summon the Nomad lol
You can only summon the Nomad from the forward beacons.
 

katkombat

Banned
This game is awesome. I'm probably 8ish hours in and haven't done anything meaningful at all besides the first couple missions. Too early to tell as far as the whole game goes, but if any developers are reading this this is what I wanted. More mass effect. I wasn't expecting a perfect game, first game for the studio (I believe), new engine for you guys. Plus, it couldn't have been easy trying to please every fan of this fucking series (as level headed fans can tell you). I'm gonna go ahead and jump the gun and say thank you now. Even if the game has some sort of sharp decline, what you have created right now is the foundation of something great. It's the NEW mass effect 1 in my eyes if that makes sense. I can deal with the animations, and, truly, if that was the only thing that swayed your purchase of the game, you are an idiot.
 

obeast

Member
I'm a few hours in and I'm kind of liking it so far. Character models and animations are complete shit, and custom character appearance options are beyond disappointing, but as a Mass Effect game, I'm liking it so far. Still early and that could change though.

If it makes you feel any more optimistic, I'm about 10 hours in and the game has steadily improved for me. It seems like they frontloaded the wrong stuff. I quite like the exploration-of-the-unknown vibe, and the early locations seem like the least interesting.

That said, the animations and faces are just not good, and I've taken to leaving subtitles on and reading rather than listening to a lot of the less significant dialogue as a result. It is what it is, and in many ways just feels like an older game, in the sense that it works better when the "real" conversation occurs in your head rather than on the screen.
 

Madness

Member
I don't know. I feel like it does pay homage to the first Mass Effect, and while I am into the story and enjoying myself. A lot of it is very unpolished. There is almost 10 years of difference between ME1 and ME:A and nothing about Andromeda is really earthshaking by any means. I honestly feel like writing has taken a step back, there is a regression in terms of some sidequests, things like poor UI.

How could they think after ME2 and ME3, the way they want us to explore in ME:A is superior? We need 5 animations to traverse back from planet to Nexus why? They trumpeted exploration and yet the last thing I honestly want to do is just 'be' out there. I like the game. However, it is a big miss for the series in my opinion.
 

Ken Adams

Member
The white line that keeps appearing on the screen in the exact same spot is really starting to annoy me now. This better be something fixed in the next patch because having to restart the game constantly is not good. Especially with the save system in this game.

Yeah i get that shit too on my pro.
 
Just took down my
first Architect.

Hot damn, that was an ordeal.
Felt like a total badass dodging, hovering and moving from cover to cover though!!
 

Xumbrega

Banned
This game is awesome. I'm probably 8ish hours in and haven't done anything meaningful at all besides the first couple missions. Too early to tell as far as the whole game goes, but if any developers are reading this this is what I wanted. More mass effect. I wasn't expecting a perfect game, first game for the studio (I believe), new engine for you guys. Plus, it couldn't have been easy trying to please every fan of this fucking series (as level headed fans can tell you). I'm gonna go ahead and jump the gun and say thank you now. Even if the game has some sort of sharp decline, what you have created right now is the foundation of something great. It's the NEW mass effect 1 in my eyes if that makes sense. I can deal with the animations, and, truly, if that was the only thing that swayed your purchase of the game, you are an idiot.

Exactly what I feel about the game right now, I can totally understand the scores and the complaints, but honestly to me animations and such are like at the bottom of my list of what I should care about this game, combat, exploration and history (so far) are great to me.
 

ajanke

Member
Just took down my
first Architect.

Hot damn, that was an ordeal.
Felt like a total badass dodging, hovering and moving from cover to cover though!!

lucky. Mine was tough because the last portion there was no damn cover lol. Was just moving non stop.
 

katkombat

Banned
I don't know. I feel like it does pay homage to the first Mass Effect, and while I am into the story and enjoying myself. A lot of it is very unpolished. There is almost 10 years of difference between ME1 and ME:A and nothing about Andromeda is really earthshaking by any means. I honestly feel like writing has taken a step back, there is a regression in terms of some sidequests, things like poor UI.

How could they think after ME2 and ME3, the way they want us to explore in ME:A is superior? We need 5 animations to traverse back from planet to Nexus why? They trumpeted exploration and yet the last thing I honestly want to do is just 'be' out there. I like the game. However, it is a big miss for the series in my opinion.


I don't disagree, but to be honest, I was kept in the dark on a lot of stuff (I watched the launch trailer which spoiled me on something sadly, and one of the gameplay series videos) after the initial gameplay leak, and I still kind of knew what I would be getting into (which isn't a bad thing, I preordered this game immediately). Right now, though, this game has hit a LOT of buttons I wanted. I don't know, I feel as though mass effect has never been praised for its animations (REMEMBER THE ME3 demo fiasco with Andersons sprint animation) and stuff like that, the writing has never been perfect either (damn near in 2). While none of it should be excused, I think the controversy surrounding this game before release was mindblowing. Had a whole conversation with my friend about "have you seen the memes with the faces in this game? Garbage game." -- as soon as the ea trial went up. This isn't really about mass effect anymore but I truly am sick of people shitting on things before the finished product is out. It's not wrong for someone to say "man, those facial animations are horrible...etc." but for someone to call an entire game bad PRIOR to release when most hadn't even played the fucking limited trial, never mind had a copy of the full game, is ridiculous.
 

Lister

Banned
Going to say something crazy right here: I like the Tempest more than the Normandy...


I should go.

Well, just the fact that there are no load screens is a big deal, as are the big open windows and smaller overall size. Makes tlakign to your companions a hell of a lot more convenient.
 

Shari

Member
I don't understand why people are having this issue of ending up back in the ship instead of getting out of the Nomad, you have to hold the triangle/Y button for a good while to get back to the Tempest and there's an icon with a bar that says "return to Tempest". Compared to pressing square/B where you instantly get out of the Nomad. I mean if you press a button and your character isn't out then you would know right away that it's the wrong button.

Nah man, gta schema hardwired too deep.

Its true that i haven't yet failed and teleport back to the tempest thanks to the "hold" part.
 

Jamaro85

Member
Hating it. This isn't mass effect. Scanning is boring and tedious. Combat is "OK" but wouldn't call it amazing. Thought I wouldn't care about the animations, but turns out, they're pretty fucking immersion breaking. Love when I walk up to talk to an NPC, and they walk away at the same time, leaving me to talk to an empty screen with their voice from a distance. Also love when I die due to an enemy getting glitched in the environment and because of the horrible checkpoints, losing about 15-20 minutes of progress.

The Ryders don't feel like heroes, or heroic in any sense. They're entitled brats who get titles literally handed to them, without any sort of qualification.

The multi was mildly redeeming but I think it was because I played with friends.

I'd like to add that I'm generally not a harsh critic of games. I don't shit on everything that's popular and go against the grain. This was a very eye-opening situation, where I could swear this game was going to be magnificent, and a true return of the franchise I loved, but I just can't seem to enjoy it.

I have to say with the trial I felt similarly, that it was an accumulation of little things that were kind of ruining it for me. I felt like the atmosphere of ME was captured from what I played, and Eos felt closer to what many would've liked to see from ME1 planets. It was just good to have ME again.

But yeah, little things. The physical scanner was annoying to bring up with the delay, having it only cover that small boxed area, and not knowing when the heck I was near something that could be scanned. I don't mean I want a cheese mode indicator, but literally I'm in an area pulling it up and doing a 360 and often finding nothing, leading me to not even want to scan another similar area where they may have been something to scan. I think the main issue here is with having become used to how snappy the focus is in Horizon. It's much easier to click in a thumbstick versus what really felt like an awkward reach to the D-pad (360 controller). Additionally in Horizon the focus is much snappier to go in and out of, it covers the entire screen, and you KNOW when you'll need to use it and will not be randomly pulling it up in every area you go into.

Combat didn't resonate with me for a few reasons. Combat encounters in 2 and 3 felt like more thought was put into balancing them with not just the enemies but design of the battle field. I know conditions aren't always going to be ideal in real life so perhaps it's better this way, but when the only way for me to win an encounter is to hang way back and kite enemies because there is no cover and flying bullet sponge robots quickly circle me, this is poor and not well thought out combat design IMO. It feels more like some random shooter than Mass Effect, which I am not looking for in ME. (This is one cherry picked encounter from the trial that irritated me to no end with 6-7 deaths before success, so maybe it's generally better). Only having three powers active and not being able to use squad mates really killed it for me because in the previous games as an adept I could carefully coordinate squad power usage to drain shields. Also not having that tactical pause is killer because there is no more pausing and calling out positions/commands for squad mates and I feel like I'm scrambling to do it in real time, and it didn't really feel like there was time for that with difficulty on hardcore and insanity.

You mentioned checkpoints and lack of saving on some missions, like the opening mission of the game. There was one encounter coming out of a facility that I died in like three times, and reloading took me way back to another location from which I had to walk to the facility, and then had to go through the facility again. I experienced something like that in the trilogy maybe two to three times.

I've had weird glitches an NPC sliding/teleporting into me and getting me stuck. I've been unable to open the scanner, unable to walk and being stuck in run mode. I had an enemy floating in the air that would not shoot back or move at all. And then my favorite, I've had the Avenger take on some properties of the Mattock. The Avenger would keep the automatic fire property of constantly draining bullets, but would only make an audible Mattock firing sound and only do damage when pulling the trigger in burst mode, while still draining rubber 0 damage dealing bullets.

NPCs can at times be immersion breaking like you said with poor character models, though generally I tend to not be bothered by it. Some of the more egregiously weird facial expressions give me a good laugh, and it's probably in a more amusing and endearing way than an irritating way. Some of the dialog is really meh. And while I haven't experienced it I could see what you mentioned with NPCs walking away from you when you speak to them and then hearing their voice from a distance being annoying (to be fair I feel like this happens in other open world games?).

I get that these things will either be forgivable, a non-issue or just non-existent (glitches) for many (maybe most?) people and that this will feel through and through like a Mass Effect game. I'm looking at a lot of things beyond the theme and top layer of Mass Effect elements that really throw me off, and they just take away from it as a game in general. Still, I'm so tempted to jump into this before I even finish Horizon. I really hope to get through the game and completely change my mind on some of these opinions, or just realize that they aren't as big an issue as I'm thinking they are now.
 
Really enjoying myself so far. I can't tell if it's because I braced myself for the worst due to all the negative reactions or what, but I love it so far. It feels like the Mass Effect (2) I loved.
 
As you play more some of the game's problems do start to get better. I enjoyed Eos and the main mission there.
The underground Remnant vault
was some pretty epic and trippy sci-fi goodness. All of the characters were reasonably well written. At one point I met a NPC and he left to walk to his shuttle and I could see him walking all the way down making little footprints in the sand. The environments are beautiful too.

But I'm playing as default Scott Ryder and his face just is a continuous problem throughout the game. You never know what strange face he's going to pull next, or what his eyes are going to do. I probably should have gone with a custom face but they all looked so bad and I didn't have the will to try and struggle with the customizer.

It's shocking to me how so many of the elements seem to come together quite well, but the Ryder twins just have me scratching my head. Their basic designs, their characters, their animations. It would just be so much better if my main character looked cooler. Even outside of the animations, he has such shitty facial hair and a douchey haircut and you can't change either of them.

And I feel like we haven't talked enough about the fact that they've just hired a Nolan North imitator as the voice. Does North know there's a guy now who can do his job? He probably asks less too.

Anyway I am enjoying the game but I just hate what they did with the main character.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
For those who played a lot of the game so far, is there any hubs similar to Illium(big city full of tall skyscrapers) or Omega?
 

Freeman76

Member
Out of all the possible designs they could have come up with for the Kett, how on earth did someone decide the one they went with was the best choice. Fuck me man, they could have been much better.
 

Whales

Banned
played my furst MP match this morning

did they remove the narrator? In ME3 you had a dude tell you " go hack this" and he used to also says "wave 6 incoming" etc. I didnt hear anyone talking in this one. Or did I just get glitched out because I joined an ongoing game?

also funny enough, there was a glitch with the "ancient" enemy... he was the last enemy remaining but he kept his shield up permanently for like 5-10mins while we couldnt do anything.. lol.

Also I noticed instakills are back, good to see

but yeah, the MP is as good as ever but there IS. a big rubberbanding/lag problem and it needs to be fixed, its almost gamebreaking at points
 

mikemandey

Member
Decided to play after working.. Instead of playing SP, I wanted to try some strike team missions.. Two hours later, still playing the MP
 

Nekrono

Member
I'm about 20 hours in, I just picked up Jaal (I'm taking my time with the game) and just reached my first real complain with the game.

The events that lead you to him and also how and why he joins the team felt incredibly rushed and sloppy. So far I have not had any problems with the story but that really bothered me, especially after so many mentions about first contact protocol with new species, etc.

BioWare really dropped the ball there.
 

sangreal

Member
played my furst MP match this morning

did they remove the narrator? In ME3 you had a dude tell you " go hack this" and he used to also says "wave 6 incoming" etc. I didnt hear anyone talking in this one. Or did I just get glitched out because I joined an ongoing game?

also funny enough, there was a glitch with the "ancient" enemy... he was the last enemy remaining but he kept his shield up permanently for like 5-10mins while we couldnt do anything.. lol.

Also I noticed instakills are back, good to see

but yeah, the MP is as good as ever but there IS. a big rubberbanding/lag problem and it needs to be fixed, its almost gamebreaking at points

do you mean the ascendant? because their shields never go down unless you kill the orb
 

Kyoufu

Member
played my furst MP match this morning

did they remove the narrator? In ME3 you had a dude tell you " go hack this" and he used to also says "wave 6 incoming" etc. I didnt hear anyone talking in this one. Or did I just get glitched out because I joined an ongoing game?

also funny enough, there was a glitch with the "ancient" enemy... he was the last enemy remaining but he kept his shield up permanently for like 5-10mins while we couldnt do anything.. lol.

Also I noticed instakills are back, good to see

but yeah, the MP is as good as ever but there IS. a big rubberbanding/lag problem and it needs to be fixed, its almost gamebreaking at points

There's an audio bug that mutes the narrator. That's probably what happened.
 

hydruxo

Member
Ok I'm really liking the game, played for about 28-30 hours and I've seen all the major planets now and I can confidently say that Eos is the worst one out of all followed by that Jungle planet. In the later planets you actually get proper settlements and towns. I haven't been to the Nexus in like 10 hours now because I've been going around doing a lot of other stuff...lol

I'm not really seeing how this is worse than the "shoot 10 billion Cerberus everywhere and have a shit ending" game honestly, ME2 is amazing because it has great pacing and always seemed to be on crack.

How many planets are there to explore? Haven't really found an answer to that, I've been curious
 

Zesh

Member
I'm about 20 hours in, I just picked up Jaal (I'm taking my time with the game) and just reached my first real complain with the game.

The events that lead you to him and also how and why he joins the team felt incredibly rushed and sloppy. So far I have not had any problems with the story but that really bothered me, especially after so many mentions about first contact protocol with new species, etc.

BioWare really dropped the ball there.

Yeah, that was not handled well at all. Felt very abrupt.
 

Whales

Banned
do you mean the ascendant? because their shields never go down unless you kill the orb

yes I think it was an ascendant! thanks for the info thats good to know... my team literally wasted 5mins trying to shoot at his shield and nothing was happening until one of us used an aoe blast, knocked him down and then he lost the shield for a brief moment

I guess thats what happens when all 4 players of the team are new to the MP :p

There's an audio bug that mutes the narrator. That's probably what happened.

Good to hear they just didnt include one in the MP. Thanks for the info!
 

nOoblet16

Member
Some screens (tried to keep them as non spoilery as possible), default Sarah Ryder is actually quite alright. I think it's just that her animations have to be generalised as she can look like anything due to the character creator. The other characters don't have this limitation so they are a lot more expressive and fine tuned in comparison, while characters like Addison are bottom tier in terms of quality. Still I really think all of that pre release stuff about animations was way overblown as it was a culmination of all bad stuff/glitches and exploiting animations at one place.


masseffectandromeda20xulvw.png


masseffectandromeda20v7lc8.png


masseffectandromeda20c7lbq.png


masseffectandromeda20u2zbd.png




 

Vic_Viper

Member
Not sure how im feeling about the game after playing it for a large chunk of yesterday, still on EOS. Theres some things about it that I like alot more than the other Mass Effects, but then there are alot more I dont like about it. Its a shame really because out of all of Bioware properties this is the one that should have been treated with the most care and love. The Tempest is awesome and the new overworld is even better. But once you are on the planet's surface the game just feels flat and uneventful. If exploration is the name of the game, why isnt it more fun? So far exploring has been just driving around an empty planet with random groups of enimeis just standing around waiting for a fight. Hopefully once I finish the main quest on EOS the game will open up more with some more varried planets. But so far im pretty dissapointed with what they put out as their new Mass Effect.



Does anyone have a tutorial for the alien Sudoku? I swear there wasnt a in game explanation for what to do and I have no idea what to do. Never played Earth Sudoku, so im pretty much clueless here.
 
Been playing the game for around 10-11 hours now, so here are my first impressions.

First off, I'm playing on base PS4 and GOD the performance is pure horror. There are times that I can tell the game isn't even hitting 30fps for about a straight minute or so. Not only that but ironically, the game runs like crap while you are talking to your squad mates aboard the Tempest. This is like the most annoying and head scratching thing about the game for me. Why the hell am I getting constant drops when I'm just talking to another person, while absolutely nothing is happening on the screen?! Another thing that I noticed is that, when I talk to SAM on Nexus my PS4 is about to explode! I don't get it. I just don't get it. What the hell is happening that makes my PS4 generate so much heat in that scene!!!? Did they even try to optimize this for base consoles?

Other than performance which is my biggest issue with the game, Andromeda is unpolished as hell. And no, I'm not even talking about the animations or character glitches. The UI? Pure garbage. Seriously, how the hell did they think that making you go back and forth through lots of folders was a good idea? What the hell was wrong with DA:I's UI? They should've just copied that. Bioware, if you are reading this post right now, go and copy DA:I's UI to this game. The journal, the inventory screen, even the codex, they are all such a hassle to go through in Andromeda while I didn't have any problems with these stuff in past Bioware games. Also, not being able to save the game manually while having a main mission as your active quest? Wtf is even gong on, Bioware.

Lastly, I've encountered this weird glitch that sometimes disables the voices for certain lines. Like I see the line and other characters answer back (with voices) but some lines from Sara just glitch out.

BUT despite all of that, I'm kinda liking it....? In fact, I'm LOVING this game. Yeah, there are tons of problems that can frustrate you and by all accounts this shouldn't be an enjoyable experience, but it really is. If you manage to look past the problems (and trust a took while for me to do that), Andromeda is a very fun Mass Effect game. The combat is great and gives you tons of options. The characters are pretty interesting and just fun to talk to. And the world really gives you those Mass Effect vibes that you've been missing. Just getting into Nomad and going to do some side quests is quite a fun experience. And speaking of side quests, while there are some DA:I designs that you can see at the core of them, they don't really feel like a hassle this time around, cause all of the stuff that I've done thus far have some sort of narrative behind them.

I don't know how will I feel about the game once I go further. Maybe I start to hate it (like I did with DA:I) and maybe I'll fall in love with it even more. But at this point, after 11 hours of playing Andromeda. I'm really enjoying it. I feel like it's much better realized DA:I, which is using a lot of ideas from that game, yet is doing them in much better way.
 

Vhalyar

Member
SOS written in giant letters on an Angara escape pod. Hm.

The entire introduction to the Angara was hilariously clunky; that's good, because otherwise it'd just be bizarrely disappointing.
 
Does anyone have a tutorial for the alien Sudoku? I swear there wasnt a in game explanation for what to do and I have no idea what to do. Never played Earth Sudoku, so im pretty much clueless here.
In a given horizontal or vertical line, no symbol can repeat. Usually, you start by looking for a horizontal or vertical line that has all but one symbol filled out and then one by one you'll be able to fill them in. Harder puzzles, without such an obvious startpoint may require a little more thinking ahead or a little trial/error.

I think later they added more wrinkles so that beyond that, you also have to have no repeats within a portioned off area of the grid as well.
 
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