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

Bingo!

Why are they racing other Milky Way galaxy races to the doodad? Aren’t they supposed to be the first?

I hate how “comic-book” narratives always have the bad guys waiting on the other side of the lost door our intrepid heros just spent an adventure trying to find and open.

Finally got to watch the IGN video last night - while the mission definitely had a very by-the-numbers roteness to it, it also had that Mass Effect “feel” to it. I’d rather see some demonstration of the open world aspects, opportunities to explore, that’s what attracts me. But I definitely didn’t see anything that turned me off.

Same reaction to the video here.

I’m still thinking of activating my EA Access membership code that I bought a few months ago. I was saving it for when I actually had time to play EA games before activating it for a second year. But this would be a good use of EA Access.

Oh man, I forgot about EA Access. You get to play the game a week early right? But just the first ten hours?

Almost a week early. 5 days early. You can play the 10 hour trial starting on March 16. The game releases on March 21.

Hm, have to think about whether I need EA Access enough to just get in on ME early. It’s funny, I was so fired up for ME3 - I remember @Editer hooked me up with the demo before it was released publically - and I’ll probably cave, knowing me. A good spacefaring adventure would be a real tonic for me these days.

Loading a lot more of the game into memory so less disk IO/loading time between planets/w.e.; or I suppose they could have optimized for lower loading times in other ways.

The crusade was basically for games to utilize the 64-bit processors we’ve had since 2005 or thereabouts, instead of being restricted to a ~4GB memory limitation of the 90s. I.e. “bigger” games that do not hit the ~2GB ram ceiling for 32-bit apps before they crash. Course, I guess some people think Skyrim looks better without mods, ugrids and whatnot.

just load games entirely into 64GB RAMdrive

new video:

Definitely more promising than the last one, but I didn’t realize how similar this was going to be to Dragon Age: Inquisition. I basically enjoyed DA:I, but it was also the last rpg I played before Witcher 3, so… yeah. Not sure I could get into that DA:I style zone exploration again.

Hell yes. You can give me all the goofy facial animation and silly dialogue in the world if you also give me an open universe to explore and a kickass ship to do it with. This is what I’ve been waiting for.

Yes yes. DA:I had a load of flaws but none of them prevented me from a straight, intense playthrough.

Absolutely down with DA:I in space.

This trailer was much more enticing.

The DA:I model, while flawed, is probably a better fit for ME since there is more distance between the places. If that makes sense.

This looks much better than the videos they’ve released so far.

If it really is DA:I in space, I’m definitely out. The combat absolutely sucked, there was way too much open-world busywork, and the loyalty quest type bits were meh.The main storyline was fine, I guess, but that’s not what I want in a Mass Effect game.

Here’s the one thing that kind of bugged me about what they’re saying in the exploration video - I think there need to be planets out there that you can land on that are basically empty. I know people have the first game crap because of all the cookie cutter barren planets, and I get the quality over quantity argument, but I think they can serve a purpose. And they make even more sense in a game focused on an unexplored galaxy - you’re an explorer, sometimes you’re just not going to find anything.

Additionally, it’s best that you don’t know what kind of experience you’re getting into when you land on a planet. Maybe you’ll find nothing, maybe you’ll set off a series of side quests. Or maybe it looks like you found nothing but suddenly there’s an earthquake exposing an underground city, totally uninhabited. Or maybe it only seems uninhabited …

Anyway, I’m just spitballing, I’m no game designer. But I think there’s a place for the empty planets, and I wish they included them in the game.

Travel around gathering ingredients is what DA:I was all about, wasn’t it?

I didn’t play DA:I but I think I know what you mean, distance is critical in games like this. It was one of the things that bugged me about Black Flag - you had an open sea and a ship but the distances between places were trivial. It affected the game’s realness for me. I understand why they did this, limiting downtime between significant actions, and most people probably prefer it that way. But not me.

Oh and hey, here’s a little item I found about crafting on the Andromeda page -

Vintage Heat Sink: Converts any gun to an overheat system (like in the original Mass Effect™), where you’ll never run out of ammo.

That’s kind of cool!