Too many characters are written like adolescents or shitty comedians. It's a script and tone that values Nathan Drake quips and reminding the player that they're the Chosen One over nuance and depth, undercutting the grandeur and weight of the expedition. There's also a workmanlike familiarity to much of the NPC dialogue if you've played a Mass Effect before, with reused archetypes for quests and characters and few roleplaying opportunities.

To be fair, Mass Effect as a series hasn't shied away from action movie corniness, leaning into it especially hard in ME3: Citadel, so it's not a complete departure. The stiff facial and idle animations don't allow for much in the way of subtlety or emotion beyond what the voice actors bring to the table, unfortunately. There are some exceptions and interesting world building that's keeping me invested. But even for middling video game writing, from the 10+ hours or so I've spend with Andromeda the direction they went with the dialogue continues to distract and disappoint.

@sammo21: Cause I don't care a whit what they're doing I can have a great time just controlling my character.

@sackmanjones: I basically just want to say I agree with just about everything you've said, and it's nice to finally see someone close to what my current opinion of the game is. There are plenty of things worth critiquing with this game, but I'm still having a good time and like a lot of the promise of where things could go.

Ghost Recon Wildlands is what I'd call a mediocre game... this game is good from what I've played so far. I think some people are putting the trilogy on a pedestal due to nostalgia. I replayed the trilogy this winter. ME1's characters later became great, the story was good for video games at that time, and that had worse pop-in and other technical errors than here. ME2 only has like 10 guns, there's hardly any exploration, the conversation system was idiotic since Miranda/Jack could easily stop talking to you forever, and most the loyalty missions come down to "go into the base and kill everyone" there's only a few like Tali, Samara, and the thief chick who offer something all that different.

Whoever did the facial animation and the managers who approved it should probably be fired, but in-comparison to Bethesda's bugs in all their games, Destiny (base game) not being worth $60, or MGS5 (a game I like a lot) literally being incomplete and having one of the lamest endings/twists I've ever seen, I think people are too hard on this game. How humble Ryder is when first meeting a certain new alien race and landing in their city was written and voiced well.

I was ready for the worst. I still bought it though, because I really wanted to be back in the Mass Effect Universe. I just got back to the Nexus after Eos, so I am not too far in, but I am actually enjoying it quite a lot.

I understand the complaints that have been said about the game, but I think they are a little too harsh. After i got over the fact that the facial animations are not the greatest, I have embraced the game for what it is. It is an enjoyable space romp. The characters might not be the deepest and they all seem to be generic archetypes, but I have not hated any of them.

Maybe, it is just me, but I have been able to see this game as not a follow up to the Mass Effect Trilogy, but its own thing. If I kept hoping for something like the original games I would never be able to enjoy it. For me the Mass Effect Trilogy is my favorite series of all time. we have to compare this game to them because of its name, but no matter how good this game could of been, I do not think it could ever live up to it's legacy.

Yeah, so this might not be the best game ever and there might be a bit of jank, but there is still fun to be had. I was thinking an impossible hypothetical question; If this game didnt have the Mass Effect name would it have been recieved better? Or, if Mass Effect had never had existed? These are dumb questions to ask, I know.

Maybe I just wanted to be back in this world so bad that I can overlook its shortcomings.

@sammo21: I'm not saying they were bad by any stretch, I think when I beat Mass Effect 1 I wanted to see most of those characters back but I didn't end the first game dying to hear more from them. But immediately after Garrus enters Mass Effect 2 he is a fucking force to be reckoned with and quickly becaoke my favorite squad mate. Liara has a very cool intro in Mass Effect 1 and continues to be a good partner throughout. But when everything she becomes your "I know a girl..." connection that gets you information you need is when she gives off that badass vibe that eventually leads her to being the ultimate information broker in the series.

Those characters are better than any of Andromedas so far by a mile. But I think it's worth nothing thst I've spend 100s of hours with them through 3 games which really cements how I feel about them. I'm not saying Andromedas characters are better and I'm not saying I know if they will be better by the time I beat the game. Ik just trying to make a point that comparing brand new characters to characters from a trilogy of amazing games that thrive from their established characters is a little unfair. Time will tell whether these new characters hit me like that or at least begin too by the end of the game but I sure hope so, that would be great.

I am curious for the people who say they are enjoying it - are you playing on PC or console? Because my experience on console has been that this game is trending into "outright broken" territory. I've had a number of crashes and progress preventing bugs before I'm even off Eos, and that's adding to the aggravation I'm feeling with all the other issues.

@lawgamer: I'm on PC here, actually switched to pc the day before it came out from my original Amazon order. That's sucks to hear though, like I mentioned I've only had one gameplay bug that was fixed with a simple restart. Despite me enjoying the game, there's definitely no sugar coating games with serious technical issues. Even though I've had almost none it's still shitty knowing that quite a few people are having bad issues.

Also, I wanted to ask everyone if hey remained their character? Whether default or made their on Ryder? I made a decision to keep mine as Sara and I feel like I've encountered much less of the "pathfinder" bullshit than everyone else. People still refer to me as the pathfinder but I also get plenty of people calling me Ryder as well as Sara. Just curious if thst varies it up a bit or not.

@sackmanjones: I just remember the cool moments from ME1 with characters I loved and talked about during and after my playthrough of that game. Being a several hours into ME:A I can say that none of these characters, including "my" Ryder really means anything to me.

@lawgamer My character model has disappeared in cutscenes several times and I've had audio cutout in what feels about 1/4 of the dialogue.

@deathstriker People put things they like on a pedestal...doesn't mean they are misremembering things about them. The thing is each entry in the Mass Effect series was flawed in some way, just like every game is. I love Horizon Zero Dawn and even that game is flawed. However, its what the strong things do in that game to overshadow the flaws. Many of us aren't find anything strong in the game to make up for those flaws. In ME1 the story, characters, dialogue, and tone made up for the combat, inventory, and "exploration" flaws. In ME2 the combat improved, yada, yada. I'm the same way. If a game has so much great stuff it helps me ignore or forget about the flaws, like in Witcher 3, then its not a big deal. Problem is so many of us are not getting that in Mass Effect then you add on top of that the fact the trilogy was so revered and important to people that it makes it even worse. When a core Mario game disappoints its far more "devastating" than if a random, licensed Activision game disappoints. Some things just carry more weight with the fanbase.

I mentioned being on a pedestal AND nostalgia. Replaying the trilogy this winter made me remember/see a lot of flaws that I had forgot about and when I brought it up to my friends they had forgotten too. This is all subjective and case by case, but I'm sure plenty of people are remembering just the good stuff or largely the positives due to time passing and the human memory sucking. Other than some facial animations, I'm not seeing anything bad from the game. It's not like the games I mentioned (Destiny, Elder Scrolls/Fallout, and MGS) are random licensed games. They have huge fan bases and I'd say they're either more buggy or flawed than what I've played of ME:A so far.

I went with the "default female Ryder" option off the main menu, and I feel like I've heard the word "Pathfinder" six hundred times in the first 20 hours or so. It seems to come up every three or four sentences, and not just as a title (instead of just Ryder). There are tons of "...should be easy for a Pathfinder" or "...they'll listen to you, your a Pathfinder" lines in the cut-and-paste sidequests. In contrast, I feel like I've barely heard Sara, even from my supposedly close crewmates. They will typically used Ryder at least.

PC, with no real bugs to speak of at all.

Not to dismiss the notion, mind, just that I've been fairly lucky.

@freedom4556: It doesn't seem that much different than any other modern Bioware game. You are always just the super important Proper Noun and its the only thing people can use to talk to you. So I don't think Andromeda is overusing the term but just that people aren't assigning very much importance to this particular one so it seems worse.

Launch Addison out the damn airlock for saying 'Pathfind' or 'Pathfound' though.

Can somebody please tell me how the game looks and runs on the base PS4?

I can see why people are complaining about it. It's pretty damn goofy, especially compared to the previous games. It pretty much reminds me of the Star Wars prequels.

Yea I'm not sure I got to any of the "bad writing" parts. My biggest complaints are only being able to use 3 powers and not being able to control your allies powers for combos. I played 2 and 3 on Insanity and thought the combat was amazing at that difficulty. I immediately turned this down to normal because of these absurd limitations.

@megalowho said:

This is probably the most effective and summarised explanation of a reason why someone might think the writing is bad, so thank you for that. Too many people are content to say "it's bad" as a short hand for them not liking it and leaving it at that. Also the chosen one narrative only loosely fits the protagonist here, as it is a rank/job specification but the problem exists because the writer tried to make the name more mystical and important than it actually is.

@deathstriker: So far the combat for me is even a step back since they removed so many options from before and only add two things from COD Advanced Warfare. I just played a round of ME3 mp and then MEA mp...and ME3 is way more fun and controls way better to me.

Yeah that's my beef with the writing. I've never been a fan of "that devil may care", pulpy theme but can deal with it in a 2 hour movie or several hour game. Not sure how I feel about dealing with it in a 30+ hour rpg. I felt I was blindsided by it since overall, Bioware's games are of a serious tone and I prefer that. Maybe Andromeda just isn't for me.

Although the writing in ME1 and ME2 wasn't perfect, there was a strong style, vision, and narrative. They were written by what I'd call a competent narrative team. I've replayed, 1 three times, 2 and 3 twice. Mass Effect was about the opera not the combat, and it seems for all the fans of the series they hired, none of them had a competent understanding of why people enjoyed ME.

ME:A reeks of fan fiction quality. It's more interested in appealing to it's audience's sensibilities than telling a story. It's seems like cobbled together pages by committee, begging for affirmation. It's not really ME:A's fault, a lot of current media seems obsessed with appealing to sensibilities instead of telling a story.

When Tali died in ME2 for me, I felt terrible. Garrus actually felt like a Bro. Joker was like an irritating smaller brother I never had. Fuck Kaidan. etc.. They all felt like real people. While everything in ME:A feels like a caricature, more interested in showboating about its broad appeal to various sensibilities. ME:A seems to assume that because it's a ME game you'll automatically adore all it's characters, it doesn't seem to realize that adoration was built up over two and half games of interesting story telling.

Hey, I'm a ME character! " Insert dad joke" You love me right?

I am still early so maybe it is explained later but, how exactly are we travelling through the galaxy without mass effect relays? Also without them, is there a reason to call it mass effect?

Seems to be a glaring omission atm, if not a huge fundamental plot hole.

No inside info, haven't gotten it yet, but I guess it would be the same answer as in the trilogy, ancient aliens. With maybe access to them being the difficult thing to gate your progress. One would think that the Rachni wars would also merit some caution as well.

I would hazard a guess that Andromeda will eventually come around to supporting the point of the Reaper threat. It helps explain the dearth of alien species revealed so far in Andromeda. So robots or overbearing ancient aliens will be the crux of the issues with this galaxy without the Reapers constantly scouring life...with a bit of that Dark Energy mystery from ME2 (Haestrom). Of course, even if I was sympathetic to the Reaper goal of preserving life, their methods and the likelihood that they didn't limit their efforts to spacefaring races but also worlds too far along to ignore for 50,000 years (like various devastated bronze age worlds you find if you scan) makes me hope Bioware doesn't go this route.

I was really hoping for oddball things like aliens from previous Reaper cycles making their own efforts to preserve themselves so you could have had a CRAZY selection of aliens in some Citadel Council, locked into conflict with the native species and counting on periodic reinforcements every 50,000 years. Or the Geth (or some other rebelling robots) beaming their schematics into the void and some "just smart enough to be dangerous" species decides to make these awesome robot slaves some generous dummy out there is just giving the plans out.

@oursin_360: Its only a star cluster, not the entire galaxy. They traveled within clusters without relays back in the original games too (think back to ME3, when you'd leave systems by going to their edge to avoid the Reapers, and then other nearby systems would be available).

Non-relay FTL has always existed in Mass Effect and always been used to get between neighboring systems within clusters. The relays were for the really big distances, that even with FTL would take too long. But none of those distances are in this game.

It seems like the sort of thing where you gotta be on board with their more roguish tone or it's gonna fuckin suck so much. I restarted 4 times (character creator woes) and by the time I was satisfied with my character and played through that starting bit again I was okay with it (after finding it quite grating pre-release and during my intial go). After I got through the trial content and the vault stuff I came away with the early impression that this thing still feels like a Mass Effect game, just with a different story and all that obviously.

Specifically as far as the writing goes though, I have been exceedingly wary of selecting any dialogue option that isn't tonally logical or professional. Smarmy Ryder seems super annoying. That said, Peebee and Drack are characters I'm legitimately excited to roll with.

For the first time in what feels like a lifetime I find myself agreeing with Penny Arcades take on the matter:

The further I get, the more I think the writing is an intentional tonal shift as opposed to a complete misfire. It can still be amateur; that’s a separate conversation. But meaning to do something that doesn’t land with a portion of their audience occupies a distinct portion of the diagram. I’m open to the idea that it was written for someone else.

@sackmanjones: Yep, totally agree about Liara and Garrus. To me, they were all pretty much one note, but in two they gave reason to like them with more humor or with Liara, how she had changed from the shy, kind of cutesy character to someone determined no matter what. Going back to one, it's a lot easier to like them, but that's because of playing two and knowing them better with two (and even three). They had more of a character, and it was interesting to see what they had been doing and who they had become in the time between the two games.

@sammo21: That's one thing, and it's one of those negligible aspects; they hold their own too. I don't feel like I'm losing much just because I can't have one of them freeze an enemy or what have you. I'm talking about shooting and your maneuverability, though (how it feels), not necessarily friendly control.

@bradbrains: Not at all, because it's neither. Amazing is too strong, and awful is way too strong. It's great so far, though.

Yeah I got that impression as well. I feel like a lot of different mediums, but especially games lately are like this. There are people who find writing and characters "bad" because they don't identify with them in any way. But that doesn't really make them bad. It means they are targeting different people, different audiences, who maybe do identify with them. I couldn't help but think of all the bad jokes they were talking about on the Bombcast, and one liners, and thinking "I know bro dudes who would laugh their ass of at this shit." A bit of elitism could be working it's way in with this stuff too. Obviously that is notwithstanding that it's still important to acknowledge that the writing could be amateurish as well. But how intentional that is is certainly also up for debate.

@deathstriker: relevant quote Jeff on the Bombcast: "over the weekend I had the game and could play as much or as little as I wanted to. [at some point] I chose to play Ghost Recon instead"

So yeah, ME:A sounds hella mediocre

I meant mediocre as "ok" or fun with flaws but moreso not awful. I think unless something is amazing (especially in the technical department) than so many people just make snap judgements and call it bad. single glitches turn into internet circlejerks and it makes it often really hard to find good info about it

@deathstriker: It's a team failure (not just that it's limited to just the animators either) and from what I've read, it's a lot more complex than "x person should be fired" because this isn't just a fault of one person nor is it something that can easily be dismissed as the team needing to be fired. It's detailed by people who worked on animation in this article who give their takes as to what might have happened and how that process might end up and not meeting expectations in the final product (in short: facial animation is a lot harder especially in games that are heavy on branching dialogue than what everyone thinks).

I feel like a bunch of people are missing the point of the criticism. You can always ignore "this game is trash fire" type comments. People are hyperbolic on the internet.

That's not what most people are saying though. I've seen ME:A compared to other ME games many times pointing out flaws that were present back then.

That's a very easy thing to do since no game is perfect but you know what? Those games are still great. Think of the conversation with Sovereign, the genophage, the Geth/Qarian conflict. Think of loyalty missions, mordin and shooting the shit with Garus on the Citadel.

Now can you tell me ME:A has anything like that? I want to hear why this game is good. Not how it is not the worst thing in the world.

@pyrodactyl: The problem is that any examples of moments that feel good in Andromeda would fall strictly into spoiler territory. I could list off my favorite moments from the 20 hours I've played but I'd immediately be ruining them for you and anyone else who reads it. It's also very hard to quantify the amount I've felt the same quality in writing/moments to compare it to the trilogy. Partially because I haven't seen everything through yet and its been years since my first expetience with the trilogy, but mostly because it's just trying to say which moments had me most engaged and interested. Which again, boils down to me just spoiling things for whoever asks.

I can say that there are times where I can sit back from the keyboard and feel pretty good about the writing. In a similar way to how I reacted to those things you listed off from the trilogy. That doesn't mean there aren't times where it's also cringe worthy, but that's what a mixed bag is afterall.

@bradbrains: Yeah, I don't know. The videos that Giant Bomb posted, there was many issues that I saw with the game, but playing it myself, I actually have not run into any of those glitches (and there haven't been any major ones in my time playing it yet). The animations don't bother me that much, it's more the lack of detail in their faces. It just looks last-gen, like the previous Mass Effect games. As for dialogue, I've been okay with it so far. To me, it's on the level of all the other Bioware games. People are being too harsh and using opinion as fact, or individual experience when not everyone else is experiencing it whether that be bad dialogue or an abundance of glitches. I think this game is way better than just average as well, but yeah amazing is giving it too much credit (though I would say it's closer to amazing than average). I still have a lot more to play, though.

@pyrodactyl: I think it's going to be hard for Andromeda to compete for Best Moments against a full trilogy. Sure target practice with Garrus on the Citadel is amazing but it's also the culmination of three games worth of characterization.

I think that's what it is but I also think the game swings and misses a decent amount, mainly with the protagonist. Insisting he be called Pathfinder the minute he wakes up after being "bestowed" it. Being the field lead of a whole initiative but kind of bumbling through situations.

Going the Firefly/Uncharted route is one thing but it's like some of the dialog was written by the "all the feels" guy in an unironic way. I switched over to FF15 (an anime-ass jrpg full of leather and zippers, where you play literally a teenage prince) and that main character is more relatable.

I'm not trying to hate; I just wish I knew the tone was gonna be different from what the other Mass Effect games were. Was Bioware ever upfront with this?

@efesell: the conversation with Sovereign is one of the best video game moment of all time and it was from mass effect 1. Genophage, geth, spectres and everything people love about the ME universe were set up in ME1.

From what I heard ME:A doesn't set up much of anything interesting. I was really excited with the premise they had for the game. It just seems like they did nothing with it.

Eh the conversation with Sovereign is good but to me that's kind of it for ME1. Obviously without it the things I actually love about Mass Effect wouldn't exist at all but that doesn't really lead me to think too favorably on the game itself.

I guess I'm not too interested in Andromeda setting the table for a whole new trilogy, I like that it's better about giving me characters that I like and fun situations to actually play through.

You can set up and resolve very complex conflicts in a game that can run anywhere from 50 to 120 hours. Again, it really seems like the world building and conflicts are shallow and unoriginal. Someone on here compared it to fan fiction seeking validation without anything original to say or offer.

I guess that stuff doesn't matter if you enjoy the characters/story they're trying to tell. I just know I wouldn't. Too many people I respect and agree with thought the whole thing was very meh. Especially the story, writing and characters.

@deathstriker: @sackmanjones: I think you're right to point out the flaws and the fact that ME changed and built on itself over time. It kind of depends on whether you insist on thinking of this as the fourth Mass Effect or the first Mass Effect Andromeda. One could say that the designers of ME should have learned everything they need to in order to avoid the unforced errors of Andromeda, but of course those were different designers, and if they keep these ones around, they will need to learn some of the same lessons (and some new ones) for themselves.

@lawgamer: PS4 standard. I haven't run into anything that I'd consider broken in the fifteen hours I've played so far. The worst and I want to say only things is that I've seen a character floating across the room until I walked up to her, and sometimes when you're in conversation, the one where you can move the camera around, the NPC you're talking to can walk off as you're talking to them. It's if you trigger the conversation as they're doing their route. I've talked to a handful of NPC's as they're ten feet away with their backs to me. To me, it doesn't ruin the experience, it's just goofy. I haven't had any moment where my progress was blocked with a glitch where I had to reload a save. The pop in isn't as bad as I suspected. That said, every visual issue I have largely come from the character detail. It also does the thing that Unreal Engine 3 has always done on last-gen, where textures pop in on the faces. The fact that this is the Frostbite, and it still has that issue is weird to me. I haven't seen a lot of bad texture pop in when it comes to the environments.

16 hours in and as far as I see it, its on par with the other games in most areas. It's at least as good as ME3. Not a perfect game but a disappointment that media and other make it out to be, not even close

@marz: I'd expect my universal translator to work everywhere in the universe, else I'd want my money back.

I haven't had major problems with the writing so far. There are a few stinkers like Liam "He's mad because I shot him in the face" Kosta but I don't expect every line of dialogue to always hit. It's nothing special but nothing that groan-inducing either. I've also found that the Ryder twins have different approaches in their line delivery, Scott has a more snarky/sarcastic tone while Sara has a little bit more serious tone to it which I appreciate.

I remember when ME2 came out, everyone on the internet complained about how much the writing in it was dumbed down compared to the original. People were mad about how you only had 2-4 dialogue choices in each conversation while the first game had 6. Today, for some reason, ME2 is everyone's favorite and I haven't changed my opinion all that much about the game. It easily had the best characters, and I remember only 1 of them was poorly written...but it was the weakest at telling the main story. It took way too much of a side step from the main plot and before I realize it, I was finished with the game. I haven't finished Andromeda yet, but so far I consider ME2 to have the weakest story. Not sure why everyone thinks it's so great. ME3's main story was much stronger but it gets overshadowed/downlplayed because of the ending.

@fezrock: ok so the whole game will be in one small section of the galaxy? I do remember it taking a shit ton of fuel and constantly being almost marooned before reaching a space station. Also weird they found so many golden worlds so close to each other. But like i said i am early(still on first planet) maybe this stuff will be explained.

A star cluster can have stars numbering in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions. The presence of a good number of potentially habitable planets in a single cluster isn't far-fetched at all. Also, the reason for a higher than normal amount of garden worlds in the helius cluster is an element of the plot.

I just got to the point where you meet the new friendly aliens and I'm just flabbergasted at how poorly it was handled. The sequence starts pretty good, but then it just fizzles completely. There's something very strange going on with the overarching storytelling in the game. The whole concept of the game is that you're at the spear tip of exploring a new frontier, yet all the interesting encounters this should entail are massively underplayed. This should've been a game filled with awe inspiring sequence after awe inspiring sequence, but everything just feels so mundane.

I think it's good enough to do its job. It's a sci-fi space opera and it comes with its fair share of cliches, deus ex machina mumbo-jumbo explanations, and some definite cheese, but the NPC to NPC interactions are good, and I'm finding pretty much all of the crew except Lexi interesting enough. In a game with this much dialogue some will be jarring, I think, and it's hard to make sure everyone has a distinct personality and tone. Some of the best writing, too, is in the emails and datapads. I'm not sure how I feel about that from a gameplay perspective, but at least it makes reading all of them interesting.

@ares42: Much as I like the game so far, that part really bugged me too. I could kinda get it not being that big a deal for the Tempest crew. They all know tons of different sentient races, and several of them had first contact occur with multiple races during their lifetime. Sure that was in the Milky Way rather than Andromeda, but having a "been there, done that" attitude to something that's usually a big deal in fiction could be interesting. HOWEVER, this should've been a massive deal to the angarans. They've meet exactly one other sentient species, the kett, and they were hostile. Meeting more aliens, and supposedly friendly ones at that, should've been huge.

Also, the language barrier should've been a bigger deal than a single line about translators after you're already back on the Tempest.

This is the most accurate and damning summary of Andromeda I have seen on the internet. Well done.