Mass Effect: Andromeda

Gbear

Designing the large maps of Andromeda’s planets became a struggle on Frostbite, where the maximum size of a map was initially 100 by 100 kilometers. The Andromeda team needed their maps to be way bigger than that.

Can't imagine any of the maps are more than about 50x50.

The Mass Effect: Andromeda team was also having trouble executing the ideas they’d found so exciting just a year ago. Combat was shaping up nicely, as were the prototypes BioWare had developed for the Nomad ground vehicle, which already felt way better to drive than Mass Effect 1’s crusty old Mako. But spaceflight and procedurally generated planets were causing some problems. “They were creating planets and they were able to drive around it, and the mechanics of it were there,” said a person who worked on the game. “I think what they were struggling with was that it was never fun. They were never able to do it in a way that’s compelling, where like, ‘OK, now imagine doing this a hundred more times or a thousand more times.’”

That sure does ring true.

Many of those core ideas had persisted, like the main character, Ryder; SAM, the artificial intelligence that melds with Ryder; and the final sequence on Meridian. But most of the quests and dialogue needed to be designed and written.

These and plenty of other ideas were really solid and interesting stuff to build around (although I think the idea to go to Andromeda was fundamentally a misstep - essentially abandoning a universe everyone already loves).

Even if many of the decisions were poor on a conceptual level, like the UI, character advancement and all that, you can see how that might be down to having to settle for the first idea they came up with that worked.

The idea that they found driving around boring, to paraphrase the comment above, is telling. They had too much other **** to do and they needed a game that worked. They didn't have time totally rebuild large sections of the game at that point.

Fundamentally it sounds like a lack of high-level leadership. The decision to have Casey Hudson involved early on only for him to leave before the main development process got going strikes me as suicidally stupid of Bioware.

I think to their credit this was the only game in the series where I truly enjoyed the combat.

But yeah theres lots in the Kotaku piece that doesn't surprise me.

ItsHoggie

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I think to their credit this was the only game in the series where I truly enjoyed the combat.

But yeah theres lots in the Kotaku piece that doesn't surprise me.

I actually preferred the combat in 2&3, even though I enjoyed the boost jump I felt like I had to rely on it a little too much.

degrassinoel

it was a needless gimmick, and one that they had to do more work around to make maps/worlds more playable in. The combat in 3 was done just right, no need for jetpacks, just fcukin shoot and cover, simple, enjoyable, fun.

Maximus Alexander

Gbear wrote: »

Can't imagine any of the maps are more than about 50x50.

Don't think any of them were even anywhere close to that. I suspect it's a typo and Frostbite can handle about 10km x 10km which would be fairly standard if they use a single precision float coordinate system.

DeadlyByDesign

I abandoned this game half way through as I was forcing myself to enjoy it. The writing, the dialouge, the feel", the glitches and immersion breaking animation was just too much for me. I thought driving around the planets would be awesome as well. It turns out is it is just boring going from point to point and to vapid.

A missed opportunity

K.O.Kiki

DeadlyByDesign wrote: »

I abandoned this game half way through as I was forcing myself to enjoy it. The writing, the dialouge, the feel", the glitches and immersion breaking animation was just too much for me. I thought driving around the planets would be awesome as well. It turns out is it is just boring going from point to point and to vapid.

A missed opportunity

If there was a mod so you could just skip to the finale, I'd do that.
Final mission was class, better executed than ME3's "final push" with all the NPCs you'd met helping you out/showing up.

Gbear

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

If there was a mod so you could just skip to the finale, I'd do that.
Final mission was class, better executed than ME3's "final push" with all the NPCs you'd met helping you out/showing up.

I dunno does anyone care but I'll spoiler just in case.

It was relatively good, but even so, they didn't make enough of the allies you'd worked with.

Even your other crew memebers didn't feature enough.

The mission itself was arguably too short as well.

They carp on about meridian for the whole game and then you spend about 5 minutes walking outside it.

If the preceding 50 hours wasn't such a load of turgid ****, I don't think it would feel like anything other than the bare minimum.

Shougeki

DeadlyByDesign wrote: »

I abandoned this game half way through as I was forcing myself to enjoy it.

My save games were deleted by their f**king piss poor cloud system. They can go choke on a buffet of d*cks.
I was liking it. It was nice. But I am not restarting it. And I probably wont buy another of their games after this.

Skerries

is it definitely gone from the cloud?
because you can force it to reinstall back to your game if they are just gone from the pc

Shougeki

Skerries wrote: »

is it definitely gone from the cloud?
because you can force it to reinstall back to your game if they are just gone from the pc

I have a copy of my Cache folder. When I restore that, it says 350M on cloud. Disable, re-enable drops to 0. Restore button greyed out.
Might try again after 1.08 patch.
They havent answered support forum post or ticket. Bunch of pr*cks.

super_furry

Does it get any better after the first planet Eos? I'm dragging myself through it right now and it's a struggle.

Gbear

Nah not really. You'll meet more characters, get new guns, find new planets but nothing fundamentally changes.

Kiith

It's basically desert world, ice world, worse desert world, night time world, criminal world and one more i won't spoil. As above, not much changes, but i enjoyed some of the other planets.

SolvableKnave

Kiith wrote: »

It's basically desert world, ice world, worse desert world, night time world, criminal world and one more i won't spoil. As above, not much changes, but i enjoyed some of the other planets.

Is it this?

Cina

Gbear wrote: »

Nah not really. You'll meet more characters, get new guns, find new planets but nothing fundamentally changes.

That's harsh.

The game improves massively about 15 hours in.

The main missions and loyalty missions are excellent, the characters improve (especially Peebee and Drack) and worlds like Elaaden are far better than Eos and Voeld (which are probably the two worst in the game).

The game suffers massively from its slow and grindy start but improves big time if you're willing to persevere (and believe me it took me a long time to persevere).

For me it goes from a 5/10 in the first 15-20 hours to a solid 8/10 for the next 40 hours, but in saying that, it does always have the annoying grind parts and fetch quests throughout, it just becomes more sparse and less annoying later on.

degrassinoel

so, 6.5 then?

A below average AAA score.

Yeah, i'm still a bit bitter about the game being so pants, the only saving grace was the multiplayer and that's nowhere near as good as 3 was.

super_furry

Well just finished setting up the outpost on Eos and it's still not grabbing me at all. The quests are really dull and uninteresting and already I'm forgetting just what I'm supposed to be doing story wise, outside of going to the marker on the map. I'll stick with it for a while longer yet but it's a poor first impression.

Venom

super_furry wrote: »

Well just finished setting up the outpost on Eos and it's still not grabbing me at all. The quests are really dull and uninteresting and already I'm forgetting just what I'm supposed to be doing story wise, outside of going to the marker on the map. I'll stick with it for a while longer yet but it's a poor first impression.

I found the game overall to be just so generic in every way. The main character has zero personality, the villains are boring, 99% of the other characters you encounter are instantly forgettable and the over all plot just feels lacking.

The non character designs and graphics are very well done as is the combat but overall this is a very meh game.

Cina

degrassinoel wrote: »

so, 6.5 then?

Maths would say 7ish

20 hours - 5
40 hours - 8

It's a really good game, if you give it time.

A bit like DA:I -just that DA:I was fortunate enough to come out in a pre Witcher 3/BOTW/H:ZD world.

Open-world games have stepped it up big time since Bioware released their previous one and that's why ME:A is such a disappointment, because they didn't adapt.

Zero-Cool

Yeah, makes it worse that they claimed the side quests were going to be witcher 3 esque. No sir, no there were ****ing not.

I'm about 25% through it and haven't played it in over a month. Yakuza 0 kicks ME:A's arse up and down the galaxy so will go back to it once I'm done.

Venom

Zero-Cool wrote: »

Yeah, makes it worse that they claimed the side quests were going to be witcher 3 esque. No sir, no there were ****ing not.

I'm about 25% through it and haven't played it in over a month. Yakuza 0 kicks ME:A's arse up and down the galaxy so will go back to it once I'm done.

I did the exact same thing which is very odd for me, partially for bug fixes but mostly because of dullness.

Gbear

Cina wrote: »

That's harsh.

The game improves massively about 15 hours in.

The main missions and loyalty missions are excellent, the characters improve (especially Peebee and Drack) and worlds like Elaaden are far better than Eos and Voeld (which are probably the two worst in the game).

The game suffers massively from its slow and grindy start but improves big time if you're willing to persevere (and believe me it took me a long time to persevere).

For me it goes from a 5/10 in the first 15-20 hours to a solid 8/10 for the next 40 hours, but in saying that, it does always have the annoying grind parts and fetch quests throughout, it just becomes more sparse and less annoying later on.

Going on how far in it is misses the point a bit.

The bulk of the game is open world explorey stuff and that's an absolute bore.

The good stuff doesn't start until a bit later in but it's still interspersed amongst the bland swill of the open world.

The loyalty missions are nothing special at all. They're grand.
They paid lip-service to innovating a bit like turning the map upside down in Liam's mission, the hacking in Vetra's or whatever but it really amounted to very little difference in gameplay.

The Remnant bunkers are good. Good pacing, a mix of mission formats, decent puzzles, good shooty bits and a good giant purple death cloud chase at the end.
The Architecht fights are alright as well.
Then there's a few planet viability missions that are worth it, like Voeld.
The finale is a strong finish to the game but the quality is so intermittent beforehand, it mostly leaves you asking why there wasn't more.

It's about a month since I stopped playing and after putting a good 70 hours into the game, I can barely remember any missions, I've forgotten the name of most of the characters - even some of the crewmates.

It's largely competent but forgettable.

degrassinoel

Cina wrote: »

Maths would say 7ish

20 hours - 5
40 hours - 8

It's a really good game, if you give it time.

A bit like DA:I -just that DA:I was fortunate enough to come out in a pre Witcher 3/BOTW/H:ZD world.

Open-world games have stepped it up big time since Bioware released their previous one and that's why ME:A is such a disappointment, because they didn't adapt.

222 hours played according to origin - granted, around 200 of those were in multiplayer. I've given it time, the single player is a pile of ****e for a bioware game.

The dialogue is dreadful.
The story is pants.
The characters are woeful.

It's a massive step backwards as a bioware game and it's really not surprising that ME has been shelved indefinitely because of it.

ibFoxer

I eventually started the story the other night, played for maybe 4 hours, it was painful, nothing like the previous entries to play through. Multiplayer is a bit of craic and i can see myself playing a lot more of that.

The_Valeyard

I completely forgot about this game.

Just left it. Only remembered it when this thread popped up on latest posts.

I literally just stopped playing one day and never went back, got distracted by another game.

Wow, not sure that's ever happened to me before. Especially from a Mass Effect game!

super_furry

Must try the multiplayer because the campaign is so dull. There's not an ounce of personality to the characters, which is the one thing Bioware always did well.

ibFoxer

super_furry wrote: »

Must try the multiplayer because the campaign is so dull. There's not an ounce of personality to the characters, which is the one thing Bioware always did well.

If you played, and thoroughly enjoyed, the multiplayer on ME3, then prepare to be underwhelmed.

Still a good laugh, but it's predecessor did it better.

Arytonblue

Thought I'd post my own thoughts on this game for the laugh.

I was a massive fan of the original trilogy, many flaws and issues aside. The combat, even in the last one was always clunky to me. They tried to Gears of War it up a bit from 2 onward but I think most people would accept it wasn't the main focus of the games, the story and in particular your squad-mate characters were. There will never be a better video game character than Garrus motherfuc@kin Vakarian, that turian was my bro, there from start to finish.

Then Andromeda is nearing release and a lot of people are already down on it, once it comes out it gets slated by many online and even mainstream critics were lukewarm on it. Then there's the issue with the facial animations and Youtube is popping up with a truckload of people mocking and eviscerating the game for how goofy default female Ryder looks. I opted to delay getting the game but then said to myself, feck it, I love Mass Effect I'll give it a try. I went in expecting the worst and.... I've been shocked at how much I've enjoyed it. I'll say again that I went in with bottom basement level expectations and maybe that's why I've loved the game. I've played about 60 hours of it and I'm still not exactly sure why I've enjoyed it as much as I have. All the problems people are pointing to are there, the crap animations, dull characters, so-so plot and tedious gameplay elements. Maybe I've just been able to plow through it to get to parts I find great, maybe it's just the fanboy in me dictating my enjoyment or maybe I'm missing something but I haven't enjoyed a game this much since Witcher 3.

Many have said the opening parts of the game drag and it takes too long to get into it but I liked that it took it's time to introduce us to what is basically a whole new game and galaxy. The character creation is definitely poor, but then again the other 3 games were just as weak if not even worse in terms of options. Not an excuse I know but it didn't stop me from loving those games either. It is great IMO that they let you change your appearance at any point in the game I should say, a huge plus. In terms of the facial animations, again I'll absolutely agree they're poor for the most part, though so much focus has been placed on the default female Ryder. It wasn't the only bad example but the criticism seemed a little over the top seeing as you could always change the appearance and that default male Shepard was incredibly goofy and awkward yet many would say (myself included) that that element from the original trilogy was a quirky and lovable flaw, a bit hypocritical I thought. People might have forgotten going in that this is Bioware, they have never been known for immersive and realistic character models, in fact they're at their best when dealing with aliens and weird looking characters (see Garrus and Thane for example) When it comes to ordinary humans it's almost always clumsy.

Storywise, I went in almost intrinsically knowing that they would never top the first three in terms of stakes and pure drama, so maybe I had a more relaxed perspective on the plot. It has its cliche tropes and predictable elements but I thought it was fine. Simple bad guys taking over the galaxy is not new but I can see they tried to diversify in terms of the whole establishing colonies and other subplots that were at times more interesting than the main story,

like the Roekaar acting basically like a terrorist group or finding the missing arks

. Some of the teammates were certainly bland, Liam and Cora are the new forgettable Kaiden and Ashley but I liked Vetra and Peebee in terms of offering new perspectives on already established alien species, a big departure from Garrus and Liara. Drack was like Wrex, which is fine by me but I liked Jaal the most, by far the best written character IMO. The rest of the crew are fine, though I would have liked to see some diversity in terms of alien races, the ship was desperately in need of a quarian or drell to mix it up. The loyalty missions were again more interesting than the main plot, to me the exact same as 2 and 3, though the enjoyment one gets from these is entirely subjective I think.

The gameplay for me is the highlight just in terms of combat and mobility not being a drag when compared to it's predecessors. Some might say that the combat was never the point of a Mass Effect game and that they should have paid more attention to the writing but I would counter that by saying for any Mass Effect game you play you spend most of your time in combat, so making that actually good is only a positive for me. The planet exploration and driving around has been described as tedious and boring though I just enjoyed the fact they made Mako 2.0 not utterly terrible. I might just be a weirdo that enjoys driving barren landscapes with aliens in tow having awkward conversations in the backseat but it was fine I thought. The fetch quests are repetitive sure, but the same can be said for most open world games these days unfortunately, developers gotta clutter up the map with dots and all. There was some variety I thought in the hub quests you could get on the Nexus and elsewhere, even simple murder mysteries and whatnot did help mix up the game.

Almost all these thoughts are entirely just my own and I can fully understand why many would disagree, but the way I see it if you like the game, hey whatever you like it.

degrassinoel

ibFoxer wrote: »

If you played, and thoroughly enjoyed, the multiplayer on ME3, then prepare to be underwhelmed.

Still a good laugh, but it's predecessor did it better.

+1 for that

it lacks a lot of the punch that me3 had, tbh i'd recommend warframe over it at this stage.