It’s also on sale on Xbox Live this week. $39 I believe.
PC version has been on sale at $35 on GMG for a few days.
rei
1987
Mass Effect Andromeda killed Mass Effect.
Yep. Turn a beloved franchise into a loser by releasing a by-the-numbers, corporate-dronespeak sequel/reboot. How ironic is it that giving the shareholders what they want doesn’t mean massive numbers, but your fanbase fleeing in droves.
RIP Deus Ex and Mass Effect.
On the contrary, it sold gangbusters and ended up on many best game lists. Meanwhile, Andromeda is awesome and tanked the series.
I thought I’d be more sad to see it go than I am, but after DA:I and ME:A I’ve lost all faith in Bioware. They need to take a step back from open world games, which they clearly have no idea how to develop.
Someone over there clearly played Skyrim and thought: this is the future of RPGs. When they had this thought, they clearly missed an incredibly important point, that Skyrim is beautifully handcrafted and ridiculously fun to explore. Once you’ve been to ONE Remnant ruin, you’ve been to them all. And it isn’t like a Remnant ruin is more than some standing stones stocked with a variety of the 3 (so much enemy variety! love it!) or so different Remnant types in the cluster guarding a chest maybe.
It’s like if you took every side quest out of the witcher 3 and just left the bandit camp markers. Who cares. They missed the point entirely.
Guap
1991
Just got this on the Bone via sale a few days ago. It feels like Elite Dangerous on rails with a much better (or, any) story so far. Avoiding this thread for a bit to avoid spoilers. I just got the purple guy on his purple planet and opted for the Pandora research mission first. I hope they can keep the planet variety up, it’s pretty cool so far. I also love feeling like I’m the explorer finding world for colonies. Great stuff. Still getting used to combat.
rei
1992
For any QT3ers with Deluxe edition who have already picked up their special delivery box before patch 1.06 you can get the DoucheBagRyder outfit and the new paintjobs by registering here and watching the 6 videos: https://www.masseffect.com/andromeda-initiative
Won’t work if you’ve already watched the videos.
I’d say the open world parts are more Ubigame than Skyrim with the reliance on generic content. Interestingly one of the rumours about the next Assassins Creed is that it is more of an open world RPG…
So uh, where would this special delivery box be located, hypothetically? Asking for a friend.
Guap
1996
What about the loot boxes you get from those special ops missions? Says I got a silver one or something.
rei
1997
no, apex strike team loot boxes are unrelated.
Guap
1998
Yeah but any idea how to claim them?
You get access to a console in your ship after talking with the security guy on the Nexus.
rei
2000
Oh the link I provided gets you a crafted +xp% helmet and the helmet itself for standard edition players too.
Not sure if Guap is trolling or not since the strike missions are immediately before getting the ship.
Guap
2001
No, not trolling. I,did the mission just didn’t know you had to tab over to see the rewards. Its the,same,reason I never changed my squad the first few missions. I had no idea there were other tabs on the load out screen.
Huh, I don’t see a box in my quarters or a new costume. What did I miss? I mean except a goofy costume.
rei
2003
If you have Deluxe Edition or higher, you get it when you get your ship, in your Pathfinder quarters to right of your “laptop.”
It’s a “special delivery cache” box.
The first time you get your ship, you trigger a cutscene by going to the bridge which encourages you to go to your first planet. You may miss the Pathfinder quarters if you head straight to this bridge cutscene and go right to the planet. Instead, when on the galaxy cluster map, you can back out by holding Y or whatever it is on keyboard. Or you can leave the first planet and board your ship again.
If you are already further along in the game and have claimed your cache, you can’t get it until a new game. Or, you can trigger its reappearance with the stuff you don’t have by signing into the “Andromeda Initiative” website and completely watching 6 videos.
You also get a new white helmet (that would have saved you in the prologue if it were equippable) that has +XP bonus. Helmet comes with a craftable recipe so you can make one with augment slots.
NON-Deluxe (ie Standard) edition owners of MEA can also get this helm (+XP body armor and a helm were a preorder bonus) and 2 Nomad paint jobs (the 2 initial ones that came with Deluxe, not the 2 new ones for 1.06) by doing the above registration + video watching.
If you were an eager superfan who registered for and watched the videos before MEA launched, this workaround won’t get the box to reappear with the missing 1.06 Deluxe goodies.
Get it?
One of the things I forgot to mention at launch is how well Bioware implemented the “Ready to Play” feature on the console version of this.
For those unaware, when you’re downloading a digital version of games on consoles, you start the download, and soon after that it says “Ready to Play”, and you can launch the game at that time, even though only 10-20% of the game has been downloaded. Usually this feature is useless because you launch the game, and basically it shows you an opening cutscene and then makes you wait until the whole game is downloaded before you can play. But some games let you play a whole first area of the game while it’s downloading the rest.
And this is one of those games. I went in when it was ready to play, and that whole first planet with the lightning islands is ready to play while it’s downloading the rest of the game. So you’re likely to still be playing that when the game is done downloading. Unless you have a really really slow internet connection, I guess. But it’s always nice when someone implements that feature well.
