Mass Effect Andromeda - I'm not Commander Shepard and this is my favorite sequel

Are these the aliens we find in the Andromeda galaxy?

Sara looks great when you don’t take her 3D model, put it in a lifeless, unnatural pose, and illuminate it with flat lighting.

I have to wonder whether the people in charge of character design for the dragon age series are working on this instead of the people who did it for the mass effect series.

I’m getting tired of bioware’s legendary bad character design. I love their games, but it is 2017 and they have been doing this for a long time now. It is time to look at the rest of the industry and realize that it is a problem.

[quote]
I’d like to give a cogent analysis of how the story in Mass Effect: Andromeda’s story evolves, or how the systems will shake out, but I was mostly deeply, hopelessly lost. Andromeda has a lot of systems in play. Crafting and modification is a major, major part of the game, with a preposterous amount of blueprints to research and then build. Systems can be investigated in a sort of cross of the scanning elements of Mass Effect 2 and 3, combined with the planetary vehicle exploration of Mass Effect (which the sequels unceremoniously discarded).

There’s a distinct sense of Mass Effect: Andromeda trying to live up to the promise of each of the previous game’s brightest hopes and dreams, and I really, desperately want to see if that works. I just didn’t have enough time to have even the slightest idea if it will — I didn’t even have enough time to fully digest some of Andromeda’s most basic mechanics, and, if I’m being honest, I found a lot of my 90 minutes a frustrating exercise.[/quote]

Sounds like the 90-minute preview event worked against them.

They should’ve known to set aside at least 3 hours to help Polygon LRN 2 PLAY.

Haha, Polygon joke! Zing!

Couple new videos.

I will say that it feels like they are trying to please everyone all of the time, and that can be dangerous. I watch this video and see them use a half dozen powers to take down a Fiend, but it involves so many profile switches on the fly. It seems overly complicated. Me? I’d just keep firing my gun until they’re dead.

Also, it appears the planet Westeros is on in Andromeda.

http://www.gamesradar.com/natalie-dormers-in-mass-effect-andromeda-along-with-a-game-of-thrones-easter-egg/

(Ha, and Gethin Anthony, who played Renly, is the voice of the ship’s engineer).

SOLD. All right, I was already in, but this sounds awesome.

I’ve read a couple of other sites’ early impressions and it seems like Polygon had less time for some reason?

RPS: First Five Hours

Seems a lot more positive, although gives me some concerns.

Sounds like I was right about skills.

[quote]
Because there’s no strict class system, you can mix and match skills from all three categories: combat, biotics, and tech. Each skill can be upgraded six times, and each category has 12 entries, with a couple of these being more generalized upgrades, like buffs to your overall biotics damage in the biotics category, or increasing your HP in the combat category. In typical Mass Effect fashion, the higher ranks for each skill will offer two upgrade choices with different effects.

What’s different for Andromeda is you’ll be able to max out every single skill in every single tree, if you want to. Lead designer Ian Frazier confirmed there’s no level cap in Andromeda, which means nothing to stop you from accruing those sweet sweet skill points.[/quote]

[quote]
If you spend a few hours focusing on guns and decide to switch over to biotics, the option’s there for you. But Frazier also mentioned that you can completely respec by spending credits in your ship’s medbay, should you want a clean slate to specialize.[/quote]

Has any preview said anything meaningful about writing or quest design, or is this basically travel the (new) galaxy, meet semi-interesting aliens and shoot them?

I don’t think anyone’s had enough time with it yet to get a sense of that.

Natalie Dormer is no Jessica Chobot.

Ah, the alternate answer to the eternal question, “What is good in life?”

Fixed that for you.

Spoilers (depending on your sensitivity) are flowing pretty freely at this point thanks to the previews, so I’d go into media blackout mode for those who care about that sort of thing.

I’m not sure how I feel about switching on the fly. That seems complicated.

I think for kids today RPG’s are “what relationships does my character have?” and not “what skills does she have?”.

I haven’t followed the genre much recently, but if that’s the case, it saddens me.

This is firmly an action game with numbers, same as Destiny or even Call of Duty. The only “role” in RPG this might have is if your choices have meaningful consequences or if you can actually role-play a type of character, like a noble hero or a seedy mercenary. I kind of doubt it though, this is clearly Bioware reaching out to the lowest common denominator.

I see you can pick your starting class, which defines your starting skills - and then completely respec first chance you get. You can pick up and use any weapon you like, you can completely change how your character plays not just on the fly, but right in the middle of combat. Pure shooter at this point. You don’t even have more than minimal control over your squad (no more ordering your engineer to take down the shields of a pesky robot hulk, for example), though the game will at least give you some breathing room when it pauses as you select a new weapon. All you can do is tell them where to stand. For some reason.

When asked why they removed the power wheel, you get an answer that sort of hurts my heart. “We decided to be way more dynamic and globally have much faster combat - you have the jump now, and the areas are more open. We felt like [the power wheel] was slowing down combat - it was an interruption we were trying not to have,” he said.

I think it looks fun, and it looks really gorgeous as well, and I’ll probably grab it. But I’ll just get a console version for $48 off Amazon Prime and play it, since it’s catering directly to the console crowd and I wouldn’t be surprised if the PC version doesn’t feel as good to control/play and would be equally unsurprised the PC version was given short shrift in the UI area as well.

Those of us that were hoping for a great sci-fi epic can still hold out hope the story has branches, the side quests are compelling and engaging, and the characters are well written and fun to interact with though, but it’s Bioware so I’m not holding my breath.