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

replaying ME:A while reading while reading Mass Effect - Andromeda: Nexus Uprising. It provides some interesting context to the Nexus and the backstory, but once you start to pay attention you start to notice ‘errors’

Like in Mass Effect - Andromeda: Nexus Uprising the book the founder and overall leader Jien Garson’s dies awakened from cryo and is killed off while running out to have a little romantic fling time with Foster Addison (which is so far that relationship in the book is only implied- though heavily) when they first encounter the Scourge… but in the game Jarun Tann says my hero she was killed in cryo when they hit the Scourge! Ok in my mind, I just made up that Tann decided to lie to avoid awkward conversations and questions.

Then I head back to Hyperion medical and talk to the survivors of Habitat 7 mission, when one of the crew says ‘at least I’m getting credit for first contact with the Kett’, I’m like WTF, I was just gotten through talking to Kandros and him telling me they have been dealing with the kett for awhile now! I suppose if my character would have at least corrected the survivor, it could have been funny moment, but instead I feel like I now need to squint when dealing with the story or else risk finding many more continuity errors.

Though I’ll admit, I’m very much looking forward to remeeting Sloan after reading some of Mass Effect - Andromeda: Nexus Uprising. She is actually an interesting and sympatric character I plan to support more heavily in the game now.

Um, you must not have done all you could on your first playthrough (if you finished the game, anyway). The book pretty much matches what happens in the game. Yes, Tann told you Garson died in cryo, but, well, you get to see what actually happened.

I mean, the game didn’t cover if she was killed while running out ‘to have a fling’ with Addison or not, but you definitely see how she was killed.

Ok good to know, yes I was getting a little weary toward the end of my first play through and didn’t pay as close attention to the story/and complete all the optional story lines!

You guys are braver than I am - I steer clear of books based on videogame properties as a matter of policy. I think I read a StarCraft book in the 90s and it was just … not good.

The most recent one is co-written by NK Jemisin, so I am super intrigued to check it out for that reason.

And the one after that is written by Catherynne Valente, who is also amazing. Even Uprising is written by Jason Hough, who doesn’t hang with those two but whose own Darwin Elevator books are decent little SF action thrillers.

The ME comics from Dark Horse weren’t bad at all.

So, I am several hours into this game, I have done the basic mission on Eos and I am at a loss as to how to proceed. I have been spending time trying to do the side quest items on Eos but it seems like I can’t go anywhere else without dying from radiation poisoning.

Should I just move on the to the next planet or am I missing something on Eos?

Also, how do you use a consumable, such as the item that lets you stay in radiation longer?

I don’t know how to answer your question without getting into at least minor spoilers, so: have you done the terraforming device/mission thing on Eos?

You have to move on and further the story before you can explore all of Eos.

Yes. I have spent the last couple hours looking for colonist bodies and new locations.

That’s what I was starting to think. The game has thrown up lvl 3 radiation that kills me in all the places I have found to go.

So I have finally got to a point where I am enjoying the game. Seems like I finally realized I was playing Skyrim in Space instead of a traditional ME game and now I am fine with it. It also took me longer than it should to figure out the controls, but that is on me as I never pay attention to half the tutorial stuff.

Maybe calling it Skyrim in Space is a little wrong, but it is just so much more open and I have seemingly have so much more freedom than in in the first 3 ME games. The first 3 games are pretty linear.

It’s very different from its predecessors. And there were certainly some that didn’t like it because of the new direction, and that’s fine. What bothers me is EA basically dropped doing anything else with this game because of dumbshits that complained about facial animation.

Much like the original Mass Effect, this should have been a new platform for them to do bigger and better things with in the future, because there is promise there, both in the technology and story. Instead, who knows if we’ll ever get anything else in the future. And we for sure won’t figure out what happened to the last ark with the Quarians on board. All because a lot of mouth breathers came down hard on a game mostly because of ‘tired face.’ And that’s a shame.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the facial animations weren’t an issue. They just weren’t one worth killing a franchise over.

image

No kidding.

Guys, I’m of the opinion that they went out of their way to kill the series with the ME3 ending.

ME:A was already a walking corpse.

The facial anims made for some great schadenfreude though.

I guess it’s possible, I’d never claim to understand the actions of massive, multinational corporations, but five years and $100 million Canadian dollars seems like a lot of effort to send a game out to die.

I will say that my Ryder has eyes that make him either look drunk or just “spaced out” half the time. But other than that I haven’t noticed anything terrible. Let’s face it, computer games aren’t the best at depicting human faces and emotion, at least in my experience.

I see what you did there.

I never had an issue with the facial animations in ME:A. Who cares? I’ve played games where I was a blob, or a goat, or a just unattractive in general. Skyrim anyone? It’s about the gameplay and the story, of which ME:A has both.
I doubt that this has anything to do with why we get no expansions or DLC. It’s all about the lack of sales.

ME:A was terrible in everything but shooting. The animations were merely the canary in the mine that the game’s overall design, execution, and polishing were half-baked.