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Mass Effect Andromeda

Darkening Demise

By Darkening Demise,
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Kendo 2

Kendo 2

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If they had the tech to make the arks then they had the tech to make a fleet capable of defeating the reapers.  And yes, the female Krogan gave birth to 40 babies while they were frozen.  There's dialogue in the game that talks about it.  And the relays are indestructible, so how did the Geth take them apart to make a telescope?

 

ME:Andromeda is a reset so Bioware can attempt to erase the mistakes they made in ME3.  Plain and simple.

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Veniat

Veniat

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If they had the tech to make the arks then they had the tech to make a fleet capable of defeating the reapers.  And yes, the female Krogan gave birth to 40 babies while they were frozen.  There's dialogue in the game that talks about it.  And the relays are indestructible, so how did the Geth take them apart to make a telescope?

 

ME:Andromeda is a reset so Bioware can attempt to erase the mistakes they made in ME3.  Plain and simple.

For one thing the reapers had possibly millions of years to prepare their fleets, the rest of the galaxy? A few years.  Building fleets didn't work for any of the previous cycles, why would it work here? If they could just build fleets they would've done that in an instant, if they even could build fleets after the reapers attacked and destroyed most of the interplanetary infrastructure including several shipyards and space stations.

 

I didn't see anything about Krogan giving birth, so I can't really say anything about it, all I saw mentioned was genetic engineering done whilst they were frozen.  The Krogan could've been woken up during hibernation at some point to give birth but that doesn't make any sense.

 

Do you know nothing about Mass Effect's lore? The relay's aren't indestructible they're just incredibly difficult to damage.  Part of the Object Rho mission leads to the destruction of the Alpha relay in the Bahak system.  If anyone at all could dismantle a relay safely, and without destroying the system it contains, it would be a hive mind race of collective AI. 

 

If anything I'd criticize about this game it would be the character creator and the strange swollen head NPCs you see all over the place;  I'd mention some of the bugs like the goofy NPC pathing and animation, and some of the eyelid problems in the facial animation, but the game hasn't even been released yet outside of the ten hour trial.  I'll give it a few weeks at least to see how Bioware responds before being too critical about bugs. 

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prinyo

prinyo

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If anything I'd criticize about this game it would be the character creator and the strange swollen head NPCs you see all over the place;  I'd mention some of the bugs like the goofy NPC pathing and animation, and some of the eyelid problems in the facial animation, but the game hasn't even been released yet outside of the ten hour trial.  I'll give it a few weeks at least to see how Bioware responds before being too critical about bugs. ld dismantle a relay safely, and without destroying the system it contains, it would be a hive mind race of collective AI. 

 

I guess it depends on the person if the CC is more important than logical and lore breaking inconsistencies in a game like this. We play games for different reasons. And if something that can be fixed with a patch and mods (the CC and faces) is more worrying than something that was done on purpose and will not be changed - the writing and some of the concepts in the game. And you don't need to wait for the game to progress, many things are established in the codex and in the dialogue in the first 3-4 hours. 

 

Creating all the tech required for the AI (Andromeda Initiative) is a colossal effort and requires technology advancement that simply doesn't exist between ME2 and ME3 when it is supposed to have happened. And if a race was capable of using the relays in a way to create a telescope that would allow them to observe individual planets(!) in a different galaxy in real time imagine how different ME3 would have been. I also believe the idea of such a telescope is impossible regardless. It simply makes no sense in the context of how the mass relays work. 

 

The AI (Andromeda Initiative) is completely out of place and makes no sense in the context of the original trilogy. To make it worse they did try to somehow position it within the lore by handpicking parts of it and ignoring other parts and a as result it exists in a schizophrenic state. 

 

Or, remember the "synthesis" ending in ME3? The one that was never really explained and that doesn't make any sense? Well, this is now in the core of your gameplay in Andromeda. It is the reason why you and only you in the Universe are a god like being. Forget everything about Kaidan or Jack.

Simply tell SAM to switch you to biotic mode (profile) and you are now suddenly a biotic god... No powers and training required. It's Magic...

Here it is in a video: 

 

 https://youtu.be/Wm7RTHz4eJs?t=40m23s

 

 

 

Seems there is a confusion about the Krogans. I think if you watch the video you will understand what Kendo is talking about. 

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Veniat

Veniat

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Posted

 

 

If anything I'd criticize about this game it would be the character creator and the strange swollen head NPCs you see all over the place;  I'd mention some of the bugs like the goofy NPC pathing and animation, and some of the eyelid problems in the facial animation, but the game hasn't even been released yet outside of the ten hour trial.  I'll give it a few weeks at least to see how Bioware responds before being too critical about bugs. ld dismantle a relay safely, and without destroying the system it contains, it would be a hive mind race of collective AI. 

 

I guess it depends on the person if the CC is more important than logical and lore breaking inconsistencies in a game like this. We play games for different reasons. And if something that can be fixed with a patch and mods (the CC and faces) is more worrying than something that was done on purpose and will not be changed - the writing and some of the concepts in the game. And you don't need to wait for the game to progress, many things are established in the codex and in the dialogue in the first 3-4 hours. 

 

Creating all the tech required for the AI (Andromeda Initiative) is a colossal effort and requires technology advancement that simply doesn't exist between ME2 and ME3 when it is supposed to have happened. And if a race was capable of using the relays in a way to create a telescope that would allow them to observe individual planets(!) in a different galaxy in real time imagine how different ME3 would have been. I also believe the idea of such a telescope is impossible regardless. It simply makes no sense in the context of how the mass relays work. 

 

The AI (Andromeda Initiative) is completely out of place and makes no sense in the context of the original trilogy. To make it worse they did try to somehow position it within the lore by handpicking parts of it and ignoring other parts and a as result it exists in a schizophrenic state. 

 

Or, remember the "synthesis" ending in ME3? The one that was never really explained and that doesn't make any sense? Well, this is now in the core of your gameplay in Andromeda. It is the reason why you and only you in the Universe are a god like being. Forget everything about Kaidan or Jack.

Simply tell SAM to switch you to biotic mode (profile) and you are now suddenly a biotic god... No powers and training required. It's Magic...

Here it is in a video: 

 

 https://youtu.be/Wm7RTHz4eJs?t=40m23s

 

 

 

Seems there is a confusion about the Krogans. I think if you watch the video you will understand what Kendo is talking about. 

 

The problem with the size of ships in Mass Effect wasn't the technology precisely but the resources, and costs, required to build them.  I get it's kinda strange though considering one of the main problems with mass effect drives was the need to vent excess static electricity into a planet's magnetic field.  I'm guessing there's some kind of alternate technology available for very large ships but I don't know.

 

I'm guessing it was meant to imply some kind of adjusted mass effect corridor projected over a vast distance allowing signals to be transmitted and received over vast distances, and considering it needed multiple dismantled mass effect relays to do so I can't imagine any government in the Mass Effect universe wanting to put the money into something like that when they already have essentially absolute control and surveillance over their people via the council and the spectres. 

 

The SAM profile thing or synthesis ending makes no sense to me either.  I guess you could vaguely justify it if he was already a biotic and SAM is simply imprinting the memories and experience directly onto his brain, but I don't get that bit either. 

 

They woke up 14 months previous to that conversation, not right just then, the people on the Nexus have been there for ages, over a year at least.  

 

The 'Didn't you just wake up? Which female(s) got pregnant & delivered 40 live eggs?' should be like 'Didn't you just wake up fourteen months ago? Which female(s) got pregnant & delivered 40 live eggs?', the pathfinder crew with mostly humans woke up shortly before that conversation, the Nexus crew with the Krogan woke up fourteen months previous.

 

Like I said earlier, Mass Effect Andromeda has it's flaws, I just don't think the things Kendo pointed out were valid given a good understanding of the series' lore. 

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Jazzman

Jazzman

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As a marginal note on the ME3 ending.

 

Ask yourselves whether Kansas goes bye-bye in The Wizard of Oz, what the experience of Dorothy actually means and what might have caused it. Then cut out the Tornado sequence in which the farm house gets lifted up to Oz and add a kumbaya sequence w/o Dorothy at the end of the movie. That's the ME-ending. A small but decisive and hard to digest sequence got cut out in the Run to the Beam. That has caused the common confusion in the com. To find the glitch, the seam, the 'tornado strike effect' in the run you have to watch more carefully for a sudden change in both speed and screen. Not everything Dorothy Shepard sees is ME reality. And watch out for a strange corpse lying on the ground in the rubble of London, BioWare missed to remove from the revised, extended final sequence that starts following Shepard's fall into the nothingness.

 

So, the trouble one has with the puzzling ending in ME 3 is caused by the inevitable inability of BioWare to explain w/o ref to removed piece of the puzzle why Shepard, in an attempt to solve the problem with the wicked reapers and their technological witchcraft, meets the Wonderful Catalyst of Oz... actually again and again for haunted by manifestations of the boy, now as hologram to keep the thrill to the end. Five years after you still believe that BioWare's Dorothy has survived the tornado in London to get the ultimate answers by the little wizard of her dreams, given with voices of which Shepard's own is one, right? Hmmm... that's indoctrination at its best ^^

 

To believe that a physically unfit 60-year old Mr Anderson would easily outrun Shepard and a fit assault team on the quarter of a mile in stealth mode is just smart humbug cuz it's 'the hare and the hedgehog' fairy tale, wishful thinking. You see the last concoctions of Shepard's brain struggling with the inevitable - dying time is here, in front of the beam. That, however, is what 'somebody on top' denied BioWare to release and their 'art' (as they just loved to call it) turned into surreal crap in the forced edit. Take your choice, Shepard! Game over anyway. And Harbinger leaves the theatre of operations.

 

The guys of the AI are in fact the last survivors of the civilizations in the Milky Way. Noah's Ark. There is no way back anymore, they just don't know it yet. Or as Harbinger eloquently puts it:

 

Hope is irrelevant.

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prinyo

prinyo

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Posted

 

[ .. ]

 

But my point is that it is MEA that actually contradicts the OT's lore. 

 

From my point of view if I'm going to spend more than 100 hours in a sci-fi world things should make sense. And playing the trial I had quite a lot of problems accepting the things the game is telling me and wants me to believe. So far it looks that in order to enjoy the game I need to suppress my logical thinking and common sense. 

 

The sidequest that expects me to run around catching dad-Ryder's memories in "Jaws of Hakkon" style didn't help at all!

 

 

Yes, the Krogan did arrive earlier. I guess the confusion here comes from the fact that the Nexus was supposed to transport only it's staff and not a full population of a species. But is seems somebody at the AI assumed it is OK to put a full Krogan clan on the most important piece of tech they send to Andromeda because - what can go wrong, right?

However this is not the main problem the video is talking about. The main problem is about how cryogenics works.

 

The way the Mass Relays work is that they create a corridor between themselves. The telescope thing seems to say that the Geth have found a way to create such a corridor between a (set of) Mass Relay and any random point in the Universe. This is a huge development and I don't see any hints in ME3 that they have the potential to do it or have any benefits from having such knowledge.   

 

 

 

 

 

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Veniat

Veniat

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But my point is that it is MEA that actually contradicts the OT's lore. 

 

From my point of view if I'm going to spend more than 100 hours in a sci-fi world things should make sense. And playing the trial I had quite a lot of problems accepting the things the game is telling me and wants me to believe. So far it looks that in order to enjoy the game I need to suppress my logical thinking and common sense. 

 

The sidequest that expects me to run around catching dad-Ryder's memories in "Jaws of Hakkon" style didn't help at all!

 

 

Yes, the Krogan did arrive earlier. I guess the confusion here comes from the fact that the Nexus was supposed to transport only it's staff and not a full population of a species. But is seems somebody at the AI assumed it is OK to put a full Krogan clan on the most important piece of tech they send to Andromeda because - what can go wrong, right?

However this is not the main problem the video is talking about. The main problem is about how cryogenics works.

 

The way the Mass Relays work is that they create a corridor between themselves. The telescope thing seems to say that the Geth have found a way to create such a corridor between a (set of) Mass Relay and any random point in the Universe. This is a huge development and I don't see any hints in ME3 that they have the potential to do it or have any benefits from having such knowledge.   

 

I don't get it either, why would Alec Ryder even do that? I can understand it partially, I guess, he's meant to be searching for locations similar enough to what's in the memory to kindof trigger them, or something like that; but it doesn't seem logical for him to even do so in the first place.

 

Yes, none of that makes any sense either, but my original post was only referencing Krogan giving birth in-transit; there's nothing in-game saying that the Krogan gave birth whilst frozen, that video takes that dialogue line entirely out of context to try and make its' points. I don't even get how it got that 40 live eggs number in the first place since there's no references to the actual number of births that have occurred. 

 

My point is more that it doesn't actually contradict any in-game lore, yes the in-game lore states that mass relays work by projecting a corridor between themselves to transport vessels from one relay to another, but there's nothing explicitly stating that they can't do so if manipulated correctly, and given the current information about how FTL drives work and element zero manipulates the environment there's nothing saying it's impossible.

 

It'd make no sense, why would element zero only be able to project mass-free corridors between other bits of element zero? I could get it if the mass relays were designed that way so you could safely slow down ships on the other end, or perhaps to actually keep the corridor stable all the way through, but not because it's impossible to do else wise. Who's to say that transport wasn't the reason why the Geth were doing it in the first place? and til they were successful the Geth were simply using it as telescope.  

 

There's not enough information given to dismiss something as against the given lore, there's information enough to state x is possible given current lore, but not that y is impossible; Improbable, yes, but not impossible. 

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prinyo

prinyo

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Continuing the first impressions from here.

 

 

Squad-mates

 

For some time it seemed that the combat will be what will make the game good. However the trial let many people feel the consequences of having almost no control over what your squad-mates are doing. Not only you can't change their weapons, but you have no access to their powers at all. One of the biggest problems with the combat in DAI was that the AI of the party members can override your instructions and do whatever it thinks it wants to do. This is now developed to the extreme where you don't even have any say in if and when they will use some power. (In DAI you could also tell them to never use some ability or to use another one more often if you didn't want to bother with micromanagement during fights. This is now also gone.)

This makes fights basically impossible to plan or some kind of a strategic thinking during a fight also mostly impossible. You have no idea if and when your squad-mates will do something. This is very bad news for the players coming from ME and DA expecting team effort in fights.
From my personal point of view this makes the squad selection irrelevant. In the previous ME games I would select squad-mates whose powers and abilities compliment mine and would benefit the team. There is no point of doing it now. It also means that sometimes the squad-mates will be a liability - working against what you try to achieve.

But it is important to say that the combat does feel fun - different from ME but fun. 

The squad-mates are also not a very clever bunch. When you are exploring you will often hear somebody scream or things falling apart. It is not because something important is happening, simply someone didn't pay attention where they are going and fell of some high place or did something else stupid.

 

 

Story

 

The game relies a lot on telling you what is happening instead of actually showing you. SAM and your squad-mates will often tell you not only what you need to do next, but what is actually happening. One example is a scene where you see a single human fighting aliens and after that you see a single dead human body - his body, but apparently the scene was supposed to be a massacre. Or squad-mates react to something that is apparently happening right now, but I can't see anything. At first I guessed it is because I'm bad at this, but I see more people having the same issue.
Often I found myself running towards the nearest quest marker or doing what I was told to do without having any idea why.

 

10 hours not enough?

 

Many people say that 10 hours is not enough in order to judge a "big game like this". I don't know, this is like almost 1/3 of my full ME1 playthru (35 hours). In a big game like DAI a lot did happen in the first 10 hours.  Looking back at the 10 hours MEA trial - what is the cool, breathtaking or extraordinary thing I did or that happened - nothing.

 

 

Overal experience

 

All this is very subjective, those are only my thoughts about the game. I started the trial with lowered expectations after watching and reading what others have experienced. And yet it still felt underwhelming in all aspects. I'll borrow the most popular piece of opinion about FO4, as for me it fits perfectly here : "MEA looks like a good game, just not a good Mass Effect game". While playing I was thinking - forget Mass Effect, this is actually a cool sci-fi shooter about teenagers in space. And if I approach it this way it will be quite fun, entertaining and probably sometimes interesting. 

 

 

So what?

 

No mater what the reviews and other players say, we are going to play this game. This is going to be the guilty pleasure of the ME fans - they are going to like it and they are going to hate themselves for that. It also reminded me that the time goes by and I'm not getting any younger. The dialogue, the voice acting, the whole dynamic of the game - this is the teenage variation of the Mass Effect.

 

 

P.S. This is the most game-y from the recent Bioware games yet. Yes, even more game-y than DAI. The prime, but not the only, example is how the save options change depending on if you are playing a "prime mission" (main quest) or not. They said that they are looking at TW3 in how to make the game feel more organic and have better questing/story but what they did was actually the opposite - made the game less immersive and consistent. 

 

P.P.S. I didn't say anything about the CC because I don't use it in games like this. But there is a sub where people post some good faces they managed to create with it. 

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Aria

Aria

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Posted

Thanks prinyo, appreciate the time you taken to write your impressions.

 

The tactical combat is off then, cant say im surprised, the moment they announced its fast-paced could have guessed where this is going, plus some of the dialogues i seen were just completely inane..

 

Wasnt going to buy it anyway, but this just confirms for me to stay the hell away from anything EAware.

Nier Automata unlocks soon, Styx is out also...now just going to wait for any news on Cyberpunk.

 

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Darkening Demise

Darkening Demise

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I'm looking forward to the Rule 34 most. After DAI and the attempt to go full on Tumblr plus with a shitty combat system and bland open world that made it feel more like a generic singleplayer MMORPG rather than the story driven fun of DAO pulled off I'll wait and see if things improve......those facial animations.....scarred for life. :s

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Zor2k13

Zor2k13

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ME3 was so bad because by then it was a game made by these jerks running things now so they wanted to destroy the whole idea of ME in general and tell a story that nobody would like they wanted things to end badly so they could tell their screwed up ideas in a new game. This is the same reasoning behind the opening of farcry 3 where some guy in a red and white hawaiian shirt is killed right away because he represents the character design from the first farcry game and they wanted to completely kill off that way of thinking. These terrible writers and etc don't like conventional stories they think the destruction of "the norm" is required for them to establish their bullshit ideas as the new "norm" for whatever reasons. They will fail and lose money for the companies they work for.

 

Nobody thinks of atari the same way now as they did back in the height of atari success. Mention that name now and most people ask are they still in business? This is the fate of EA and some others someday the only thing people will remember about them was they made some shitty ending to a game that most people forgot about. Like I said earlier this game looks more like an argument than a game like people were doing things on purpose during development to sabotage it. Who would release a big name game looking like this?

 

Everything is connected no matter what it is so this is just part of other problems going on in other industries. As time passes we will see what those problems are and how they are connected.

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Zor2k13

Zor2k13

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They don't like shepard because he is by default presented as male even though they had him lookin kinda minority of some kind almost all video game main characters and player characters have always been a white guy so they are trying to do something different thinking it will draw in more people or other people I don't know but more like it is just increasingly sjw which is the trend right now. They could have done the whole player character thing totally different through all three games by never showing that character in ads and materials so people would be able to see themselves as that character whenever they think about the game let alone play it. By giving the player character an appearance of any kind they kinda ruined it for us.

 

All these companies think the popular demographic is hispanic now but that is not the case and by trying to say it is this or that doesn't change anything it still appears divisive like I said they should have just never showed the player character which I think would have drawn in way more people.

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