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Why the bad vibes on Mass Effect Andromeda?

I thought it looked boring. But I haven't said much else. They finally showed gameplay, and not a moment of it really did anything for me. Just kinda instantly killed my hype.
 
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Huge fan of Mass Effect, best trilogy of the last 'generation' for me. But I just feel Bioware are on an unfortunate downward trend (e.g. DA:I). I'll buy ME:A day 1, and I'll be reasonably excited for it - but my excitement is restrained by just a general feeling around Bioware - my confidence in them isn't there in the same way as it once was.

I hope I'm wrong, I really hope I'm wrong - I don't want this to be true about one of my favourite studios who have made some of my favourite games - but I can't shake the feeling.

Same. Didn't most of the head guys at Bioware from ME1 and 2 leave shortly after the third launched? Drew Karpyshyn (Head writer), Casey Hudson (project manager, studio founder who stayed after the doctors left). Studio got drained of its talent. Some people you just can't replace
 
EA and Bioware's ad campaign has been fucking garbage and we learned more about the game from leaked surveys and summaries of Game Informer articles than we have by actually seeing footage. I know they're trying to avoid ME3's media campaign and the mistakes it had, but they went too far in the opposite direction and now no one has any fucking idea what's going on.

Honestly, if it wasn't the only good non-Star Wars space opera RPG, the game would be way less relevant.

They're trying so hard to avoid the original trilogy it has become comical. They were so adamant in saying that the Andromeda Initiative had absolutely nothing to do with the reapers. They just left the main galaxy because.
 
As other have said, their last 3 RPG's. Say what you will about 2, (I loved it), it was still a solid game, which is a lot more gab can be said about their last 3.
 
People wanting the franchise to be shooter franchise rather than a space exploration RPG is where it all went wrong.

The first Mass Effect wasn't all about the combat which is what made it great.

Funny how this is always the same go to excuse, even though it was always meant to be a shooter/RPG. It's just that the shooting mechanics were still using dice rolls in the first game and felt super janky, so you wouldn't even realize that it's meant to have actual third person shooter mechanics.

So Bioware tuned the gameplay more and more to become closer to what I can only assume they were originally going for. You can argue that they seemed to be chasing the CoD/Gears crowd with ME3, but maybe they had always intended to in the first place (for the record, I can't get into either of those franchises).

Why is it that there seems to be this ultra vocal minority who believes that to be an "RPG" means a game has to either be turn based, or have god awful combat, and that if the combat strays more towards an action genre that it's automatically no longer an RPG? I loved Mass Effect when it first hit the PC (after dropping it nine hours in on the 360 due to the controls and UI), but once ME2 hit, it was extremely hard to go back to the jank factor, and I didn't miss anything that was removed either.

The first game never had any legitimate "space exploration" either. Almost entirely barren planets with a few mineral nodes and maybe a pirate or geth base or two ad nauseum, oh boy!
 
I think the series has been on a downward trend since the second and this one looks to be continuing the trend. Might get it with a heavy discount like i just did with DA:I.
 

oh okay, what?

I don't understand this weird relationship with GOTY awards by users on GAF. X game wins numerous GOTY and suddenly its trash and a bunch of western reviewers that don't play "real" games. Y game wins and it is suddenly validated as the greatest thing ever, see haters even the press loves the game. Ex: The Witcher 3 v. Bloodborne.

MGS4 wins GOTY here twice but apparently it is somehow now the worst thing since slavery. How about maybe you just didn't like X game but everyone else did? It's okay that you think Inquisition is garbage, just realize you are in the minority.

from your post:



thanks for the laugh

Hey, I'm just being honest.
 
I dont trust bioware.

They've managed to completely fuck over what made their original games great with every new iteration.

Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age 1 are some of my favorite and memorable games of last gen, that had great potential.

Every sequel we got was worse than the last in terms of story, chracterization and overall fanwankery to the highest degree. Not to mention the fact that the gameplay mechanics either get streamlined to null and simplified to all fuck all.


I gave up after DA2 and ME3 and have yet to look back.
 
We're still all fairly positive/excited over in the official Mass Effect community thread, and there's quite a bit of people voting for Mass Effect: Andromeda in the NeoGAF most anticipated games of 2017 thread.

For me personally I'm extremely excited for Andromeda and I've been enjoying following the devs on twitter and hearing about interesting development updates and quirky teases.

A bitter, vocal minority can't hurt my love for the franchise, I hope it doesn't for others either.
 
Biggest disappointment of 2017, ME:A or Horizon:ZD, fight!
As long as ME:A doesn't fuck up the multiplayer, it won't disappoint if you have low expectations of the story. (I wonder if this is EA/Bioware's strategy, but that would require them to be oddly self-aware.)
 
After ME2, ME3, DA2, and DAI, I don't see myself buying Bioware games. I want to like 'em and all, but they're just... super safe, with some genuinely godawful combat (not a single Bioware game has good combat, yet they have LOTS of it).

"Safe" is a good word I'd use to describe pretty much everything BioWare has done since Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 1. Those are actually the earliest BioWare games I've ever played, but they both felt like they did very interesting and risky things with their quests, worlds, characters, and game structure, even if they weren't always successful. There was a certain humility to those games that just isn't there in any of BioWare's later work.

Even when BioWare acknowledges mistakes with one game, the next one feels obviously programmed to address them and appeal to the audience in ways everyone expected. It's as if BioWare is tuning a robot with each new game. BioWare says it'll bring back the exploration in Andromeda, but I have a suspicion it'll be brought back in the form of a system that feels oddly mechanical and uninspired.

When it comes to crafting RPG worlds in a smart way that feels fresh, CDProjekt RED has pretty much become the heir to BioWare's throne, at least in the mainstream console space.

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oh okay, what?

I don't understand this weird relationship with GOTY awards by users on GAF. X game wins numerous GOTY and suddenly its trash and a bunch of western reviewers that don't play "real" games. Y game wins and it is suddenly validated as the greatest thing ever, see haters even the press loves the game. Ex: The Witcher 3 v. Bloodborne.

MGS4 wins GOTY here twice but apparently it is somehow now the worst thing since slavery. How about maybe you just didn't like X game but everyone else did? It's okay that you think Inquisition is garbage, just realize you are in the minority.

Your initial post said that people "didn't like Inquisition, despite it being ranked GOTY from numerous publications and award shows". We're supposed to like it now because it got GOTY awards?

Hey, I'm just being honest.

yea man you should try something different this isn't really working for you
 

The face isn't the worst part of this for me, the worst part is that the devs actually thought she'd realistically have enough time to grab the gun that way and that slow and wouldn't get shot. There has gotta something else going on here, like the guy holding the gun has a soft spot for her and couldn't pull the trigger or something.
 
ME1 being the best is just another idiot meme. The sequels were way better.

B-b-but muh inventory. Shut up, nerds. 😂
 
Reading this thread is kinda making me happy Mass Effect 1 is th only Mass Effect I've played (technically am playing through).
 
The third Mass Effect game killed a lot of the enthusiasm around the story of the series. Andromeda is a clean break from this, however while it's not continuing the plot of the first game, it also means it's not following up on the story and characters of the beloved first two games in the series. It's only got a few things in common with the old trilogy, so it's got to capture everyone's interest all over again.

Second point, Dragon Age Inquisition was a quasi-open world game that attempted to give the player vast areas to explore. It was filled with metagame systems. Both of these things seem true of Mass Effect Andromeda, which is encouraging players to seek out new planets, set up colonies and do all sorts of things that really have nothing to do with what the core experience of Mass Effect 1, 2, or 3 was. DA:I was critically and commercially well received, but also has a vocal community of people who were underwhelmed by or in some cases outright loathe the game. DA:I was the physical incarnation of "quantity over quality", with an excessive number of low quality, repetitive quests that all conform to a small number of quest templates. Some of them are literally autogenerated.

There is something of a fear that MEA might wind up in a similar position to inquisition, where it ticks every box that reviewers have but is nevertheless a soulless husk of a game, a design-by-committee piece of repetitive trash with shitty bloated sidequests to pad out the hour-count and featuring strong influences from mobile and f2p games layered on top for no discernible reason.
 
Reading this thread is kinda making me happy Mass Effect 1 is th only Mass Effect I've played (technically am playing through).

I personally think ME:2 is great, one of the most enjoyable RPG's I've played. ME3 was a fun game, just cheapened the series with the ending. That being said, the Multiplayer was a blast.
 
The trailers have been playing it far too safe. Andromeda will probably be a good game, but BioWare have done a very poor job selling the mystique of an entirely new galaxy. Everyone here already knows what Mass Effect is about, yet trailers only seem to emphasize gameplay and narrative situations we've already experienced.

I'm still waiting for a hook. Why do I care about the mystery of this galaxy? What kind of cool new gameplay encounters am I going to play through? Seriously, despite having a jetpack, not an ounce of combat gameplay has showcased interesting vertical levels.

The stuff we've seen so far has been snippets, bits of archetypal situations I would expect. If nothing else, I just want to see this game breathe a little.
 
Reading this thread is kinda making me happy Mass Effect 1 is th only Mass Effect I've played (technically am playing through).

ME2 was so much better it hurts, but if your favorite part of the series was bad inventory management and looking at vistas on uncharted worlds, the second and third games won't appeal.
 
I don't know why marketing team don't do meet the cast trailer. I thought those were best marketing for ME2.
 
Reading this thread is kinda making me happy Mass Effect 1 is th only Mass Effect I've played (technically am playing through).

Do you want gloomy grimdark cover-based shooters without glorious exploration of uncharted alien planets with breathtaking vistas?

Then Mass Effect 2 and 3 are for you!
 
Do you want gloomy grim dark cover-based shooters without glorious exploration of uncharted alien planets with breathtaking vistas?

Then Mass Effect 2 and 3 are for you!

I'll take that over vast swaths of emptiness with a smattering of copy-pasted prefab buildings.
 
It just looks like more of the same. Im sure it will be fine, but was kind of hoping that the move to next gen and a new trilogy would let them be more creative or ambitious.
 
It sounds like Andromeda is going in a direction I didn't want for Mass Effect (it basically seems to be doubling down on the open world MMO grind of DA: I).

I want them to return to the story/character/world-building focus of the prior games, but they're instead focusing on things like resource gathering, crafting, Mako exploration, and taking out random enemy bases. None of these things sound like they'll be narrative-driven, which is an important aspect of RPGs for me.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't have confidence in this BioWare to deliver a Witcher 3-quality RPG. I hope that at least the multiplayer will be fun.
 
Everything about Andromeda that has been shown so far looks absolutely boring with a couple of exceptions revolving around the combat, which isn't really why I come to the series in the first place.

Combined with how they handled the finale to the first trilogy, and there's no reason why I would have faith in this game.
 
She should learn from the best

Looking at that just highlighted why this is so bad. When you grab a gun you wanna move your body out of the way like Snake did or move the gun so if it gets shot the bullet won't hit you. The woman in the gif literally just moved the gun down so she'd still get shot.
 
Do you want gloomy grim dark cover-based shooters without glorious exploration of uncharted alien planets with breathtaking vistas?
The cool vistas were few and far between, and not worth suffering through the terriblely generated terrain and horrible Mako driving.

And this is coming from someone who played the game four times in various classes. ME2 was a total quantum leap in the overall quality of the experience.
 
The face isn't the worst part of this for me, the worst part is that the devs actually thought she'd realistically have enough time to grab the gun that way and that slow and wouldn't get shot. There has gotta something else going on here, like the guy holding the gun has a soft spot for her and couldn't pull the trigger or something.

Yeah, every time I watch it all I can see is someone's first self defense class in a sitcom. The weird expressions are whatever, but if that goofy shit is supposed to be some super serious action scene, whelp.
 
While Mass Effect 2 did improve combat - and also introduced a lot of great new characters plus that nice team recruitment aspect - the atmosphere that made the first game so special was lost.
 
Every Mass Effect has been worse than the previous as Bioware moved away from making a detail-oriented, relatively hard sci-fi universe to explore in favor of corridors for shoot banging and spectacle instead of internal logic.

SMH at fucking thermal clips and close range Star Wars WW2-with-lasers style space combat.

While Mass Effect 2 did improve combat - and also introduced a lot of great new characters plus that nice team recruitment aspect - the atmosphere that made the first game so special was lost.

So much this.
 
Do you want gloomy grimdark cover-based shooters without glorious exploration of uncharted alien planets with breathtaking vistas?

Then Mass Effect 2 and 3 are for you!
It's like people forgot what the mako segments really were. C'mon, felt like going through empty random generated terrains with little to no reward in exploration. Hammerhead sessions in me2 were way better.
 
We can only hope they fix or cut that animation all together come Spring.

I'm excited for Andromeda, though I never played DAI. Mass Effect 3 was the last Bioware game I played, which I didn't particularly like. The return of the Mako has me interested as I liked ME1 the most, despite it's janky combat mechanics.
 
Mass Effect 2 took the franchise to a jarringly different direction from the Trekkie sensibilities of the original.

Andromeda is suppsoed to be an olive branch to the disenfranchised, but like DA:I they may not fully reconcile either camps or commit to one direction.

(I don't know what I want myself though)
 
I will never understand why people get so upset that ME2 doesn't have the features that sucked balls in ME1.

Agreed. Mako sucked ass, the combat was terrible, and everything else was clunky and kind of awful. It's basically the same people still salty every game isn't a janky late 90s PC RPG. ME2 is still the highlight of the franchise. Assembling a team then going into a final mission with actual consequences and genuinely enjoyable gameplay is what ME should be.
 
While Mass Effect 2 did improve combat - and also introduced a lot of great new characters plus that nice team recruitment aspect - the atmosphere that made the first game so special was lost.

I don't think I'm ever going to have a gaming experience on the same level as exploring the Citadel for the first time in Mass Effect and that's just sad. It was like the gaming equivalent of Disney World or Willy Wonka's factory for me, and I played that game years after it came out.

The first game is my favorite one, but I still really like two, they are just very different games in the same universe.
 
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