I think that's mostly true in the case of Andromeda, here. In the other games, I feel like they were always going to take huge flack for the LGBT stuff.

Austin at waypoint's hitting a lot of the vibes I'm trying to get at in his video when it comes to the overall plot of Andromeda, though. The setup and pacing at the start feel quite poor, it gives you little reason to care about the world, the stakes of it, or why you should care about your character or feel important after the thing happens. Austin says the overall tone feels completely different as well, more like a b-movie than the high-level stuff Mass Effect has always been before too, and I think I agree.

Waypoint plays Andromeda

@mezza: There's supposed to be a 2 gig day one patch. Wonder if that'll fix some of the wonk?

@shorap: Yeah I look forward to seeing what gets adjusted. I'll be restarting from the beginning at release just for fun, so I'll keep an eye out for a few things I saw. A lot of it seems fixable if they take the time. The biggest annoyance in particular was where the outfit customization wouldn't save my color settings after leaving the interface. Got stuck being white and blue while walking around the ship. It's entirely possible I just missed how to save the setting, but I did try every button command that was presented at the bottom of the screen. The armor in combat seemed to save alright. Changing the model between jacket, short sleeved, and long sleeved also worked fine.

Just hit the wall with the single player, took just under 7 hours.

Ready for more.

@mezza:

After watching Austin play, so will I. facial stuff looks a lot less derpy on his character than it did on the default male.

@mr_bones: Does it? I might make a custom then. With the trial I didn't want to take the time and the default surprisingly isn't terribly far away from what I look like anyway aside from some proportions and the scrappy bioware beard, so I just kind of rolled with it.

I'm really enjoying the game itself, but the voice acting/characters have been disappointing so far. Hopefully they get better or grow on me as the game goes on.

I played the game for 6 hours yesterday and made it up i to where i get the ship.

Im really loving it sofar and it really improves on most of the problems i had with Me3 (which mainly was junk sidequests and a terrible questlog). The new opennes of the leveldesign is wonderfull. Theres some jank here and there if you wanna nit pick but if it stays like this the rest of the game im gonna have a great time.

Game looks very good and it runs flawless for me. 1440p ultra at 60+fps with loadtimes shorter than the movies they try to mask them with. Im running a Titan X but the way the game is running i think you will have excellent performance from the entire nvidia 10xx series with this game.

Custom characters seem waaay less fucked up than defaults which I guess isn't surprising since they've fucked up every attempt to recreate actual people to date.

Dunno why you are quoting me, I wasn't saying anyone is a hater if they don't like this game, I think it looks like garbage

@wynnduffy: wasn't meaning to call you out specifically, just wanted to comment on that comment chain in general, though I think I should have actually quoted the comment about how people are just anti-SJW or something

The truth is, plenty of people care about graphics and gameplay over things like story-telling and depth in characters. And, suprising no one since games like Mass Effect, Tyranny and Dragon age exist, some of us are heavily in favor of story and characters.

For both sides, what you value is what matters. If a game looks good and plays great, some people couldn't give a damn about characters or story. Hell some are thankful for the skip-option and use it liberally bypassing all said content they can. On the flip side, give me a good story and interesting characters and the graphics don't matter to me at all. I'll play anything from a text-based rogue-like to the Witcher 3. Give me interesting characters and likewise, I don't care if the game play isn't great. Just like those people who are happy for the story-skip option, I am happy most such games let me set the difficulty to 'super easy'.

From what I've been seeing in this thread, if your the type who favors gameplay and graphics, Mass Effect is gonna disappoint. Where as if your like me and favor story/characters, then if you liked ME2/3 (minus 3s ending), Inquisition or so on your likely to be happy to give Andromeda a go.

And you know what? That's all ok. This isn't a game meant to please everyone. In the same way Titan fall is not meant to be this lore-rich 60+ hour story experience with a wealth of choice and character development. To me, Mass Effect and games like it were never meant to be cutting edge graphical power-houses. See Alpha Protocol being a great story if flawed game. See Tyranny being pretty damn ugly.

The only exception in the last few years has been the Witcher 3, and its an outlier for a reason. Is it a better game for its graphical quality and decent gameplay? Yup. Would I have enjoyed it less if those things were not top quality? Nope.

I just got done with my trial, it was enjoyable enough that i'll keep my preorder, dialogue seems less cringey when you use other options that aren't emotional(heart) and my custom Ryder that i made seems decent enough that I dont' laugh at the bad facial animations as much.

@wynnduffy: I think it looks really underwhelming in many ways but to call it straight up garbage seems a bit much. That somewhat hyperbolic reaction people are having is the difference with Andromeda as opposed to any other disappointing game released recently: people are a lot more negative in their assertion of it. To me a game that is pure garbage ranks among titles like Ride to Hell or Darkest of Days, you know, pure garbage. Andromeda looks like an O-K game with some roughhhh edges to it, it's just a lot of us expected so much more. At the same time to call it garbage is a bit much.

Still looking forward to the game, and still keeping my pre-order. I just want to know how on earth BioWare ended up with a situation where the default faces--presumably the ones that were tested and reviewed the very most, throughout the entire development of the game--how did they end up with those default appearances looking worse than custom faces?

@spaceinsomniac: incompetence

Perhaps I should clarify that I think it looks acceptable as another open world-ish collectathon game but as a Mass Effect, I do think it is some hot garbage.

@shorap said:

The "day one" patch has been in since the trial started.

@dystopiax: You're absolutely right, of course. Alot of people have a lot of genuine complaints and worries. I'm 10 hours in, and I have a couple of worries myself. The lip synch isn't great, like it is with any game that hasn't been performance captured. If a character has light eyes, they look a bit dead.

But having played it for 10 hours, it's become painfully clear that the response is disproportionate to how big the problems are. GiantBomb isn't the worst. (Holy shit, twitter. Holy shit, PCGamer.) There is a transparent glee with some people that they have found something to latch onto with a BioWare game, which I only can surmise comes from the resentment that built up since the ME3 ending and DA2.

I really doubt this. I haven't played or watched anything about the game to be fair, but I did pick up a minor few things here and there. So when I hear 'slightly more expanded ME3 gameplay' that equals superb gameplay to me. ME3 is still the most engaging third person ability shooter-type thing I've ever played. Nearly every single person I've talked to doesn't even know what I'm talking about when I explain combo's and squad builds. As you said, different people want different things. I set that game to Insanity to have the mechanical aspect be engaging. Others that are there just for the story might set it to Normal or even lower.

At the end of the day, everything about this revolves around opinion. Just take a look at your last sentence. You're saying The Witcher 3 has decent (or even top quality?) gameplay, which I found to be one of the worst playing games I've played in the last 10 years. Andromeda will likely end up in my top 3 end of this year, it might not even make your list. As you say: that's okay. It isn't going to please everyone. From the 15 seconds of gameplay footage I've seen that was supposedly showcasing how bad the animations are and the characters look, I already know none of this negativity is going to affect me while playing the game in any sort of way.

You could scratch most of that and just say 'if you liked Inquisition, give Andromeda a go' as that appears to be the core formula they've decided to build upon. Speaking personally, I haven't found a Bioware game particularly compelling in the story department for years and, even as a CRPG fan in general, I thought Inquisition was dreadful. The argument about plot and writing might hold some water if you were referring to Obsidian since, let's be honest, we've overlooked some janky Obsidian games over the years simply because their characters and storylines are great but the same does not hold true for Bioware - and certainly not a new, untested development team.

I also really wouldn't lump Inquisition in with ME123, the Mass Effect games are semi-linear character driven (except ME1 which focused far more on worldbuilding) RPG shooters. Inquisition took it far more in an MMORPG direction with a lack of emphasis on story and scripted heavily directed encounters and made things far more open ended. More crafting, more quests and more environments, with most of it feeling really shallow story wise. So I 100% agree that if you like Inquisition you'll like ME:A, but for older fans of Bioware (DA:Origins, DA:2, ME123 and even KOTOR) this is still squarely in that MMO lotta content little substance category of RPG's. Which isn't necessarily bad, it's just different. The emphasis is on content volume.

@pilgore: Inquisition had so much story and so many cool personal quests for your followers. A ton of that game had really awesome hand crafted areas and encounters. People need to stop parroting the MMORPG rhetoric because it really doesn't hold any more water than any other open world game. I WISH MMORPGs were like Inquisition cause then I'd be a lot more inclined to play them.

So I took the plunge and tried it like the filthy consumerist I am. Mainly because I'm really in the mood for one of these games and I wanted to see how it performs on my PC before dropping big dollarydoos on it.

I can say that yes there is potential to create a custom character that doesn't go to extreme derp levels as the pre-made faces but don't expect it to magically fix the issues. The custom and other characters still emote pretty poorly but honestly like I posted in another thread it eventually stopped being noticeable to me outside of extreme cases. The other thing is I feel like the game running at 60fps actually slightly improves the lip-sync issues that were demonstrated on the GB stream. They're still flapping jaws but it's not as noticeably bad as it was in their stream.

Aside from that the game is really more Mass Effect but with even more B-tier cheesy writing than the original trilogy. I did end up liking some characters more than I would expect and I enjoy the atmosphere as well. I do have concerns with the open level structure as everyone expected it's VERY similar to DA:I which handled that aspect incredibly poorly. The Nomad should alleviate some of the tedium of getting around that DA:I had (because the mounts were garbage.) I should also say I have a strong dislike for DA:I but I am finding myself enjoying this game, not over the moon or anything just having fun with it.

If you go into this game expecting it to take the world by storm again like the original trilogy you're undoubtedly going to get disappointed. This feels like a side game made by a separate developer. So if you were one of those people that hated Bioshock 2 then you'll probably not like this either. You're also a terrible person with bad taste.

For anyone curious about PC performance, I reflect the experience of @essi2 it's similar to how DA:I performs.

- 4690k, 970, 16GB RAM = 1080p 50-60FPS on High Settings.

@bladededge:

your likely to be happy to give Andromeda a go.

I feel like this...is fundamentally ignoring the complaints that are out there, isn't it? That not only are the graphics and facial animations subpar (outside of enviromental details, ships, etc) but that the story, dialogue, and characters are lacking as well? I'm hearing complaints from all directions so far.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 didn't have amazing main campaign stories but the dialogue, characters, and your interactions with them were what mattered. Even the "general" looks of human faces weren't the absolute most amazing but it was certainly not as bad as this and it is highly unlikely that stuff changes later in the game. Could the dialogue and story get better, possibly, but if they're not putting even their second best foot forward in the introduction to hook you? :|

What? The personal quests were really bad and yeah, it had "so much story" which consisted of the player collecting horses, goats, shards and track down Astrariums. Inquisition features so much combat, enemies patrolled zones like in MMO's, many conversations where just zoom-ins of two awkward and stiff characters looking at each other while the player panned around with the stick. It was a game made with content volume in mind, about collecting materials to craft potions and swords/armors and about ludicrously oversized zones. The writing was pretty good and some of the Main Quest missions were pretty good too. I would say the very last DLC of that game -Trespasser- is actually the best thing that came out of it. I really enjoyed that and wanted the whole game to be like that. I'd WISH Inquisition was less like an MMORPG cause then I'd be more inclined to replay it. I am never coming back to that game. It was chore and it did not respect my time.

@pilgore: I guess we just have different ways of interpreting things so I won't try to convince you otherwise, but if you feel like MMORPGs respect your time more than Inquisition did then I dunno what to say to that.

so should I just save my money and finish dragon age inquisition ?

I dont care about "jankiness"

How have peoples experience ben on the Xbox? I currently have the deluxe edition pre ordered for PS4 (pro) but the pc version is running better than I thought on my pc. Along with that I'm pretty okay with messing with the early game again but now I'm torn on whether I should get the pc version now, admittedly the version I have pre ordered from Amazon is only 55 bucks which is a big selling point for me right now, but if the Xbox version is kinda shitty I don't imagine it'll be that much better on the pro so I may switch.

I am glad looking through this thread though thst people are kinda confirming how I feel in a much more positive light. I know I'm slightly crazy for enjoying Residents Evil 6, but this seems like a different situation.

@bradbrains: I would leave that up to whether you like sci-fi or fantasy more. Personally my experiences with andromeda so far have been more positive than inquisition. I couldn't get into the characters of inquisition much at all though. I like the third person combat of andromeda more than the action rpg/mmo styled combat they had going on in inquisition as well. Neither game seems so amazing that I would say you should drop one for the other though. If you're enjoying inquisition then you might as well finish that first. If you're only looking to fully play one, my vote would be for andromeda.

thanks for the info. for me I dont care about either but I enjoy the bioware style and conversation trees etc. I also didnt play mass effect 3 so im probably more ready for a game like than than mots.

tbh im having a damn hard time getting real information on the game sa the focus seems to be really minor technical stuff that I juts can see as common for this type of game. Maybe gaming has past me by but the constant focus on framerates and such seem to detract from the more important talking about

The problem for Bioware is that...well, it's that name. Bioware. There's a whole host of expectations attached to "Bioware". It used to be an instant guarantee of a purchase for me. Baldur's Gate I & II, Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Dragon Age Origins, you're talking about 12 years where I at the very least really liked every Bioware game I played, & then you have KOTOR which is one of my favourite games ever. And Mass Effect 2 which might very well be my favourite game. Those are very high expectations.

And when you put the name Mass Effect on something, that's a whole other lot of expectations, even after 3, which was a perfectly decent game mechanically, but obviously rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way (I didn't get it at release, in fact by the time I did get it every piece of DLC except Citadel out (criminally I've never actually played Citadel) was out so I got the "fixed" ending, & Javik & Leviathan & all that) for story problems. It was always going to be hard to wrap up that series though.

Obviously Dragon Age 2 upset a lot of people (it was the first time I was actively bummed by a Bioware but to be clear, I certainly didn't hate my time with it either. It was disappointing rather than terrible. DA:I was much better, but I also found myself drop off it before the end in a way that I hadn't before. By the time I came back to finish it about 6 months had passed and obviously that means I'd forgotten some shit. But it was still an enjoyable experience of on the whole, both gameplay & story/character wise.

And to me, that's why I come to Bioware games. Yeah, I want the gameplay to be at least competent. But what I really care about is the people in the game. The writing. So long as that's all good, I'll enjoy ME:A. But...At the same time, I want more than good because it's a Bioware game, it's a Mass Effect game. I want something that really sucks me in. DA:I certainly managed that, there were a bunch of characters I got attached to in that game, Josephine, Iron Bull, the gay wizard dude whose name I forgot but who I really loved, Solas, Cole.

So yeah. It's a bit harsh on Bioware Montreal, it's not the old Bioware, the Doctors aren't there, Casey Hudson's gone, but well...it's still that name. It's still that series. There's always going to be baggage with a well loved series like this.

@sammo21: Personally, I thought the dialog has been fine from what I've played so far. I haven't been picking the heart/emotional options though; could be those are worse. And I don't understand any of the complaints about the voice acting, it seems fine to me. The plot so far seems like pretty standard sci-fi adventure; not trying to answer any deeper questions about life, just trying to have fun. More like Flash Gordon than SOMA. I'm enjoying it.

And the gameplay seems like Mass Effect 3's. I haven't reached the open world yet, only a couple hours in; but the combat feels good. And the graphics outside the conversation/cinematic camera are totally accceptable. Framerate with a 1070 is smooth as silk.

None of the above is perfect, but to me all the complaints people have on those topics are fairly minor. The only exception is the graphics during within the conversation/cinematic camera; there are real problems there. However, to me, the eyes are the only thing that's as bad as what a lot of people are saying. The rest of the jank is there, but for the most part I didn't find it very noticeable.

@efesell: Really? I wasn't planning on using a created character. Do you think it's worth doing?

@fezrock: Some people don't care about certain things, ignore other things, have a different opinion, etc. The Witcher 3 had people who said there was nothing wrong with the movement or menus and others thought they were clunky and cumbersome. Some people think the Tell Tale games are flawless while ignoring all of their horrendous technical problems.

That being said, I thought the voice acting and dialogue were subpar. I also think that Bioware, and the gaming industry, needs to remember that good actors do not equal good voice actors.

@sammo21: For sure. Which is why my comment was filled with "personally" and "to me."

And yes, that's a lesson everyone should have learned after Destiny's Peter Dinklage. That said, I thought Natalie Dormer was fine here.

Let me preface this by saying I LOVEDDragon Age: Inquisition. It was my game of the year in 2014 and I am also one of those crazy people who prefer it over The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

So far I have about 5 hours into the trial itself. I'd say roughly it's a 50/50 split of Single Player and Multiplayer. Playing on the PC on high settings and I have to say I think the game looks pretty good honestly. I have had a couple of frame rate issues with cutscenes and loading back out to the world from the menu but so far it's been a pretty flawless experience for me single player wise. I've been playing on Insanity difficulty as an "Infiltrator" and while it has taken me many deaths to get used to the combat I feel that I'm growing accustomed to it. We'll see how that translates into the later fights but so far I haven't found it anymore difficult than ME2 or ME3 on insanity. World exploration reminded me quite a bit of DA:I and I'm 100% down for that. I just got back up the Hyperion so not quite to the open world. Don't know how much more time I'll put into the single player but my body is ready for more.

To get on the hot topic of animations I will say that nothing in the facial animations has really bothered me. Honestly I've barely noticed and I think this game looks a lot better in motion than it does in stills. I will say that I think if you move away from either Default Ryder that the custom character models look like complete ass. I've always used the stock model for all my Shepards though so playing stock Ryder is just fine by me. Voice acting has been fine for me and there haven't been any super cringe worthy lines that I can recall.

I'm definitely ready to sink some time into the multiplayer though. As someone who put in a significant amount of time into ME3 horde mode I'm ready for more. I like the fact that there is a lot more movement around the maps rather than hunkering down in one spot and just defending. Enemies rush in more often and a lot of the enemies that rush in now too are armored enemies so it makes taking them out quickly a little bit harder. The jet pack and dashes make traversing the maps feel fun and allows for multiple options of getting around. I did experience quite a bit of lag in a couple of games but I think that was because I was getting connected with EU people as they are all speaking French in both matches. I like that there are "loadouts" for characters and races still similar to ME3. Hopefully we'll get some cool ones added like the N7 slayer or Volus Adept.

Playing through this made me super excited for next week though. I'm diving in feet first. May even take some time off of work to get some quality play time in.

@humanity: That's not what I said at all.

@pilgore: My mistake I thought you wrote that you wish it was more like an MMORPG because THAT would incentivize you to replay it, which I found really strange. Apologies, didn't mean to put words in your mouth, completely my bad on not reading carefully.

I've not seen the complaints targeting the story/character/does it hook me and make me want to keep playing aspect. Indeed the OPs initial review of the game didn't mention them much at all. When I noted this and asked, they responded with essentially "They were fine, I look forward to playing further".

I won't discount that you might have seen complaints I simply have not, as I have tried to stay dark about the story as much as I can before release. If, however, they are anything like the counter arguments people used to disagree with my last post? People who distrust Bioware to create a compelling story/characters are likely to highly skeptical of those elements in their newest game. Of course we are going to get the typical "Well the company only produces crap/I never liked anything from them in the story/character department so this one must be bad.." element. That is likely not all of the complaints..but the "I don't trust this company to produce good stories" seemed to be a theme in this thread when i brought up the topic.

That said? The exact opposite is true for those who claim to be in the other camp. I thought ME2 and 3s stories/characters(minus the ending) were great (to be fair a lot did). But I also enjoyed the characters in Inquisition. Bioware can still write interesting stories and characters, to me. Lacking the 'I don't trust Bioware" angle, its the "I had fun, I am gonna keep my pre-order and look forward to seeing where the story goes" responses that speak to me as a consumer from those who have hit the 10 hour mark.

On a side note, to everyone else who picked apart the games I chose to make my points as opposed to the points themselves. My apology for using examples that fit me, and not you. That said, my general premise I think remains sound. Some people like graphics and gameplay over story. Its why there is a bloody skip-feature and people like Dan mash it as quick as possible (silly example I know). Some of us like characters and gameplay. Such that we want to unearth every last bit of lore, dialog and interaction we can from them in the games we adore. We are the reason 'super easy' difficulties exist.

And both of those viewpoints are fundamentally fine. There is no right answer, there is only your own answer. I was only saying it seems like people in the gameplay/visuals camp seem to be extremely down on Andromeda, while those of us who skew hard in the other direction (and granted don't think Bioware is a shit story-teller) are willing to give Andromeda a go.

Aside from a few shitty combat barks I'm really not seeing where the vitriol for the writing is coming from.

e: Oh it's Addison, got it.

Hearing that the open world questing is like Dragon Age Inquisition is making me so bummed out. I liked Dragon Age well enough, but the incredibly dull quests really made completing some of the levels in that game feel so boring and grindy. If Mass Effect has any quests to go kill 5 space-cows for meat, I am going to be so disappointed.

@crommi: You go with Rippers. I'll go with Harvest Men. :D

@crommi: YOU BLOODY RIPPERS! YOU KILLED EARTH!

I decided to spend $5 on Origin Access to give the trial a shot. I'm 8 hours into the trial and finished everything I can at the moment. I enjoyed walking around the Nexus and on the Tempest talking to people. They were setting up some interesting story lines. Here are some minor spoilers on some of the questlines I encountered during the trial. There is a Salarian who wants to stop the Krogan from gaining more power. The krogans want more say after the what happened with the genophage. The main ship is running out of supplies and desperately needs new materials. There was a mutiny on the main ship, they were afraid of being left alone hopeless in an entirely new galaxy. The new enemy species won't even try talking to Milky Way species' at all for an unknown reason. The one side mission I completed was about freeing a convicted murderer because he was in danger trying to settle on a new planet and shot the leader of his group to escape to safety (this one ended abruptly which I didn't care for).

Talking with the different aliens NPCs reminded me of the interspecies politics going on in Mass Effect. I enjoyed finding out more about the situation in Andromeda. To a lesser extent, your squadmates' stories were fine as well. I didn't find out much about their backstories so far. Everything was going well but then I went down to explore the second planet and had strong, negative Inquisition deja vu. The controls felt clunky like Inquisition did. This was emphasized when the game asked me to do light platforming to scan icons or equipment on top of spires and boxes. In between the main story missions that take place in this huge, vast open world, deja vu came back with one the many collectible quests I received on the Nexus. While driving to the next mission, I dismounted my horse (the nomad in this game) to scan 1 out of 16 minerals on Eos (not sure if this is planet specific or not). There were research stations to find for research points, minerals to gather for developing weapons, wildlife to scan, corpses to scan, science vessels to discover, and research cores to find. For this one major planet, I received six collectible missions.

Aside from the combat (which is fun) it's exactly the same as Inquisition, with the emphasis on roaming around the open world collecting materials to craft weapons and gear. To me, it's one of the more worrisome aspects of Andromeda because I like to try getting the best gear in games and Inquisition's system required so much collecting from enemies and objects in the world. Andromeda is exactly the same and it was the worst part of Inquisition in my opinion.

@cerberus3dog: I secretly hope that your decision regarding the prisoner will come back to bite you in the ass later.

@sandalinbohemia: That would be really cool. That side mission did end abruptly so there may be more to it. I wanted to tell the wife about it! So yeah that would cool if I see them again.