When my character said that, "umm, it's "Pathfinder" actually" I just yelled; "What a Bitch! Who says something THAT Rude to someone you just met, and in these circumstances?!?"

Sure, if that had been the "Cocky" dialogue option, then that's totally fine, but I didn't choose for my Ryder to say something so incredibly Dickish! Like, am I overreacting? That line from our character felt REALLY rude to me, and incredibly inappropriate. (Especially considering Ryder barely knows anything about being a Pathfinder! Who the hell is she to expect everyone to refer to her as such??)

It's not the only time I've seen my Ryder make a dialogue choice that I thought I (as the player) was going to get to make, and I felt my Ryder's reaction was not what "My" Ryder would have said. But I guess "Ryder" is supposed to be more of their own character than the more blank slate that was "Shepard".

Overall i'm enjoying the game so far, about 10 hours in, just finished everything I could do on Eos. Combat/movement is fun, Faces are wonky, a lot of the humor isn't hitting for me? At least not the humor in conversations. I've chuckled a few times at little notes and emails I've found while exploring.

Now excuse me, my phone just informed me that Echo team is ready for another Strike mission.... Gotta make the numbers go up!

@vikingdeath1: Here is a thing that happens that made me fucking lose it in disbelief.

So like you said, with Tann you person can act SUPER rude and undeserving, and seems like a complete cocky asshole.

Then a bit later on the Nexus, some random INSIGNIFICANT npc stops me all like "excuse me Pathfinder?" and you reply back "oh no just call me Ryder"

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

Given the circumstances though I did appreciate Ryder being preemptively shitty to Tann.

If I were a boss there I'd definitely have a talk (and possibly fire) those who worked on the facial animation. They're the ones who dropped the ball since everything else in the game is fine/good to me. I wouldn't want to hear "my job is hard", since other studios aren't having this problem.

I have both games, I probably won't be playing Ghost Recon for weeks. I have Ghost Recon due to Gamefly, I wouldn't recommend anyone spend $60 on it since it's repetitive as hell - while ME:A is worth $60. Obviously that's subjective, just like someone saying "I'd rather play Ghost Recon" is hardly gospel or fact, even if it's from Jeff.

Well, that's like me saying blue looks better than red and you saying the opposite. I prefer ME:A's combat in singleplayer way more... they did screw up by taking out squad controls though, but I like the mobility they added and having any/every power. I'll have to level up and get some powerful characters in ME:A's multiplayer to really compare them, since I had every character in ME3 and never prestiged since I don't like leveling up. I do like that combat is harder now, since you can't just hunker down anymore and stick to one desk/corner.

Just a PSA to PC users who haven't already thought of this. If the planet to planet flight animations are shitting you like they were me you can just use Cheat Engine to speed hack the games timescale.

As I suspected they don't hide loading screens at all, they're purely for irritating time wastage. It's actually a nice effect at 4x speed.

EDIT: Naturally I'd advise not to use CE if you're going to be playing Multiplayer.

@ivdamke: as a console user, seeing that those aren't just bad load screen masks is infuriating....this means I have to sit and watch those slow as fuck animations for no reason outside Bioware "wants" me to.....

@takayamasama: :(

@ntm: absolutely. It's hard to compare the old characters to these ones but you naturally do it, so I've done my best to just judge these new ones on there on merit rather than comparing.

I've spoken mostly positive things about the game but I wanna make sure that people are aware there are certainly pretty big issues that can't be ignored.

The Sudoku puzzle games get old really fast. I've never been a fan of sudoku and tying that to some vital stuff really sucks, especially the larger boards they have on the monoliths. I spend a good 15 or 20 minutes on one only to have to start over cause I failed it. Then I failed it again and again. Now I just saved a page with all the answers cause I don't wanna waste my time doing that shit. I will say though, I don't know if they changed this or if it was only on Eos, but whenever I failed I was never attacked my Remnent, I just had to restart.

There are bugs and weird physics stuff that mess with the game negatively. In a mission I was supposed to kill all of the Kett in an ambush. I used push on a guy and I guess unknowing to myself he went flying way farther than he should've. So I had to wait about 1 or 2 minutes after I thought I had killed the last Kett for this dude to try and be a hero and run back to the fight. Then their are the annoyances like not being able to switch power and some of the more serious things that I admittedly have not experienced.

Mining is whatever, it's fine both on the planets and in your ship but the little animation they added that seemed like they were masking a load screen is stupid after awhile. It's a cool Effect but they could've made it happen every 5 planets or only the ones that you actually land on, not every. single. one. What's worse is the animation for the camera to turn, both when you start the animation and at the end where it stylistically zooms close to the planet and then backs out. If it was metered it would've been a really cool thing but now it just annoys me. But I have a smart phone like everyone else so I can distract myself, it's just unnecessary for it to happen all the time I think.

I still am enjoying it though, sure it has throw away quests but so does every RPG ever. I don't mind doing mindless fetch quests, I tend to just turn my brain off and watch tv or giant bomb content while I do all those things at once. But I still enjoy the larger quests and talking to the crew, that's still good ole mass effect stuff.

Also I forgot to add that fuck, they should not have taken out the squad control. It was perfect how it was, it was simple and quick. Now I just auto level my squad cause I don't have any control over them, so what does it matter to me what powers they have? Before I could strategize at least a little to combine powers with someone else. But now I don't even bother, at least they are capable. On a positive note, the actual moment to moment combat I honestly think is stellar. There is so much variety and mixing and matching all the powers and even different profiles (which all have their on perks and abilities) is phenomenal. It's some of the best and most diverse combat I've played in awhile, and I don't think the game gets enough credit for it since Mass Effect is mostly looked at as a space opera first and third person shooter second. The observation is accurate but it takes away from the fact that this games combat is incredibly fun to play with.

@ivdamke That's one of the most irritating things in the game, after a while. Thanks...hopefully this is easy to do?

They hide loading on consoles but they don't change it for the pc version, same with the last game too. Don't want to use cheat engine on this as i'm not that familiar with it honestly, and i play multiplayer. Any other way to do this? Mods out yet? Last game they just edited the video files and speed them up, doubt it's the same in this one though.

@ethanielrain:It's an inbuilt feature into Cheat Engine so you don't have to know how to use CE.

1. Launch ME:A
2. Tab out and Launch Cheat Engine
3. Edit
4. Settings
5. Hotkeys
6. Set Hotkey for [Speedhack speed 1 (1.00)] and [Speedhack speed 2 (4.00)]
7. Select Process Button (Top Left under File)
8. Select MassEffectAndromeda.exe
9. Tab back to ME:A and press your respective hotkeys when you want to speed it up or down

I should also say, naturally don't have Cheat Engine open if you launch into Multiplayer. No idea whether they've got protections but don't blame me if they do.

I definitely agree with taking out squad control. It almost feels like some executive said "no more pausing, gamers don't like that" so they took out the power and squad wheels. In the past games I thought "oh, I'm going against Geth so bring Garrus since he has overload" and so on for other enemy types. Now I don't really care who I bring, it all comes down to dialogue.

Something I haven't really seen brought up is how your crew moves around the ship now and interacts with each other, which is really cool. I always wished there were more meetings with everyone in past games. Before they'd sit in a room and wait for you in there like it's a prison cell.

OK, so now I'm a little farther into the game and I think I have hit on one of my major complaints about the game - I hate the new conversation system.

I get that they wanted to move on from Paragon/Renegade. That system definitely had it's issues and I'm not objecting to doing something different. It's just that what they replaced it with is so, I guess the word would be insipid?

The P/R system, for all of its flaws, at least let you respond forcefully to situations. You could have an opinion on what was going on and express that opinion. It helped create a defined personality for Shepard and added to the idea that he/she was a great leader capable of getting the bunch of otherwise strong personalities on your crew to work together.

By contrast, all of the options in ME:A feel largely the same in that they are all variations on "politely milquetoast." I've tried really hard to make my Ryder a kind of a professional asshole and the game just isn't having any of it. Not only is this making it seem like my Ryder doesn't really have a personality, but I don't believe for a second that anyone would accept him as a Pathfinder with the level of near-Messianic reverence they do. I don't seem to be able to make any decisions - Ryder just sort of nods and agrees with whatever is going on around him. Or responds to a statement with a question. Heaven forbid I be able to disagree about the proper course of action with someone.

EDIT: I feel I should mention I had this problem with DA:I as well, I just think it was handled a little bit better there. At least in that game most of the principal companions at least expressed initial doubt about the abilities of your character and could disagree with each other on occasion. In ME:A the game is practically desperate for everyone to be friends.

@lawgamer: This is all actually something that I kinda like about the system. It all just sort of ends up working in favor of the idea that Ryder is just kind of in charge by accident.

I also think that the messianic pathfinder ideal is mostly reserved for people who don't know who you are because your actual crew is pretty willing to treat you like its your first day on the job.

Its not a failure more a consequence of not having enough time/staff or EA being frugal. Guerilla 350 people spent 6 years and $50 million developing Horizon which by AAA's standards is a bargin. Bioware has three studios with ~200 people most of Andromeda's 5 year development was done by Bioware Montreal costing $40 million, Bioware's small teams clearly didn't have enough time to animate or direct most of the dialogue so they probably used the computer algorithm for most of them which is why for alot of the dialogue looks wooden often with a static camera.

There have certainly been some poorly delivered lines and really clunky dialogue. But so far it doesn't seem as bad as others have made it out to be.

That said, if everyone I talk to could stop jerking off over me being the, "OMG PATHFINDER," that would be great. Especially since I play Pathfinder, it's just really weird.

It was super easy and I'd recommend it to anyone :D

@lawgamer: Playing on PS4. Had one crash so far. Literally the very first time I used the tram system, the game crashed. I'm 4 hours in, I think. I'm on Eos now.

@lawgamer: Yeah, i think not having definitive stances is fucking stupid. You can get rid of the paragon/renegade system and still have direct answers to questions. And i also wanted a professional/asshole ryder as I thought it would fit with the engineer/tech class, very rigid in trying to get things done no matter the cost. Instead you're tied to whatever the personality the writers wanted ryder to have, why the hell is my asshole ryder cracking jokes telling everybody we got this? Know I got this, you shit heads do what i say cause Ryders the boss goddamnit. Don't like it? Get left on the ship! :-(

Yeah, that's been my experience from early on. Trying to go for an initial professional/logical asshole too, and have quit the game multiple times to undo an dialogue option that wasn't what I expected. Obviously the stuff they force your character to say I can't do anything about though. Going in I wanted to make something more along the lines of full renegade (I was pretty much full paragon in old Mass Effect), but quickly realized that shit ain't happening.

At it's very worst, it feels like they're funnelling you down towards a very specific perspective. I remember getting that vibe from the early talks with Suvi about religion. All roads end in platitudes. Kinda shit for roleplaying, and I'm certainly not of a mind that these games should gut the roleplaying.

Dragon Age: Inquisition felt a lot better about it, but that could have just been my intentions for my character happening to align with what options they gave me. With Andromeda I'm doing what I did in Fallout 4: adjusting my idea of my character and their direction to incorporate the information and tone they occasionally force on you. Though at least in Fallout 4 I could install the full dialogue mod to avoid any tricky dialogue options, as well as a mod to mute the player character so I could read tone however I liked (also the faction stuff makes it kind of a different thing from Mass Effect). Nothing beats the Dragon Age: Origins style of dialogue system imo.

Bit of a bummer!

Going in I didn't care about any of the technical or graphical issues I'd been hearing about because I go to Mass Effect for the characters and if they could just get that one thing right I'd be happy. So I held out hope but unfortunately I'm nearing the game's final act and my level of attachment to the characters is pretty low across the board. There are actually quite a few that I actively dislike. Jeff described Andromeda as seeming like a direct-to-video type of iteration and if they were riding off the coattails of the original crew they could have gotten away with it in my eyes because my reverence for that cast would have enabled my brain to soften the edges and fill in the gaps of the lackluster dialogue and character interactions. However, as something new, so far to me what's there is just not good enough.

Side note: In reference to the ME franchise my gripe with it being a space opera is the need for the future of humanity and/or the galaxy to always be on the line. You can still have high stakes on a smaller and more personal scale. If Sheppard had been an ex-soldier turned captain of an independent freelance ship with a crew a misfits we could still be playing games with the crew from the original trilogy.

@theht: i think the paragon system in the real games actually had quite a bit of depth too. I know most people are reluctant to go "evil" but renegade wasnt that at all. You made tough calls and could be an asshole BUT you could also be cool with your crew and it still made sense logically. My crew in 2 loved me even though i wad a dick to everybody else, and it didnt feel far fetched because you could be full renegade and still look out for your crew.

Eh, i haven't even gone back to single player yet as it has just started to bum me out. :-(

Only thing that has bothered me is that everyone seems to know I'm the Pathfinder as soon as they see me, even random bandits out in some desert. It's almost like there's a big sign over my head that I can't see that says PATHFINDER with an arrow pointing down.

@redyoshi: same for me. Or how races refer to me as The Pathfinder as if the title has some kind of meaning in their society? Like, I can understand how word spread quickly about the fleet, but how would it get to a race we didn't know existed, and why would it mean anything to them at all?

Pretty much every complaint about this game is accurate... I am still enjoying it in the same way I enjoyed Dragon Age Inquisition, but I do not blame other people for being annoyed about it.

@sackmanjones: Yes, of course. The game has issues, and I agree with the things you've stated, but they are pretty negligible to me. I mean, they're worth mentioning, but they're not experience ruining to me. Currently doing everything I can on Voeld. I'm almost thirty hours in. I've only run into one other glitch that was bad and it was pretty recently which is mech enemies were clipped under ground and could still shoot me from anywhere, so I had to run away a bit and come back, then they were above ground again to kill.

@deathstriker: No, I have the feeling it's because you as a player have all the abilities now, and so they probably thought squad abilities weren't needed. It doesn't bother me much, but yeah, a little extra choice would be nice. I do hope it's something they add back in for a sequel (heck, maybe even an update?)

deathstriker: I'm not even sure you got the point of what was being said in the article (assuming you read it) since you made the same statement and still made the same assumption, thinking that is the easiest solution, to just terminate the jobs and replace them. We will never really know but at the same time to make that assumption as if you, myself or anyone else here knows better by just replacing people because they didn't do a good job and then by extension whoever replaces them is gonna do better isn't really the solution because it doesn't really address the root of these kinds of problems like what was laid out in said article. This kind of dismissive, rigid attitude isn't going to solve the problem in the first place.

The writing seems pretty consistent overall. I wouldnt say its bad by any means... I think its the overall tone thats not really jiving for me. The protagonist is a bit of a clown... which seemed really jarring and out of place to me given the gravitas of the situation. I tend to enjoy my fiction to be bleak and weighty -I'm fine with a sarcastic protagonist, but the rest of the story needs to set up their weary, dry snark. DA2 sarcastic Hawke was a great example. Dude had the shittiest life and was just chewing the scenery, it was pretty great.

I did have a conversation last night with a character where the protagonist straight up said "Yeah, I'm sorry if my sense of humor is a bit jaring for you... its how I try to deal with all of this. A little levity you know?" And I really appreciated that.

vikingdeath1: By the way which option did you choose (I'm assuming there's four in this case)? You can just tell me which direction since I can't remember the exact terms for them other than the symbols. I may not have gotten far enough yet though (still in Eos, haven't spent a lot of time playing since I've been busy).

I got what the article was saying and it sounds like it's bigger than the animation department, but someone still needs to held accountable and probably let go. I've had someone at my job fired because they misspelled a few tweets, so obviously this problem, which might've cost them millions of dollars, is an offense that can get someone fired. It doesn't sounds like it was an actual animator's fault, but was a director, producer, executive, etc the root of the problem? Someone(s) screwed up. Why was it such a small team and budget anyway when this is one of EA biggest franchises? Did they ask for more, if so why/who denied it? Who thought they could do so much work in such little time? Those are the questions I'd ask so I can figure out the real problem then I'd (probably) fire someone. For their work to even get approved this problem must be at the top, not a worker bee. I was never trying to say I'd walking into the room with the whole animation team, close my eyes then point to someone at random and say "you're out of here" lol. There should obviously be an investigation of what caused the problem and a solution so it doesn't happen again.

@deathstriker: hey...why do you get so much glee from people getting fired from their jobs?

xanadudeathstriker: To be fair, I don't think he's getting some sort of happiness from it as much as it's his way of having people be held accountable for letting something like this be in the final product. I disagree with the notion of having to fire people (unless they were being toxic to their co-workers or something similar) but I think we can all agree that this probably shouldn't have happened in the first place and it would have been in the company's best interest as a whole to have delayed the game. I know it's easier said than done knowing that there are budget constraints and delaying it would have also meant allocating a much bigger budget so who knows what the financials are in the company internally. Not all companies have the luxury of being like Blizzard or Valve or CD Projekt Red who are financially able to delay projects and have the funds to accommodate that (CD Projekt also has GOG like Valve has Steam for example).

There's no glee about it all. @gaspower sums up my rationale well in his post. Obviously some major incompetence happened and mistakes were made. They should figure out the problem so it doesn't happen again and if it originates from certain people they should be held accountable. This is a industry where people would give their right arm to work in it at all, especially with such a big and well liked studio and franchise like this, so why settle for mediocre people and mediocre results.

"GORDON FREEMAN!?"

@lawgamer: I've been playing on XboxOne and I haven't had any major issues to speak of. The biggest thing I had was one time after I conversation a character went back into a pose leaning against a console but was facing the opposite way so they were leaning on nothing. And that has only happened once. So I would say there hasn't been any bug bugs so far that take away from my enjoyment.

I don't mind everyone using Pathfinder so much but I'm still consistently annoyed by everyone using "Kett'.

@oursin_360: I believe the idea is the Helius Cluster is an extremely dense area of systems in the Andromeda Galaxy (presumably caused by the blackhole at the center). This density is such that its actually possible to use FTL to travel between them in a reasonable time. Its like the Skyllian Verge or any other region of space in Mass Effect that consists of multiple systems.

Now do they ever actually explain this? Na, they are too busying focusing on the excellent story and generally terrible story design decisions. Do they ever mention about how long it takes to go from one system to another? Na, but from what I can tell it must be multiple days, at the least, based on later story elements that make absolutely zero sense if you don't assume at least multiple months had passed.

At some point you have to cut your loses and move on. No amount of delays would've saved the writing, world building or characters. This game has been in development for a very long time and it has already been delayed multiple times. EA made a totally understandable decision here.

This is a pretty presumptuous post. How do you know the situation that went down in regards to the animation? Which for the record people the technical issues are really the only ones anyone could be saying "hold them accountable" for. Because if your saying "the writing is bad" that is subjective. If it is meant to be stupid, and they like it that way and there is an audience who likes it that way that is a case of different strokes for different folks.

But in regards to the technical stuff. What if the person responsible has a better handle of how to properly do the animations now, in their engine with their tech than they did before hand? How would firing them and hiring someone who has never worked with their engine be the answer? The point I'm making here is we have no idea what the "right" answer is, and to presume you do is such an entitled self obsessive viewpoint. It's so simplified. "Hey man these animations are bad and I see countless other games that don't have this. Obviously just get a better animator bro." Maybe a new animator on Andromeda 2 is what is needed, maybe not. But that isn't for us to determine. You either support the project or you don't, and from there we look to patches for the game, and a potential sequel to see if changes have in fact been made to the animations/other technical details.

I don't know that it's something Andromeda needs to explain, apart from just having token codex entries, because it's just a standard feature of the ME universe.

I was absolutely fine with the writing up until first contact with the Angarans. After the initial caution they suddenly speak your language, trust you way too much, and use the same terms for everything as you do. Even things like species and tech they should be more familiar with than you.

They just kind of breeze over discovering a whole new, space capable species when it should be one of the most rewarding parts of the game.

@alistercat: You learn this later, but this is not the first time the Angarans have had contact with the milky way species.

Now, it's the fault of the game that there's no option to ask about it, but it makes sense in a way.


My thoughts 35 hours in:

I actually really like this game so far, don't really get the character or writing complaints. I like everyone in the cast, which is rare for a Bioware game. I really like how characters seem to have lives and relationships outside of just you. ME3 touched on this, but it's something greatly expanded upon in MEA. Characters have unique relationships with you, and with each other. They have personal lives, family ties and deals outside of your involvement. They don't stay in one place on the ship, the move around, have conversations with each other.

As for the main plot of the game, I found that I'm interested in what's happening, there's a lot of mystery to solve so far, but I like what I've seen.

I don't think the villain is interesting really, but I don't think Saren was all that interesting either, I think people greatly overstate the need for really good villains generally.

I feel like most everything in the game feeds back into it's premise in a cool way. I think that for once, the main story isn't something that should require my immediate attention, so I don't feel guilty driving around Kadara instead of killing the space pope.

I think the Angara are interesting for the most part and I'm looking forward to meeting more of them.

Also for those talking about how Ryder is sounding too much like Nathan Drake (outside of the VO just sounding like Nolan North). Ryder's dialog changes depending on which dialog options you choose most. So if you pick "Emotional" or "Casual" options a lot, you end up sounding a lot like Drake. If you choose "Rational" or "Logical" options a lot you sound more like Shepard, or even someone like Picard from TNG.

I'm 16 hours in (two 8hr-long play sessions that have been super-engrossing and I've not wanted to put the controller down).

There are style differences compared to previous Mass Effect titles, and some relatively minor animation issues but I've had half a dozen or more 'this is so f***ing cool' moments with this game already.

I could see ME:A not being exactly someone's cup of tea, and I could see some people not liking the style or animations, but some of the extreme reactions to this title are 100% triple-distilled internet hyperbole.

I found I started liking Ryder more when I realized she/he is just some 20-something dweeb trying to be super cool like their dad. Your dad is like Shepard and you're the fuckin Conrad Verner.

I really don't know why people are done down on the main story to be honest. I'm way more interested in learning why Andromeda is so fucked up and full of murderous space clouds than I was finding pieces of a doomsday recording.

Seems like you're missed part of the conversation we were having, because I said (hypothetically) if I were in charge I'd start an investigation to find the source of the problem so that it doesn't happen again and added that it wasn't necessarily the animation department if they were given too much work in too little time. Whether it was: producers, project managers, directors, executives, etc some major incompetence happened and the origin of the problem needs to be figured out as well as someone(s) possibly being held accountable for those problems being there that might've cost the company millions. I'm not sure how that's an "entitled self obsessive viewpoint". Also, the writing isn't bad to me at all, it's mostly on par with the past games.

Okay, now I'm a little further into the game...I just got done with the main story mission in that blizzard planet where you find out a bit more about the Kett. I now encountered some of the bad writing many people complained about. What just happened in that mission was predictable and just stupid.