They should just release a quick free update for everyone that puts an epilogue on the game.
It’s not absurd, though. There are certainly legitimate criticisms of the game, and while I don’t agree with most reviews’ assessment of things like the systems, characters and dialogue I absolutely can understand either being lukewarm about or bouncing off the game if they didn’t work for you. But in my experience, literally the first, and often the only, thing that anyone brings up when discussing Andromeda negatively are the cosmetic issues, which frankly I never even noticed, much less consider to be a major problem.
Miramon
2048
I don’t think it’s necessarily the engine so much as the art direction. When I was working on MMOs a whole line of characters from one artist would look like pretty, made-up models, and a line from another using exactly the same tools would look like normal hungover people standing on the street at 4AM after a house fire turned them out of bed. So if they only have one character artist who likes grunge, or if the art director said “I want more realistic faces” it can end up looking kind of ugly out there.
The engine certainly seems to have major problems with character models and animation. Either that or bioware is simply terrible at it because basically all of their games in the frostbite engine have this problem.
Mass Effect Andromeda is not a terrible game, but it is not a good game either.
The animation is the most noticeable problem in the game. It is easy to show someone a video and have them instantly recognize that it is embarrassing that a AAA game looks like that. Even worse, bioware has done VERY little to make it better over the years.
The exploration/level design is simply boring. Bioware went through a shit storm after mass reusing content in Dragon Age 2 and yet they did it again in MEA. About 1/3 of the way in to the game, i realized that i would not be seeing anything new in the game and that over each hill was just the same thing i had seen before.
Boring Missions. The loyalty missions were a lot better than the normal missions but that says very little a they were merely decent.
Terrible save system. This improved a little later on, but on release the game would save after a battle, so if you died, you would have to redo a run and then often doing useless busy work like opening stuff.
Low quality writing.
Major elements missing/cut.
Poorly designed encounters.
Luckily i had zero expectations, so i felt the game was ok and then instantly forgot about it after i pushed myself to finish it. This also resulted in me feeling like i do not need another Mass Effect game or DLC for MEA.
My impression from the Kotaku article was that resources started being diverted towards Anthem once senior management realized how problematic Andromeda’s development had already become.
I disagree on the writing. Thought it was the same as previous ME games. The AI teammate banter when traveling was the best part. I would regularly switch out teammates just to get different pairings.
The game was flawed in ways but I still enjoyed it. I also came in after several patches were released too. It wasn’t the triumphent return of ME after the trilogy but I hope they revisit the series at some point.
I found the banter the best they did so far. From serious to hilarious everything was there
The problem isn’t that their model of cinematic rpgs has stagnated, it’s that they’ve tried to fit it into open worlds, which actively torpedoes everything good about it. Or at least, they haven’t figured out how to square that particular circle yet.
The Witcher 3 can do an open world, because it’s all close combat that doesn’t rely on level layout. A cover based shooter is all about the space you’re fighting in. Every random combat encounter in Andromeda is terrible. The hand-crafted missions on the other hand are pretty good fun, but they’re gated behind that tedious open world bullshit, stretching a pretty decent 20-30 hour game into twice its length.
It’s not the entirety of Andromeda’s problem; there’s some pretty big issues in how it lazily recreates the status quo of the previous games when you’re basically immigrants arriving into a fight between an imperialist force and an indigenous population, which *should’ be an entirely different dynamic. Also, the whole Pathfinder veneration to make sure the player feels super special for no good reason is just sad. If the game was propulsive and polished enough it could probably paper over that for most players though.
I completely disagree. The combat in Andromeda is the best of the series, giving you more options than any of the other games ever had. You can eschew cover-based shooting entirely by staying mobile with the jetpack. I never got tired of the fighting in Andromeda at any time I played. Probably go back and give Insanity a shot sometime.
I agree. I loved the combat. The random encounters are excellent because even in situations where there is no cover, you can park your vehicle at an angle to provide you the cover you need, and the enemy will sometimes still try to flank you from both sides, and it’s challenging and fun, and one of the things that the game got right.
People keep talking about Pathfinder veneration and I haven’t seen anything I’d describe that way in over 70 hours with the game. People who know how you became Pathfinder are skeptical of you until you pull off actually impressive shit, people you’re encountering later are just happy to see a Pathfinder because it means the project hasn’t failed and there’s help arriving. Or cranky because they’re exiles and you represent the authority they’ve already been on the wrong end of. And you’re definitely not the boss, just a reasonably important position among several others.
Overall, I think it carries less weight than being a Spectre or an N7, and nobody complained about Shepard being both in the previous games.
I do agree that there ends up being more to do than is actually good for the game or its pacing, though. I was initially positive about the sidequests and I still feel that they make sense narratively for the most part, but at this point I am definitely getting fatigued of doing them and may just skip most of them going forwards. A big part of the issue is that XP and loot don’t really matter to me anymore - by level 40, I’ve maxed everything I want and loot drops are strictly inferior to crafting.
Timex
2058
Exactly my experience.
I hit a point, as you say about a third of the way through… And had exactly this realization. I had already seen it all. It was just gonna be hours more of the same stuff.
There was no deep connection with any of the characters. They weren’t terrible, but I didn’t really give a shit about any of them.
Part way through, I just realized that playing the rest was gonna be a chore, rather than fun.
Timex
2059
HAHAHAHA no.
It’s garbage, because I can’t control my squad mates.
That means I can’t actually orchestrate complex combinations. I ended up just running my own combo build and ruined everything, but it was not anywhere close to as fun as prior ME titles.
Put it this way: on what authority do you get to decide what direction a colony should go in? Why is this decision up to you, a scout who just got an undeserved battle promotion?
The spectre position makes sense, both in a meta-fictional sense in that you’re 007 with a space ship, and you have a clear place in the command hierarchy of Citadel space. Judgement calls you make are in response to spur of the moment crisises. Even if they have far-reaching implications, they’re not things you could defer until later. (Going off the first game here. There might be things in 3 that are contradictory to this, but by then Shepard is a know quantity, with pull that goes outside the position.)
The Pathfinder meanwhile, just comes off as something between a Spectre and an Inquisitor, without the clear position in the hirarchy of the former, or the religious angle or unique nature of the Anchor to justify the authority of the latter.
What makes it more annoying for me is that it’s mostly not an issue of what you do in gameplay, but the framing of it. Just have people give you more shit, and not wet themselves with excitement over meeting a Pathfinder - whatever that actually means - and it wouldn’t be an issue.
On the authority of being directly linked to an incredibly powerful AI that no one else has access to (beyond the other Pathfinders, who aren’t available at the start) and that can’t be reassigned without killing you?
And people give you plenty of shit and don’t ever get all that excited, in my experience.
Edit: I slightly misread your post - I do think it’s a little silly you get to determine the direction an outpost goes (i think it may just be the first one where you get to make that call). On the other hand, you’re the one that’s out there seeing the lay of the land and in a better position to see what front line colonization efforts need, and you do have that AI backing you up.
Again, it’s the framing . With a bit of extra writing and staging, you could be the tie breaker vote for the direction at the not-Citadel, speaking as someone who’s been there at the frontier. But no. This is up to you, on the spot, for no discernable reason.
It bleeds into how ill-defined the role of Pathfinder role is in the game. (And generally, tying the success of your mission into one person per ark seems like a pretty dumb thing to do.)
Yeah, I think there are a few points like that in the story that could have used a bit more justification. But I think overall the Pathfinder role is better handled than people are making out. And they didn’t tie the success of their mission to one person per ark - there were protocols established for replacements, which your dad decided not to follow but which are enacted in other contexts in the story and which are an early point of tension with Cora. They did put one person per ark in charge of this particular aspect of the mission, which is semi-logical. (Really, you’d think you’d want a few different Pathfinders and survey vessels connected to each ark. But having leaders is not, in itself, dumb.)
This, not only did they succeed in making the AI even stupider than previous games, but they also removed any ability to effectively influence your AI companions.
Your AI Companions provide extremely minimal benefit in combat. Unless you pick one of 2-3, they are just useless. Even then, the good ones are mostly just meat shields.
