Starker on 10/7/2017 at 05:54
Well, there are three new species in the game and we don't really know how the third one looks or even whether they are corporeal, only that they are a type 2 civilization on the Kardashev scale. But it's kind of how it's been in the series, isn't it? Turians are the militaristic law and order types, Salarians are the ingenious inventors, Volus are the enterprising merchants, Asari represent feminine diplomacy, Krogan are the warrior race. Tropes are the bread and butter of Bioware for a reason.
As for ME2, it had less guns, though, didn't it? IIRC it streamlined weapons, equipment and skills considerably. Anyway, I never cared about any of that, as I never liked the series for its gameplay, which was a tedious chore at best and a grueling punishment at worst. And I never liked the shallow pretensions of roleplaying or the laughable dating simulator romances. All I ever cared about was the space opera.
Also, if you're looking for the tightly structured cutscene-heavy story that you got from ME1 or ME2, you won't find it in ME:A. It is much more episodic and exploration driven. It's probably a good idea to watch a fair bit of a let's play before buying to get an idea what the game is about.
Starker on 17/7/2017 at 16:03
I played ME1 over the weekend and it was an interesting experience right after playing Andromeda. It was quite surprising how poorly some parts of ME1 have held up and how much of an improvement Andromeda is over them.
The biggest surprise for me was how much more mobility there is in Andromeda. Just being able to jump is a gamechanger as far as exploration is concerned and the jetpack boost makes the difference like night and day. And you can sprint in Andromeda, so you can actually make a pretty fast beeline to your target most of the time. Also, driving the Mako in ME1 felt like torture after Andromeda's Nomad. It's not an exaggeration to say that the Nomad drives better on rocky terrain than the Mako drives on a road. Not only does the Nomad have a speed boost, you can drive up some pretty steep slopes with the 6-wheel drive and the vehicle isn't in constant danger of tipping over in the process. All of the above made exploring Andromeda's sandboxes, which generally are bigger than ME1's sandboxes, much more enjoyable.
The second issue was how much padding there was in ME1. I remembered it as a story heavy game, but there is actually a fair amount of planets to explore, side missions to complete, and pointless objects to collect. Andromeda was surprisingly enough not much worse in that regard, even though it's much more of an open world game. With fast travel and being able to move fast on any terrain, it certainly felt much less of a chore. Also, even if it's not quite at the level of Witcher, there has clearly been some effort to make the side content feel more relevant to the story or at least contextualise it better in Andromeda. Especially the loyalty missions tie into the main story pretty heavily and are more than just another task you have to do.
The main story of ME1 still holds up pretty well, though. Compared to Andromeda it's more dramatic and therefore more memorable, quite fitting for a space opera. It's better paced and more focused as well -- very early on it establishes a clear threat and sets a goal for you to do something about it whereas in Andromeda things take more time to set up and are less clear cut. The villain in ME1, even though he's a bit cartoonish, is fleshed out much better and even has a character arc. Compared to that, the villain in Andromeda feels flat, but he's more interesting than Harbinger at least.
The main character and the companions, however, feel much more static in ME1, with the notable exception of Garrus. In ME1, you start as a hero and end as a hero, the only choice is whether it's a nice and caring or a rude and selfish kind of hero or a bland and non-committal kind of hero. In contrast, Andromeda starts you out in your father's shadow, openly doubted and disrespected and you end up proving yourself as a leader. And the companions exist as more than just infodumps of "let me tell you about my culture and/or backstory". Heck, even some of the non-companion crew gets some character growth in Andromeda.
Anyway, now that I'm done with the game (as is the game, in all likelihood) and have had time to digest it, I think Andromeda would have been a solid start for a new series and I'm actually sorry to see the studio end this way. It had some intriguing sci-fi ideas and parts of the story felt genuinely touching. Also, despite the presentation having some serious issues, some of the scenes and animations are actually the best I've seen in a game. It's pretty clear now that all the unpolished and janky parts of the game are not due to lack of skill and ability, but more due to the game being rushed out prematurely.
Sulphur on 17/7/2017 at 19:35
ME1 had boilerplate sidequests to an almost literal degree. I think I've seen enough of those reused warehouses dotted across the galaxy to last me a lifetime. Part of the game's charm was in how janky shit could be, though, and I didn't hate the Mako as much as most. It was never fun, but I never felt it was a terrible idea, just a good one that was poorly executed. You could see what they were shooting for, and that was charming in itself. Some of those planets were kinda nice to rove around in, and the fact that it was a new setting with things to discover helped it along even if it was all very paper-thin in the end. Good thing the main quest was pretty great, though.
Don't get me wrong, but I've yet to see any actual writing or character beats from ME:A's promotional material that I'd consider as 'good'. For reference, I'd not consider most of ME1-3 to have a lot of that either, but we're all fans of Mordin and Garrus, and they managed to carry sequels two and three a fair bit despite having personality vacuums like Jacob, Kaiden, and Vega suck up all the air around them. ME:A's design template seems to be vast amounts of formalised busywork scattered with some decent bits here and there from what you've written. I don't think that's good enough, personally.
Starker on 18/7/2017 at 00:37
I liked the idea of the Mako. If only it was implemented better. In Andromeda, it feels like what Mako should have been.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
ME:A's design template seems to be vast amounts of formalised busywork scattered with some decent bits here and there from what you've written. I don't think that's good enough, personally.
Yeah, I'm not saying it's great and I wouldn't recommend it at anything other than a pretty steep discount, but it's a fairly decent game with some good bits (and some bad bits). It's pretty hard to show examples of the good bits without spoilers, but here's a funny scene from the loyalty mission of the most obnoxious character in the game:
[video=youtube;ztCmZCP1YxY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztCmZCP1YxY[/video]
Sulphur on 18/7/2017 at 05:51
That is indeed pretty funny. Can't help noticing the timing of the VOs is off and the line readings are weirdly stilted. Would have helped if they'd done it with the VA's mocapping the scene like with the Uncharteds, but I guess with games of this scope and duration that's often financially impossible.
Starker on 18/7/2017 at 14:27
There's a lot of humour in the game, especially in the party banter when driving around and in party interactions in general. Also, one of the dialog choices is usually something less serious/more casual and if you pick it a lot, the game will apparently keep track of it and change your character's personality a little bit. Don't know how extensive this is, but I noticed that a couple of scenes played out a bit differently on Youtube than in my game (I already had a silly character with a name like Mumen Ryder (German Shepard in ME1/2) and therefore chose a lot of the casual dialog options).
As for the VO timing and stuff, yeah, there's a fair bit of unpolished stuff like that in the game where you can tell that it's mostly algorithms and not fine-tuned by a human hand. And I don't know if it's really excusable for a AAA title in the post-Witcher 3 world. From what I read, the animation team was severely understaffed, some of the animation was outsourced with less than ideal quality control, and most of the game was made in 18 months, so it's down to development troubles more than anything else. Personally, I can overlook it, but it definitely hurts immersion and it's one of the bigger flaws of the game.
Starker on 31/7/2017 at 06:02
Also played ME2 (or Mass Effect: Collectors Edition, if you can forgive the pun), and it's still my least favourite game in the series. It's funny, I remembered it being more polished than the first game, but it was actually far more buggy. In the first game, I had an occasional crash or a gamebreaking bug where I got stuck inside level geometry due to enemy biotic powers or something, but in the second game, it was much worse -- I got stuck on ledges with no way off, I fell out of the world, I got stuck on the galaxy map, etc. It's weird how everyone talks about how buggy Andromeda is, but ME2 was worse in my experience. Of course, this might have to do with the fact that I played Andromeda after it was patched, but then again I played ME2 after it was patched too.
Bugs and glitches aren't the reason why I don't like ME2, though. Sure, they are annoying, but I've always been able to overlook such things when the game is otherwise interesting. And it's not like ME2 doesn't have interesting parts in it. There are side missions with interesting characters and some pretty good writing, but they are absolutely overwhelmed by all the crappy stuff in the game. I'm not going to cover all the issues I have with the game, as Shamus Young has done (
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=28582) an extensive analysis on it, but here's a few things that bugged me after freshly finishing Andromeda and ME1...
The minigames are much more irritating. The planet scanning minigame doesn't even make sense -- what, do you have a refinery somewhere? Cerberus spent an exorbitant amount of money on you and your ship, but you have to personally scavenge for raw materials when you're on a mission? And do you really have to deplete entire solar systems for one lousy new gun? To be fair, it's not like playing Frogger and Simon Says in the first game was particularly interesting either and it kind of defeated the point of having skillchecks, but in ME2 the minigames really got on my nerves due to how tedious and time-consuming and frequent they were. In contrast, Andromeda has you playing Sudoku, but at least it's few and far between.
ME2 is much more claustrophobic. The Citadel and the other hubs in ME2 are smaller than even one section of the Citadel in ME1 and coming off the open sandboxes of ME1 and Andromeda, the change to linear corridors interspersed by battle arenas was quite jarring. The Mako may have handled poorly, but at least it brought variety to the gameplay and made it feel like more than just a series of shooting galleries.
The movement somehow sucks much more than in ME1. Now there is one button for a lot of things and contextual controls are the worst. Want to run past an obstacle... whoops, I guess you really wanted to hunker down behind it. Want to run past a character... whoops, looks like you actually wanted to talk to them. Want to have a quick peek from behind a chest high wall... whoops, looks like you actually wanted to vault over it and get killed. Also, even after a short distance you're out of breath like you just ran a marathon. I don't get why this limit is even there. In other games, a stamina meter is there to prevent you from running circles around your enemies or it's a shared resource forcing you to make tactical decisions, but ME is cover shooter where you spend most of your time hunkering behind chest-high walls (unless you decide to skip all that nonsense and play as vanguard, of course). It makes no sense to limit your mobility that way, unless it's there to show how out of shape your character is. Which leads me to...
Your character is much more pathetic. In the first game, at least you had the illusion of choice, the option to say you don't want to work with Nihilus or to hang up on the Council. In ME2, you don't get to show any significant resistance to the terrorist organisation that you are forced to work for, and you still take all the blame for it. Also, in the first game, your squad mates were queuing up to join you, but here you have to go ask them to join. And then you run around solving their personal problems to keep them happy. And then you run around the ship like, "Hey, got a minute?" and they are all, "I don't want to talk to you." or "I'm busy." as if you're some kind of a loser.
The villain is much more pathetic. You don't even fight the villain directly, it just comes down on the battlefield occasionally to take control of some mook and threaten you and get its ass kicked. It's kind of like the Russian villain in Iron Man 2 who kept "winning". And it's not like you as a player even have a reason to care about the colonists. In ME1, at least Saren taunts you in front of the Council, giving you some sort of an excuse to get personally invested in going after him. And in Andromeda it will get quite personal eventually. In ME2, however, the only colonist you meet is an asshole and actually nobody seems to be that bothered about the collectors -- not even the colonists.
I could go on, but I'd just be repeating a lot of the stuff that has already been already covered. In any case, I look at all the 10/10 reviews and I wonder how ME2 got so much praise while Andromeda got so much flak. The way I see it, it doesn't have less issues than Andromeda and it doesn't have any better gameplay and it has worse exploration and a nonsensical plot, but somehow it's the perfect game while Andromeda is supposed to be the worst in the series. It just doesn't add up for me. Anyway, on to Mass Effect 3 (the reason I've been replaying the series). I'm curious to see if it's as bad as everyone says it is.
Sulphur on 31/7/2017 at 07:00
I don't think everyone has the same priorities you do when it comes to appraising the series, hence the major difference of opinion. Count me in amongst the people pissed off at having the same key for use, take cover, and run, but you get used to it. Anyway, I think we all said that ME2's main campaign was pretty weak compared to everything around it, and The Collectors were pretty milquetoast antagonists despite the little 'twist' about their origins.
If you don't like ME2's companions and assorted quests, sure, it'll be the worst in the series for you. I liked 'em fine, but I missed the open-ish exploration of the original, which is why both end up being just about equal for me, because what one gives, the other takes away, and vice-versa.
Starker on 31/7/2017 at 10:46
I like some of ME2's companions. They are the reason the game doesn't get an even worse score from me. Some of the best writing in the whole game is in those companion quests. It's just that a lot of them feel a tad... fanservicy, for the lack of a better word, and not really relevant to what you're supposed to be doing. It's side-content most of the time and feels like busywork at its worst. In ME1, the process felt more or less organic, but in ME2 if felt like you're gathering a team for the sake of gathering a team, because it's a trope that Bioware does. And it fragments the story in the process.
Sulphur on 31/7/2017 at 10:57
Yep. ME2's priorities were clearly going all Seven Samurai on the plot arc ME1 had started, which was enjoyable but clearly at odds with the Dark Star Trek vibe ME1 had. It's a pretty radical shift in tone, and nonsensical in terms of how it screws the supposedly hard deadline you have, but the benefit is a distilled series of enjoyable character bits and conversation. Know how I dealt with it? I pretended the main plot didn't exist. Because it really was bollocks by the time I got to the suicide mission (I saved almost everybody, but I didn't really care too much if someone like Legion died. And he did, but they ...soft rebooted* his character to deal with that anyway.) ME3 doesn't really bandage this in the end, but it manages to be fun if you're, once again, okay with ignoring the fact that you have a hard deadline to Save the World/Galaxy.
*ba-dum-tssh
