Quick Look: Mass Effect: Andromeda

The colours, lighting and animation in this scene makes it look like something straight out of KotOR on the original Xbox.

Not just you. I came here to see if anyone else noticed it. Right at the beginning of the quick look I was certain Brad would open with "look at this framerate" or similar, but nothing. So could be just the video?

"Ryder meet horse. Horse meet Ryder"

Yeah, looks bad. :)

We got this.

Man, seems like a bummer. I had hoped it would be more exploration oriented, but it kinda looks like they aren't even doing the standard Bioware thing very well.

And feel like I will still buy it at full price. I probably shouldn't.

"This feels like a direct to video sequel to Mass Effect"

NO. :( I want a good ME game so bad.

I'll be this on PC. I'm nearly done with Horizon so It'll be nice to have another game to play. I loved ME 1-3 so I'll buy this and play it regardless.

As someone who has (finally) just started Dragon Age Inquisition, which came out in 2014, everything I see about this ME:A looks ten times worse.

Jeff compared the weak story to Halo 4. It was actually written by the same guy.

I think there might be an interesting parallel here: I think Andromeda is to the Mass Effect series what Fallout 4 was to the Fallout series.

I thought Fallout 3 was top 5 games of all time, and New Vegas was great in its own way, though not as good as 3. Fallout 4 was a hot mess of an open world, but there was fun in it if you gave the game enough of a chance to find it, and because I love the series so much I forgave it for being a hot mess, and for having a terrible "you have to pick a side now" ending. I still think Fallout 4, while undoubtedly the worst Fallout game, is better than lots of other games, and is good enough to have 100+ hours of fun with if you love Fallout.

Similarly, I thought Mass Effect 2 was top 5 games of all time. Mass Effect 3 was awesome in it's own way, though not as good as 2 (Interestingly 3 had the Fallout 4-style "You have to pick a side" ending choices, which sucked.)

And Andromeda (just guessing here, haven't played it yet) seems to be the Fallout 4 of the series: A hot mess of an RPG, with fun to be had in it but you have to be patient with the game to find it, better combat than it's predecessors but worse characters and voice acting and side quests, and generally you have to really love the series to forgive its flaws. I hope the ending isn't terrible like ME3's and F4's were.

A side note: I got Mass Effect 2 for a very deep discount on Steam, and I played 3 for free while housesitting for a friend, so although I am absolutely on the "No Preorder" train, for the first time in my life I preordered a game. I bought this today. If for no other reason than Mass Effect 2 was a defining moment in my game history and I bought it for such a deep discount that I don't mind wasting full price on Andromeda. At worst I owe the series the money anyway for the great experience I had with 2, and the good but free experience I had with 3.

If I had paid full price for Fallout 4 (I didn't) I would feel the same way. Got a heavy discount on 3 and New Vegas on Steam, so if I had paid full price for 4 I wouldn't feel bad.

But my impression is, if you don't feel that way, and I understand most people don't, don't preorder this (or anything else, ever.). Maybe don't even buy it. You're probably going to feel swindled if you do.

Yo that's a dick.

@jec03:

Edit: Model pop-in at 3:51. Boy, this is off to a good start :/
Edit: Time to T-pose: 6:11
Edit: Gil miming being a bartender is amazing.

I can't get over the general jank and terrible animation. I seriously think this is the worst animation from any major video game releases in recent years. It looks like an Xbox Arcade game sometimes.

Wait, this has the War Table thing from Dragon Age Inquisition as well? Groan.

At 29:00, the descendants of Funky Student have finally made it to the stars.

I'm genuinely surprised how bad the characters look in this, it looks like an early Xbox 360 game, if that.

Yeah, that frame rate isn't 30 fps. Seems like a bit of a technical mess.

@eskimosnow: If they didn't mention it, and in fact i think Brad said it ran fine on the Pro, then I can only imagine its a playback / recording issue.

This looks like they just handed us Mass Effect all over again with minimal changes bolted onto the formula, even the presentation looks like a last gen open world game. In the same way Fallout 4 tried to serve up just more Fallout without making significant advances to any part of it, Andromeda looks like it tried to reheat an old meal.

Everything about this looks depressingly mediocre.

Jep total bummer, but i guess it has it's audience so good for them. Just feel sad they went this direction, but no surprise really.

Wow man. Just...wow.

@stordoff said:

@jec03:

This week on the Beastcast: Vinny announces his career move from radio to MoCap model

I'm most disappointed they removed Tactical Pause from combat. Even Inquisition gave me the option to take on higher-level enemies by pausing during combat. Bioware's Tactical Pause is what distinguished Mass Effect from any other third-person shooter and Dragon Age from other hack-n-slash. The last time Bioware did this was when they "streamlined" Dragon Age 2.

first off why does the new friendly alien race look so terrible? they almost look like bad sonic the hedhehog fanart and also from their necks up to their heads it looks like one big blurry texture.

I don't know, all of the characters in this just seem generic or bad. Just think back to how awesome characters like the Illusive Man and Anderson were. Not only were their voice acting and animations great and way better than the ones in this game, but they just felt like important interesting characters where you want to go through every single dialogue option and really take in what they're saying.

From the 10 or so big characters ive seen so far in all these videos, nobody seems to be even close to the level of the characters from the first 3 games.

And why does it feel like there's no music or atmosphere in any of the game or story moments.. everything's just so flat and lifeless. since they didn't seem to come up with good new stuff they should just take this galaxy map music or this and use it in any dramatic moments or even in the menus.

edit; actually after listening closer it does seem like the map has kind of a worse version of the original map theme, and it's really quiet.

Jeff conveyed exactly how I feel about this. I'm really bummed out that some crucial aspects of a story-centric game have been overlooked. I want to hope that there are more compelling aspects of the story but it's looking like that's not the case.

There are some cool parts to this game and ME:A has done exactly what I wanted the previous two games to do and that was to flesh out more of the planetary experiences. However there is a deep lack of authenticity about this that makes it hard to feel excited about.

I got about 8 hours into DA:I and didn't continue, but it looked like a great baseline for upcoming BioWare games. If they could build on DA:I, they would have something special. Problem is (just by the looks of it), they didn't build up; I'm being incredibly reductive in saying this, but Andromeda looks like a re-skinned DA:I.

It's disappointing because the combat video they've released looked incredibly promising. I think there's room for an RPG with that kind of snappy movement with a lot of character spec options. Unfortunately, ME:A looks to be stuck in 2013. This might have cut it as a launch title, but with the release of an open-world action RPG like The Witcher 3, and seeing character animation and live, open worlds evolve so much in the past few years (specifically in Horizon and Watch Dogs 2), this just doesn't cut it. Doing a lot of things used to be impressive, but now they need to be done exceptionally.

They definitely went for quantity over quality. I feel better about cancelling my preorder

Predicting this will be on the biggest disappointment list this year :(. Looks like they just did what they did with DA Inquisition, padded out a narrative over too much modular content. What happened to the narrative side of Bioware?

Agreed! It appears to have just about as much jank as there was in the first game. That still didn't stop me from enjoying what I played of the demo.

I am disappointed. There are so many awkward moments.

@meanstreet said:

The colours, lighting and animation in this scene makes it look like something straight out of KotOR on the original Xbox.

Is that really a screenshot? Holy crap it looks like a Gmod video.

This game has unfortunately looked less and less appealing with every video. Now discovering there's no Quarian squadmate is the last nail in the coffin.

I can't not see the Bioforge "flying through tunnel" scene whenever I see the train cutscene in this game.

@axelscythe: Bravo Sir

Everyone would be better off not settling for middling games.

Jesus fucking christ this game. Just got to the "mime" part...

I'm fully playing this game and excited to "experience" this game, but wow...just wow.

Looks like the type of game best bought down the road during a drought in releases, on a sale, preferably in a Game of the Year package when they've had time to patch it up as best as they can. At that point it will probably serve as a fun thing to load up every day and run around in.

As much as it pains me that Mass Effect has been downgraded to this sort of "holiday sale time filler" game, it is what it is. I liked Inquisition because i could just run around a map and do things and that's basically what I wanted at the time. For me it respected my time by not making me run back and forth between NPCs when doing filler quests - and all RPGs have filler quests, yes even Witcher 3 - and allowed me to stay in the map and keep pushing forward. Andromeda looks similar but also weird in a lot of ways like all the superfluous animations when going from planet to planet. Oh well, I'll check it out probably come Christmas or whenever.

My personal code is "I got this".

I am convinced that they have the ambient lighting all the way high in most of the scenes I've seen. That would cause something like this looks where the characters come off as close to cel shaded but in a really really weird way.

When the dude warps in at 6:11, he starts in a T-pose as well, so three in less than two hours...

...Is Mass Effect: Andromeda Game Room?

I feel like people are remembering the original Mass Effect games as some sort of amazing literature-level sci-fi. It wasn't. It was a good B-tier sci-fi adventure in a fresh feeling setting.

Honestly everything I've seen of this game just looks like more of that. Really not sure why everyone is harping on it apart from the obvious presentation issues.

I feel like folks are comparing the worst of the first ten hours of Andromeda to the best of the entire previous trilogy. Go that route, and of course Andromeda is going to pale in comparison.

Having played through the Andromeda trial and continuing to play through Mass Effect 3 again, Andromeda seems a worthy entry into the Mass Effect series, even if it carries over some of its predecessors' shortcomings.

I feel like I'm watching Dragon Age: Inquisition in space, Inquisi-Pathfinder. I'm a little surprised they meant that DAI was a blueprint for later games this literally.

Gameplay seems like a blend ME1 and DAI.

You would think this is the WORST GAME OF ALL TIME by reading some of these comments. Holy shit.

Poor Hainley, even hundreds of years into the future and her kink of being deadnamed by strangers makes her a social outcast who has to go to a new galaxy to find acceptance.

Who even wrote any of this? What? Is Bioware aware that there are alternatives to fetishisation and tokenisation?

@lokez352: Which would be awesome. I would love to see any Mass Effect with some actuall skill-tree, decent character development (not just likeable characters) and an well written villian that isn't copied from another game.

I never liked Mass Effect, dunno what I feel about the story moving forward when Mass Effect 3 ended the series well enough to keep it self contained as a story and setting.

Its like with Star Trek. The Voyager went home so let it rest guys!