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Off the back of this thread, I've actually jumped into a new playthrough of the game, having not touched it since the 2 runs I did just after launch. Looking at it a bit more critically, I guess, there's certainly some things that jump out, but as many good as bad. With that in mind, some more specific thoughts on what the next game ought to keep in mind regardless of when/where it's set.


- Definitely keep the class and progression system. I think Andromeda strikes a great balance between allowing you have a little bit of every skill tree and rewarding you for really specialising. Each of the trees has enough variety active/passive skills that you can be just as well-prepared and powerful going all-in on one or spreading yourself across two/all of them. The Profiles mechanic helps with this a lot, the fact you can have up to 12 skills easily accessible at a time rather than the 3 the older games let you have means you're not punished for developing many abilities at once, and can set yourself to get the most out of them with the passive bonuses of each class.

- Likewise, the combat might be a little clunky at first, but once you get the knack for using the greater mobility you have, combined with the aforementioned wider array of powers, it fits together so nicely. It's all about options, and it does this far better than the earlier games; you can switch from up close to long-range combat in a moment, almost always have the movement advantage over your enemies to dictate the battles and you never feel like you're coming up against hard counters if you've prepared properly. It's all so much more interesting than the original trilogy where you spent most of your time cowering behind low walls...

- The open world to explore are great. However, going back to them after things like AC: Odyssey or The Witcher 3, they seem really empty. Lots of markers (more on that in a minute), but very little to do at most of them, and plenty of quests that just require you to go to a location and hold Y for 3 seconds, and once you've done it 5 times you get an XP dump and a few lines of dialogue. Some are literally just 5 enemies and a container of mostly useless loot. The open structure is definitely better than being a linear corridor shooter, but the next game needs to make sure there's something to actually do in it.

- On a more negative note, the UI is very often godawful. The map is maybe the worst example, all shades of blue with a vague set of markers that don't tell you anything without the key. No detail of the actual landscape or locations, so it manages to be pretty much useless for, you know, actually navigating the world... On a related note, mission updates/popups are so easy to miss if you're not looking at the right moment or get several quests at once, and when you sequence-break a quest and the popup comes up with no actual context, it's thoroughly unhelpful. Sames goes for the tutorials. The inventory, level and squad screens are a little better, but this is definitely an area that needs work.

- I think one of the real takeaways is that the next studio to make a Mass Effect need a big banner saying 'less is more' on the wall. There's a ton of meaningless fetch/scan quests on each world, a load of 5-line NPCs, a load of 'empty' map markers that only serve to bury the really good content. Some really strong character loyalty missions and dialogue, interesting dungeons in the Vaults, epic set piece sequences, a handful of genuinely interesting subquests, cool environmental storytelling, all so easily lost in a swathe of 'scan 5 rocks', 'here's my life story' and '4 enemies and a box' locations.


On balance, I still think Andromeda is a really, really solid game after those first few patches. Satisfying, varied combat mechanics, some great characters and locations, an engaging (if a little slow off the mark) main story that does some very interesting things throughout, but it just needs trimming and polish to measure up to some recent games that have done the same sort of thing better. There's a really solid game under all of it, you just need to know what to ignore.

I think one of the real takeaways is that the next studio to make a Mass Effect need a big banner saying 'less is more' on the wall. There's a ton of meaningless fetch/scan quests on each world, a load of 5-line NPCs, a load of 'empty' map markers that only serve to bury the really good content. Some really strong character loyalty missions and dialogue, interesting dungeons in the Vaults, epic set piece sequences, a handful of genuinely interesting subquests, cool environmental storytelling, all so easily lost in a swathe of 'scan 5 rocks', 'here's my life story' and '4 enemies and a box' locations

To be fair, that's pretty much a signature of the series (and DA/ME Bioware in general). The much 'lauded' ME1 is jam full of meaningless fetch quests, scanning, and one line NPCs, punctuated by a bare handful of meaningful exchanges (like the Roach Queen decision, the Krogan dilema, and a couple others). Real story content is maybe 5-6 hours, and a lot of cruft.

 Col Hammer wrote:

P.S. I actually was in the minority and didn't hate the choose-your-color-ending of ME3. I think, especially after the fix-dlc, that it was a fine enough ending for the series. I had no strong opinions of it.

I personally didn't think that the "fix-dlc" actually made the ending any better. I liked the original ending. The extended ending just threw off the pacing and removed elements of player control. I didn't need to be told what happened afterwards during a slideshow, I was shown during the game what was likely to happen. For example, if you have Wrex and Eve alive, it is pretty clear that they're going to drag the Krogan into a new age, pulling them out of their aggressive factional warfare-oriented mindset, the engineering advances gained during the construction of the Crucible would help repair the mass relays etc.

An example of the removal of player control is the final run to the beam. In the original version you are in control of Shepard, you are physically making her run forwards as Harbinger obliterates everything around you. It feels chaotic and desperate, it feels exciting. When you are hit you aren't 100% sure if it was because you made a mistake or it was meant to happen. In the extended cut, that is replaced by a cutscene in which you take cover with your team, the Normandy comes down to pick them up and then Shepard charges forwards and gets hit. You are no longer in control, you are a passive observer.

The expanded ME3 ending definitely added its own pacing and plot issues for sure, without really addressing any of the myriad of issues with the original ending, mainly where all the player agency from the previous 100 hours of trilogy gameplay, the primary plot conflict, and all narrative coherency get thrown out the airlock in the last 5 minutes

The beam walk thing definitely was one of the weird things the expaned ending dlc made even weirder where they stopped the whole sequence to hamfist in a last sendoff with the Normandy. BioWare just could not gets its schtick together (or someone stubbornly *really* didnt want to budge on something) on this count and it showed.


Ive heard better things about the Citadel Shore Leave DLC, but never bothered to go back and play it.

That said, an epilogue of some sort was highly requested even if they botched it, the way they ended the original unpatched game left a lot still in the air.

Yeah, for me the extended ending was an improvement but only a little IMO. It was a way for the developers to stick to their guns (however stupid they were) while still technically doing something public to address the controversy. I suppose that earlier plotlines could also be considered part of the ending when looked at from a 100+ hour trilogy investment with the wrap up of both the Quarian/Geth storylines and the Krogans. Those were definitely satisfying moments for me at least.

As for the Citadel DLC, it was worth it for me and felt like playing a Mass Effect version of the Expendables movie franchise. The humor was cranked up to 11 with some very funny moments which was a welcome momentary change of pace from the "every civilization in the galaxy is about to be wiped out!" seriousness of the three games. The key though is momentary as it seems that the developers took the positive response to some of the slapstick action and one liners to mean that it should be like that throughout the next main game (Andromeda). I'm basing this off of watching youtube playthroughs so take it with a grain of salt but that same style of humor looks to fall flat with the new characters in Andromeda compared with those that you've gotten to like over the course of 3 games.

TL;DR: The citadel DLC is worth playing IMO.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ive heard better things about the Citadel Shore Leave DLC, but never bothered to go back and play it.

You should definitely go back and play it. It is an amazing piece of fanservice, in the best possible way. I consider it kind of a non-canon addition due to the incredibly contrasting tone of the DLC compared to the rest of the game and when approached from that angle, where it is an intentionally tongue-in-cheek almost parody of the series which goes about hanging lampshades on many tropes which have become prevalent throughout the series, it's great fun.

mission updates/popups are so easy to miss if you're not looking at the right moment

And the dialogue cues had similar issues.

Team member: "Ryder, we've reached the waypoint. Now we need to-"

SAM: "This area can be mined for resources."

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ive heard better things about the Citadel Shore Leave DLC, but never bothered to go back and play it.

You should definitely go back and play it. It is an amazing piece of fanservice, in the best possible way. I consider it kind of a non-canon addition due to the incredibly contrasting tone of the DLC compared to the rest of the game and when approached from that angle, where it is an intentionally tongue-in-cheek almost parody of the series which goes about hanging lampshades on many tropes which have become prevalent throughout the series, it's great fun.

It was definitely one giant loveletter to the characters in the series. Being released after the game had already been out, it felt like a better "goodbye" to the characters than the real ending did.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Paradigm wrote:
- The open world to explore are great. However, going back to them after things like AC: Odyssey or The Witcher 3, they seem really empty. Lots of markers (more on that in a minute), but very little to do at most of them, and plenty of quests that just require you to go to a location and hold Y for 3 seconds, and once you've done it 5 times you get an XP dump and a few lines of dialogue. Some are literally just 5 enemies and a container of mostly useless loot. The open structure is definitely better than being a linear corridor shooter, but the next game needs to make sure there's something to actually do in it.

In some ways, I think the problem is having multiple open worlds to explore. And, in a way, they all felt kind of the same, with no real sense of scale. You have several planets to visit, each one with just a single major settlement/base on it, and somehow, by pure chance, that settlement/base is also right next to the alien techvault you need to access. That just bugged me.

Voss wrote:

I think one of the real takeaways is that the next studio to make a Mass Effect need a big banner saying 'less is more' on the wall. There's a ton of meaningless fetch/scan quests on each world, a load of 5-line NPCs, a load of 'empty' map markers that only serve to bury the really good content. Some really strong character loyalty missions and dialogue, interesting dungeons in the Vaults, epic set piece sequences, a handful of genuinely interesting subquests, cool environmental storytelling, all so easily lost in a swathe of 'scan 5 rocks', 'here's my life story' and '4 enemies and a box' locations

To be fair, that's pretty much a signature of the series (and DA/ME Bioware in general). The much 'lauded' ME1 is jam full of meaningless fetch quests, scanning, and one line NPCs, punctuated by a bare handful of meaningful exchanges (like the Roach Queen decision, the Krogan dilema, and a couple others). Real story content is maybe 5-6 hours, and a lot of cruft.

This is a load of rubbish, and you must surely know that. ME:A has fetch quests and rando NPCs like MMOs(or Dragon Age Inquisition...); they're empty wastes of time, they don't really contribute anything to anything except your XP bar. The original Mass Effect's "cruft" was almost entirely stuff that added to each location you visited, people's dialogue and miniquests often tied back into the story of the area, or included interesting worldbuilding.

The sad fact is catering to this "only the main plot matters, and it better not have anything but action and Big Choices" mentality is what's driven Bioware's quality into the ground since ME and DA:O.

I'd argue ME2 and ME3 handle their side content better than the first one, precisely because of how both games make that stuff directly relevant to the wider narrative. Every mission in 2 is largely built around better preparing you for the end mission (as are activities like the planet scanning), and that singular focus is a big factor in why it's my favourite entry (I struggle to think of another RPG in this vein that builds the entire game around a single task quite as well). Likewise, 3's War Score mechanic means all those simple tasks you do can add up and have a genuine effect on the outcome of the whole narrative (saving some Elcor art or not doesn't seem to matter until, like my last run through, you end up 5 Warscore short of the best endings...)

A lot of the side content in ME1 is a little bit on the irrelevant side and didn't really seem to go anywhere, though it was probably still more worthwhile than a good chunk of what Andromeda offers. I think the open-world nature is the big distinction here, as rather than the game using linear environments to push you in the right direction, it's encouraging you to explore without really offering much of a reward for doing so. I still prefer the open-world format conceptually, it just needed to be filled with something worthwhile. Despite having a lot of the same sort of stuff, I think Inquisition did the multi-world format far better, as there was at least plenty of non-pointless stuff in among the chaff.

Weirdly, the tutorial world is probably far better in this regard than the rest. It's actually worth exploring, as you find some early hints at the Remnant/Kett, get a head start on research data and materials, get some unique dialogue with Ryder Sr. if you find certain things. It actually feels worthwhile.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Voss wrote:

I think one of the real takeaways is that the next studio to make a Mass Effect need a big banner saying 'less is more' on the wall. There's a ton of meaningless fetch/scan quests on each world, a load of 5-line NPCs, a load of 'empty' map markers that only serve to bury the really good content. Some really strong character loyalty missions and dialogue, interesting dungeons in the Vaults, epic set piece sequences, a handful of genuinely interesting subquests, cool environmental storytelling, all so easily lost in a swathe of 'scan 5 rocks', 'here's my life story' and '4 enemies and a box' locations

To be fair, that's pretty much a signature of the series (and DA/ME Bioware in general). The much 'lauded' ME1 is jam full of meaningless fetch quests, scanning, and one line NPCs, punctuated by a bare handful of meaningful exchanges (like the Roach Queen decision, the Krogan dilema, and a couple others). Real story content is maybe 5-6 hours, and a lot of cruft.

This is a load of rubbish, and you must surely know that.

ME:A has fetch quests and rando NPCs like MMOs(or Dragon Age Inquisition...); they're empty wastes of time, they don't really contribute anything to anything except your XP bar. The original Mass Effect's "cruft" was almost entirely stuff that added to each location you visited, people's dialogue and miniquests often tied back into the story of the area, or included interesting worldbuilding.

The sad fact is catering to this "only the main plot matters, and it better not have anything but action and Big Choices" mentality is what's driven Bioware's quality into the ground since ME and DA:O.

I surely don't know that, because I don't even vaguely agree with anything you just said. Most of ME1s sidequests are less relevant than the 'codex' entries (which themselves had the depth and entertainment value of a 9th grade political science class). There is very little interesting world building and a lot of fetch X <medals> or take a <letter> to <alien> standing next to <building>.
Its MadLibs style garbage quests all the way down. Even the companion quests are lackluster and mostly just murder sprees in a ship or dungeon, and the choice is whether or not to kill the guy at the end or take whatever widget is in the last locker. Which frankly was a massive step down from anything Bioware had done before.

I never said a single thing about 'only the main plot matters or action or big choices.' The important bit is the side quests need to be relevant, and the vast, vast majority of ME1 (and DA:O) weren't. Both games feature occasional interesting set pieces and a lot of trash to fill time so they could advertise that a playthrough is X-Y hours, Z hours if you do everything. The games just get a nostalgia pass for being the initial entries into their series and establishing 'lore' (which isn't as fixed or as thought out as people like to believe. Like GW, they leave a lot of blanks to be filled out or stretched later, because its far more functional to the kind of creative process they use) One major failing of DA: Inquisition were the big empty late zones that didn't matter, and don't tell interesting stories. But frankly most of the side quests in ME1 and DA:O felt exactly like that, just in smaller spaces due to tech limitations.

But that such places exist in both DA:Inquisition and ME: Andromeda is pretty much proof that they aren't dictating that 'only the main plot matters.' It's a bizarre claim to make when their latest games explicitly aren't doing that, otherwise you wouldn't have 'empty wastes of time' to complain about. But I can't figure out why they'd be wastes of time in Andromeda but not in ME1...

 Yodhrin wrote:

This is a load of rubbish, and you must surely know that. ME:A has fetch quests and rando NPCs like MMOs(or Dragon Age Inquisition...); they're empty wastes of time, they don't really contribute anything to anything except your XP bar. The original Mass Effect's "cruft" was almost entirely stuff that added to each location you visited, people's dialogue and miniquests often tied back into the story of the area, or included interesting worldbuilding.

ME1 had a bunch of collection quests that consisted of you running around finding things like "five ancient Asari texts" that somehow turned up at planets on your galaxy map that otherwise served no purpose (you couldn't even land on those planets). The mission would start when you found the first item in the collection, and there would be no dialogue or anything else relating to the quest. It was basically, "Here's an interesting item that you found. There are four more in the game. Go find them somewhere out there. And we're not telling you where."

The game did reward exploration (there were some interesting mini-dungeons that you could only find if you went exploring every last point of interest on the galaxy map), but the collection stuff was more annoying than anything else, imo.

Eumerin wrote:

mission updates/popups are so easy to miss if you're not looking at the right moment

And the dialogue cues had similar issues.

Team member: "Ryder, we've reached the waypoint. Now we need to-"

SAM: "This area can be mined for resources."

Reminds me of the first Dragon Age.

*Clicks on door to leave the area.*

Party Member: "Let me reveal this important part of my backstory! You see, the true reason I travel with you is to--"

*tries to click away, too late*

Party Member: "No, I've completely forgotten what I was going to say. Probably wasn't that important."

Please secure tin foil hat firmly on head and apply salt liberally by the bucket.

Okay...

I could see the Apex trademark registrations being tied to something ME related. Now having said that...

1.) I would expect that - even if ME:A hadn't fallen flat, Dragon Age was scheduled to get the next Bioware CRPG. He seems to think that this possible Mass Effect thing is on the verge of being announced, but I'm pretty skeptical (unless, of course, it's not a CRPG).
2.) "Not Dead" does have an obvious connotation for Shepard, but any sort of game that picked up where ME3 left off would have to address the four possible endings. Even assuming you ignore the "Reapers win" ending, that leaves three other endings that don't exactly fit together.
3.) Did I *really* hear him suggest a possible storyline in which the Apex teams travel back from Andromeda and help Shepard rebuild Earth? Did he miss the whole "six centuries one way travel time between Milky Way and Andromeda" detail that was mentioned in ME:A?


Assuming that Apex is related to ME, I could see a few possibilities. It could be a squad shooter set in ME:A. From what I understand, the cooperative multi-player aspect of ME:A has been reasonably popular, and the Apex teams that were the focus of that could be the focus of new ME content while Bioware and EA try to decide what to do with the next RPG. Think "Battlefield: Mass Effect". That's just a random example of where options could lead, though. There's no actual reason to believe that's really what EA has planned.

If "Not Dead" is really being used as a tag line for the next ME product, it seems to me that a more reasonable (given the ME3 ending) usage for it would be to indicate that the ME franchise as a whole is "Not Dead", even though the studio that developed ME:A was completely dismantled after that game was released. After all, as noted in the video, that exact message was one of the points made during the last N7 day.

Just some stray thoughts.

Can't imagine they're going to bother with a new ME with Anthem right around the corner and I forget where I read it but they're already working on DA4. If they're working on a new ME it's in the concept stage if not relegated to water-cooler chit chat at this point.

The thing that annoyed me the most about the ME3 ending is that the Control ending completely ignored the fact that EDI's body exists. Like, Shepard just saved EVERYONE, surely some money could be scrounged to make a synthetic body for AI-Shepard to inhabit? Like, the technology is RIGHT THERE. It's been a major plot point throughout all of ME3.

 Frankenberry wrote:
Can't imagine they're going to bother with a new ME with Anthem right around the corner and I forget where I read it but they're already working on DA4. If they're working on a new ME it's in the concept stage if not relegated to water-cooler chit chat at this point.

Funny you should say that. I'm currently watching CohhCarnage mess about with the Anthem beta? demo?
Just launching a mission is a confusing clusterfeth of fancy graphics and misdirection. He was at it for 10 minutes, then was stuck hanging out on loading screens for another 4 minutes, before crashing.
Then got stuck unable to login, stuck on server capacity. So it took him 17 minutes to get into his first expedition, and apparently it took ~30 minutes off camera to get into the game in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51VxBfULnPs
"Flying feels sluggish and inaccurate"

My big question is why wyverns (as in big flying reptiles) explode when shot to death with bullets.

Ooo. Additional loading screens inside the expeditions

Gunplay and combat seem almost exactly like Andromeda, which I find hilarious.

Voss wrote:
Gunplay and combat seem almost exactly like Andromeda, which I find hilarious.

Makes sense. As I mentioned above, my understanding is that the multiplayer in ME:A was reasonably popular. If it's working and people like it, then why mess with it?

Of course, it also suggests some connections between the Anthem development and ME:A development that we were unaware of prior to this. It's unlikely that two teams, working on unrelated projects, "just happened" to come up with a system that works largely the same.

Eumerin wrote:

Voss wrote:
Gunplay and combat seem almost exactly like Andromeda, which I find hilarious.

Makes sense. As I mentioned above, my understanding is that the multiplayer in ME:A was reasonably popular. If it's working and people like it, then why mess with it?

Of course, it also suggests some connections between the Anthem development and ME:A development that we were unaware of prior to this. It's unlikely that two teams, working on unrelated projects, "just happened" to come up with a system that works largely the same.

Well, the latter is easy to explain. Bioware has been using the Frostbite engine as the basis for the last few titles. Changing it would be an unnecessary cost- and the flight mechanics look like an unpolished 'upgrade' of the jumping in Andromeda. (though given the way it looks in Cohhs videos, they did what a lot developers do: flight and swimming are much the same, with some animation tweaks.

It just seems funny given that there were a lot of anti-Andromeda articles complaining specifically about Frostbite, and Anthem looks like more of the same. Except, well, without the Bioware elements.

Voss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

It just seems funny given that there were a lot of anti-Andromeda articles complaining specifically about Frostbite, and Anthem looks like more of the same.

If I had to guess, that's an EA choice. And they're not going to bend on it, no matter how much people complain.

It wasn't last time.
https://www.onlysp.com/bioware-were-not-forced-to-use-frostbite/

Flynn (the developer being talked to) is credited with saying they could have gone with a new in-house engine, Unreal (which was used for ME3 multiplayer) or use Frostbite.

They chose the latter.

We talked internally about three options. We could have burned down Eclipse and started something new internally, we could have gone with Unreal Engine, or we could have picked Frostbite which had shown some really promising results on the rendering side of things and it was multiplayer enabled.”

To be honest, I'm of the opinion that 'publisher/studio interference' is too cheap and easy of an excuse. Though honestly I blame Obsidian for overusing it to excuse almost every mistake of their early years. It was always someone else's fault.

Voss wrote:
the flight mechanics look like an unpolished 'upgrade' of the jumping in Andromeda.

Nope. They're actually quite fluid. The guys who did Titanfall worked on the controls for movement, and it shows. I found the demo quite enjoyable, when the loading screen bug didn't happen. Apparently it's a problem they thought they had fixed before the demo, so their bad on not doing enough testing, but even with that bug I found it very promising.

As for sluggish controls, did the youtuber you heard talking about that ever consider just... turning the sensitivity up in the options menu? I did that first thing, and control as a result it felt fluid and responsive while aiming. The semi-auto battle rifle and shotguns felt really rewarding when you got a solid hit, and the autogun was great for general spraying of bullets.

(though what this has to do with the original topic of the thread, IDK, but still, thre wasn't an anthem topic so whatever)

You could always start a thread. It's a big enough AAA release that it probably deserves its own. It's certainly generating enough videos on youtube at least (for both good and bad reasons).

A follow up to the video link I posted above... the "Apex Legends" might be some sort of a Titanfall without titans battle royale game according to youtubers posting this weekend.

Yeah, the Apex name (referring to the Apex teams in Andromeda) points more likely to a multi-player shooter game rather than another Mass Effect. I would be happy to be wrong about this.