tormund
Arcane
And Kodexers keep saying how female characters are ugly.
But hey, who are we doubt the expert opinion of bunch of basement dwelling nerds...
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Mass Effect: Andromeda Pre-Release Thread
- Thread starter Space Satan
- Start date
And Kodexers keep saying how female characters are ugly.
But hey, who are we doubt the expert opinion of bunch of basement dwelling nerds...
Jarmaro
Liturgist
The problem isn't that she doesn't look beautiful.
The problem is she looks below average.
The problem is she looks below average.
Lambach
Arcane
If you wanna get anal about it, the problem is that she looks nothing like the model she's based on. Why bother hiring a model then?
donkeymong
Scholar
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2012
- Messages
- 210
Bioware finally managed it to include blindfire into their game. But squadmates seem to be more pathetic then ever. Like having only 2 active skills.
Last edited:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/23/mass-effect-andromeda-is-looking-good/
Five hours with Mass Effect Andromeda
By Holly Nielsen on February 23rd, 2017 at 2:00 pm.
It’s been five years since BioWare released the final part to their Mass Effect trilogy. Five years of very little information dispersed between huge fan anticipation and speculation. The ending to the trilogy meant a sequel was unlikely, and a prequel was rumoured for a while, but instead Mass Effect Andromeda [official site] has shaken off the shackles of the trilogy’s narrative by setting itself 634 years in the future and in the new galaxy of Andromeda.
After five hours of playing both the first mission and the fourth mission (which takes place roughly 3 hours into the game) of a preview build of Andromeda I’m able to share my experience.
Sometime between the second and third Mass Effect games a group of “powerful people” put forward the Andromeda Project. The Andromeda galaxy was identified as having the most habitable planets for the four races involved with the project (humans, turians, asari and salarians), and four arcs were sent out, each with 20,000 individuals onboard and kept in stasis. As you might expect not everything goes to plan upon arrival as you’re faced with a strange dark energy known as “The Scourge” as well alien politics, power plays, wars and mutinies.
From what I played there was a couple of references for fans of the original trilogy (I won’t mention them directly as they’re best discovered on their own) but because of the isolation of the setting, there were no direct narrative links. However, when creating your character it does ask you to select the gender of the “legendary Commander Shepard” (the protagonist from the original trilogy). It is likely then that Shepard will be referenced, but probably not a huge amount as there is no way of inputting decisions made in the previous games.
Andromeda is all about exploration. You play as the Pathfinder, whose job it is to find a new place for humanity. Your ship, the Tempest, is therefore not equipped with weapons, as you’re charged with gathering information and pushing the boundaries of knowledge. The environments you visit on your journey can be vast. One planet can have a map larger than the entirety of the Dragon Age: Inquisition map, which immediately rang alarm bells for me as my patience for huge, open but ultimately empty worlds is wearing thin. However, we were told that this Andromeda is definitely not a sandbox game. That because you have the Nomad (the vehicle you use to explore planets) and will usually have a specific goal, mindless travelling is never necessary.
I spoke to Fabrice Condominas, a producer at BioWare, he talked about the difficulties of dealing with huge environments and retaining player interest. “We tried a lot of things and failed in a lot of different ways in development! So at the end the decision we made for this game was to say, we have those huge spaces but we’re not going to randomly generate anything. Everything we’re going to make will be memorable, hand-crafted and placed, and have a narrative impact even if it’s a very small thing. Can you drive 50 minutes without encountering anything? We’re trying to avoid that, but because of the nature of what we’re doing, I can’t promise it won’t happen. That being said, if it does happen as a player you will know it, because it means as a player you’re going to a part where we don’t promise you anything. Our hope is that you never have to hit an invisible wall because you keep finding something interesting.”
As well as geographical exploration there is a lot of focus being put on cultural and linguistic exploration. Condominas was keen to reinforce the point that this cultural side was “part of every aspect of development.” The environments are apparently designed with the cultural and biological needs of their inhabitants in mind. “For example the shape of a room and the material used will change depending on how we talk and communicate,” he continued. “So you have to take that into account. Do they have voices? If they have voices how do they work? I could go on for hours!”
These ideas of anthropology and cultural examination are hugely important to the developers. When I enquired as to why the players will be experiencing the universe through the eyes of a human again he gave an interesting and well considered response. “Very simple. First, one of the main themes of the Mass Effect franchise is the place of humanity. And that has always been central. The second part is, is that there is one thing we’re totally sure of, our players are humans. Which means if we put them in the type of game we’re building, based on emotional bonding and relationships, if we ask them to make a decision for another race, we’re building anthropomorphism, and we’re not interested in that. We don’t want anybody to pretend that they know what a krogan thinks. That’s based on anthropology, we don’t know that the other people think.”
Now that all sounds fascinating on paper. BioWare seem keen to show that in Andromeda we are very much the weaker newcomers trying to find a place in an existing order. During the preview they made it clear that this was not meant to be a metaphor for colonisation (although it is inevitable, and possibly rightly so, that comparisons will be drawn). They stress that this is a galaxy that evolved separate to our own so not only are we the new arrivals, we are entirely alien to them, as they are to us. The two new races shown to us in the preview and in trailers are the kett and the angara. Both are bipedal and fairly humanoid in the grand scheme of things. This is where some of my initial worries lie. We’ve only seen these two races so it is still possible that BioWare have a few more slightly unexpected intelligent lifeforms up their sleeves. However, it would be disappointing if this new galaxy is populated by aliens with two arms, two legs and two eyes. The jellyfish-like hanar and slow four-legged elcor from the trilogy prove that an alien does not need to be humanoid for players to form a connection.
We’ve learnt a little bit about the kett and angara. I will be keeping this vague – don’t want to spoil the initial knowledge building for players. The kett are destructive, angry and not particularly friendly – expect to be shooting at them a lot. The angara seem to have a little bit more to them, living in large close-knit familial groups with spirituality being passed on by parents to their offspring.
Despite having some concerns as to the variety of races what I did see was all very well realised. It is apparent that a lot of time, effort and research has gone into making a credible world. Condominas stressed this, “The key point is that with Mass Effect as a franchise, we’ve never wanted to be realistic, but we have always wanted to be credible, and this is a very important notion and to achieve that it does absolutely require real scientific input. For example we were at the European Space Agency 2 years ago, and so there’s a scene where Ryder [Andromeda’s protagonist] breaks their helmet and repairs it with the omni-tool and when I showed that scene someone in the room said ‘Oh I’m working on that!’ and it took me several seconds to realise he wasn’t joking.”
Of course BioWare are aware of the main reason their games are so popular: the characters. Despite having relatively little time with them in the preview, I am interested and want to spend more time with the cast of Andromeda. Not only do your party members (those who join you on missions and can handle a weapon) feel well written and fleshed out, the rest of your crew have received the same attention. While your non-combat crew mates (the pilots, scientists, engineers and doctors) were very much secondary characters in previous games this time it feels like just as much attention has been lavished upon them by BioWare’s writers. Your crew interact with each other over the intercom, and have a real sense of presence in the world rather than being a thing that appears only when you’re nearby.
Dialogue options are not displayed by what you will say but by the tone. It feels natural to use and eliminates those moments of “oh no, I didn’t know they would say it like that” after choosing an unexpected dialogue choices like in the older games. Your options now include emotional, logical, casual and professional. As well as the dialogue being a smoother experience, the relationships between the characters and Ryder are a lot more nuanced. The simplistic moral gauge of paragon and renegade used in the previous games has been thrown away. It seems that this time it’s just the case that not everyone on your team will like everything you do. It’s going to be impossible or incredibly difficult to make everyone respect you, because no matter how charismatic you are, your decisions will inevitably alienate some people.
Condominas spoke about how romance and relationships in Andromeda will involve more variety and shades of grey. “We know what type of character and personalities we want and we want you to interact with and we want you to have the choice to become, and we build from there. Whatever the nature of the relationship it has to be a natural conclusion of what the character is.” There is a whole section of the menu dedicated to your crew and detailing your relationship with each one, allowing you to keep track of where you stand. To demand a section of the menu means that relationships are a huge focus in Andromeda.
While the characters and story have been kept relatively secret by BioWare, they have shown a lot of combat in the gameplay trailers. The combat is based off the system in Mass Effect 3, with a few little tweaks to keep things slicker and more malleable. You aren’t stuck to a class this time around, instead you can choose to develop whatever skills you fancy and map them to be used in combat. You can save your favourite combinations of skills and abilities so you can switch between different set ups mid-battle. One addition that actually makes a big difference is the ability to jump and hover using a jetpack. This adds a different dimension to firefights as you can spring upwards out of cover, throw some grenades and quickly pop back down again. You cannot control your two teammates as you can in the Dragon Age series, but you can tell them where to go using the D-pad much like the original trilogy. I enjoyed my time with the combat, much as I did in Mass Effect 3, and the added extras mean there looks to be more flexibility than before.
The environments look gorgeous but the preview build suffered from something that haunts many BioWare games: the character models and animations were awkward and could often be jarring. After a few natural and engaging conversations with my crew they would spin around a bit and then quickly sprint a few steps in order to get back into their previous position. With the huge amount of dialogue and variables, some of this is to be expected but excellent writing and characterisation was let down by the awkward faces and movements.
I went into the Andromeda preview feeling trepidatious. I came out excited and anxious to play more. Most important is that it feels like Mass Effect, and it looks like it’s building on the best aspects of the previous games. Speaking with Condominas, it’s clear this is their aim. “The trilogy had a narrative constraint, but when we start from scratch, when we don’t have that story anymore, our first reflex was to say ‘what are the best elements of all three games that we can bring and put together’. So obviously the exploration, the Nomad, all those notions are from Mass Effect 1; the loyalty missions from Mass Effect 2 and the character bonding; and the more action based gameplay of Mass Effect 3. We tried to bring all that together. But they were three different games, suddenly having to balance that into a single game… It takes five years.”
Mass Effect Andromeda is due for release on March 21st 2017.
vortex
Fabulous Optimist
All articles in one place.
Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFMoZGBzAHQ
Another featurette with Dormer.
Heretic
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2015
- Messages
- 844
It all depends on execution.
Alpha Protocol had a similar system and it worked really well in that game.
But I doubt MEA will be on the same level.
sullynathan
Arcane
There also isn't any level limit and you're allowed to max out every skill, every AAA "rpg" has this these days so they're following the herd.
They're banking on not giving you enough XP in one playthrough so that you have to go to NG+ but I don't know how they'll do that with this semi-open world thing.
This game looks like it has been built on the corpse of DA:I, which in return was built on the corpse of a MMO.
Latelistener
Arcane
- Joined
- May 25, 2016
- Messages
- 2,594
racofer
Thread Incliner
They could have just made a 3D sex simulator featuring Natalie and it would sell better and get better community feedback than another ME game. Probably cheaper as well.
RoSoDude
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2016
- Messages
- 730
What is the point of having RPG systems and build paths if you can just swap between them at will, IN COMBAT. The hell?
The idea of having classes open up to you as you invest into their skills (or, a jack of all trades class if you don't specialize) is great. Ignoring how dedicated the AI is to being idiotic cannon fodder, the combat also looks much more dynamic and engaging than the cover-hugging of previous ME games (unless we're just seeing Easy difficulty, where otherwise cover is mandatory). But then they throw this favorites shit into the mix. As you said, this just means you can assemble a few loadouts to constitute all major builds in one playthrough, and just use them all in every fight. So, rather than have to choose your squad to complement your chosen build and adapt your playstyle accordingly, you can just slap everything on and be everything. Doesn't that kind of invalidate the "Explorer" class as it is?
This probably also means that the levels and enemy encounters won't be balanced around the classes. There will probably be some situations where you have to pull out the sniper rifle, and some where you better have biotics and a shotgun. Again, assuming you are playing on any real difficulty.
All of this, combined with the fact that you can max out everything, leaves me less interested in the game than I had even expected.
sullynathan
Arcane
doesn't Witcher 3 and every other AAA rpg do this?
RoSoDude
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2016
- Messages
- 730
Certainly. Doesn't make it a good thing. Makes sense if you consider the demographic they're catering to, though. Muh power fantasy.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 97,495
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-02-22-four-hours-with-mass-effect-andromeda
Four hours with Mass Effect Andromeda
Far more than just Dragon Age Inquisition in space.
Mass Effect Andromeda has been in development almost five years but it's not until now, one month before release, that BioWare has let us play it. To say some fans are cautious is an understatement. Conspiracy theories abound as to Andromeda's shortened marketing cycle, or the reason why its release date was only set in stone last month. A product of BioWare's untested Montreal studio (albeit with help from the Edmonton mothership), Andromeda has been the subject of concerns over its lengthy development - not to mention the narrative leaps needed to continue the series after its original trilogy was so definitively tied off. And, while Dragon Age: Inquisition was generally well-received, Mass Effect fans want a proper Mass Effect game - not just a Frostbite-powered Hinterlands in space. Recently, fan suspicion bubbled over when a gameplay trailer included a small animation bug. BioWare's fans are some of the most loyal - but also some of the most critical.
Within its first mission, Andromeda sets most fears straight. The game's opening sequence wastes little time propelling you to your new galactic home, introducing core characters and redshirts and immediately placing you under threat. You are Ryder, the son or daughter of humanity's Pathfinder leader, in a brand new galaxy on a ship full of tens of thousands of colonists - most still in cryosleep. But Andromeda is immediately more alien and hostile than you were expecting. Within minutes, you find yourself almost alone on a completely foreign world.
The move to Andromeda is a smart one: it both sidesteps the narrative dead end BioWare had written itself with Mass Effect 3 (Andromeda's colonists leave just before ME3 begins) and acts as a natural refresh for the series' space opera storyline. Many of the players remain the same - turians, krogan, salarians, asari - but each species is now the invader, the alien, the stranger. Past events are still important to the identity of each race, but I was surprised how quickly Andromeda created its own conflicts. After all, every colonist leaving the Milky Way opted in to their one-way ticket. It's a great backdrop for Andromeda's characters, but also a fine stage for divisions immediately upon arrival when things don't go to plan.
That first planet you find yourself on treats you to a taster of this trouble. Andromeda's Heleus Cluster is not the welcoming harbour you were expecting, or even particularly safe for the locals. Quickly you're introduced to several new races - the invading kett, and later the indigenous angara. Then there's an ancient synthetic race known as the Remnant. Each presents a new challenge - to befriend, to fight against, or simply to try and understand. It's a familiar theme - after all, the original Mass Effect trilogy was set against the story of humanity's growth on an already-mature galactic stage. Andromeda takes that idea to the extreme - here, humanity is now a minutes-old arrival, and the galactic stage is a mess.
It's lucky, then, that when you do need to pull out a weapon, BioWare has used Mass Effect's move to Frostbite to beef up its combat. Much has been made of the decision to ditch the series' traditional character classes (although stat-boosting Profiles with similar names are unlocked when you specialise in a relevant field). So, if you want, you can now be a biotic engineer with soldier skills who wields a massive krogan hammer, and when you become Pathfinder you can switch between Profiles on the fly. Another big change is Andromeda's move to dynamic cover, which takes a little getting used to - initially it feels imprecise compared to ME3's snap to cover feature, but the shift to more varied terrain means it comes in handy. One big negative, however, is the removal of the powers wheel, and with it the ability to command squadmates to use specific abilities. (I asked producer Fabrice Condominas for more information on why the powers wheel was removed, which you can read in our separate discussion). Overall, combat is saved by Andromeda's addition of new movement options - a boost jump, a further boost via horizontal jets and automatic mantling. It means you can hover above the battlefield and shoot down over cover, or boost up to the top of a building and snipe down with ease. It's faster and more fluid than any Mass Effect so far.
The kett come in all shapes and sizes. More aggressive forms include a cloaked varren-like version. Karren?
Frostbite's larger areas appear even in "critical path" narrative missions. Andromeda's prologue is a good example. Here you're tasked with a perilous descent down cliffs while lightning strikes around you - a good place to try out that boost jet. There's a key goal you must reach, but on the way there are diversions - other paths and distractions. Caves hold encampments of kett but also valuable loot. Another path lets you free a grateful survivor. Later missions are even more open, although BioWare has shied away from describing the game as open-world. The planet Kadara, seen in BioWare's earlier cinematic trailer, hosts one of the game's many hubs. There's a critical mission here, but you'll likely spend much longer getting to know the locals, trading items and uncovering side-quests. The area's market hub sees Ryder in shirtsleeves, free to wander even while undertaking the main story. You can go meet Sloane Kelly, one of the ex-Andromeda Initiative officers who has defected, and watch that scene with the graphics bug which has now been re-animated. Or you can visit a local bar, or uncover a serial killer, or search for a hidden cache of supplies out beyond the market, in an area where you switch to your armour and rev up the six-wheel Nomad.
I'm not yet sold on the Nomad, I have to admit, but Kadara's drivable area was fairly compact and I was in somewhat of a hurry to see as much as possible, so used the game's fast-travel option when specific points became unlocked. Right now the best I can say is that the Nomad handles better than ME1's Mako and its on-board robo-mining function is better than ME2's planet-scanning. Exploring in general is fun but with far wider environments than Inquisition there feels like there's less finesse in certain areas, as much of it is designed to be rushed through. At least navigation and quest-tracking is improved - Andromeda has both ME3's annotated top-down map for each area or hub as well as ME1 and 2's much-missed full quest log. Another handy feature comes after completing a mission, when you can look back over a summary of what happened and see how you responded to any choices. I didn't get to see any game-changing decisions, but regular dialogue felt more open thanks to the expanded selection of responses. You can now choose either an emotional, logical, casual, or professional response in many instances where you previously just had a Paragon/Renegade option. As for the game's animation, in most cases it is generally fine, albeit on the baseline of a BioWare role-player with hundreds of thousands of possible lines, rather than a Naughty Dog game with a static script.
I played as both male and female Ryder - each has a slightly different personality, unlike male and female Shepard.
But cars, combat, even exploration - for me, none of this matters at all if Andromeda's cast wasn't worth making the journey with. Mass Effect's heart has always been its characters. Sure, the trilogy was technically about stopping the Reapers, but the people and aliens you met over those three games were the aspect fans remembered, mourned and missed when all was said and done. Andromeda features six new squadmates and another four crew members aboard your ship, the Tempest, which is sleeker, brighter and more homely than the Normandy. Every character on board has their own personality and perspective. Exploring the ship while everyone was still settling in, I was treated to scenes where Ryder hung out with the crew, or where I stumbled upon them mid-conversation with others. In general, Andromeda's tone is a little brighter than the grim circumstances of ME3, though moments of your main mission can still carry some serious narrative weight. It's your little family of crewmates who signed up for adventure which provide light-relief. The interaction between them picks up the tone from where ME3 and its Citadel DLC left off - well-written, well-rounded and instantly likable. That's not to say they're all going to be best friends - early on, different opinions among the diverse cast were plain to see. Securing one squadmate's trust may impact another, I was told by Condominas, and some players may find themselves unable to complete every character's loyalty mission.
The game's aliens once again steal the show and, while different to your squadmates of old, comparisons to past party members are inevitable. Take Krogan badass Drack, for example - an ancient, wizened warlord but still capable of smacking enemy heads together. He provides the gravel-voiced deadpan humour of Wrex but from a more mature point of view, almost the antithesis of Grunt. By comparison, turian squadmate Vetra seems much younger. She's warmer than Garrus - if anything, she seems closer to Tali - and protective of her little sister who also made the jump to Andromeda. Then there's Peebee, your new asari pal - adventurous, sometimes spiky, she lives in one of the Tempest's escape pods. My early favourite is Jaal, your new squadmate from Andromeda's angara race. His background provides a window into that culture and its factions in a way which reminds me of Javik from ME3 - and he's also got a lot of fans very hot under the collar. (It goes without saying that yes, you can try to flirt with everybody.)
For players who like customising the look of their character, Andromeda has a huge amount of options. You can tweak your sibling's appearance, too.
Liam and Cora are your human squadmates, meanwhile, who are with you right from the start. Liam is a cockney, cool, upbeat and a natural fit for the role of your new best bro - I checked in on him in his quarters and had a short scene where we shared a beer. Cora is stricter, trained to be your senior but now having to deal with the fact this is no longer the case. Both are a million times better than Ashley and Kaidan. Elsewhere on your ship you'll find salarian pilot Kallo Jath, asari doctor Lexi T'Perro (voiced by Game of Thrones' Natalie Dormer), Scottish science officer Suvi, and chief engineer Gil Brodie, who very much enjoyed my male Ryder's flirting. Finally, there's SAM, your new AI who on the surface seems similar to EDI but in reality is far more intriguing. SAM was created by Ryder's parents - and, it is hinted, will help uncover more of your family's backstory. Your father Alec Ryder, voiced by Clancy Brown, is more distant - a useful narrative trick when the player initially feels little connection to him.
After more than four hours of playtime I left Andromeda feeling like I had barely brushed an omni-tool over its surface. Crucially, though, it felt convincingly like a Mass Effect game. I enjoyed Dragon Age Inquisition, but after five years of waiting for a new Mass Effect chapter and a fresh start for the series overall, BioWare needed to do more than just transpose its Frostbite template for fantasy gameplay into the sci-fi genre. Andromeda's combat, characters and stories thankfully hold up.
And, excitingly, much of Andromeda remains a mystery. I got a glimpse at a couple of spoilery moments in the game's early plot but its overall storyline is still shrouded in secrecy. (And you can click here to read more than a dozen other, more nerdy bits of Mass Effect Andromeda information I couldn't squeeze into this preview). I'm curious what happened to the Andromeda Initiative's other arcs, to find out about all the new factions I met. I still have no idea about the Remnant race or its creators and I'm intrigued by Ryder's own family story. I'm also itching to experiment properly with the game's combat - and even to try out the game's co-operative multiplayer mode, which we were not able to sample. But, most of all, I want to spend more time with its characters - and simply see where this new adventure takes us. And that, to me, sounds a lot like Mass Effect.
Kem0sabe
Arcane
These fucking sjw are so predictable... So the crazy asari lives in a escape pod, like the crazy lesbian elf in inquisition, she most certainly is quirky and weird, which apparently is supposed to be hot in sjw minds?
From the video, viewer focus was a lot on the big beast, but did you notice how other grunts still stayed in game even hit by biotics and various weapons point blank. Before that, player sunk cloaked shot with Widow or Black Widow, that should be most of the health bar gone (or one shot kill on lower difficulty levels) but nope. I didn't bothered to re-watch to see how weapons were upgraded, but for weapon combat, either guns were pea shooters or enemies are bullet sponges. Effect is still the same, grind like hell to upgrade your weapon, weapon related skills and ammo powers.
Also did you notice how few enemy combatants there were in a map simultaneously? And it isn't just this video, it's been like that in all videos I have seen.
One more thing regarding gun play, I wonder if located damage (read: head shots) is in the game.
What comes to skills, combo attack appeared to be powerful which can make combat fun, but for now I'm sceptical.
Note: I'm writing this pretty much thinking how MP will turn out.
bminorkey
Guest
Kem0sabe
Arcane
The previous mass effect games didn't have a lot of enemies on screen as well, most firefights were small.
J1M
Arcane
- Joined
- May 14, 2008
- Messages
- 14,629
Bioware lights its fictional characters the way it lights its game studio.
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