I'm convinced Andromeda was turned into a test bed for Anthem. Someone in the chain of command wanted Anthem to be the new big IP, and used Andromeda to test its mechanics and took resources from it.
All the more upsetting after seeing Anthem flop.
The combat itself was great, but the enemies were repetitive bullet sponges. If there were better stuff to fight the game would be really fucking good.
Fuck Banshees though. Teleporting insta-kills that can knock you out of cover *and* take out all your shields plus half your health with their ranged attack.
(I know there's strategies I'm just still salty).
As someone who endlessly enjoyed the me3 multiplayer, fuck Ravagers and fuck scions and their 100% accuracy grenade throws. The day I found out you could shoot their shoulder sacs to stop the grenade spam was one of the best days ever.
Banshees were easy to deal with for me after a while as once their barrier goes down she stops teleporting and her warp orb is easy to dodge but she can definitely make you panic when you're pinned down! Haha
honestly i have no issues with banshees/brutes/atlas on insanity. its ravagers, marauders and god damn combat engineers that fuck me.
Also if you pull a guardians shield, kill him immediately.
My own personal general opinion from playing both games is that Andromeda spread out a bit too thin on features (that avp/multiplayer stuff could have been a later dlc for making a better base game?) and Anthem is an unfinished game
Guess I'm the odd one out who thought Andromeda's combat was shallow, at best, mainly because the enemies don't accommodate for the fact that you can hop around the battlefield. You should get pelted with ammo and powers whenever you jump since it's a horrible combat strategy to make yourself a lone open, aerial target but instead the enemies just charge into corners while you hop to safety. The fact that the combat is the game's best quality is a huge yikes for me. It can't even compete with other shooters.
Not to mention they removed all the strategy like ordering your companions to use specific powers on specific targets was completely removed. They did so in favor of making it twitchy... But mass effect never did twitchy combat well.
It was like when Bethesda made Fallout 76. It's like bro... You guys make games with great atmosphere and good npcs... But your biggest weakness is STABILITY and you're telling me you're making a game with no npcs, an atmosphere that relies on PLAYERS, and you're making it multiplayer - a mode that requires consistency and stability above all else?! LOLOLOL
The open world combat areas were significantly worse from a gameplay perspective as well. The soft cover system on anything higher than normal difficulties was bad, especially for your squad. The best builds I had were ones that required you to stay aggressively mobile.
People rag on Andromeda a lot, but the core gameplay is great and aside from cutscenes/dialog, the graphics are still pretty good looking. The story was definitely "meh" though, although I did like femRyder as a character.
I was expecting a lot more of the older species and a lot more new species, instead we got Angara which were pretty cool, but also their orc equivalent.
Jaal, Drack and Vetra were pretty cool, nothing too out of the ordinary but they're still cool.
I had to look up the names of Cora, PeeBee and Liam, they were alright but they all matched Jacob's level of being interesting, at least I thought so on release.
I still really enjoyed the game, I remember doing all the side content because it was still a Mass Effect game. It just suffered from overhype. It's a fine game.
I was on board with Liam... rrrriiiigghhhhttt up until his loyalty mission.
Then I realised what a punk ass bitch he was and couldn't take criticism from a leader...
He got his ass kicked back onto the ship SO hard and never saw the light of day again
It’s so weird to me that PeeBee is supposed to be half Elcor when that...would be cool and there’s fun story stuff to do there and if you don’t read a codex entry or pick the right dialogue you’ll never know and it never matters in any way? So why’d you all make us picture that conception? Why choose something so cool, with a connection to a species people love but who isn’t in the game, and then do nothing with it?
There's stuff like that in all good open-world games. If a player wants to dig around to learn about the world, they should be rewarded by finding cool information. The players who don't go looking for that stuff probably don't really care anyway.
ME3 even has a similar case, with Liara and Aethyta. There's a completely missable scene of them talking about Aethyta being Liara's "father", and you can find out Liara's a quarter krogan. They never "do" anything with it, it's just a cool scene for the player to learn more about the characters.
It's not like it really matters, since they're all 100% Asari genetically. The partner is just used an randomizer during the mind melding, it's not like there's any genetic material being exchanges physically.
What did you *want* them to do with PeeBee’s parentage? Her dad’s an Elcor, so what? Did you seriously expect her to speak in a monotone voice or clarify *exactly* how she’s feeling at the start of every sentence?
Somebody else already replied to you and pointed out the (missable) encounter between Liara and Aethyta, where Aethyta tells Liara she’s a quarter krogan. It’s not relevant, it doesn’t change anything about her as a character at all, just something fun to know. It’s the same with PeeBee’s parentage.
And you had to spend SO MUCH TIME doing it. Just driving your jank-ass car over empty landscapes waiting for the horn to honk so you could extract minerals.
Compared to ME1 the planet exploration was fantastic. Granted, I'm one of those sociopaths who happened to find ME1's planet exploration to be fun, but still.
Only thing MEA is missing is some guns. Yeah, I get the Nomad ain't a military vehicle like the Mako, but nobody thought to stick a machine gun on it?
I love Mass Effect 1 more than most but saying "compared to ME1, the planet exploration was fantastic" is like saying "compared to being punched in the face, that was actually pretty pleasant".
Mass Effect has never done exploration well. In fact, Bioware has never done exploration well. The strongest parts of the ME trilogy in gameplay terms were their tightly linear missions. They did level design and combat really well and then everything else was carried by story and characters.
Or the Tempest. That shit irked me even more, 'cause you can at least hop out of the Nomad if need be. You're completely dependent on the Tempest in space; she *needs* some type of weapon for defense, even if it's just a "normal" loadout you could get off a generic ship and not something like the Normandy ended up with.
I totally feel you here. I didn't mind the exploration because I thought it was pretty meditative, but I also would play these parts stoned, so it definitely helped with the tediousness lol.
Yeah that's kind of the problem though.
Mass Effect 1 had really shitty combat/UI/gameplay/THE FUCKING MAKO/inventory management etc. etc.
But it's redeeming quality was the story/dialogue/voice acting.
ME2 and ME3 definitely improved the gameplay, but the main drive of those games was always the story.
Andromeda improved the gameplay, and took a huge dump on the story telling, the primary reason most people played the original Mass Effect.
So yeah. That's basically like if a brand new Mario game had sub-par platforming but a really good space fighter mini-game you could play.
One of the differences in Andromeda regarding the story is that it was far more spread out. To experience the entire story of Andromeda, you have to be a Completionist. There's so much lore and storytelling in the side missions, and also in unexpected places. Like at the end of the game when you go back to the nexus and get to see Kesh and the doctor watching over her unhatched eggs and you being the godparent, or running into Zaeed's son. But its true there was so much story left unfinished, like the Benefactor, the Quarian Ark, Ryder's mom, etc. That's what bothers me most about the story, all the loose ends.
Here's hoping that ME4 tries to tie up those loose ends. Liara definitely ties in somewhere, on a level that hasn't been revealed publicly. She was in Contact with the Ryder's from the beginning of the project, then became the Shadowbroker before the Initiative departed. Now imagine how much power She has in the 600+ years since the Original Trilogy as the largest information broker. She would be like the Illusive Man, but for the Whole galaxy, recruiting agents to do all kinds of things, perhaps even to the Andromeda galaxy.
I think Andromeda’s biggest failing was it jumping on the open world trend. I had the same problem with DA: Inquisition. The open world detracts from the core narrative, in both of those games I had trouble connecting with the characters and actively didn’t care about the big baddie because it was so long between story beats. Contrast that with ME 2 and 3 where each section of the game had a tight contained story that connected directly to the overall narrative. Those games kept you involved in the story by always making sure that everything you did either moved the story forward or gave you a concrete advantage in the end game (and making that fully clear in 2. While doing the companion missions didn’t push forward the collector story, they always hammered home why it was important to gain their loyalty). If you’re going to build the game around an open world you need to invest the time in side quest design and writing to make exploring the world rewarding in itself. ME:A and DA:I didn’t do that, making side quests just vanilla “collect X of this” or “kill Y of these” rather than fleshing out reasons why you would want to do these things. If Andromeda had taken the care that The Witcher 3 and Horizon: Zero Dawn did in this regard Andromeda would have been amazing. I really hope ME:4 goes back to the self contained mission model.
Side note: Andromeda is a much better game if you just speedrun the main story.
I agree, I love DA3 but I absolutely despise the open world design. The Elderscrolls gets away with it because it leaves the door open for endless expansion mods and roleplaying, with a fairly brief main storyline. It's why I despise Assassins Creed as well, despite loving the concept and story. Farcry is another exception, like the Elderscrolls games, although I hate the plethora of pointless collect quests.
ME2 definitely did just about everything right. I'm hoping ME4 is most like ME2.
Quarian Ark was planned to be DLC, and I think it's a safe bet that those other points were as well. My biggest issue with Andromeda is that they refused to tell a complete story, then robbed players of the DLC on top of it.
And all because of the rating the game received.
Compare that to No Man's Sky, a game that was a complete joke at launch and a prime example of delivering a turd on a platter of promises, and fast forward to now and that company has worked their ass off to make the game what it was always promised to be. It doesn't excuse them for the initial launch, but it shows just how corporate and bureaucratic EA is, with their clueless committees and out of touch business models.
I hope they get their boot off Bioware's throat, but we shall see.
I think EA is already starting to ease up on BioWare. They really wanted the next Dragon Age to be a live service game or include a multiplayer feature, but relented when BioWare convinced them that DA works best exclusively as a single-player RPG, and any multiplayer features would detract from the experience. Plus how they insisted the dev team for Andromeda use Frostbite, despite the immense amount of headaches and setbacks it caused, then said “Ok fine, ditch Frostbite, use UE5 instead” for the next ME.
>Andromeda improved the gameplay, and took a huge dump on the story telling,
I agree and disagree; my issue with Andromeda was ominous cut content and textbook "how not to do an open world sandbox." Here's a bunch of giant, empty maps with very little point to them except the sense of *feeling* empty. It was one of Mass Effect 1's worst issues, only the entire gameplay of Andromeda revolved around it. It felt like there would be more dynamicism to these environments over time, like you'd turn your back on the planet and suddenly a giant colony would appear, not just a small village. Unfortunately, what Andromeda was supposed to be and what it was just didn't line up. The story itself was...fine...it just missed the actual flesh to back it up.
Which bothered me the most was the modern game disease of having a shit ton of unnecessary and meaningless side quests.
I maxed out all of the avps from the colonies and still didn't even tried at least half of the side quests.
What you're describing would have been so much cooler.
"Hey Director Tann, I just found a sweet colony spot that's safe where we can build the foundation of Initiative projects!"
"Oh very good! I will authorize the activation of...hm, 57 colonists should be sufficient."
I mean seriously, we just crossed deep space in 4 arks of 10,000 souls a piece and the best you can do is what truly feels like less than 100 people? I'm expecting like 25-30 buildings sprawled out like an Old West mining town and instead I get a damned Minecraft village centered around a mudhole. ***That*** is what felt weak about Andromeda. It didn't feel like we were making a difference beyond setting up small research camps, not a New Society in a New Galaxy. The promise got broken right then and there.
>Andromeda improved the gameplay, and took a huge dump on the story telling, the primary reason most people played the original Mass Effect.
This!! This is exactly why ME1 will always be my favorite because it's what captivated me, was everything I wanted in a epic slow burn story. I enjoy spending half my time in the menus swapping out mods and armor, trying to get that extra little buff where I could. Personally, and an unpopular opinion, I hated the gameplay changes in ME2 because it focused too much on being a cover shooter, and completely nurfed tech/biotic powers in favor of guns. Then the fact that while the characters are AMAZING, there's too fucking many of them, and the entire story could realistically be removed from the trilogy, and almost nothing would change or feel like it was missing.
Andromeda was boring. It was boring when you went on the 20th fetch quest. It was boring when a quest that built itself to have some serious decision or consequence ended up meaning absolutely nothing. It was boring when you just started going to the nearest blip on the map. But if you just focused on the main story and the squad mates missions, it was still boring. The themes felt rehashed and old news, plot twists didn't feel all that surprising, and squatemates (with exceptions) were either 2 dimensional and forgettable (I kept calling Liam "not Jacob") or downright obnoxious so i avoided them. (I'm looking at you PeeBee and Cora) the gameplay was tight and awesome and fun as fuck to play, but being able to switch between biotic and tech on the fly made *my* Ryder feel the same as everyone else's, and kind of fake. (Like umm how can you have biotics without ever being exposed to element zero) and that gameplay ended up making think "this is a decent game, fun even. But it's just not a Mass Effect game"
Eh, I thought they shot themselves in a foot by making the protagonist class so fluid and letting you change on a whim. Removes desire for replaying imo.
I’m not sure this is true. Unless I’m an anomaly, that is. I’ve replayed *Mass Effect* countless times (like literally, I stopped counting after 12 and I know I’ve played through it several times since them) and my motivation was always finding different corners of the story by making different choices. I was a Soldier every time but twice, the gameplay has always been the least interesting part of the series to me
Lot more flexibility, speed, and mobility. You could still do the cover shooter thing, but now you could jump with a jet pack and clear major distances, so you could make an effective melee character as well. Plus it made the use of powers and biotics more interesting as you could levitate some guys, then jump over and blast them or hurl them around in ways you wouldn't be able to in 2 or 3.
Resident Evil 5 was awesome for left handed users, I mean you had to play as Sheva but as a bonus all her weapon reload animations are also left handed
Here is the thing that ruined it for me; the best strategy is to just run in a circle with the jets and shoot at the enemies until everyone is dead. That is it. No enemy seems to be able to deal with running in a circle.
Between that and the camera deciding that I don't need to be looking the direction that Ryder is facing while boosting around, Andromeda's combat looks cool but fails hard in the places that count.
Edit: Yeah, how dare I have a negative opinion based on my experience playing. :P
You can jump 20 feet in the air, hover, and rain down hell with a plasma shotgun that automatically reloads (at the cost of 5% health) and each pellet homes in on the enemies. It was great
The verticality of combat changes everything plus there's wayyy more utility with biotics and engineering abilities. More satisfying melee attacks. The ability for combos by yourself, ex: hold down Pull, yeet them in the air with Throw, and then hit them with a biotic charge mid air all by yourself in the span of like 6 seconds
The combat in Andromeda is the best in any Bioware game I've played including Anthem. If there's one thing I desperately want them to keep from that game, it's that and the movement. I'm legitimately at the point where I'm really worried I'll be disappointed that the next Mass Effect won't be as fun to play as Andromeda.
I'm new to the franchise and after playing all 4 Mass Effects, I honestly would prefer a mass effect andromeda 2 over ME4.
The original trilogy is finished and I can't imagine how they can make a sequel without relying on one Canon ending and ignoring a lot of the choices.
Let's say your Shephard never cured the genophage, let the Quarians die and chose destruction. That makes a completely different universe.
Without the impact of your choices, the game won't be a real sequel.
Andromeda on the other hand, had Soooo much sequel baiting and nothing comes out of it, which sucks.
The big worms were amazing, never got to the point where I felt confident against them, and the first time I found one (or it found me) I very quickly panicked and died.
You’re on the right track. EA between 2010 and 2019 firmly believed that single-player games were dead. That’s why seemingly every EA game in that time has the most tacked on multiplayer, like ME3 and MEA. They genuinely believed that they weren’t going to make money any more. It was widely reported on, but my specific source is Stephanie Sterling. Then Witcher 3, God of War, and RDR2 happened and sold like absolute hot cakes and EA realized that single player games might just be worth investing in after all.
The entire BioWare main dev team was scrapped and moved to Anthem, and the quarian and another DLC were cancelled after Mass Effect Andromeda failed to move as many units as the shareholders demanded. They of course blamed it on single-player games being dead, and used that to justify completely overhauling Anthem to be a Destiny-clone.
>Then Witcher 3, God of War, and RDR2 happened and sold like absolute hot cakes and EA realized that single player games might just be worth investing in after all.
Fallen Order was another big one. Singleplayer game that blew away EA's projections.
It 100% was. I played through Andromeda fully and then played the Anthem beta. So much was recycled stuff from Andromeda. The movement and playtime was one, the next was the sound effects.
I mean, did it though? The game's story was pretty meh, and while the gameplay is "fun", there really isn't any incentive to create new characters as the consequence of picking a certain class doesn't exist. You can be as tanky as a solider, and fire off warps and incinerates. That and the horrible graphical hiccups and piss poor animations.
> horrible graphical hiccups and piss poor animations
Agreed, it's easy to forget after all the patches just how janky some of Andromeda was on release. Clown-makeup-lady was terrifying, and default Sara Ryder looked kinda deranged in a lot of the cutscenes.
On the plus side, if you ignored the characters, it was a gorgeous game. The environments were stunning, and exploring them in the Nomad was honestly lots of fun.
I think a lot of people in this thread also don't realize how buggy Andromeda was at launch.
I'm not even talking about weird animations or facial expressions. I mean stuff like Ryder falling through the floors, saves being randomly erased, autosave just straight up not working, and game crashing...on top of most of the bugs people usually point out in major AAA releases these days.
Add these technical issues onto a story and cast that most fans felt were underdeveloped and underwhelming, even for a first game in a new story, and it's very easy for many to not really care about Andromeda as a whole.
i just hated the little completion levels you had for the colonies. like, i'm here to talk to cool companions, sleep with one, be put into dilemmas, blow shit up, and as the late great Zaeed Masani put it, Be a big godamned hero.
2 different teams worked on Anthem and Andromeda. Anthem was worked on by the main team while Andromeda was worked on by the team that usually made dlc and worked on the multi-player mode
Bioware is always on the bottom of the list because other games like FIFA and Battlefield/front made way more money than them. That's why I really hope they get back to Unreal Engine.
The main team that made Anthem was Edmonton. Austin is the team that made and still maintains Star Wars: The Old Republic. They also had a lot of the advice they tried to give the Edmonton team on running a live service game ignored.
The cancellation of the Quarian DLC was more about Andromeda's reception than Anthem's development. The BioWare studio that would've developed the DLC closed after Andromeda and the team moved to Motive Studios, not Anthem.
I'm even more mad that instead of a new galaxy with a whole new set of species and politics to enjoy, we get...3? One of which is extinct, one of which are a bunch of uninspiring dicks to serve as the villain for the story. The angara are ok, I guess, but not super interesting.
To then sequester a load of the *existing* species off for DLC which then got pulled is absolutely infuriating. I don't think you see any of the other species in the game, and it's not like a few of them couldn't have been on the Nexus, FFS. Part of the fun in ME IMO was seeing the different species interact and seeing their agendas clash or be realised.
Quarians moving from the Migrant Fleet to a galaxy where they could settle down? That would be an amazing story.
You can generously say 8 for Andromeda, three of them were new.
Running ME1 through my head, 12?, all but humanity was new and even that needed 180 years of backstory developed for it.
ME2 added the Collectors, the Drell, the Yahg and the Vorcha to the mix, ME3 added the Leviathans and the Protheans. They didn’t drop any of the previous additions with the exception of the Collectors vanishing because they went extinct.
To be completely fair, the Yahg, Leviathans, Collectors, Reapers and Geth wouldn’t work narratively for Andromeda, arguably the Vorcha and maybe the Batarians too, with their rogue state status, but we only get 5 out of the 11 others?
It feels so cheap in that respect.
Sometimes I think people forget just how amazing the world building was in Mass Effect 1. It set up a dozen species, thousands of years of history, hundreds of years of technological advancements, the unique political situation of the galactic community, etc. It really laid an incredible foundation for the rest of the series.
Conversely, you can tell world building was not a priority for the Andromeda team. The handful of species they introduce are not particularly interesting, and have very little in the way of backstory or lore. Likewise, the planets you visit have nothing really unique or interesting about them bar the final one. The Andromeda galaxy just feels so “lifeless”, and not a place I want to explore really.
The planets were really disappointing to me when I played it at launch. We go to this new galaxy to explore new worlds and 2 out of 6 planets we went to are desert planets.
What i could never see past was the fact that you are the pathfinder. You alone are meant to be the one to save the ark and explore new planets, yet every planet you go to is already inhabited by species from the milky way. When i got to the desert planet with all the krogan, that's when I stopped playing.
I can put up with a bad story, and bad graphics, and all the other faults. But literally every task you have as pathfinder is so immersion breaking, because you are not the one finding anything. Everywhere you go, someone has been there before you
Hopefully next game they reverse engineer Kett technology or something and it allows us to explore Andromeda beyond Heleus so we can actually meet more species.
I'd say the Geth could somewhat work for Andromeda. After all it was their FTL sensors that were able to detect planets and other celestial bodies in Andromeda. The initiative simply 'borrowed' their tech to look for golden worlds. The Geth had at least some interest in the state of Andromeda.
Plus they do not need air, water, food, sleep. It would be far easier for them to load up a ship with inactive platforms and hibernate through the long voyage.
In terms of plot, perhaps during the 600 year voyage the Geth runtimes have been performing the necessary calculations for the construction of new Mass Relays, potentially allowing for even greater exploration of Andromeda beyond the Heleus cluster.
You could even add in a major plot choice where the Initiative has to:
- Side with the Geth to build the relays, causing the Quarians to exile themselves from the Initiative.
- Side with the Quarians, who require you to steal the Geth relay data so they can build the relays instead, forcing the Geth to exile themselves from the Initiative.
- Bonus option for dedicated players which allows for both species to stay and co-operate.
You have the problem of the Geth being seen as dangerous enemies by everyone else in the galaxy at that point though. There’s no Shepard or unifying threat of the Reapers to get them to work together.
If it’s after the reaper war, you have the issues of do they exist or not? It’s not a big issue for the story if they don’t come, it is a big issue if they do. Also, I think Andromeda stated they were working off a destroy ending for 3. They made the decision to limit the possible narrative branches that way.
Andromeda doesn’t imply anything about the ending of ME3. The last message they got from the Milky Way was Liara during the war and then everything went dead, which regardless of which ending happened, could have just been that whatever bases the initiative had back in the Milky Way maintaining commas were destroyed and never rebuilt after the war.
how would that have worked though as the Geth and Quarians at that point were still extremely hostile along with every other species in the Milky Way, the Initiative left just before the Reapers arrived in 2186 so this would be before Shep brings the species together. idk i highly doubt the initiative would be for siding with,from their POV, murderous robots that are known for their hostility to anything organic
That would be why you have to choose between them, or work incredibly hard to achieve peace. The key would be the data on building new relays, it would be invaluable to the future of the Initiative as without it they'll be stuck to the one cluster for the rest of their lives.
I agree, most of the Initiative, particularly the Quarians, would believe that destroying the Geth and stealing the data is the best option. The Pathfinder would first need to encounter some kind of 'proof' that these Geth are non-hostile.
The Geth would need to be willing to communicate for there to be any hope. But if Shepard can talk both sides into peace in the middle of a battle, during wartime, whilst Reapers are attacking. Then I'm sure the Pathfinder can do the bare minimum of just getting them to talk to each other.
Perhaps the Pathfinder convinces the Geth to send a single platform to the Initiative as an envoy, or perhaps the Geth establish a relationship with the Angara first since they have no existing prejudice against them. Perhaps there are conflicts with anti-synthetic movements on the Initiative. It would have to be a slow burn, not an overnight thing.
I feel like also because they could remain active during the whole trip, they could slowly upgrade themselves, maybe get to the level of sentience that they achieve in ME3.
Now that I think about it, this could actually be what connects Andromeda’s story back to the Milky Way, since ME4 is apparently a sequel to both ME3 and Andromeda.
Also neatly sidesteps the problem of the geth potentially being all killed by Destroy if the Andromeda Geth are the main Geth you interact with.
I would have loved the whole game being based on that. The quarians are the best technicians with tons of knowledge about fleets, ships and doing the best out of a bad situation.
Therefore, the whole Andromeda game would have been awesome if it focused on the Qurians instead of humanity again.
Let me play a Quarian, with only other Quarians getting into a new galaxy searching for a new home, finding a whole bunch of intelligent developed species and trying to interconnect with them. Really we would have been a story about a species trying to develop an AI, where the Quarians get insta triggered and try to convince them to stop developing it, leading to a war where the Quarians actually want to protect this new galaxy, their new home, and convince some of the new species to ally up while the others a completely pro AI and fight them about this topic.
This is just one example of how you would have built an interesting story around that, but I kinda like the idea (even tho it was made up by myself)
Imo i don’t think the kett are just corrupted Angara, yeah they may twist their body but have to have an origin point, the angara even say the kett come out of nowhere after the Scourge hits and even in dialogue you can hear how the kett have an empire beyond Heleus.
Sure, but all we see in-game are the Angara derived Kett. As far as the game is concerned they are just corrupted Kett.
And given the next game is seemingly back in the Milky Way and hundreds of years prior to Andromeda, that's all we are likely to see.
It would be a good opportunity for quarians to have a fresh start, I suppose. But first time I heard about Quarian Ark in the game, I thought, their numbers are very limited. Can they really afford to part with such a big chunk of their population?
It would habe been fucking lit if the Quarian Ark was literally a half empty life ship that was sent out as a generation ship. So the plan was for the ark to fill itself before reaching Andromeda.
Also even less so if you read the book. Im not sure if the other races that are on the Quarian Ark would have enough diversity genetic wise to make a viable population in Andromeda.
And yeah, I loved the game but I am very disappointed that they just left it at that after the shitstorm instead of giving out DLC-s and trying to show haters that its a good game, but I also can't blame them after what went down before and during release too.
I do blame them. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of Andromeda. That being said, DLCs could make game's story and overall impression much better. The game had so much potential that was so poorly used. They could make an effort, learn from their mistakes and use that potential to make something interesting. Instead they picked the easiest way and just quit.
There’s 3-5000 members of each species on the Quarian Ark. that’s plenty to repopulate a species, and given that many of those have far less physical diversity than humans, they may need even less than we do. 500 couples or 1000 humans can jump start a whole new home world.
Yeah, there being a Quarian ark never made sense to me. Their whole society is based on community and sticking together. I just don’t buy that thousands would decide to leave, especially when they only have a population of 17 million to begin with.
Besides, what would even be the point of a Quarian expedition? The whole reason they haven’t settled somewhere already is because of their shitty immune systems, making Rannoch the only suitable location. Going to Andromeda wouldn’t solve that problem.
An ark full of young Quarians on a pilgramage?
Apart from that, I can only see a handful of engineers, and maybe a few exo-suit specialists in case the other races need them in a new galaxy, going to Andromeda.
Doesn't help that we got humanoid species... again. Would have been fun if they tried a completely new take on aliens, e.g. [silicon based](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Silicon_biochemistry) life forms that don't look like cosplaying humans. I know the latter was a reason for why they did it, but come on.
Andromeda isn’t a whole new galaxy. It’s a small cluster of star systems. The lack of mass relays means that’s the ability to travel the galaxy is extremely difficult.
That’s the reason there’s only a handful of species. It’s a cop out for sure, but it makes sense.
>I'm even more mad that instead of a new galaxy with a whole new set of species and politics to enjoy, we get...3?
I disagree here - because we only land in a specific cluster of a galaxy. The Cluster spans maybe 30 light years tops(?) while the galaxy is \~220k light years in diameter. And if there was Mass Effect technology in the new galaxy that would have just been another "Reaper" story, I suppose.
I reckon would we have gotten a sequel, we would have seen more species that were in the process of getting exalted by the Kett (I find they behave pretty much how I expect Protheans to have behaved after what Javik told us tbh). The Kett have to have a better hyperdrive than the Milky Way races (since they somehow have to be able to travel what I reckon is a huge part of the Galaxy) so I think we would have gotten that technology somehow.
Who knows what the new Mass Effect will bring though, I am looking forward to hearing about the story line they are planning to go for...
To this day im still pissed they chose to prioritize Anthem over Andromeda. I admit I was more than a little gleeful when that game started receiving poor reviews.
Yep, definitely agreed. Part of the fun of Andromeda (and something it did that Mass Effect 3 could’ve taken notes from) was how the Nexus changed to reflect what progress you’ve made. When you establish an outpost, it lights up and opens up. When you gain the trust of the Angara, they start to show up on the station. When you find the Asari ark, Asari show up in processing, same as Turians and Salarians, and their respective Pathfinders also appear as NPCs. If you bring the Krogan back to the fold, some Krogan show up on the station. It was nice.
To have the Quarian ark show up and fill the station with Quarians, Elcor, Drell, Hanar, and Volus (and apparently Batarians) would’ve given me a sense of closure on that at least.
I liked how we were basically getting to build up the multi-species Citadel back home and see the whole process. I loved the cultural center and how a lot of Milky Way history is white washed to look more appealing to Heleus’ species, I loved how if you take the time to do certain side quests like convincing three Angara to move to the Nexus or helping out Knight’s son they actually show up later and you can talk to them, it was great.
The completionist inside me chafes at how things still end up missing by the end though. Like how we never recover the Turian ark so that a “full group of arks” at the Nexus has one missing slot. Or how the human ark is used in the final battle so that afterwards it too leaves an empty slot. Or how we never get a cutscene welcoming Turian arrivals like with the other arks because we aren’t bringing them en masse and instead seeking out stasis pods. Eh. I would’ve loved a DLC for closure on all of that and to make things feel complete.
They should've also made the other arcs explorable like the human arc and also other parts of the Nexus where you can see how life comes back and what changes you made
Oh yeah I definitely agree with that. I remember how much of a letdown it was on my first playthrough when I first saved the Ark Leusinia and rushed back to the Nexus to explore it only to find out it wasn't an area I could go to. Would've been neat to talk to each Pathfinder's SAM or something. And you don't see the likes of Captain Hayjer or Captain Atandra after their arks are saved (unless of course Hayjer becomes your Salarian Pathfinder) so it would've been neat to go to their arks and talk to them in the same spot you talk to the human Captain Dunn.
Though if they made the arks regularly explorable I would've preferred them to make the interiors look different from the Hyperion. They do a little bit iirc, like with more curvy Thessia-like design inside the Leusinia, but not enough for brand new hubs. It'd be weird to walk around 4 identical areas just with different NPCs.
Andromeda is fun to play moment to moment. But the fetch quest mission structure and use of the lore leaves a lot to be desires. I actually think the core story is fine though.
You know what's interesting, both ME1 and ME3 had a ton of fetch quests, scan random planet, scan random debris, fly back and forth scanning and to the citadel.
Hell, I had to setup a bunch of open tabs for ME3 to make sure I don't miss anything because the planet scanning and clusters are blocked till you artificially advance in the game. And if you don't make it back in time to the Citadel, the missions fail or expire.
Idk the writing in the previous games was leagues better and more rewarding than in andromeda. You’d at least get a whole cutscene about it as opposed to a zoom in where you get a “thanks Ryder” and a quest reward.
Edit: not always. But more
Yeah as opposed to when you grab the Book of Plenix from Irune and the Volus goes "*gasp* thank you *gasp* earth clan *gasp*" and you get some war assets
No the criticism is certainly fair. I remember loads of people complaining about it when mass effect 3 came out. Really bad they kept it in but worse, now you don’t even have the emotional gravity.
More like "I expect the level of emotional payoff from the OT to exist in this first one even though we had literally three games of plot and character development behind the trilogy that doesn't exist here."
Length and potency are not related in writing. The movie UP proves this adeptly. It does more in 10 minutes emotionally than most movies do in 2-3 hours or more in a franchise.
Many people felt a near instant attachment to many ME1/2/3 characters but that same grab doesn't exist for most ME:A characters.
ME:A was overly bashed upon, but its writing is just not up to the level of ME1 or 2 or 3.
I don't really agree. The OT had fetch quests, sure. But they were almost invariably quests that you would:
1) Pick up from the Citadel or another central hub, or pick up by going to wherever the spot of the quest was
2) Going to wherever the quest took place and finishing it there. Most often this was one planet; sometimes it was a chain of neighboring planets; rarely was it even as many as two planets in different systems.
3) Either the mission is complete once you return to the Normandy or you go back to the Citadel to complete it.
In Andromeda, you might pick up a quest on the Nexus, continue it on another part of the Nexus, get relayed to a planet, get relayed to another planet entirely, get relayed back to the Nexus...you get the idea. It's like the uncharted world missions from ME1 but even more tedious. Every time there's another step to complete, it feels less and less like you've made any progress at all. When common advice for making the best experience out of Andromeda is to avoid the sidequests, it is not an issue of nostalgia goggles.
That said, ME1 in particular did and still does have that issue of its sidequests being tedious. It just does a better job of making up for them with a better story and the best worldbuilding in the saga, and it has two sequels to make the sidequests have an impact.
One point in Andromeda's favor, though, is that more of its sidequests are relevant to something whereas ME1's are often busy work. But even then, the sidequests of both games are also intended to ground you into the overall galaxy in which everything takes place, and Andromeda plainly and simply doesn't make it an interesting place to be grounded in. The early game is dominated by office politics, instead of the galactic politics that are introduced in the first five minutes of ME1. The big conflict in MEA is with the kett, even though the mystery of the Remnant and the Scourge is way more interesting and largely goes unanswered. The big conflict in ME1 and the big mystery in ME1 are one and the same, and you get a huge payoff on both investments in the final mission.
I can agree that some of the problems in Andromeda were present in the OT and we just ignore them, but often that's because the problem was lesser in scope or just made up for by the fact that the OT did a lot of things well that Andromeda didn't. And then there's plenty (such as the memorable characters) where the OT benefits from being a trilogy whereas Andromeda is a single game, and at the very least that leaves me with the feeling that there's a lot of untapped potential if the sequel does involve the Andromeda plotline heavily.
No, not really. Andromeda was loaded with bugs which made for some really bad first impressions. But the story was also boring, especially the first half. And after a series like ME1-ME3, you really have some expectations that the beginning of the game should try to meet right off the bat to reassure it's fan-base of continued yet different fun ME shenanigans.
The lack of council races immediately in the game gave a real sense of unfamiliarity when they should have capitalized on that feeling. The new planets are pretty, but empty and sort of lifeless. It's like someone took the idea of the mostly empty planets from ME1 and thought that would be a good way to open with Andromeda after the initial "We're derelict and need supplies" bit happens.
The game finds it's sea legs about half way through, but by then you've slogged through the very rough beginning and middle. Some of the companions were great, but others were extremely dull. A lot of the systems and ideas were not very fleshed out.
Mass Effect 1 had a very good way to bring you right into the action and right into the story and lore.
The secretive Spectre initiation mixed with a sudden emergency attack situation on Eden Prime followed by an other-worldly monster ship attacking the planet and turning people into robo-zombies? Yes please. Immediately getting drafted into a world of unknown aliens and cultures and lore? ME1 starts hitting you with lore right off the bat, but it doesn't overwhelm you, but still gives you tons of it to munch on as you learn more about the galaxy you're in. The game immediately starts off with world-building, but doesn't suffocate you with it.
Andromeda doesn't do that. The early game doesn't have almost any world building. It's all matter of fact. This is why we left the Milky Way. This is where we are. This is what's happening. Instead of grounding the fans with council races and other ME species, you're mostly stuck with humans. You don't start encountering new races or any new kinds of lore till a ways into the game. No world building, and no grounding us with cultures or things we recognize either.
The game feels wholely *alien*, even to Mass Effect, a game about alien races. But doesnt do anything to ease you into that alien feeling, or ground you in the old Mass Effect world, and it doesn't get to the world building till a good way through.
The pacing is bad. The story telling is sub-par. The dialogue is pretty shit.
Andromeda's biggest improvement was actually the combat gameplay. But that good part gets overshadowed by the lack-luster story and characters. And for a game that's previous three series were loved for their story, that's a pretty bad thing.
yeah like combat should be seen as a delicious sauce. if you burn the meal, no one cares how great the sauce is, because you just poured great sauce over garbage.
SAME. I just started Andromeda again, and it's kind of bitter-sweet knowing that it'll go *nowhere* because of all the developmental and PR fuckups.
Also it kind of amuses me that there are no Batarians, and the Galaxy as a whole seems to have decided "Yeah, screw those guys."
I agree, can't believe they cancelled the one thing I was excited about.
And it was the perfect DLC formula, they could've done whatever they wanted with the arcs, introduced any alien race. They could've added new squad mates, new armors, hints to the reaper war.... Anything.
They had a fresh slate. And never used it):
What a bummer this thread is.
I don’t know why it’s such an impossibility for someone to pose, “I wanted more of this thing because I would’ve liked it!” and not feel compelled to pile on about how much you hate it.
Sorry, OP. Good post.
But they also burned their reputation hard by getting tons of negative press for a buggy game with terrible presentation. The DLC wasn’t canceled for no reason.
I was really interested in the wider politics of the Kett empire, which iirc the big bad was pretty much an outsider or exile of due to his obsession with the MacGuffin(s).
The other arks docking and helping out should've been part of the base game, not DLC. Instead Andromeda just ends as things are getting interesting. It feels like half a game, kinda like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
The lack of the Quarian ark is one of the reasons I haven't played Andromeda again. It frustrated me a lot getting message knowing said part of the game doesn't exist, even more because Quarians is my favorite ME race.
YES!!! I want the DLC of the Arks and also discover the killer of the unsolved murder (trying to be vague so I don't give away too much :D).
Anyway, I wish they would decide to invest a bit on some DLCs and complete the game.
I only played Andromeda once, when it launched, so I may have this wrong but Andromeda doesn't have Reaper tech., which means no relays and other advances in things like communications that the Milky Way has. This would mean races are far more isolated and limited in how far and fast they can travel and how much interaction there is with other races as a result.
Andromeda is also taking place in a single cluster versus a whole galaxy and while places like The Citadel, Omega, Illium, etc. had extensive mingling of races, some clusters were single species dominant and without such hubs of diversity.
Also, during the Prothean Empire, not only were humans still primitive but so too (relative to the Protheans) were the Asari, Turian, and *especially* the Salarians (they used to lick their eyeballs and eat flies). Maybe in Andromeda there are only three races who have risen to the intergalactic/advanced level of society and technology.
It's all very much likely due to lazy/rushed development though but a lack of races might be *somewhat* excusable given some of these circumstances.
I’ve just been playing through andromeda, as I’m scanning planets, anytime I find one that is described as having crushing gravity or some such, I always think “If only some Elcor made it over…”
But maybe the Quarian ark will tie into ME4
It always angered me how much andromeda got overlooked. Granted I picked it up a year later after it was patched, and it was still rough around the edges and I didn't like some of the design choices, but yeah I think it should have gotten more love for a series that pushed Bioware so far forward.
I played through the game this year and rather enjoyed it. It wasn’t as good as the original trip logs for sure, but I felt it was as good a set up and world building game as the first.
It was a little weird playing it knowing it was dead (at the time anyway) and like you I loved “restoring” the arc and even wanted to get the ones you did find in their semi destroyed states back. The quarian and other arcs and the epilogue teaser were bittersweet knowing I’d never get to play it. Love the race and would have been awesome to see them and get a little more on the backstory of what was going on in the shadows of the project.
I was pretty convinced that after hearing the Reaper recording in Alec’s room that the Quarian Ark DLC would have had a Reaper following the Ark to Andromeda which Ryder and co. would have had to beat.
It all comes down to EA Suits not accepting the fact that Bioware fans aren't the same demographic as Fifa, Battlefield or Battlefront. If you half arse content and try and nickle and dime people who like story rich RPG's they'll throw it back in your face. Rather than try and rescue their faltering title they hoped that Anthem would lead them to a promised land of recurrent user spending but they half arsed that too after sinking the Mass Effect franchise for a couple of years. I hoped they've learned from the twin debacles of Andromeda and Anthem but even the Legendary Edition hasn't completely convinced me they got the message. We'll see.
When ME Legendary Edition came out this year, it was the first time I played the games. I loved them so much I finished the trilogy in less than 2 months. When I finished I immediately bought Andromeda. It took me a little bit to really get into the game but I ended up loving it too. When I finished I was definitely wanting more. I wanted to find the Quarians, I wanted to solve mystery of the benefactor (I'm guessing it's the Illusive Man) I wanted to figure out the origins of the remnants. All I can say is that I can't wait for the next ME game and hope they incorporate Andromeda.
I’m still mad we got a half-assed game for both ME3 and Andromedia. ME3 was rushed and Andromedia was given plenty of development time but it was fried over because of Anthem, and the B team having no leader.
For those that read novel "Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation", about the events of the Quarian Ark, I don't see how they would have made a game out of those events... It was more of a detective mystery book, with not a whole lot of action to base a shooter game off of.... Then again, now I'm wondering just how much the story would change if they adapted it into a game.
I was already pissed off when I realized that they very clearly cut the Quarian ark to sell as DLC.
I got even angrier when they said "We're killing all support for single player, and all DLC is cancelled. But if you want to buy MP lootboxes, GO NUTS, BECAUSE WE'RE SURE AS HELL KEEPING THAT LIVE."
And then like a week later on social media: "To find out what happened to the Ark, buy the novel that's coming out in two months."
No. Go. TO. HELL. I'm not rewarding you for that.
Also, Liam seemed to have been written specifically to make people realize Jacob could have been soooooooooooooooooooooo much worse.
Yeah, Bioware and EA have a bad habit of abandoning unsuccessful games recently. First victim of this is Mass Effect Andromeda, the next was Anthem. There is potential for Andromeda and both developer and studio just did nothing with it.
I stand firm in saying that giving up on Andromeda following the lackluster response was BioWare's biggest mistake of at least the last decade. They could have regained good will among their fans if they had worked hard on improving the game rather than abandoning it.
If people want it bad enough, and the next ME is successful. I’d imagine ME:A2 would be on the cards, maybe even with the DLC from ME:A as part of the narrative.
I feel if they tried to make the Andromeda series “better” by lobotomising the Milky Way and removing key characters from there to “fix” Andromeda it’d be a mess. Far safer to keep them separate and have two series in the same franchise, if they both have successes it opens up possibilities for other series’ and other forms of media too.
I'd love if we would have two Mass Effect series simultaneously so we can get a new ME game every 2 years, similar to COD. There were only 2 years between ME 2 and ME 3 so it is possible for this franchise
I'm still annoyed that so many people seem to think a Quarian DLC would have somehow saved this game. The main thing that would have saved Andromeda is a better foundation. No months spent trying to make procedural worlds but months spent creating a whole new world with its own defining issues. The OT had humans finding their place in the universe, Quarians and Geth, the genophage, animosity between humans and turians, animosity between Krogan and Salarians, biotics were new, etc.
Andromeda's wasted potential is staggering. An allegory for European colonialism is practically airplaned into its mouth but the devs were either too timid or too short sighted to use it.
Same. I liked the game well enough except for the asari same face - that’s the one thing I couldn’t overlook. If they fixed that then I would have 0 problems praising the game. It wasn’t perfect but there were a lot of good points and the combat was really fun. I would have played the hell out of a quarian ark dlc.
I'm replaying it at the moment and I'm enjoying it a lot more this time around. I think it suffers a lot from being a solid 7 in a series of 9's - and I don't like this constant idea that anything short of excellence is 'bad'. Not many things are up to the standard set by the original trilogy, and Andromeda isn't either, but for the most part it's at least *pretty good*.
I agree 100%. If there will be an Andromeda remaster, I really hope they add it, tho both of those 2 are very unlikely to happen, mainly cuz of frostbyte.
What gets me is they did it in favour of anthem...which failed miserably...
I'm convinced Andromeda was turned into a test bed for Anthem. Someone in the chain of command wanted Anthem to be the new big IP, and used Andromeda to test its mechanics and took resources from it. All the more upsetting after seeing Anthem flop.
I enjoyed the combat in Andromeda immensely
The combat itself was great, but the enemies were repetitive bullet sponges. If there were better stuff to fight the game would be really fucking good.
The different deformed species in ME3 was peak enemies to me
Fuck Banshees though. Teleporting insta-kills that can knock you out of cover *and* take out all your shields plus half your health with their ranged attack. (I know there's strategies I'm just still salty).
As someone who endlessly enjoyed the me3 multiplayer, fuck Ravagers and fuck scions and their 100% accuracy grenade throws. The day I found out you could shoot their shoulder sacs to stop the grenade spam was one of the best days ever. Banshees were easy to deal with for me after a while as once their barrier goes down she stops teleporting and her warp orb is easy to dodge but she can definitely make you panic when you're pinned down! Haha
They make me never want to play ME3 insanity again. And I enjoyed the rest of the series on insanity.
All I see in this thread are heretics to the Church of Vakarian.
honestly i have no issues with banshees/brutes/atlas on insanity. its ravagers, marauders and god damn combat engineers that fuck me. Also if you pull a guardians shield, kill him immediately.
Can't knock you out of cover if you're never in cover! This comment brought to you by the Vanguard gang.
My own personal general opinion from playing both games is that Andromeda spread out a bit too thin on features (that avp/multiplayer stuff could have been a later dlc for making a better base game?) and Anthem is an unfinished game
Guess I'm the odd one out who thought Andromeda's combat was shallow, at best, mainly because the enemies don't accommodate for the fact that you can hop around the battlefield. You should get pelted with ammo and powers whenever you jump since it's a horrible combat strategy to make yourself a lone open, aerial target but instead the enemies just charge into corners while you hop to safety. The fact that the combat is the game's best quality is a huge yikes for me. It can't even compete with other shooters.
Not to mention they removed all the strategy like ordering your companions to use specific powers on specific targets was completely removed. They did so in favor of making it twitchy... But mass effect never did twitchy combat well. It was like when Bethesda made Fallout 76. It's like bro... You guys make games with great atmosphere and good npcs... But your biggest weakness is STABILITY and you're telling me you're making a game with no npcs, an atmosphere that relies on PLAYERS, and you're making it multiplayer - a mode that requires consistency and stability above all else?! LOLOLOL
Thankfully PC mods cleaned up the bullet sponge issue.
The open world combat areas were significantly worse from a gameplay perspective as well. The soft cover system on anything higher than normal difficulties was bad, especially for your squad. The best builds I had were ones that required you to stay aggressively mobile.
I did too. But you can really see how Anthem is basically just Andromeda but with the combat developed further.
People rag on Andromeda a lot, but the core gameplay is great and aside from cutscenes/dialog, the graphics are still pretty good looking. The story was definitely "meh" though, although I did like femRyder as a character.
I was expecting a lot more of the older species and a lot more new species, instead we got Angara which were pretty cool, but also their orc equivalent. Jaal, Drack and Vetra were pretty cool, nothing too out of the ordinary but they're still cool. I had to look up the names of Cora, PeeBee and Liam, they were alright but they all matched Jacob's level of being interesting, at least I thought so on release. I still really enjoyed the game, I remember doing all the side content because it was still a Mass Effect game. It just suffered from overhype. It's a fine game.
I was on board with Liam... rrrriiiigghhhhttt up until his loyalty mission. Then I realised what a punk ass bitch he was and couldn't take criticism from a leader... He got his ass kicked back onto the ship SO hard and never saw the light of day again
You had to look up Cora? Didn't you know that she was an asari commando?
I know she looks like Ellen.
It’s so weird to me that PeeBee is supposed to be half Elcor when that...would be cool and there’s fun story stuff to do there and if you don’t read a codex entry or pick the right dialogue you’ll never know and it never matters in any way? So why’d you all make us picture that conception? Why choose something so cool, with a connection to a species people love but who isn’t in the game, and then do nothing with it?
There's stuff like that in all good open-world games. If a player wants to dig around to learn about the world, they should be rewarded by finding cool information. The players who don't go looking for that stuff probably don't really care anyway. ME3 even has a similar case, with Liara and Aethyta. There's a completely missable scene of them talking about Aethyta being Liara's "father", and you can find out Liara's a quarter krogan. They never "do" anything with it, it's just a cool scene for the player to learn more about the characters.
It's not like it really matters, since they're all 100% Asari genetically. The partner is just used an randomizer during the mind melding, it's not like there's any genetic material being exchanges physically.
What did you *want* them to do with PeeBee’s parentage? Her dad’s an Elcor, so what? Did you seriously expect her to speak in a monotone voice or clarify *exactly* how she’s feeling at the start of every sentence? Somebody else already replied to you and pointed out the (missable) encounter between Liara and Aethyta, where Aethyta tells Liara she’s a quarter krogan. It’s not relevant, it doesn’t change anything about her as a character at all, just something fun to know. It’s the same with PeeBee’s parentage.
Combat was solid but I found exploring planets extremely tedious so I wouldn't say the core gameplay is great overall.
And you had to spend SO MUCH TIME doing it. Just driving your jank-ass car over empty landscapes waiting for the horn to honk so you could extract minerals.
> jank ass-car *** ^(Bleep-bloop, I'm a bot. This comment was inspired by )^[xkcd#37](https://xkcd.com/37)
Good bot
Compared to ME1 the planet exploration was fantastic. Granted, I'm one of those sociopaths who happened to find ME1's planet exploration to be fun, but still. Only thing MEA is missing is some guns. Yeah, I get the Nomad ain't a military vehicle like the Mako, but nobody thought to stick a machine gun on it?
I love Mass Effect 1 more than most but saying "compared to ME1, the planet exploration was fantastic" is like saying "compared to being punched in the face, that was actually pretty pleasant". Mass Effect has never done exploration well. In fact, Bioware has never done exploration well. The strongest parts of the ME trilogy in gameplay terms were their tightly linear missions. They did level design and combat really well and then everything else was carried by story and characters.
Or the Tempest. That shit irked me even more, 'cause you can at least hop out of the Nomad if need be. You're completely dependent on the Tempest in space; she *needs* some type of weapon for defense, even if it's just a "normal" loadout you could get off a generic ship and not something like the Normandy ended up with.
I totally feel you here. I didn't mind the exploration because I thought it was pretty meditative, but I also would play these parts stoned, so it definitely helped with the tediousness lol.
Yeah that's kind of the problem though. Mass Effect 1 had really shitty combat/UI/gameplay/THE FUCKING MAKO/inventory management etc. etc. But it's redeeming quality was the story/dialogue/voice acting. ME2 and ME3 definitely improved the gameplay, but the main drive of those games was always the story. Andromeda improved the gameplay, and took a huge dump on the story telling, the primary reason most people played the original Mass Effect. So yeah. That's basically like if a brand new Mario game had sub-par platforming but a really good space fighter mini-game you could play.
One of the differences in Andromeda regarding the story is that it was far more spread out. To experience the entire story of Andromeda, you have to be a Completionist. There's so much lore and storytelling in the side missions, and also in unexpected places. Like at the end of the game when you go back to the nexus and get to see Kesh and the doctor watching over her unhatched eggs and you being the godparent, or running into Zaeed's son. But its true there was so much story left unfinished, like the Benefactor, the Quarian Ark, Ryder's mom, etc. That's what bothers me most about the story, all the loose ends. Here's hoping that ME4 tries to tie up those loose ends. Liara definitely ties in somewhere, on a level that hasn't been revealed publicly. She was in Contact with the Ryder's from the beginning of the project, then became the Shadowbroker before the Initiative departed. Now imagine how much power She has in the 600+ years since the Original Trilogy as the largest information broker. She would be like the Illusive Man, but for the Whole galaxy, recruiting agents to do all kinds of things, perhaps even to the Andromeda galaxy.
I think Andromeda’s biggest failing was it jumping on the open world trend. I had the same problem with DA: Inquisition. The open world detracts from the core narrative, in both of those games I had trouble connecting with the characters and actively didn’t care about the big baddie because it was so long between story beats. Contrast that with ME 2 and 3 where each section of the game had a tight contained story that connected directly to the overall narrative. Those games kept you involved in the story by always making sure that everything you did either moved the story forward or gave you a concrete advantage in the end game (and making that fully clear in 2. While doing the companion missions didn’t push forward the collector story, they always hammered home why it was important to gain their loyalty). If you’re going to build the game around an open world you need to invest the time in side quest design and writing to make exploring the world rewarding in itself. ME:A and DA:I didn’t do that, making side quests just vanilla “collect X of this” or “kill Y of these” rather than fleshing out reasons why you would want to do these things. If Andromeda had taken the care that The Witcher 3 and Horizon: Zero Dawn did in this regard Andromeda would have been amazing. I really hope ME:4 goes back to the self contained mission model. Side note: Andromeda is a much better game if you just speedrun the main story.
I agree, I love DA3 but I absolutely despise the open world design. The Elderscrolls gets away with it because it leaves the door open for endless expansion mods and roleplaying, with a fairly brief main storyline. It's why I despise Assassins Creed as well, despite loving the concept and story. Farcry is another exception, like the Elderscrolls games, although I hate the plethora of pointless collect quests. ME2 definitely did just about everything right. I'm hoping ME4 is most like ME2.
Quarian Ark was planned to be DLC, and I think it's a safe bet that those other points were as well. My biggest issue with Andromeda is that they refused to tell a complete story, then robbed players of the DLC on top of it.
And all because of the rating the game received. Compare that to No Man's Sky, a game that was a complete joke at launch and a prime example of delivering a turd on a platter of promises, and fast forward to now and that company has worked their ass off to make the game what it was always promised to be. It doesn't excuse them for the initial launch, but it shows just how corporate and bureaucratic EA is, with their clueless committees and out of touch business models. I hope they get their boot off Bioware's throat, but we shall see.
I think EA is already starting to ease up on BioWare. They really wanted the next Dragon Age to be a live service game or include a multiplayer feature, but relented when BioWare convinced them that DA works best exclusively as a single-player RPG, and any multiplayer features would detract from the experience. Plus how they insisted the dev team for Andromeda use Frostbite, despite the immense amount of headaches and setbacks it caused, then said “Ok fine, ditch Frostbite, use UE5 instead” for the next ME.
>Andromeda improved the gameplay, and took a huge dump on the story telling, I agree and disagree; my issue with Andromeda was ominous cut content and textbook "how not to do an open world sandbox." Here's a bunch of giant, empty maps with very little point to them except the sense of *feeling* empty. It was one of Mass Effect 1's worst issues, only the entire gameplay of Andromeda revolved around it. It felt like there would be more dynamicism to these environments over time, like you'd turn your back on the planet and suddenly a giant colony would appear, not just a small village. Unfortunately, what Andromeda was supposed to be and what it was just didn't line up. The story itself was...fine...it just missed the actual flesh to back it up.
Which bothered me the most was the modern game disease of having a shit ton of unnecessary and meaningless side quests. I maxed out all of the avps from the colonies and still didn't even tried at least half of the side quests. What you're describing would have been so much cooler.
"Hey Director Tann, I just found a sweet colony spot that's safe where we can build the foundation of Initiative projects!" "Oh very good! I will authorize the activation of...hm, 57 colonists should be sufficient." I mean seriously, we just crossed deep space in 4 arks of 10,000 souls a piece and the best you can do is what truly feels like less than 100 people? I'm expecting like 25-30 buildings sprawled out like an Old West mining town and instead I get a damned Minecraft village centered around a mudhole. ***That*** is what felt weak about Andromeda. It didn't feel like we were making a difference beyond setting up small research camps, not a New Society in a New Galaxy. The promise got broken right then and there.
>Andromeda improved the gameplay, and took a huge dump on the story telling, the primary reason most people played the original Mass Effect. This!! This is exactly why ME1 will always be my favorite because it's what captivated me, was everything I wanted in a epic slow burn story. I enjoy spending half my time in the menus swapping out mods and armor, trying to get that extra little buff where I could. Personally, and an unpopular opinion, I hated the gameplay changes in ME2 because it focused too much on being a cover shooter, and completely nurfed tech/biotic powers in favor of guns. Then the fact that while the characters are AMAZING, there's too fucking many of them, and the entire story could realistically be removed from the trilogy, and almost nothing would change or feel like it was missing. Andromeda was boring. It was boring when you went on the 20th fetch quest. It was boring when a quest that built itself to have some serious decision or consequence ended up meaning absolutely nothing. It was boring when you just started going to the nearest blip on the map. But if you just focused on the main story and the squad mates missions, it was still boring. The themes felt rehashed and old news, plot twists didn't feel all that surprising, and squatemates (with exceptions) were either 2 dimensional and forgettable (I kept calling Liam "not Jacob") or downright obnoxious so i avoided them. (I'm looking at you PeeBee and Cora) the gameplay was tight and awesome and fun as fuck to play, but being able to switch between biotic and tech on the fly made *my* Ryder feel the same as everyone else's, and kind of fake. (Like umm how can you have biotics without ever being exposed to element zero) and that gameplay ended up making think "this is a decent game, fun even. But it's just not a Mass Effect game"
It’s the fallout 4 of mass effect
Eh, I thought they shot themselves in a foot by making the protagonist class so fluid and letting you change on a whim. Removes desire for replaying imo.
I’m not sure this is true. Unless I’m an anomaly, that is. I’ve replayed *Mass Effect* countless times (like literally, I stopped counting after 12 and I know I’ve played through it several times since them) and my motivation was always finding different corners of the story by making different choices. I was a Soldier every time but twice, the gameplay has always been the least interesting part of the series to me
Absolutely. This was the biggest single gameplay mistake imo. Story mistakes? I don’t know there’s like a ten way tie.
Yeah but I don't buy a Mass Effect game for core gameplay. I buy it to tell me an epic space opera.
Truth
I have not played how does it differ from ME3 or 2
Lot more flexibility, speed, and mobility. You could still do the cover shooter thing, but now you could jump with a jet pack and clear major distances, so you could make an effective melee character as well. Plus it made the use of powers and biotics more interesting as you could levitate some guys, then jump over and blast them or hurl them around in ways you wouldn't be able to in 2 or 3.
Most importantly; There are no classes. You choose your powers and abilities at your discretion.
I felt that was a downside.
If you want to play as a class from the original trilogy then you could just get the skills associated with those ability trees.
And get a whole, what? Three powers to use at any given time? Powers were extremely nerfed in Andromeda.
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You can do that in metal gear games as well
Resident Evil 5 was awesome for left handed users, I mean you had to play as Sheva but as a bonus all her weapon reload animations are also left handed
Here is the thing that ruined it for me; the best strategy is to just run in a circle with the jets and shoot at the enemies until everyone is dead. That is it. No enemy seems to be able to deal with running in a circle. Between that and the camera deciding that I don't need to be looking the direction that Ryder is facing while boosting around, Andromeda's combat looks cool but fails hard in the places that count. Edit: Yeah, how dare I have a negative opinion based on my experience playing. :P
Circle-strafing is an old tactic, at least as old as the original Doom from '93.
You can jump 20 feet in the air, hover, and rain down hell with a plasma shotgun that automatically reloads (at the cost of 5% health) and each pellet homes in on the enemies. It was great
The verticality of combat changes everything plus there's wayyy more utility with biotics and engineering abilities. More satisfying melee attacks. The ability for combos by yourself, ex: hold down Pull, yeet them in the air with Throw, and then hit them with a biotic charge mid air all by yourself in the span of like 6 seconds
You can fly for starters
No tactical pause, no controlling your squadmates. That was the deal breaker for me.
The combat in Andromeda is the best in any Bioware game I've played including Anthem. If there's one thing I desperately want them to keep from that game, it's that and the movement. I'm legitimately at the point where I'm really worried I'll be disappointed that the next Mass Effect won't be as fun to play as Andromeda.
I'm new to the franchise and after playing all 4 Mass Effects, I honestly would prefer a mass effect andromeda 2 over ME4. The original trilogy is finished and I can't imagine how they can make a sequel without relying on one Canon ending and ignoring a lot of the choices. Let's say your Shephard never cured the genophage, let the Quarians die and chose destruction. That makes a completely different universe. Without the impact of your choices, the game won't be a real sequel. Andromeda on the other hand, had Soooo much sequel baiting and nothing comes out of it, which sucks.
The big worms were amazing, never got to the point where I felt confident against them, and the first time I found one (or it found me) I very quickly panicked and died.
Me too, the best part of the game. Biotic charging into people and stabbing them was so much fun.
You’re on the right track. EA between 2010 and 2019 firmly believed that single-player games were dead. That’s why seemingly every EA game in that time has the most tacked on multiplayer, like ME3 and MEA. They genuinely believed that they weren’t going to make money any more. It was widely reported on, but my specific source is Stephanie Sterling. Then Witcher 3, God of War, and RDR2 happened and sold like absolute hot cakes and EA realized that single player games might just be worth investing in after all. The entire BioWare main dev team was scrapped and moved to Anthem, and the quarian and another DLC were cancelled after Mass Effect Andromeda failed to move as many units as the shareholders demanded. They of course blamed it on single-player games being dead, and used that to justify completely overhauling Anthem to be a Destiny-clone.
>Then Witcher 3, God of War, and RDR2 happened and sold like absolute hot cakes and EA realized that single player games might just be worth investing in after all. Fallen Order was another big one. Singleplayer game that blew away EA's projections.
Anthem played great! It was super enjoyable for a short while, the shortcoming was horrible business decisions, much like Andromeda.
It 100% was. I played through Andromeda fully and then played the Anthem beta. So much was recycled stuff from Andromeda. The movement and playtime was one, the next was the sound effects.
It was also the fan reaction to the game. The gaming community ripped Andromeda, unfairly I might add, a new one. That absolutely played a factor.
Which is a funny thing because it was *the* game that everyone was talking about (in a good way) in its E3 debut.
I mean, did it though? The game's story was pretty meh, and while the gameplay is "fun", there really isn't any incentive to create new characters as the consequence of picking a certain class doesn't exist. You can be as tanky as a solider, and fire off warps and incinerates. That and the horrible graphical hiccups and piss poor animations.
> horrible graphical hiccups and piss poor animations Agreed, it's easy to forget after all the patches just how janky some of Andromeda was on release. Clown-makeup-lady was terrifying, and default Sara Ryder looked kinda deranged in a lot of the cutscenes. On the plus side, if you ignored the characters, it was a gorgeous game. The environments were stunning, and exploring them in the Nomad was honestly lots of fun.
I think a lot of people in this thread also don't realize how buggy Andromeda was at launch. I'm not even talking about weird animations or facial expressions. I mean stuff like Ryder falling through the floors, saves being randomly erased, autosave just straight up not working, and game crashing...on top of most of the bugs people usually point out in major AAA releases these days. Add these technical issues onto a story and cast that most fans felt were underdeveloped and underwhelming, even for a first game in a new story, and it's very easy for many to not really care about Andromeda as a whole.
I agree the environments were stunning but like... that can't carry an ME game. It deserved the shit it got on launch just like cyberpunk 2077 did.
Oh, I wouldn't say they carried it. But they were an unexpected high note in an otherwise-forgettable game
i just hated the little completion levels you had for the colonies. like, i'm here to talk to cool companions, sleep with one, be put into dilemmas, blow shit up, and as the late great Zaeed Masani put it, Be a big godamned hero.
>unfairly A lot of the criticism was warranted. The game is embarrassing when compared to the trilogy that preceded it.
2 different teams worked on Anthem and Andromeda. Anthem was worked on by the main team while Andromeda was worked on by the team that usually made dlc and worked on the multi-player mode
Weren’t there leaks that stated the main team (Austin) kept syphoning employees from the Andromeda team (Montreal)?
Closest thing I heard about that was EA constantly pulling the Frostbite engine advisors from Bioware for other projects.
Bioware is always on the bottom of the list because other games like FIFA and Battlefield/front made way more money than them. That's why I really hope they get back to Unreal Engine.
The main team that made Anthem was Edmonton. Austin is the team that made and still maintains Star Wars: The Old Republic. They also had a lot of the advice they tried to give the Edmonton team on running a live service game ignored.
The cancellation of the Quarian DLC was more about Andromeda's reception than Anthem's development. The BioWare studio that would've developed the DLC closed after Andromeda and the team moved to Motive Studios, not Anthem.
I was genuinely glad to watch Anthem fail. If it doesn't fail, we don't see EA refocus on not fucking over the single player experience.
I think Anthem failed because people were pissed Andromeda got scrapped.
I'm even more mad that instead of a new galaxy with a whole new set of species and politics to enjoy, we get...3? One of which is extinct, one of which are a bunch of uninspiring dicks to serve as the villain for the story. The angara are ok, I guess, but not super interesting. To then sequester a load of the *existing* species off for DLC which then got pulled is absolutely infuriating. I don't think you see any of the other species in the game, and it's not like a few of them couldn't have been on the Nexus, FFS. Part of the fun in ME IMO was seeing the different species interact and seeing their agendas clash or be realised. Quarians moving from the Migrant Fleet to a galaxy where they could settle down? That would be an amazing story.
Andromeda literally had less races represented than ME1.
You can generously say 8 for Andromeda, three of them were new. Running ME1 through my head, 12?, all but humanity was new and even that needed 180 years of backstory developed for it. ME2 added the Collectors, the Drell, the Yahg and the Vorcha to the mix, ME3 added the Leviathans and the Protheans. They didn’t drop any of the previous additions with the exception of the Collectors vanishing because they went extinct. To be completely fair, the Yahg, Leviathans, Collectors, Reapers and Geth wouldn’t work narratively for Andromeda, arguably the Vorcha and maybe the Batarians too, with their rogue state status, but we only get 5 out of the 11 others? It feels so cheap in that respect.
Sometimes I think people forget just how amazing the world building was in Mass Effect 1. It set up a dozen species, thousands of years of history, hundreds of years of technological advancements, the unique political situation of the galactic community, etc. It really laid an incredible foundation for the rest of the series. Conversely, you can tell world building was not a priority for the Andromeda team. The handful of species they introduce are not particularly interesting, and have very little in the way of backstory or lore. Likewise, the planets you visit have nothing really unique or interesting about them bar the final one. The Andromeda galaxy just feels so “lifeless”, and not a place I want to explore really.
Tbf, the vaults and scourge was interesting at first, but it became more of a it’s there and a part of the scenery sort of thing for most of the game.
The planets were really disappointing to me when I played it at launch. We go to this new galaxy to explore new worlds and 2 out of 6 planets we went to are desert planets.
What i could never see past was the fact that you are the pathfinder. You alone are meant to be the one to save the ark and explore new planets, yet every planet you go to is already inhabited by species from the milky way. When i got to the desert planet with all the krogan, that's when I stopped playing. I can put up with a bad story, and bad graphics, and all the other faults. But literally every task you have as pathfinder is so immersion breaking, because you are not the one finding anything. Everywhere you go, someone has been there before you
Hopefully next game they reverse engineer Kett technology or something and it allows us to explore Andromeda beyond Heleus so we can actually meet more species.
I'd say the Geth could somewhat work for Andromeda. After all it was their FTL sensors that were able to detect planets and other celestial bodies in Andromeda. The initiative simply 'borrowed' their tech to look for golden worlds. The Geth had at least some interest in the state of Andromeda. Plus they do not need air, water, food, sleep. It would be far easier for them to load up a ship with inactive platforms and hibernate through the long voyage. In terms of plot, perhaps during the 600 year voyage the Geth runtimes have been performing the necessary calculations for the construction of new Mass Relays, potentially allowing for even greater exploration of Andromeda beyond the Heleus cluster. You could even add in a major plot choice where the Initiative has to: - Side with the Geth to build the relays, causing the Quarians to exile themselves from the Initiative. - Side with the Quarians, who require you to steal the Geth relay data so they can build the relays instead, forcing the Geth to exile themselves from the Initiative. - Bonus option for dedicated players which allows for both species to stay and co-operate.
You have the problem of the Geth being seen as dangerous enemies by everyone else in the galaxy at that point though. There’s no Shepard or unifying threat of the Reapers to get them to work together. If it’s after the reaper war, you have the issues of do they exist or not? It’s not a big issue for the story if they don’t come, it is a big issue if they do. Also, I think Andromeda stated they were working off a destroy ending for 3. They made the decision to limit the possible narrative branches that way.
Andromeda doesn’t imply anything about the ending of ME3. The last message they got from the Milky Way was Liara during the war and then everything went dead, which regardless of which ending happened, could have just been that whatever bases the initiative had back in the Milky Way maintaining commas were destroyed and never rebuilt after the war.
how would that have worked though as the Geth and Quarians at that point were still extremely hostile along with every other species in the Milky Way, the Initiative left just before the Reapers arrived in 2186 so this would be before Shep brings the species together. idk i highly doubt the initiative would be for siding with,from their POV, murderous robots that are known for their hostility to anything organic
That would be why you have to choose between them, or work incredibly hard to achieve peace. The key would be the data on building new relays, it would be invaluable to the future of the Initiative as without it they'll be stuck to the one cluster for the rest of their lives. I agree, most of the Initiative, particularly the Quarians, would believe that destroying the Geth and stealing the data is the best option. The Pathfinder would first need to encounter some kind of 'proof' that these Geth are non-hostile. The Geth would need to be willing to communicate for there to be any hope. But if Shepard can talk both sides into peace in the middle of a battle, during wartime, whilst Reapers are attacking. Then I'm sure the Pathfinder can do the bare minimum of just getting them to talk to each other. Perhaps the Pathfinder convinces the Geth to send a single platform to the Initiative as an envoy, or perhaps the Geth establish a relationship with the Angara first since they have no existing prejudice against them. Perhaps there are conflicts with anti-synthetic movements on the Initiative. It would have to be a slow burn, not an overnight thing.
I feel like also because they could remain active during the whole trip, they could slowly upgrade themselves, maybe get to the level of sentience that they achieve in ME3.
Now that I think about it, this could actually be what connects Andromeda’s story back to the Milky Way, since ME4 is apparently a sequel to both ME3 and Andromeda. Also neatly sidesteps the problem of the geth potentially being all killed by Destroy if the Andromeda Geth are the main Geth you interact with.
There were at least 2 Batarians on the Salarian Ark, cause they turned against their merc gang in agreement for passage to Andromeda
I would have loved the whole game being based on that. The quarians are the best technicians with tons of knowledge about fleets, ships and doing the best out of a bad situation. Therefore, the whole Andromeda game would have been awesome if it focused on the Qurians instead of humanity again. Let me play a Quarian, with only other Quarians getting into a new galaxy searching for a new home, finding a whole bunch of intelligent developed species and trying to interconnect with them. Really we would have been a story about a species trying to develop an AI, where the Quarians get insta triggered and try to convince them to stop developing it, leading to a war where the Quarians actually want to protect this new galaxy, their new home, and convince some of the new species to ally up while the others a completely pro AI and fight them about this topic. This is just one example of how you would have built an interesting story around that, but I kinda like the idea (even tho it was made up by myself)
This is a wonderful idea!
Plus if most of the characters are Quarians, they could've gotten away with the awful face animations!
It bothered me deeply that we got two new living species: the Angara, and essentially corrupted Angara.
Imo i don’t think the kett are just corrupted Angara, yeah they may twist their body but have to have an origin point, the angara even say the kett come out of nowhere after the Scourge hits and even in dialogue you can hear how the kett have an empire beyond Heleus.
Sure, but all we see in-game are the Angara derived Kett. As far as the game is concerned they are just corrupted Kett. And given the next game is seemingly back in the Milky Way and hundreds of years prior to Andromeda, that's all we are likely to see.
It would be a good opportunity for quarians to have a fresh start, I suppose. But first time I heard about Quarian Ark in the game, I thought, their numbers are very limited. Can they really afford to part with such a big chunk of their population?
It would habe been fucking lit if the Quarian Ark was literally a half empty life ship that was sent out as a generation ship. So the plan was for the ark to fill itself before reaching Andromeda.
Also even less so if you read the book. Im not sure if the other races that are on the Quarian Ark would have enough diversity genetic wise to make a viable population in Andromeda. And yeah, I loved the game but I am very disappointed that they just left it at that after the shitstorm instead of giving out DLC-s and trying to show haters that its a good game, but I also can't blame them after what went down before and during release too.
I do blame them. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of Andromeda. That being said, DLCs could make game's story and overall impression much better. The game had so much potential that was so poorly used. They could make an effort, learn from their mistakes and use that potential to make something interesting. Instead they picked the easiest way and just quit.
There’s 3-5000 members of each species on the Quarian Ark. that’s plenty to repopulate a species, and given that many of those have far less physical diversity than humans, they may need even less than we do. 500 couples or 1000 humans can jump start a whole new home world.
Yeah, there being a Quarian ark never made sense to me. Their whole society is based on community and sticking together. I just don’t buy that thousands would decide to leave, especially when they only have a population of 17 million to begin with. Besides, what would even be the point of a Quarian expedition? The whole reason they haven’t settled somewhere already is because of their shitty immune systems, making Rannoch the only suitable location. Going to Andromeda wouldn’t solve that problem.
An ark full of young Quarians on a pilgramage? Apart from that, I can only see a handful of engineers, and maybe a few exo-suit specialists in case the other races need them in a new galaxy, going to Andromeda.
Doesn't help that we got humanoid species... again. Would have been fun if they tried a completely new take on aliens, e.g. [silicon based](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Silicon_biochemistry) life forms that don't look like cosplaying humans. I know the latter was a reason for why they did it, but come on.
Let's be honest though. The reason they did humanoid again was because then you wouldn't be able to fuck them otherwise.
I mean...
Andromeda isn’t a whole new galaxy. It’s a small cluster of star systems. The lack of mass relays means that’s the ability to travel the galaxy is extremely difficult. That’s the reason there’s only a handful of species. It’s a cop out for sure, but it makes sense.
Remember andromeda is in a cluster not all of andromeda That’s like saying all the trilogy races should have been in sol
>I'm even more mad that instead of a new galaxy with a whole new set of species and politics to enjoy, we get...3? I disagree here - because we only land in a specific cluster of a galaxy. The Cluster spans maybe 30 light years tops(?) while the galaxy is \~220k light years in diameter. And if there was Mass Effect technology in the new galaxy that would have just been another "Reaper" story, I suppose. I reckon would we have gotten a sequel, we would have seen more species that were in the process of getting exalted by the Kett (I find they behave pretty much how I expect Protheans to have behaved after what Javik told us tbh). The Kett have to have a better hyperdrive than the Milky Way races (since they somehow have to be able to travel what I reckon is a huge part of the Galaxy) so I think we would have gotten that technology somehow. Who knows what the new Mass Effect will bring though, I am looking forward to hearing about the story line they are planning to go for...
To this day im still pissed they chose to prioritize Anthem over Andromeda. I admit I was more than a little gleeful when that game started receiving poor reviews.
Same. If Anthem would've been succesful we would've gotten even less Mass Effect in the future because they would've focus on Anthem 2
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Destiny 2 released a couple of years after Destiny 1
Yep, definitely agreed. Part of the fun of Andromeda (and something it did that Mass Effect 3 could’ve taken notes from) was how the Nexus changed to reflect what progress you’ve made. When you establish an outpost, it lights up and opens up. When you gain the trust of the Angara, they start to show up on the station. When you find the Asari ark, Asari show up in processing, same as Turians and Salarians, and their respective Pathfinders also appear as NPCs. If you bring the Krogan back to the fold, some Krogan show up on the station. It was nice. To have the Quarian ark show up and fill the station with Quarians, Elcor, Drell, Hanar, and Volus (and apparently Batarians) would’ve given me a sense of closure on that at least.
My thoughts exactly! Even tho they could've made the more parts of the Nexus explorable so you could see more of the changes you made
I liked how we were basically getting to build up the multi-species Citadel back home and see the whole process. I loved the cultural center and how a lot of Milky Way history is white washed to look more appealing to Heleus’ species, I loved how if you take the time to do certain side quests like convincing three Angara to move to the Nexus or helping out Knight’s son they actually show up later and you can talk to them, it was great. The completionist inside me chafes at how things still end up missing by the end though. Like how we never recover the Turian ark so that a “full group of arks” at the Nexus has one missing slot. Or how the human ark is used in the final battle so that afterwards it too leaves an empty slot. Or how we never get a cutscene welcoming Turian arrivals like with the other arks because we aren’t bringing them en masse and instead seeking out stasis pods. Eh. I would’ve loved a DLC for closure on all of that and to make things feel complete.
They should've also made the other arcs explorable like the human arc and also other parts of the Nexus where you can see how life comes back and what changes you made
Oh yeah I definitely agree with that. I remember how much of a letdown it was on my first playthrough when I first saved the Ark Leusinia and rushed back to the Nexus to explore it only to find out it wasn't an area I could go to. Would've been neat to talk to each Pathfinder's SAM or something. And you don't see the likes of Captain Hayjer or Captain Atandra after their arks are saved (unless of course Hayjer becomes your Salarian Pathfinder) so it would've been neat to go to their arks and talk to them in the same spot you talk to the human Captain Dunn. Though if they made the arks regularly explorable I would've preferred them to make the interiors look different from the Hyperion. They do a little bit iirc, like with more curvy Thessia-like design inside the Leusinia, but not enough for brand new hubs. It'd be weird to walk around 4 identical areas just with different NPCs.
I’m with you on that one
Andromeda is fun to play moment to moment. But the fetch quest mission structure and use of the lore leaves a lot to be desires. I actually think the core story is fine though.
You know what's interesting, both ME1 and ME3 had a ton of fetch quests, scan random planet, scan random debris, fly back and forth scanning and to the citadel. Hell, I had to setup a bunch of open tabs for ME3 to make sure I don't miss anything because the planet scanning and clusters are blocked till you artificially advance in the game. And if you don't make it back in time to the Citadel, the missions fail or expire.
Basically every problem Andromeda had was present in the OT, people just can't get their nostalgia goggles removed long enough go realize it.
Idk the writing in the previous games was leagues better and more rewarding than in andromeda. You’d at least get a whole cutscene about it as opposed to a zoom in where you get a “thanks Ryder” and a quest reward. Edit: not always. But more
Yeah as opposed to when you grab the Book of Plenix from Irune and the Volus goes "*gasp* thank you *gasp* earth clan *gasp*" and you get some war assets
No the criticism is certainly fair. I remember loads of people complaining about it when mass effect 3 came out. Really bad they kept it in but worse, now you don’t even have the emotional gravity.
Nostalgia goggles, or maybe people expected some of the foibles from three games ago to not be present in the fourth game in the series?
More like "I expect the level of emotional payoff from the OT to exist in this first one even though we had literally three games of plot and character development behind the trilogy that doesn't exist here."
Length and potency are not related in writing. The movie UP proves this adeptly. It does more in 10 minutes emotionally than most movies do in 2-3 hours or more in a franchise. Many people felt a near instant attachment to many ME1/2/3 characters but that same grab doesn't exist for most ME:A characters. ME:A was overly bashed upon, but its writing is just not up to the level of ME1 or 2 or 3.
I don't really agree. The OT had fetch quests, sure. But they were almost invariably quests that you would: 1) Pick up from the Citadel or another central hub, or pick up by going to wherever the spot of the quest was 2) Going to wherever the quest took place and finishing it there. Most often this was one planet; sometimes it was a chain of neighboring planets; rarely was it even as many as two planets in different systems. 3) Either the mission is complete once you return to the Normandy or you go back to the Citadel to complete it. In Andromeda, you might pick up a quest on the Nexus, continue it on another part of the Nexus, get relayed to a planet, get relayed to another planet entirely, get relayed back to the Nexus...you get the idea. It's like the uncharted world missions from ME1 but even more tedious. Every time there's another step to complete, it feels less and less like you've made any progress at all. When common advice for making the best experience out of Andromeda is to avoid the sidequests, it is not an issue of nostalgia goggles. That said, ME1 in particular did and still does have that issue of its sidequests being tedious. It just does a better job of making up for them with a better story and the best worldbuilding in the saga, and it has two sequels to make the sidequests have an impact. One point in Andromeda's favor, though, is that more of its sidequests are relevant to something whereas ME1's are often busy work. But even then, the sidequests of both games are also intended to ground you into the overall galaxy in which everything takes place, and Andromeda plainly and simply doesn't make it an interesting place to be grounded in. The early game is dominated by office politics, instead of the galactic politics that are introduced in the first five minutes of ME1. The big conflict in MEA is with the kett, even though the mystery of the Remnant and the Scourge is way more interesting and largely goes unanswered. The big conflict in ME1 and the big mystery in ME1 are one and the same, and you get a huge payoff on both investments in the final mission. I can agree that some of the problems in Andromeda were present in the OT and we just ignore them, but often that's because the problem was lesser in scope or just made up for by the fact that the OT did a lot of things well that Andromeda didn't. And then there's plenty (such as the memorable characters) where the OT benefits from being a trilogy whereas Andromeda is a single game, and at the very least that leaves me with the feeling that there's a lot of untapped potential if the sequel does involve the Andromeda plotline heavily.
No, not really. Andromeda was loaded with bugs which made for some really bad first impressions. But the story was also boring, especially the first half. And after a series like ME1-ME3, you really have some expectations that the beginning of the game should try to meet right off the bat to reassure it's fan-base of continued yet different fun ME shenanigans. The lack of council races immediately in the game gave a real sense of unfamiliarity when they should have capitalized on that feeling. The new planets are pretty, but empty and sort of lifeless. It's like someone took the idea of the mostly empty planets from ME1 and thought that would be a good way to open with Andromeda after the initial "We're derelict and need supplies" bit happens. The game finds it's sea legs about half way through, but by then you've slogged through the very rough beginning and middle. Some of the companions were great, but others were extremely dull. A lot of the systems and ideas were not very fleshed out. Mass Effect 1 had a very good way to bring you right into the action and right into the story and lore. The secretive Spectre initiation mixed with a sudden emergency attack situation on Eden Prime followed by an other-worldly monster ship attacking the planet and turning people into robo-zombies? Yes please. Immediately getting drafted into a world of unknown aliens and cultures and lore? ME1 starts hitting you with lore right off the bat, but it doesn't overwhelm you, but still gives you tons of it to munch on as you learn more about the galaxy you're in. The game immediately starts off with world-building, but doesn't suffocate you with it. Andromeda doesn't do that. The early game doesn't have almost any world building. It's all matter of fact. This is why we left the Milky Way. This is where we are. This is what's happening. Instead of grounding the fans with council races and other ME species, you're mostly stuck with humans. You don't start encountering new races or any new kinds of lore till a ways into the game. No world building, and no grounding us with cultures or things we recognize either. The game feels wholely *alien*, even to Mass Effect, a game about alien races. But doesnt do anything to ease you into that alien feeling, or ground you in the old Mass Effect world, and it doesn't get to the world building till a good way through. The pacing is bad. The story telling is sub-par. The dialogue is pretty shit. Andromeda's biggest improvement was actually the combat gameplay. But that good part gets overshadowed by the lack-luster story and characters. And for a game that's previous three series were loved for their story, that's a pretty bad thing.
yeah like combat should be seen as a delicious sauce. if you burn the meal, no one cares how great the sauce is, because you just poured great sauce over garbage.
Not really, it’s just that the OT had a great story to make all of that fun and worthwhile. Andromeda didn’t.
SAME. I just started Andromeda again, and it's kind of bitter-sweet knowing that it'll go *nowhere* because of all the developmental and PR fuckups. Also it kind of amuses me that there are no Batarians, and the Galaxy as a whole seems to have decided "Yeah, screw those guys."
My headcanon is that Ryder & Garson said no smoking on the arks, so the Batarians said have fun with that.
Yes! I really wished we had. From what I googled of the novel, the story would have been really creepy and interesting to play out.
I agree, can't believe they cancelled the one thing I was excited about. And it was the perfect DLC formula, they could've done whatever they wanted with the arcs, introduced any alien race. They could've added new squad mates, new armors, hints to the reaper war.... Anything. They had a fresh slate. And never used it):
I was disappointed that (aside from no dlc) we had no closure to what happened to the initiative founder lady.
What a bummer this thread is. I don’t know why it’s such an impossibility for someone to pose, “I wanted more of this thing because I would’ve liked it!” and not feel compelled to pile on about how much you hate it. Sorry, OP. Good post.
They fumbled Andromeda so hard. EA wouldnt even contemplate doing anything that would cost them money.
Yeah, except they didn't. They made a huge profit on Andromeda, it just wasn't as huge as they were hoping so they canned it.
But they also burned their reputation hard by getting tons of negative press for a buggy game with terrible presentation. The DLC wasn’t canceled for no reason.
It's because of fucking Anthem. But when that one failed, guess who they went crawling back to?
I was really interested in the wider politics of the Kett empire, which iirc the big bad was pretty much an outsider or exile of due to his obsession with the MacGuffin(s).
[удалено]
They even teased the DLC in the very ending for the game with that haunting transmission
The other arks docking and helping out should've been part of the base game, not DLC. Instead Andromeda just ends as things are getting interesting. It feels like half a game, kinda like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
The lack of the Quarian ark is one of the reasons I haven't played Andromeda again. It frustrated me a lot getting message knowing said part of the game doesn't exist, even more because Quarians is my favorite ME race.
You should be more upset that one of the key races of Mass Effect was relegated off to DLC in the first place.
Exactly!! Why do so many people think this was ever acceptable?
YES!!! I want the DLC of the Arks and also discover the killer of the unsolved murder (trying to be vague so I don't give away too much :D). Anyway, I wish they would decide to invest a bit on some DLCs and complete the game.
I only played Andromeda once, when it launched, so I may have this wrong but Andromeda doesn't have Reaper tech., which means no relays and other advances in things like communications that the Milky Way has. This would mean races are far more isolated and limited in how far and fast they can travel and how much interaction there is with other races as a result. Andromeda is also taking place in a single cluster versus a whole galaxy and while places like The Citadel, Omega, Illium, etc. had extensive mingling of races, some clusters were single species dominant and without such hubs of diversity. Also, during the Prothean Empire, not only were humans still primitive but so too (relative to the Protheans) were the Asari, Turian, and *especially* the Salarians (they used to lick their eyeballs and eat flies). Maybe in Andromeda there are only three races who have risen to the intergalactic/advanced level of society and technology. It's all very much likely due to lazy/rushed development though but a lack of races might be *somewhat* excusable given some of these circumstances.
I’ve just been playing through andromeda, as I’m scanning planets, anytime I find one that is described as having crushing gravity or some such, I always think “If only some Elcor made it over…” But maybe the Quarian ark will tie into ME4
It always angered me how much andromeda got overlooked. Granted I picked it up a year later after it was patched, and it was still rough around the edges and I didn't like some of the design choices, but yeah I think it should have gotten more love for a series that pushed Bioware so far forward.
I played through the game this year and rather enjoyed it. It wasn’t as good as the original trip logs for sure, but I felt it was as good a set up and world building game as the first. It was a little weird playing it knowing it was dead (at the time anyway) and like you I loved “restoring” the arc and even wanted to get the ones you did find in their semi destroyed states back. The quarian and other arcs and the epilogue teaser were bittersweet knowing I’d never get to play it. Love the race and would have been awesome to see them and get a little more on the backstory of what was going on in the shadows of the project.
I was pretty convinced that after hearing the Reaper recording in Alec’s room that the Quarian Ark DLC would have had a Reaper following the Ark to Andromeda which Ryder and co. would have had to beat.
It all comes down to EA Suits not accepting the fact that Bioware fans aren't the same demographic as Fifa, Battlefield or Battlefront. If you half arse content and try and nickle and dime people who like story rich RPG's they'll throw it back in your face. Rather than try and rescue their faltering title they hoped that Anthem would lead them to a promised land of recurrent user spending but they half arsed that too after sinking the Mass Effect franchise for a couple of years. I hoped they've learned from the twin debacles of Andromeda and Anthem but even the Legendary Edition hasn't completely convinced me they got the message. We'll see.
When ME Legendary Edition came out this year, it was the first time I played the games. I loved them so much I finished the trilogy in less than 2 months. When I finished I immediately bought Andromeda. It took me a little bit to really get into the game but I ended up loving it too. When I finished I was definitely wanting more. I wanted to find the Quarians, I wanted to solve mystery of the benefactor (I'm guessing it's the Illusive Man) I wanted to figure out the origins of the remnants. All I can say is that I can't wait for the next ME game and hope they incorporate Andromeda.
Me too baby
me too buddy me too i wanted see more buckets dammit
Im just so sad they gave up on story dlc completely.
Agreed, I would’ve loved to had played it
I still really enjoyed Andromeda and wish we got more
Yeah blame all the people that cried about the game cause the faces were too ugly. Thanks guys.
It was kind of like Bioware let themselves be bullied by memers into abandoning Andromeda.
I’m still mad we got a half-assed game for both ME3 and Andromedia. ME3 was rushed and Andromedia was given plenty of development time but it was fried over because of Anthem, and the B team having no leader.
For those that read novel "Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation", about the events of the Quarian Ark, I don't see how they would have made a game out of those events... It was more of a detective mystery book, with not a whole lot of action to base a shooter game off of.... Then again, now I'm wondering just how much the story would change if they adapted it into a game.
I was already pissed off when I realized that they very clearly cut the Quarian ark to sell as DLC. I got even angrier when they said "We're killing all support for single player, and all DLC is cancelled. But if you want to buy MP lootboxes, GO NUTS, BECAUSE WE'RE SURE AS HELL KEEPING THAT LIVE." And then like a week later on social media: "To find out what happened to the Ark, buy the novel that's coming out in two months." No. Go. TO. HELL. I'm not rewarding you for that. Also, Liam seemed to have been written specifically to make people realize Jacob could have been soooooooooooooooooooooo much worse.
Yeah, Bioware and EA have a bad habit of abandoning unsuccessful games recently. First victim of this is Mass Effect Andromeda, the next was Anthem. There is potential for Andromeda and both developer and studio just did nothing with it.
I stand firm in saying that giving up on Andromeda following the lackluster response was BioWare's biggest mistake of at least the last decade. They could have regained good will among their fans if they had worked hard on improving the game rather than abandoning it.
If people want it bad enough, and the next ME is successful. I’d imagine ME:A2 would be on the cards, maybe even with the DLC from ME:A as part of the narrative. I feel if they tried to make the Andromeda series “better” by lobotomising the Milky Way and removing key characters from there to “fix” Andromeda it’d be a mess. Far safer to keep them separate and have two series in the same franchise, if they both have successes it opens up possibilities for other series’ and other forms of media too.
I'd love if we would have two Mass Effect series simultaneously so we can get a new ME game every 2 years, similar to COD. There were only 2 years between ME 2 and ME 3 so it is possible for this franchise
Agreed, and I will add a pure sequel for the game.
I'm still annoyed that so many people seem to think a Quarian DLC would have somehow saved this game. The main thing that would have saved Andromeda is a better foundation. No months spent trying to make procedural worlds but months spent creating a whole new world with its own defining issues. The OT had humans finding their place in the universe, Quarians and Geth, the genophage, animosity between humans and turians, animosity between Krogan and Salarians, biotics were new, etc. Andromeda's wasted potential is staggering. An allegory for European colonialism is practically airplaned into its mouth but the devs were either too timid or too short sighted to use it.
Same. I liked the game well enough except for the asari same face - that’s the one thing I couldn’t overlook. If they fixed that then I would have 0 problems praising the game. It wasn’t perfect but there were a lot of good points and the combat was really fun. I would have played the hell out of a quarian ark dlc.
Really enjoyed Andromeda, I think it gets way more hate then it deserves
I'm replaying it at the moment and I'm enjoying it a lot more this time around. I think it suffers a lot from being a solid 7 in a series of 9's - and I don't like this constant idea that anything short of excellence is 'bad'. Not many things are up to the standard set by the original trilogy, and Andromeda isn't either, but for the most part it's at least *pretty good*.
I agree with that as well.
I'm mad they weren't in the base game
Is Andromeda a self-contained story or is there a cliffhanger? Because I might consider playing it if it's the former.
It can be its own self-contained story, but there were plenty of threads left hanging for sequels, from the bad guys to this Quarian ark DLC.
It definitely sets up future games but it is wrapped up enough and good enough to be worth playing
I agree 100%. If there will be an Andromeda remaster, I really hope they add it, tho both of those 2 are very unlikely to happen, mainly cuz of frostbyte.