Cannot understand why Bioware made such a terrible prologue for Mass Effect Andromeda

[figandsalt]

I haven't play lots of games, but according to my understanding, most game would put the most intriguing and dedicate parts at the beginning, in order to lure players to purchase after the trial version or just expect to make a good first impression.

 

 

 

Take Fallout 4 for example. The prologue of the game is dedicate: the shiny Mr. Handy robot, your warm and cozy house in Sanctuary, detailed reaction of nearly every NPC while running to the Vault 111. I'd say this chapter have same standard as the Last of Us.

 

After you get out of the Vault, you almost immediately find your old  anthropomorphized robot Cosworth, who provides guidance and accompany in this scary wasteland. Then enter the Concord museum and encounter the first boss fight in game, which you fight a Deathclaw with a minigun in a power armor. After that you go south to the Diamond City and on the halfway you will trigger the first random mission that give you choices between helping merchants and siding with raiders.

 

You see, all things above are properly designed missions which are probably the best parts of the game. After you enter the Diamond City, game designers become lazy and the mission quality keeps falling until you enter the Institute where it kind of hit the valley bottom.

 

 

 

However, things are quite the opposite in ME:A. This game somehow put its WORST part at the very beginning, which is quite weird for any sort of publication.

 

It even didn't save it for the prologue. You remember the silly-looking face of the female protagonist? This is perhaps the first face players will see in the game and naturally they would assume that face is the best-looking one through out the game. But after I've played 80% of ME:A, I can safely say that face is actually the worst one. I mean, event NPCs with no dialog or name have a far more normal face than our heroine. After huge amount of criticism on facial expression, Bioware fixed most of problems that plays were complaining for, but they leave that specific and most critical one unchanged. I can only guess that specific face was designed by some arrogant high ranking EA management personally and Bioware art team are too afraid to tell him or her how bad it is.

 

Honestly I don't feel the story of the prologue is either impressive or dramatic, but at least it gets the job done. Still, the part that Alec Ryder sacrifices himself and appoints his son/daughter as the next pathfinder... I don't know what to say about this, patrimonialism in the 28th century? I understand that at this point, the protagonist will become the next pathfinder anyway, but this is a key point of character shaping and story telling. You cannot just give the result directly.

 

The third issue of the beginning is the squadmate system introduction. Now I am finishing the squadmate loyalty missions of ME:A and I feel the background stories and squadmates' personalities are designed quite well. Maybe not as great as those in Shepard trilogy, but still good. But look at the introduction of this fine mechanic - the first two squadmates you get are two human commandos. The first one is the second-in-command and successor of Alec Ryder. When Alec granted his title to the protagonist instead of her, she expressed a little resentment - about two or three lines - and then went back to normal as it didn't happen. The second one is some random guy in the pathfinder team, who is pretty boring and has nothing memorable. I didn't realize that he is one of my squadmate before I checked the menu. By comparison, all other four squadmembers who can be acquired later in the game are far more interesting. 

 

 

 

I can still list more things but I think I've made my point. In conclusion, ME:A puts its most dull and unimpressive part at its beginning and only comes back to its real standard after you've played 20% of the game. This whole thing is like someone in the development team want players to hate this game and quit early. 

 

I don't think this is result of some mistakes or rush job, since it all seems deliberately designed this way. I can only guess someone want to benefit from the failure of ME:A project, maybe getting rid of the project leader, maybe acquiring more budget after ME series being suspended. I never like unfounded conspiracy theory but I cannnot see any other explanation of such peculiar incident.

[RomeoZero]

The whole project was on team of freelancers,doesn't matter who was in charge they were fired as soon as the game rushed by EA. Many speculated- it was a strategic plan to hurt Bioware stocks make em $0.5 to buy them out completely later and close them, as EA love to do.They RIP many game companies but IP's of that companies are in EA now. Simple math.And I assure, you will forget ME Andro after end credits in 6 months, and never wanna replay that game again. Better replay Metro Redux series,now thats the team of CDPR like quality devs are, failout 4 nervously smoke in the toilet ))     

[Clea Strange]

yep EA destroys any company they get their hands on, one of my favorite game company was the one that did Command and Conquer

[jxm]

*shrugs* With all the minor flaws ... MEA is still the superior story and gameplay compared to ME2 and ME3 ...

 

MAss Effect went downhill after the first, and never recovered from dropping the ball with the nonsensical way they went in MAss Effect 2 with the stupid story and way too many, often uninteresting, squadmates. Instead of going forward with the Reaper-Story, which took a backseat...and then ME3 had to happen, which was simply a disaster all around, except for some side stories here and there...

 

MEA ... gets its job done at least. Would have preferred it not having take place in the ME Universe though...always had to try and forget the stupidity that happened 600 years ago.

 

It was mostly the premise of MEA though that got me intrigued ... waking up the "next day", but 600 years later...that's both fascinating and terrifying...sadly the fake outrage on the Internet over the animations killed that franchise before it started. Would have liked to see more of Ryder and co from here on ... thanks, Youtube-Clickbaiters and Outrage-"Fans"

 

Now all I can hope is Bioware/EA goes Capcom and Remakes the MAss Effect series...not just the graphics....the entire story needs a rewrite though...all the way to the end...

[27X]

1 hour ago, figandsalt said:

ME:A puts its most dull and unimpressive part at its beginning and only comes back to its real standard after you've played 20% of the game.

This is a baldfaced lie. ALL, The Sum, The Entirety of AndDramaDuh is mediocre junior high fan fiction. All of it. All. Every. Also. Aside from the Loyalty missions there is nothing worth investing in here. The combat is solid, but hampered by infinite scaling enemies which makes leveling literally pointless, the Kett literally have NO motivation other than "we're dicks also something something joss whedon b villain something something space pope", the angara are literally krogan politics over emotional vaguely space italian stereotypes stuck on the batarian skeleton. There's nothing in Andromeda that's unique. That Mac Walters refused to walk back his massive fuck ups and refuses to discuss ME3 but feels competent enough to still run the story barn is the literal definition of cognitive dissonance. Train wreck incarnate.

 

1 hour ago, RomeoZero said:

Better replay Metro Redux

I'm not paying a dime for a series that uses someone as openly greedy as Koch media, whom 4A knew full well had a history of fucking over consumers and devs alike, you get in bed with devil, you get the horns. When Exodus is back off of Epic's exclu$ive deal, I'll pick it up. A year from now. For 5 bucks.

[Reginald_001]

I'd love to play ME:A once but there's no way to get it without installing bloatware, new stores, new Steam clones and whatnot.

I bought Prince of Persia through steam, then when I run it, I must install Origin, is MUST register, I MUST stay online, so they can spy on my gaming behavior. So there I went, back to redeem it and get my money back...

 

Thanks, but no thanks.

One store (Steam) taking up my memory and CPU and disk real-estate is enough.

[MrEsturk]

ME:A was created by a second string branch of the company that had only handled creating DLC add-ons up to that point. Didn't help the guy in charge of that branch at the time was more interested in being a Twitter warrior than doing his job. So pretty much no matter what the game was going to have some flaws due to poor leadership and the lack of experience of the team creating it.

[FauxFurry]

They made such a terrible prologue either because there was no one willing to tell them that it was terrible before it was released to the public or because they didn't really care since the whole thing was made to cash in on the name of the Mass Effect franchise. There isn't some deeper more complex reason behind it waiting to be found after much investigation and introspection. 

 

Now that the name has lost quite a bit of its luster, they are doing what would have made more sense to do in the first place by creating another similar yet unconnected sci-fi franchise, Anthem. 

[sen4mi]

I kind of liked MEA, but I must admit I never finished it.

 

(I got sort of side tracked on multi-player and then never got back into the campaign.)