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

Games
2247

Update:

It got better after Eos. I am now enjoying it more than Horizon Zero Dawn. It still has lot of issues and isn’t as good as Original Trilogy, but I am liking it overall. The combat is really fun with the biotic stuff. And there are some cool quests in here. Shame they had to cram into it so much low quality ones as well. I thought I would hate Peebee but she is fun. And Drack is pretty good stand-in for Wrex.

Fuck Liam though.

2248

Yeah, Liam is kind of a tool.

2249

His loyalty mission is fun, though.

2250

Achievement or no, my Sarah is not romancing Australian Lenny Kravitz minus any personality.

2251

I like this planet very much. Krogans are awesome.


.

Cora’s mission seems fun so far

I wonder if they wrote Liam so unsufferably on purpose. If so, they succeeded brilliantly.

2252

redundant.

2253

I liked Liam. He’s not super bright, and he’s impulsive, but he’s constantly positive and cheerful and team-oriented.

Which is not to say that I brought him along most of the time.

Also yes, New Tuchanka is <3

2254

You should try this. Put him in a team with pretty much anyone else, drive the buggy around for a while and watch the fireworks. Dude will pick a fight with just about anybody.

2255

Finished it. PC version 1.10, 90 hours.

First, the flaws:

  • at times, cringey writing. At other times, bad writing. Occasionally, some good writing too.
  • really bad facial animations, still. Especially those eyes that made often Ryder (default one even) look like he was high/dead. Lot of dialogues don’t have camera setup and just do lazy zoom-in - this is embarrasing two years after Witcher 3.
  • abundance of shitty low-effort fetch quests (scan 10 plants. scan 10 rocks. scan 10 dead bodies). These should have been cut. Even if they relegated them to “task” section of journal.
  • Liam. This cannot be overstated enough. Liam is the single worst NPC I have ever met in an RPG. Give me Jacob over Liam anytime.
  • secondary NPCs have terrible character models like something from Oblivion 2006.
  • dumbass open world barriers
  • lacking music. Original Trilogy had great soundtracks, all three games. Andromeda is mostly just quiet and when something plays, it is not memorable. Ending credits song was nice though.
  • there are still some bugs and glitches here and there, although (so far) nothing gamebreaking
  • only two new alien races, both humanoid and somewhat generic

Why I enjoyed it:

  • I still like the Mass Effect-ish atmosphere - I am a scifi/space opera whore and exploring planets is inherently enjoyable for me
  • planetary design is quite beautiful and in fact atmospheric, I liked Kadara, Elaaden and Havarl the most
  • driving Nomad is ok, better than Mako at least
  • combat is genuinely great. It is better third person shooter than lot of dedicated third person shooters - I like the various abilities and respecced few times to try lot of them out. Jetpack and dodge are great addition.
  • loyalty missions and main quests are pretty fun (if the at times cringey writing can be overlooked), some named (nontask) quests are good
  • I like Drack, Vetra and Jaal
  • graphics (of environments) is beautiful and the game is well optimized (60fps maxed without drops)

Overall, it is noticeably worse than original trilogy, but I still liked it more than dislike it. I hated Dragon Age Inquisition and left it after 5 hours or so, but after the dodgy beginning here, I managed to enjoy lot of it.

It’s a shame that it killed the franchise (for the foreseeable future) since I would not mind (vastly improved) sequel and some expansion pack.

2256

Agree with you on a LOT of points! Here are a few of my thoughts:

  • I really loved the intro music in the menu, beautifully written, can’t understand why it wasn’t implemented more into the actual game. But, since I’m actually playing through ME1 now, I’d rather go for the quiet of Andromeda than to that HORRID weird plinky-thing they have there.
  • Romanced Reyes, which was just… soooo unsatisfactory. You pretty much have like, two scenes with him, and whenever you visit him after finishing his quest, he just sits in his night club, going like “did you want something?”. Poor Ryder. Such a boring boyfriend. A bit jealous of male Ryders romancing Cora because… well, steamy.
  • Why are there no friendly animals on any of the planets? =(
  • So sad we won’t get to save the quarian ark since they cancelled the DLC. Is Andromeda really THAT badly recieved that they had to leave those poor people floating around in space for eternity?
  • All Asari have exactly the same facial features. WTF.
  • What’s the point of having a twin sibling if he’s just gonna sleep through the entire game?
  • The most annoying thing though, which was an actual crappy bug throughout the game, was all the god damn geth-stations I cleared out, just to be filled with geth the next time I went pass it. Jeez. Might have been fixed by now, but when I played it, this was basically EVERY place in the game. And the comments about the places, even when empty, kept coming up from my team mates.

And all the other things you said, and more stuff I don’t remember now. But still - I enjoyed it, and liked it more than not. And I DO want the DLC and the next game. Didn’t think I could actually enjoy alien-based games until I played this =)

2257

I think they said that it would probably be addressed in other media, since they won’t be doing it in a game. So maybe a comic or a novel or something, I forget what. Not that I’ll know, since I usually ignore other media outside of games, even for games that I really enjoy.

2258

I second that!

2259

Haha. I somewhat by accident “semiromanced” Reyes because I chose the heart option once (it seemed innocuous) and was a bit uncomfortable with how close they seemed afterwards (I was, after all, playing a straight Ryder). Of course then he proved to be manipulative dick so I shot him in the back and that was that.
Then I romanced Cora to its conclusion, because I am shallow and prefer humans over aliens, plus hey, steamy, but I do not really like her character much, so…eh. Why does Bioware make human women in their games so uninteresting compared to their alien women? If I never hear about assari combat manuals ever again it will be already too late.

Also, that steamy Cora sex scene looked pretty terrible anyway. There was some decent lip animation in those kisses, but any Witcher 3 sex scene is still vastly less weird and unnatural looking.

Good points there with the lack of friendly animals, all asari looking the same etc.
And Sara Ryder being in coma all the time also disappointed me. Although talking to her while in coma was interesting. I lied about Dad and spoke truth about the problems. Seemed most appropriate and she accepted it pretty well after waking up.

2260

Haha! That’s fun. I know - I didn’t like Cora much either, but still, everyone deserves some action when being stuck in space for such a long time. I kind of find the romance part of the story an important part, and was hoping ME would impelement it better (since Dragon Age does it a lot better).

LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS! Cause hey, I love the sence of being open minded and all the great anti-racism work and equality in the games. But. I just CAN’T with an alien. I mean… HOW? Even if they could explain the phsycicality of it in… some whay (angarans? how does that even work?), I just don’t by it. Which makes me a bit sad cause Garrus is the character I like the most in the first games so far (and in Andromeda, actually Drack is my favourite although he is ancient), but I just can’t bring myself (or, well, Shepard) to romance him. Mostly because NO LIPS! Come on. Even if all that lizard/cat-action would be acceptable, how do they kiss?
I wouldn’t call that shallow, just… realistic.

Ahem. I probably put way much thought to this but I just feel sad for our explorers with worlds teeming with people and no real good partner-options. And the asari are all female, and even though they all seem kind of cool (never liked Peebee though), I’m not gay so neither is my Ryder/Shepard.
Oh well.

I actually went the other way around, told him about dad, because that felt worse lying about, and rather lied about having found home. Since I kinda felt hopeful about finding a viable planet before him waking up. =)

2261

There’s actually some dialogue from Garrus where’s he’s trying to puzzle out what Femshep and he are going to do once the lights go out. Like everything about Garrus, it’s smoove

2262

I love Garrus’ stories. “I had reach; she had flexibility.”

2263

Garrus: All right my turn. What’s the first order an Alliance Commander gives at the start of combat?
Joker: Uh, I give up.
Garrus: Correct!
Joker: All right big guy. What do you call it when a turian gets killed by a horrible spiky monster?
Garrus: Friendly fire. Come on that one goes back to Shan-Xi.
Joker: Gotta respect the classics.
Garrus: How many humans does it to activate a dormant relay?
Joker: 602, 600 to vote on it, one to ask the Asari for technical help and one to ask for a seat on the Council afterwards. How do you know when a turian is out of ammo?
Garrus: He switches to the stick up his ass as a backup weapon. Why does the Alliance hire pilots with brittle bone disease?
Joker: You’re shitting me! The turian military has one about me?
Garrus: Oh, absolutely. I heard it myself from a private back on Palaven.
Joker: All right why does the Alliance hire pilots with brittle bone disease?
Garrus: So their marines can beat someone in hand-to-hand drills.
Joker: Damn, you need to tell James that one. Hey what’s the hardest part about treating a turian who took a rocket to one side of his face?
Garrus: Figuring out which side took the hit!

2264

Yeah I actually watched a vid with the complete romance of Garrus to see how it ended up (I don’t care much about spoilers) He would be my obvious choice really, after slapping him around a bit in the first game and watching him become this really nice dude. But still. KISSING!! They have the weirdest mouths.

But yeah… might consider ditching Kaidan in the second game. We’ll see how things turn out in the love life of Jane Shepard!

2265

Interesting article on Polygon about the value of “messy” games.

2266

The article is written by Sophia Park of Aether Interactive. They made Arc Symphony, which had some fans, but its main claim to fame was the fake PlayStation 1 discs that were made for the viral marketing campaign.

Anyway, yeah, I think there is a space for “messy” games. One of my favorites for years has been the Arma series, and you can’t get much jankier and messier than that.