Already tired of the ME:A hate

@efesell: yea, he's whatever. Generic space cop. He's the only ship character so far I would say is actually weak.

The graphics aren't great. I can't see how the body movement animations are a great improvement over the trilogy. And while you didn't run into bugs on X1 if the PS4 Pro and X1 versions had greatly different amounts of bugs it would be very unusual. I think perhaps you just got luckier than those who ran into the other bugs.

I'm all for giving the game a chance. But I don't share your optimism and I think that the issues others have raised are significant.

Yeah the transition to Pathfinder was pretty weak, though I suspect that might be by design. In the original trilogy Shepard becoming a Spectre was a destination from the start, and it was built up to and quickly reached (to much fanfare). Becoming Pathfinder here seemed like a fuck up, and it kinda was right?

Wasn't Cora supposed to become Pathfinder, but for whatever reason you end up getting shoehorned into the role? Makes sense to be met with "uhh, okay, I guess," under the circumstances. To have your coming to prominence be confounding and dubious rather than jubilant. Hopefully they build on that, and it seems obvious they mean to. It's an interesting framing, though one I don't think they conveyed especially well.

Err, not that the weakness is by design, but that it not being hyped up is by design.

There's something slightly perverse about the way the internet will dogpile on things that are perceived as having "earned" the hate. 7 years ago, Bioware was on top of the damn world between Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, but after Dragon Age 2 and the whole ME3 ending debacle there's a bit of schadenfreude surrounding that company and its (continual) mishaps.

As far as I go, Dragon Age Inquisition was not my cup of tea, so I was already pretty cautious about Andromeda. Seeing what I've seen of the trial and the preview coverage kinda confirms that they're doubling down on the faux-MMO structure and some of the amateur-hour writing that turned me off of Inquisition in the first place. The weird faces are just the most obvious thing, and since they make for some pretty hilarious gifs and short clips, they're the thing people hammer on because it's easy. Ultimately though, unless the game is really and truly dire, there's just enough goodwill left between me and Bioware that I'll at least give it a try... when it's cheap enough.

I played the EA Access trial. Yes the game has flaws, the writing and voice acting is bad at times, the animations and faces are bad. However, overall I really enjoyed what I played, I really liked some of the changes they made. I'm getting the game next week.

@theht: I think the reason they give for you becoming path finder is that Sam is a secret super advanced AI that was designed to study and learn from the human experience and can actually control your body and store memories which is a big no no in that universe. Even EDI in Mass Effect 2 had restrictions put on her where she couldn't access parts of the ship without being unshackled. Sam has none of those restrictions. When you find out your character even says that if other people found out about Sam's true capabilities it would cause more panic.

@opusofthemagnum: That's just not true though. Important NPC's such as Miranda or Fist animated horribly at times. Not to mention the frequent glitches in dialogue scenes. If the original trilogy was a C in that department, Andromeda is at least a C+ and people are bummed it isn't an A. Fair, but come on.

@zevvion: I am curious as to why your so keen to defend the game?

Gave the game a second try after being very disappointed by it. The facial animations are bad but I could definitely looks past them, its the writing that is getting me. Just seems very bad, i started just skipping all dialogue and began enjoying the game because of it. The game is definitely mass effect inquisition, something about how they lay stuff out makes me want to do everything. Combat is enjoyable, game does seem a bit buggier then id like though. Finally one little other thing that is grinding my gears is when going between plannets for scanning you have that little bit of your ship slowly flying over there, massive ballache that.

If you love Inquisition, there's a good chance you'll be on board with ME:A. Certainly seems to follow the same "blueprint"

I don't like how BioWare became one of those studios that has like 5 different versions of themselves around the world of varying quality.

It makes you think Mass Effect is a BioWare game, well, the BioWare people think fondly of. It's basically an entirely new developer that for some reason looked at Inquisition which people were very mixed on and decided to build Mass Effect around that.

The writing and delivery are definitely the worst things, adding the animations on top and that's when it gets intolerable. What I saw in the livestream was very poor and disjointed dialogue, the repeated use of "Pathfinder!" and "We got this" is a failure of writing 101, you're not supposed to use the same lines (or similar) over and over.

I dont know what it is but seeing the animations in a 10 second gif makes it seem alot worse than when i saw it while playing the trial, not to say that they are good, but I was more forgiving. My main problem with the animations were the little things like the way Peebee's lip's moved when you talk to her, they get weird and strechy like how lips dont normally do and how it seems like 90% of the time people walk and stand around with elbowsbent to much, and the deadpan delivery and how they animated certain scenes make mittle scense.

But despite all this i'm still pretty excited for the game, it feels pretty good and the shooting is also pretty good, although i wish they went more ME1 rpg then ME3. I just hope the game holds up over however long the game takes, since as much as i loved ME1-3, Origin and even DA:2 i still haven't beaten inquisition, but im hopeful.

What is bad about the writing, exactly? From Brad's stream and other clips I've seen, the writing is fairly middle-of-the-road sci-fi pulp, but nothing egregious. It's just that I've seen so many folks dinging the writing without giving any insight as to why it's so poor.

I'm not. Hate it all you want. But the part where it's supposedly worse animations, worse graphically, worse environmental design than the original trilogy is just not something to take seriously. This is Mass Effect 3 all over again: 'Shepard doesn't even talk to some of the questgivers, he just overhears them and then returns when he completed it! That never happened in 2!' Uh, yeah it did. Not just that, it happened more frequently.

You can dislike the game. You can dislike it because of the animations. But the second someone says it looks worse than before my bullshit alarm goes off. It's like these people have completely wiped their experience with Mass Effect from their brains and rewrote it how they wished they experienced it. In the OG, for example 2, multiple NPC's had their eyes stuck to the top of their eyelids every other sentence. Their necks were cranked to be at a 90 degree angle all of a sudden if you approached them from behind. The lip sync was often most definitely not well sunk (ha!).

Writing-wise, the pace of the story's introductory hours is very fast in a clunky way. Characters are introduced in passing or in ham-fisted ways (Vetra walking right up to you and giving you bullet points of her personality without you even asking, PeeBee collapsing onto you then being in your party half a minute later, etc.)

Leaning heavily on the fact you're a pathfinder every few sentences or quicker, when that title doesn't seem quite as awe-inspiring as they intended, jars somewhat too. That'll not be a big deal when you've done some major things in the story, however.

The lead writer is the Halo 4 guy, in only his third writing credit after Halo 4 and Destiny: Rise of Iron, and that game also suffered in similar ways. It barely feels like a Halo game from some angles, but the Master Chief/Cortana exchanges were decent. The world-building or extensions he added to Bungie's universe felt off (that weird vampire-looking villain was so out of place), though that's less true in Andromeda. It definitely has Mass Effect-ass stuff in it, but the pacing and, "We got this," shit and less-than-subtle character introductions are my personal bugbears. Once you're out of that rough start and into the swing of things, the writing starts to sink into the background a bit more (in a good way), and the simpler ambient conversations do their work. Once you know everyone, I wouldn't be surprised if it comes together more cohesively and isn't an issue. We'll see.

Compare all that to Mass Effect 1's method of introducing you to people as they interact with others (Wrex fighting in C-Sec, Garrus disagreeing with a superior, Tali's dodgy dealings with some of Fist's lackeys in that alley, Saren and Nilus' weird exchange, etc.) That isn't masterclass shit, but it succeeds in making you think, "Woah, who's that?" in interesting ways without them feeling like they were scripted to land right in your path. I'm confident they will pick it up, however. It's just not the best intro.

As someone who replayed the trilogy this November through January I can definitely say that Ashley and Kaiden in ME1 were not very personable or interesting in the first few hours of the game. IMO, Kaiden was boring/lame in all the games (him dying in ME1 or shooting him in ME3 were the most interesting things he ever did). Ashley largely just had "I'm racist" going for her story, but it was interesting to see if guys would ignore that or not since she's the "hot one". I couldn't stand her, but she was some of my friends love interests because of her looks. I think people are comparing Liam and Corra to all the great times they had in the trilogy, which is really comparing 100s of hours to 3 hours.

ME1's story was not very enthralling in first few hours nor were the characters that memorable, it all comes together as you play the game. It actually had quite a bit cheese as Saren throws a fit in the beginning of the game on his ship and Liara's mom is there dressed like dominatrix nun. All we've played or really seen is the prologue of this game and a little bit of the next planet, so I'll hold judgement until I play more. I do already care more about finding the other arks, the Ryder family mystery, and what's going on in general than Shepard finding that relic and having visions, which is the beginning of ME1. Shepard definitely didn't earn being a spectre on-screen. You become one after the first mission. There is a secret about the Ryder family, which is probably why the father passes it down to his kid. Also, that's pretty normal storytelling - a new leader in over his/her head - you could say the same thing about Captain Kirk in the Star Trek reboot. Becoming a hero on-screen is what Bioware wanted, since Shep was already one before we even played ME1.

I will say that over the course of the first ME game (and then later on the trilogy) Ashley and Liara grew well as characters in a variety of aspects despite initially being despised (Ashley) or just there (Liara). I'm willing to give these new characters a chance.

@deathstriker: Mass Effect has a tradition of your first two companions -- who are always humans, and usually tailor-made for romances -- being lame, so I feel like I've been trained to not care about Liam and Cora. If the alien companions are boring, now that's when alarm bells will start going off.

The fondness for ME1 in a lot of Andromeda takes is something I wish I maintained.

I tried to replay that in the lead up to new Mass Effect and it was a terrible mistake.

From the playthrough thing the duders did, Drack seemed about 1000% cooler than anybody else and I am happy about that. Very HK-47 vibes.

@encephalon: I remember hating all the main characters until garrus and wrex showed up, mass effect always has bad human characters (shepard included honestly). I think 2 was better with that, Jack and Miranda were way more interesting than kaiden and ashley (god she annoyed me in the first game). They were a bit better written in the third game though.

Thinking about the plausibility of the story and the hamfisted nature of how things are presented, this game needs to NOT take itself too seriously. Where mass effect 2 was basically the suicide squad, this should do something like the rat pack and oceans 11 type thing where it's a bit tounge and cheek. Would honestly make the animation stuff more palatable as well, IMO mass effect's story ended with 3 no need for a new epic but a fun side story would be alright.

@oursin_360: Yeah I'm not super worried about that. This whole thing feels intended to invoke B movie sci-fi over grand space opera.

A few things I liked:

- Faces aside, it's one of the best looking games of this generation. I'd put it in the top 5, maybe top 3.

- After I got use to the combat I like it more than the past game. Getting stuck on cover was a problem in past, even in ME3 which had the best combat, but that's no longer an issue and the shooting feels even better. My only worry there is if they've made powers weaker, but that could be because I was so low level.

- I'm actually intrigued about where the other arks are and how they're doing, the Asari one the most, since I like that species the most. The Kett seem to like to experiment, so I wouldn't be shocked if one of the arks gets transformed like the Collectors did.

- The level design and environments were great, they don't feel like reskins and the first planet actually felt alien - some other games like Halo always feel like Earth, so I'm curious to see what other worlds they've created.

- The voice acting was fine, Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor from the Justice League/Superman cartoons) is always a win. Some of the side mission characters didn't sound as great as the main cast, but that's every RPG.

- Crafting armor and weapons was a good idea. ME2 has like two weapons for each category (pistol, shotgun, etc) this game looks like it probably has dozens of weapon choices and a nice amount of armor too. Plus getting the crafting materials encourages exploration.

What we played and what critics are allowed to talk about is basically just the prologue and a little after, so that's my impressions with a few hours of the campaign. I don't think scanning planets is back. You click on a planet and choose where to land (on a designated spot), I haven't seen any mineral scanning of a planet from that view, which I wouldn't mind. You scan and mine for minerals with the car. I don't preorder games, not sure why people still do that.

@redcometrising: You probably liked the original trilogy for a different reason? ME3 is the best third person shooter I've played to date. This seems like a tad better version of that. I've seen nothing to agree with anything else you've said though.

I understand you were purposefully exaggerating with your question, but yeah, I would totally get this if it was just called Andromeda. I'd be surprised if this doesn't end up in my top 3 this year. It might dethrone ME3's multiplayer even. In fact, this still has the potential to be one of the best games of the generation for me.

I think whatever your reason was for liking the original three (I am sort of assuming you actually didn't like 3 as much as you say) is something that either isn't here or is less impressive now to the point where you don't care.

@deathstriker:Hmmm, maybe I should go back and play ME1 because I think I may have a "rose tinted view" a bit.

I totally agree, Kayden was just sort of there, and Ashley was the love interest, but her story and personality were interesting and engaging to me. And her racist thing did turn me off a bit, but I don't remember what redeemed her from that for me, though. Again, I'll have to replay it to see exactly where and how that comes up. I'm currently playing through ME2 so I can be caught up to where that ends, and Andromeda begins.

I honestly don't know why it's not striking me the same way, and I REALLY REALLY wish it was because I LOVE Mass Effect, and a huge sucker for space oppera's! So for me, it's not about "hating" on the game, it's more like...

@m16mojo2: I realize I'm the odd one out, but I always thought Kaiden was awesome. He felt like the rock solid friend who had your back. He was open about his emotions, yet strong and did not weaver on missions. Ashley never really redeems herself. The closest she came was after you sacrifice Kaiden's life (which I did in like playthrough #6 for the first time because fuck Ashley (not literally. Actually... that's probably the only thing I'd do; and yeah Kaiden) she makes a somewhat convincing argument that she did not want to be rescued and Kaiden's life was more important. That's about the only thing I liked about her.

EDIT: Regarding Mass Effect that is. In ME3, she is actually a much better and more explored character. Which is another reason why I like 3 the best.

Yeah many glaring problems persist, and people tend to focus upon them. The animation involving a second or two mishaps are freeze framed in meme footnotes in perpetuity. But Bioware and EA should've known better, they seemed to be frozen in some vacuum or echo chamber while the rest of game industry moved forward. I'm sure the day 1 patches will address some of the more egregious ones, fingers crossed, and this will shape up to be a game one could find acceptable if DA:I is your idea of a good time.

Bioware Apologist here: I played the 10 hour early access demo and i'm itching to get back into it and explore the brand new galaxy.

The human facial animations are a little weird but i can look past that for the in-depth story and characters. The writing and voice acting seems fine from what i saw.

@redcometrising: I just explained 3 is the best third person shooter I've ever played and Andromeda is seemingly a tad better than it even. Why would I not say it has the potential to be one of the best games of this generation to me? That's what potential means.

I'm not trying to change your mind on anything, but you said you were seeking to understand why anyone would buy this game if not for the 'Mass Effect' title. It's the gameplay and the universe for me. The actual mainline story was real cool, but it was never actually a fantastic story? I mean, Mass Effect pretty much lays its story out for you near the end, but before that it hints just lightly enough to make you want to play and explore that world which was the main draw to me. Yeah, conversation with Sovereign and Vigil was great, but it was also like 5-10 minutes of that game. The most fun I had was learning about all the alien species and visiting the different hubworlds and talking to people.

In ME2, the gameplay was significantly improved to the point where it was fun to play for that. It also fleshed out and added tons of squad mates and further elaborated on the lore and universe which was still the main draw. The actual story never amounted to much more than 'Collectors are Protheans' and that was pretty much that. In fact, if it weren't for Sovereign and Vigil in the first game, I would argue ME3 actually has the best story and it doesn't even have that great of a story. It ascended the gameplay to new heights and I almost want to say they invented a new hybrid genre with it. There were less characters, but they were all much more fleshed out and interesting.

I thought the mainline story in that trilogy was very cool, but it never was the actual reason for me to play those games. I totally get why someone would though. It's a neat story.

Wait are there people who think ME3 played bad? I don't get that perspective at all. Agree with @Zevvion here honestly. I thought the gameplay of ME3 was strongest in series, maybe even one of the better third person shooters I've ever played. The interplay with powers, teammates and overall tactics was fantastic. The encounter designs as well i thought were great. Especially late when your fighting to get to the center tower on earth. They manage to secure tension, pace and this high octane action feel all at once.

I can't speak for other people who are critical of the animations or voice acting in the game, but I think a lot of this frustration comes from a confusion on what criticism is. I call it out not to be little the game or others experiences with. I call it out because I think they game is going to be good. I just point it out so we can say it could be "even" better. Not all criticism is negative or meant to tear it apart. I hold them to a high standard because they called the game Mass Effect and I know they can make something incredible.

Just my 2 cents.

@devise22: I mean ME3 is strongest if you're looking for a purely action based game. I think ME3 was the most polished action shooter, ME2 was the best playing game overall - story, gameplay, presentation - but I enjoyed the combat in ME1 the most because of how absurdly overpowered and baddass biotics were in that game.

I thought this was going to be a thread about how the Andromeda hate has quickly gone from actual criticism to rampant misogyny. But instead, the OP starts the thread with the SJW boogeyman.

You can't have both sides calling the other side of the argument the same name with no evidence, guys.

@zevvion: I would echo those thoughts as well. Mass Effect -and by extension videogames- rarely have groundbreaking stories. I think people misspeak when they say they play Mass Effect for the story... when really we're playing Mass Effect for the experience of sci-fi, human drama, adventure, heroics etc.

We get to see, imagine and immerse ourselves in what it would be like to be out in deep space, using cool technology and challenging ourselves against the unknown. I often see people writing that Mass Effect 2 had no ~story~ ...and they're right if they refer to the "story" missions... but Mass Effect -and most videogames- arent about that. They're about all the little pieces along the way. Using cool space guns, looking at alien worlds, discovering mysteries, friendship etc. Its definitely great to be able to pull off Breaking Bad in space... but I think that's not what people really need from these games.

I doubt Andromeda will have a good story. But I'd be very surprised if it doesn't at least deliver the interesting Star Trek/Star Wars/Starship Troopers/Guardians of the Galaxy/(Insert Favorite Fantasy Here) that folks come to Mass Effect looking for.

I played the trial and love the zipping around you can do. Coming from Horizon, being able to quickly get around is making me enjoy playing Andromeda more. Narratively you don't really get a sense for where the story is going, but I'm invested in finding out what's going on, and where the other Arks are.

I can understand people not getting into this, but am baffled by the hate. Plays like a Mass Effect game, sounds like a Mass Effect game, and looks like a Mass Effect game. As someone who really loves Mass Effect, this is what I was waiting for, and am quite excited to go all in.

All in all, I don't understand hating on any game. I didn't like the writing for Persona 4, or the way it plays. A lot of people are looking forward to Persona 5, and I couldn't be more ambivalent. I'm not going to shit on someone's good time, and hope everyone enjoys Persona 5. So let me have my nerdy space adventure game.

I also don't want to disparage criticism, being critical about something you love, is a way to love it more. Mass Effect 1,2, and 3 have some of my favorite moments ever in gaming. But, the story was never anything more than generic. Saren may as well have had a pencil thin mustache, the Illusive Man (while entertaining and fun to interact with) was the obvious villain, and the Reapers amounted to a world ending fart. But it was fun being in a pulp sci-fi setting. Acknowledging that doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the series, it actually just makes it seem like a silly fun stage play.

@humanity: I pretty much agree with all of this. For me provided Andromeda plays well and you can tell they are building to something bigger in narrative to lead into the inevitable sequel then I'll probably be fine with it.

Also most of this thread feels like people arguing over whether they see glass half empty or half full honestly.

Are people taking it too far or joining the ME/bioware hate train? Maybe. Are there things to "hate" and critique? As a person who hasn't played the game, yes. As for people who have played the game, I'm sure they have a lot more they might want to critique. You can think it's too much or too harsh or whatever; but people are fair to do so.

I desperately wanted this one to be good. Because I knew if it wasn't the internet was going to get stirred up like this, and now I won't be able to go on Twitter without having to filter out some random egg's tirades about how EA committed the heinous sin of releasing a video game that isn't abject perfection. I tend to be more of a gameplay person than a narrative person, but I think what got me to stick with the Mass Effect series was always the game mechanics. I just kind of liked how biotics and shooting combined to make it interesting vs. other third person shooters.

This applies to most fiction, but if I were an academic, I would consider looking into when an established brand goes from a blessing to a curse - how many entries need to be in a series before the expectations from fans outweigh the benefit of selling to an established fanbase?

I would offer one thing in defense of EA, at least regarding the PC version. Origin has the best refund policy in the industry, at least you can just get your money back, no questions asked if you do find yourself disappointed by ME:A. So I have recourse if I find the issues mentioned intolerable, or I don't like the combat.

In closing though, and something I ought to mention whenever a hot button issue crops up: I would like to say thanks to the GB mod team. Because GB always seems to be on the ball when controversy happens, when it comes to ensuring the balance between discussion and moderation on stuff like this, I can be confident that this stuff remains contained within this and potentially other relevant threads instead of devolving into the open ended mud slinging I always see elsewhere.

I'm in the position where I'm looking at all this and just saying, "yep." I don't know, man. The original Mass Effect is, in my memory, one of the most magical gaming experiences of my life. Clunky shooting aside, that world pulled me in like practically no other. I used to just hang out on the Citadel because I loved existing in that environment. I adored Mass Effect 2 as well, but my heart is with the original game because of the nostalgia it evokes in me.

Andromeda is a game I shouldbe itching for by this point. At the very least, I should be hopeful that it will turn out to be worthy of praise and undeserving of all the criticism it's getting. I just can't bring myself to give a shit, because Andromeda looks like an incredibly lazy effort. Obviously a ton of development work went into it, but in terms of designing a game that brings Mass Effect to the next level, Andromeda seems like nothing more than a wet fart. Only time will tell.

Indeed. The format of enemy encounters is handled very wisely. I remember Gears of War doing it that stuff really well for the first time. Switching up Berserkers and Crawlers in between the regular stuff neatly. ME3 took that to the next level for me. Each faction had their own tiers of dudes and what they could do and fighting them in all the different configurations and in crazy waves in conjunction with fine tuned combat and the supremely improved balance of powers as opposed to ME2 made that stuff legendary for me.

I'm really not exaggerating when I say it's the best third person shooter I've played. I feel connected to it that much. It's just so solid and felt like I was playing something I'd never played before.

@devise22: yah I think the thread kind of missed its purpose. A lot of people arguing against the game seem to miss the point that the original intent was not to say that the game is not without flaws, but that people are dogpiling on it in a somewhat unreasonable intensity.

If the story gets deeper as you go and the combat is fun then hey, you could do worse. That's not to say that I'm happy with playing a mediocre mass effect game, but I guess I can deal with it. It just means I'm not going to get it at launch. I don't think it looks like dogshit, and I am disappointed with how it turned out, but the SUPER negative response seems like your typically overblown internet hyperbole which I'm not a fan of.

Bioware have put out a statement after an individual has been called out and attacked with regards to the animation.

https://mobile.twitter.com/bioware/status/843190432033005568/photo/1

I think that 'Attacking individual developers by name' is an early front runner for the 'Please Stop' category. I've already seen it several times this year.

@paulmako: See? That stuff. I will bet you everything that person would have never even considered getting upset over the animations if people weren't obsessively dog piling on it. Because of this negativity, they are getting convinced it hurts them personally so much they must attack others.

It's that level of mentality. I get it, we're all human beings, but it is crazy.

@zevvion: Especially in an industry where products shipping with broken things often related to visuals and animation is the norm. And hell even the original series has its fair share of animation problems. It's why these type of overreactions get groans. It's awful too since for the most part even if the GB crew might of encouraged the piling on the animations, their coverage was very fair and clearly highlighted how that aspect isn't as big of a deal to others. They also clearly highlighted how it wasn't even the deciding factor even for them.