Mass Effect Andromeda

[Caliga]

Insanely high expectations?

[Syt]

I have to say after watching the Co-optional podcast yesterday and watching Strippin stream it a bit I don't see what everybody is freaking out about with Andromeda. The game seems perfectly fine.

Yeah, that was my impression, too.

[Valmy]

Insanely high expectations?

Probably but I don't see what Bioware has done the past six years to justify those sorts of expectations.

[Scipio]

FAcial animations are poop. Just fucking awful. Otherwise, the game plays really well. In game menus suck, but this is Bioware, so what do you expect? They are known for their shitty menus and opaque GUI stuff.

[Tamas]

I must say, reading Valmy's most excellent AAR of Mass Effect 1, reminding me and showing all the various plotholes and writing, I am thinking the reaction on unacceptably weak writing in Andromeda has to be overblown.

[Valmy]

FAcial animations are poop. Just fucking awful. Otherwise, the game plays really well. In game menus suck, but this is Bioware, so what do you expect? They are known for their shitty menus and opaque GUI stuff.

Well my standards are so low I still think KOTOR has good facial animations

Yeah Bioware UI is pretty bad. Stupid crafting menu from DAI.

[Valmy]

I must say, reading Valmy's most excellent AAR of Mass Effect 1, reminding me and showing all the various plotholes and writing, I am thinking the reaction on unacceptably weak writing in Andromeda has to be overblown.

Something that has been bothering me that last couple days: Tali has a recording from a Geth who overheard a conversation that happened after the Battle of Eden Prime yet you get the sense she had been shopping this information around the Citadel for a bit before Fist tries to set her up. So somehow she destroyed a Geth somewhere who was aboard the Sovereign after Eden Prime, removed its memory core, traveled to the Citadel and made enough noise to get herself in trouble? I mean you go straight from Eden Prime to the Citadel. That's impossible. Yeah this is the problem with me going back and playing these games.

I am glad you are enjoying the AAR

[celedhring]

You're actually tempting me to do a full walkthrough of the saga. Mako segments though 

[viper37]

Glad I didn't pre-ordered this one
It's bad

Well I watched TB playing it on a VoD, the multiplayer anyway, and his assessment was 'it's not bad, a bit better than the last one anyway.' So the combat part seems decent enough. That certainly made me want to play a Vanguard, holy shit.

So if you want some spoiler free gameplay you can take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ZBqBbA6mQ

I read a similarly hysterical take down of PoE when it was first released and that turned out to be nonsense. But in any case I am eventually going to play Andromeda on my AAR so if it sucks you can at least enjoy watching me bitch about it.

major critics are hovering around an 80% score.  While that does not seem so bad, for a major company (EA), that invests a fuckton of money in advertising on all these sites, that tells a lot.

[viper37]

Bioware is in its decadence.

Bioware does not exists anymore.  It's an internal EA studio with a given name, but anyone who worked at Bioware prior to EA take over and who worked on DAO or Mass Effect is gone, including the founders.

They've nominally kept the name Bioware for marketing reasons, but everything is handled by EA-Main branch.  Well, actually, they call it "EA worldwide studios", it's a merge Bioware, Maxis and EA Mobile.

[Barrister]

I was just reading a story that mentioned one of the BioWare founders was opening a brew pub here in Edmonton.

[celedhring]

There's always Obsidian and CDProjekt.

I wish Obsidian got a shot at another AAA project though.

[Valmy]

major critics are hovering around an 80% score.  While that does not seem so bad, for a major company (EA), that invests a fuckton of money in advertising on all these sites, that tells a lot.

Yeah but those are the people I don't trust. The people I do trust say it is alright. I am expecting something of the quality I have come to expect from Bioware these days.

[Valmy]

Bioware does not exists anymore.  It's an internal EA studio with a given name, but anyone who worked at Bioware prior to EA take over and who worked on DAO or Mass Effect is gone, including the founders.

Well that is not literally true but yes all the big wheels who we knew and loved are gone. Which is pretty amazing for such a short period of time. Over at Obsidian virtually all the Black Isle people are still there.

I plan on talking about this when I get to Mass Effect 2 because that is when I realized Bioware, as I knew it, was in trouble. I have reconciled with the new regime since but it took awhile.

[viper37]

I plan on talking about this when I get to Mass Effect 2 because that is when I realized Bioware, as I knew it, was in trouble. I have reconciled with the new regime since but it took awhile.

I think ME2 was a vast improvement over ME1, personally, but it still had one major problem, being made for consoles.  Straight level, narrow corridors, a few jumps up and down, get to the boss, end the level.