March 14th at 1:00 PM Central Time - Streaming embargo ends. Any reviewers who have access to the full game are now allowed to stream any of the single player EA/Origin Access content up until a specific point in the story. Presumably, they can also stream multiplayer.

March 16th at a currently unknown time - Anyone with an EA Access or Origin Access account can play a total of 10 hours of single player and multiplayer. Players can only play until a certain point in single player, which is said to take about six hours to reach. This could perhaps last longer, depending on the way you play the game. You could also choose to ignore single player, and just play 10 hours of multiplayer, or any combination of either, for 10 hours total. Expect loads of video and impressions all over the internet.

March 20th at 1:00 AM Central Time - Review embargo ends. Presumably, the rest of the game can now be streamed.

March 21st - The game is released.

Most of the info above comes from this video, from someone who is reviewing the game, and will also be streaming it starting this afternoon. He'll also be posting the stream to You Tube once the stream is over, and I'm sure he won't be the only one. So if you're on PS4, or just don't want to subscribe to EA's gaming service, at least you'll be able to see plenty of the game for yourself starting later today.

Anxiously awaiting impressions on the multiplayer from people who invested a lot of time into the ME3 multiplayer.

Man, I am so excited and scared at the same time. I've loved the previous Mass Effect games so much, I really, really hope this game stacks up.

Weird. Why bother with a day-before-release embargo if you can let folks stream the game a week before. Presumably they'd be able to give some impressions there, no? Perhaps not. I vaguely recall seeing videos where someone says they can talk about a game itself, but not qualitatively, so I suppose that sort of thing can happen.

In any case I guess it still makes sense for marketing reasons to have multiple "events" leading into your release. Last week I was ready to throw down but I'm glad I decided to wait. I'll see if the impending deluge of footage can get actually get me excited to play this game, rather than "The Next Mass Effect," if you know what I mean. Otherwise, I'll wait for reviews.

@theht said:

I'm of the same mind. Cover all the bases and let the deluge flow during this last week seems to be the ticket.

As of two days from now, anyone with an EA subscription is going to be able to play 10 hours of the game, single player and multiplayer. I guess EA / BioWare can NDA reviewers however they want, but there will be absolutely no way to stop everyone else from sharing their opinions as of this Thursday. The only blanks reviews will be able to fill in are things like the game's overall length, and if the first six hours are representative of the 30+ hours that follows it, for better or for worse.

Everything about the gameplay, presentation, and overall entertainment value will be widely discussed long before review scores are available.

Absolutely. ME3 multiplayer kept me coming back to that game for months.

I wonder if there'll be any more pre-release coverage on the site. I'm especially curious to see what Jeff, Brad or Vinny think of the game. A friend of mine pre-ordered this for me a few weeks ago, so I'd rather not pretend to be enjoying it :p

@theht: makes me think there could be performance issues with later content, or writing/level design could suffer later in the game, or it could just be to avoid spoilers.

Anyways, i am going to get a month of origin and check out multiplayer and some furi/mirrors edge.

Like most people I'm very unsure of this game but I REALLY hope it's good!

The you tuber I mentioned in the first post has been streaming the game for hours. If you want to see the finish product and don't care about early spoilers, you can do so now.

i ended up getting a month of origin access for the 10% off, ends up being slightly cheaper that way to get the game, so might as well play the game early :)

Why did they have to shoehorn in an open world and resource scanning? Why...

#NotMyMassEffect?

Actually the 10-hour rule for Access members only applies to the single-player. Multiplayer is unlimited.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/more-details-on-mass-effect-andromedas-eaorigin-ac/1100-6448444/

It's not an open world, just really large environments on multiple planets. And resource scanning has been a thing since ME2 and perhaps even earlier. The only difference is that now it happens as you're walking around, rather than scanning planets from a ship. It seems sort of like finding and gathering materials in Horizon: Zero Dawn.

#SoYesYourMassEffect

@deckard: This is good to know. I'm trying to get a couple friends to jump on the origin access so we can test this out

I wanna say the EA early access stuff is time limited, so maybe a streamer couldn't get too far into the game before release?

But also because having people stream your game can get a ton of eyeballs on it.

Please just let the story and characters be memorable. That's what makes Mass Effect special.

exactamundo.

i'm going to make a BOLDprediction and say they game will be decent and competent, but ultimately not as notable as the original ME trilogy.

man, I really wanna play this game. I almost wanna play for ea access to mess around with it on Xbox but my actual copy will be PS4 so it's probably not worth it. Worried people will dig around the files of this game and throw spoilers up left in right. Guess I'll just stick to press coverage and maybe the giant bomb forums for impressions. I hope most people that deliver their impressions go in with a blank slate, Bioware has had a big red target on their back since dragon age 2 that they can't seem to shake and it gives all their games a shadow of negativity no matter what it is.

Regardless I am super excited to play this game. I definitely have my nitpicks from what I've seen but so far everything EA has shown has made me wanna call off of work to marathon ME:A for a whole day.

Do we know yet how big the day one patch will be? Still can't seem to find any solid info on patch size. Hopefully not too big as I get internet with my cell phone via jetpack.

I'm galactically ready, but I have niggling feeling this is going to be a sub par affair. It just doesn't seem to be doing anything too different.

Lets hope the characterisation is solid, mechanically none of the games have ever been that interesting... and that's coming from someone who loved the originally trilogy.

Ooof, a lot of the previews out there are reflecting a lot of the negativity in threads on this forum. Lots of talking down about the writing, characters, facial animation, faces and the character creator too.

I was really ready for another character driven ARPG, it's been since TW3 since i've played one so I've been craving it.

I may throw down the $5 for Access to try Mass Effect early. I need to know for myself.

@shorap: The "day one" patch is a little over 2 gigs. The entire game comes around at 45 gigs.

From what I've seen, that character creator looks about as bad as the old Mass Effect games. I thought Dragon Age: Inquisition had a pretty decent character creator, so I dunno what gives.

Everything I've seen looked to have "Custom" greyed out on that preset screen though, so fingers crossed you can actually pick and choose facial features rather than just tweaking a preset. No idea why it'd be greyed out if they're letting folks mess around with the early game.

Yeeesh. The RPS preview's impressions are . . . not good.

@lawgamer: Concerning, but I can also kinda count the times I've agreed with an RPS take on one hand so...might need a bit more.

The author of that article also hated The Witcher 3, saying playing it was "like eating cardboard," so take that for what you will.

I honestly don't know what to make of this, sounds like so much hyperbole especially the part about the character shooting like that isn't in every action movie ever is it really that offensive? eh. Showing the AI jank that is so common just to show the game in a bad light, just seems like the guy wants to make the game look like the worst thing of all time just cause he doesn't seem to like it much. From what i've seen there isn't anything offensively bad about the writing at least in the first hour or so.

@ll_exile_ll said:

Well that makes sense, reading that review just gave me the "Hey i'm the angry reviewer guy and here is my over the top reaction" vibe. Not him not liking the witcher , but saying stuff like it's "like eating cardboard".

Might have to look into that cause if the writing of Witcher 3, and not just gameplay, was also not up to standard then this whole impression is of zero help to me.

Hasn't John Walker had some rather "contrarian" opinions on some very popular and well-reviewed games in the past? He's certainly entitled to his opinion, regardless, of course. I just remember disagreeing with him before.

It seems he also called Mass Effect 3 superb and defended its ending, so either the writing is by far the worst it's ever been in any BioWare game, or we might just have different opinions.

[edit]

And there you go.

Also a little hard to sort through hot takes cause there seem to be a lot of "Oh no it's like Inquisition, bleuuuugh' and I loved that game.

I actually didn't care for the writing in Inquisition, mainly because I found too many of the characters unlikable, and I didn't care for the primary campaign quest towards the end. I did still enjoy the game quite a bit, though, and having environments that large in a Mass Effect game sounds fun to me.

The examples he provides are so out of context and hard to even understand where the overwhelming negativity comes from. Not to mention they also sound very similar to Biowares writing styles all the way back to DA:O.

That being said, I've seen complaints elsewhere about the writing. I just hope it's not DA:I bad, that whole game was fanfic tier.

One last example from his twitter:

"Everyone complaining about the end of Mass Effect 3 is a loon. What a splendid way to finish."

Yeah. No. Absolutely no. No backed up by statistical evidence. No.

@spaceinsomniac: Yea so he's a contrarian not worth listening too. I stopped visiting RPS for a reason.

Always a bit deflating to read a preview like that from RPS, but Eurogamer has a similar article up, and it's alot more positive.

Peter Brown didn't exactly praise the beginning of this game in the Bombcast, so the opening may just be weak.

Either way, this game doesn't sound awful or broken, so I'm probably going to buy it just to experience it myself. There are so many good games coming out right now that it might be hard to squeeze in, so I may have to mainline the main story.

Andromeda's a Bioware game poor shooting/animations, weird lip syncing and graphical issues are par the course, mixed previews are natural not everyone will see through Mass Effects usual quirks.

I really hope this is good. Doesn't have to be great. I can deal with some minor issues.

@draugen: Indeed. It's also worth pointing out that the author of the RPS piece - John Walker - described playing The Witcher 3 as "like eating cardboard", and found Inside to be "an empty, procedural, albeit often beautiful platform game with not a single original idea in its belt", calling its ending in particular, "utterly dreadful".

Now, that's not to in any sense discredit his preview - people react to different games differently, and that a person's impression of a game doesn't line up with the 'general sentiment', in so much as such a thing can be quantified, makes it no less valid (I, for example, love Dragon Age 2 with a fervent passion) - but it should hopefully serve to better place it within the proper context. I find that it's always better to know a writer's general preferences, and to have some knowledge of how they've reacted to games that you yourself have played in the past, when determining if their impression of a game is likely to line up with your own.

While unlocks and maps are not gated, multiplayer is still limited to those ten hours. Single player is limited to both the ten hour and up to a certain story mission.

@kirkyx: thats just alot of fancy writing for discrediting his article.

After having read it im gonna go out on a limb and say hes right because it describes a Biowaregame in a nutshell.

Loved the Mass Effect games (yes even 3) and I actually think the combat looks way more interesting this time round. But some of the story footage I've seen looks kind of bad, just have a worry about this game.

@rethla: I didn't discredit his article, but hey ho, you take what you want from my comment, duder. And you don't like BioWare games? Cool! I love them, always have. :)

It's not discrediting him, it's his opinion and I'm sure it's genuine. However, if past examples of his opinions and preferences are the complete opposite of mine, I'm not going to put a lot of stock in what he's said here.

Understanding a critic's point of view is always a good idea, and it can help you understand if their opinions align with your own and if what they have to say will be relevant to you. The Witcher 3 is one my top 10 favorite games of all time, he hated it. That calls into question whether anything he has to say about other RPGs will match up with my own preferences.

Kotaku seems to REALLY like it so far

Game critics opinions on game stories are often very different than mine (even I find in the case of many RPG fans) so I don't care about opinions about that part of the game. I'm already playing this for sure so I'm interested to find out for myself.

@artisanbreads: I think that's the key with all media coverage. You don't try to find people who are "correct" in their coverage, but understand how their opinions line up with yours. So if Jeff says he doesn't like something there's a pretty good chance that I will enjoy it, especially when it comes to story and gameplay.

@kirkyx: i love Biowaregames and im looking forward to Andromeda.