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Eumerin wrote:

 Frankenberry wrote:
so it wasn't like you could even get everything maxed in one play through.

I think that was the point. You weapon rank upgrades carried over between playthroughs, and IIRC (and it's been a long time, so I could be wrong) they were also shared with your multi-player profile.

I completely forgot about that! I guess if you played enough, you could eventually max out every weapon.

Paradigm wrote:I think ME2 did weapons since you started with a sufficient variety (pretty sure every class got pistols and SMGs at standard, so you at least had options for different targets) and could get the extra unlock later in the game to tailor your playstyle.

In 3, it was nice to have all the options from the start, I found especially with playthroughs where I was emphasising powers that I'd typically only take 2 weapons at a time anyway for the more efficient power usage. I did enjoy the weapon customisation in 3 a lot, though.

Ultimately, though, so long as I can have something akin to the M6 Carnifex, preferably with Cryo Ammo, I'll be perfectly content! I think an equally interesting question is how the classes are going to break down, and if they're going to keep the old ones or tweak them all slightly.

I was a fan of the weapon customization in 3 as well, and I liked the 'loadout effects how your powers work' aspect to it too.

As for the classes, I imagine they'll have the soldier, or maybe reclassified as the 'pathfinder'? Have to have a pure biotic one because...space mages are cool as hell. I would't mind an engineer class that actually did something other than summon a ball of angry energy as it's big 'wow' skill though.

They'll still have a soldier.

Pathfinder is probably going to be treated as this game's version of Specter.

Perhaps they will do classes in new ways. Hopefully combat gets an upgrade to be a little quicker and mobile.

Super stoked for ME4 multiplayer. I have been playing ME3 multiplayer constantly since it became playable on XBone.

I think the combat will go that way, it's been getting steadily more refined and more significant across all 3 games so far.

In 1, you do the shooting to get through the plot, in 2 you have the fantastic narrative coupled with excellent mechanics and that's what makes it so fantastic, by 3 you have an actual mode in the options to turn off conversation options and just play it as a shooter, the combat is that big a part of it (not sure why you ever would, but the option is there!).

With Andromeda adding the jetpack as well, I think mobility and dynamic combat are going to be a big focus.

New trailer with lots of actual gameplay.




Looks absolutely stunning. Combat definitely looks a lot more varied, and some of those new abilities look very nice, like the Biotic Shield which always came up in cutscenes in the originals but that you could never really do. Not-Mako looks much more manageable, and I like the idea of the crafting system, it'll be interesting to see how much their is to that. I'd guess not as much as Fallout 4, but something close to that would be nice.

Going back to the race discussion, that's definitely Krogan confirmed, and I'm pretty sure I saw a brief glimpses of a Drell and a Batarian in the walk through the port... Still no sign of Quarians yet, but if the others are there I assume they'd have to be.

Another video giving some info on how they plan to reach a new galaxy and survive.




So we have seen Krogans, Turians, Asari and Salarians, but still no Quarians. Which is strange because they would be a pretty useful species for long voyages, seeing as they live on ships their entire lives.

I'm willing to bet that the Quarians will be like the Krogans are, and be dispersed across all 4 arcs or they'll turn up in a a sequel. As the departure point is pre-ME3 (Hence before the vast expenditure on the crucible), we don't yet know if the Andromeda Initiative had built any other arcs, to follow on in a few years after the initial exploration force had left. Assuming it's a uniform time delay to travel between galaxies (After all, there's no warp trickery in Mass Effect!), if they left a few years after the first wave, they would arrive a few years after the first wave.

Personally, I think it's best to let the original trilogy's story rest, and setting it in a new galaxy is perfect. Similarly, I'm fine with them not shoehorning old characters in or even resurrecting Shepard. However, the trouble is that they are at some point going to have to address the ME3 ending 'problem'.As seen in the 'Andromeda Initiative Orientation Briefing' video, the stated aim is not only to colonise Andromeda, but also to seek a reliable route back to the Milky Way. Hence, regardless as to whether it's the morning after the Reaper War, 600 years later or even 1200 years later (The return journey being 600 years as well), if a route is to be established back to the Milky Way, then an explanation will be necessary as to what happened to the Milky Way.

IMHO, the only problem the ending of ME3 caused was not in the respective choices or their narrative (Ppersonally I always pick the red ending, but all endings are valid), but rather that if you wish to continue Mass Effect as a series and include the Milky Way then you have to either pick an ending and run with it (Thus upsetting a chunk of fans who chose another ending) or you have to acknowledge all endings simultaneously (Which would be very hard to write) or you have to create a whole new ending to ME3 that discounts the original endings as false (I guess this is where the indoctrination theory comes in). Regardless, at some point ME:Andromeda or it's sequels will have to address this if the current plot is to be retained.

Nevertheless, I am looking forward to ME:A immensely.

It doesn't really have to address it at all, or if it does address it, it can just use your end-game save from ME3 to do so in the form of ancient news reports-- and even that's pushing it. Simply put, the game takes place in Andromeda and doesn't need to interact with the Milky Way.

@Melissia - Actually, I was wrong. I had been going by the plot summary of Andromeda on the mass effect wiki, which says the aim of the initiative is to set up a link back to the Milky Way. In fact, none of the currently released info or videos makes any mention of that - its just misinformation. So apologies for that. I suppose if Bioware wish to return ME to the Milky Way at some point in the future, then the above points still stand - but personally I'm more than happy to let sleeping dogs lie and see what Andromeda has to offer.

I'm hoping the customisation is improved - one of the thimgs I liked most from ME3 ability to customise more than just the standard torso and legs combo that most games opt for. Ideally I'd like to see complete customisation of every armour section, with independant left and right options - but I doubt there would be funding or time for that level of depth.

Even if they had intended to set up a return route, that could be hand-waved away by having the expedition receive a garbled warning via their quantum entanglement communicators just before the linked devices that are in the Milky Way are destroyed.

600 years later everyone wakes up, discovers something horrible happened in the Milky Way Galaxy and realize that maybe those rumors about Reapers were true. And then they decide not to return to the Milky Way just on the off-chance that the scouts who return accidentally run into Reaper forces who backtrack the scouts to the Andromeda Galaxy and kill everyone.

The crafting system has me excited - although I'm sure it won't go as in-depth as I'm sure we all want it to (not a bad thing mind you).

So far, it looks beautiful - I think I'll end up spending WAY too long working on a character, as I'm sure we all will.

As far as the Milky Way, I'm sure it'll be mentioned throughout the game, but if they want to have multiple games (as I'm sure they do), they could just evolve THAT story as they progress. No need to have everything hammered out in the first 15 minutes of the first game - besides, how cool would it be to get a haunting message from say...Shepard, towards the end of the game saying something along the lines of: "Don't come back. They're here. The Reapers are here."? If they do it that way, the Andromeda(Andromedan?) based races will just sob into their space coffee and start colonizing - eliminating the need to include the Milky Way at all.

Urgh, I hope the crafting system isn't god-awful like most of them are.

One of the most enjoyable crafting or customisation systems I've come across was for Halo: Reach. For those of you who may not have played it, you could choose different options for Head, Torso, Arms, Legs, Knees, Shoulders and Accessories. Alongside that, some of those options got separate left and right options and other options such as the helmet had further additions to add on. In all, you could easily do 10 play-throughs and provided you had unlocked all the options, you'd never have the same look each time.

If Andromeda was to go down that route and expand upon it to include separate upper and lower arm/leg options and separate left right options - it would be near as damn perfect. I'm kind of hoping that once the main game is out, we get a few DLC packs solely devoted to customisation of armour and weapons, as I appreciate that the bulk of time will be spent on the campaign and game-play.

Frankenberry wrote:So far, it looks beautiful - I think I'll end up spending WAY too long working on a character, as I'm sure we all will.

One of the more interesting things I've heard is that they've dropped the Renegade/Paragon system and the specialisations. From what I gather, there'll be more of a focus on ambiguity and grey areas in decisions, although I think I remember reading that interrupts will still be a thing (Not sure though). Skills will end up being more like Skyrim, with players not being bound into one class or another, but able to allocate points all across the board and able to reallocate them at will. I'm not sure what to make of that as Skyrim's skills were very hit and miss. Some were great, such as the archery tree, whilst others (Such as Speechcraft) were overlooked in favour of more useful areas. Here's to hoping that Andromeda will be able to strike a balance.

There are definitely still interrupts, there's one in the video up the page, but it seems to be less paragon/renegade as locking/unlocking certain dialogue options, eg you can't interrupt to punch someone in the face then choose what would be a Paragon option for your next dialogue choice, and in the example shown, performing the interrupt to disarm the guard appeared to open up a less confrontational dialogue choice.

I do like that they clearly label what an interrupt action does now though, in the original trilogy is it was a 50/50 tossup s to whether you were going to coerce someone with a threat or kick them off the 50th story window. It's like the Sarcastic option in Fallout 4, until you press it you never know if you're going to make a witty joke or be horribly racist about Synths. So yeah, I like the idea of context-based interrupts over the Paragon/Renegade.

I'd be surprised if they dropped classes altogether. I know one of the previous teasers mentioned Pathfinder training included combat, tech and biotic training as part of the process, but I'd imagine there'd still be some built-in restrictions and specialisations as that's such a staple of the series so far. While if the skills are open you can build a specialist if you so choose, I think it was best when playing a certain class meant you got abilities that were otherwise impossible to get even as bonus/squad powers, like the cloaking or the Biotic Charge. That always made every class feel nice and distinct in how it played, I think.

@Paradigm - I'm not sure that it'll be a total scrap of the class system, but I gather it'll be something more fluid. Obviously, there's not yet been a lot of concrete info released, so it's more just bits I glean from here and there whenever I feel like looking up when it's going to be released. Anyway, I don't know how trustworthy IGN are - but here's where I found the quote relating to skills:

http://uk.ign.com/wikis/mass-effect-andromeda

Take with whatever saline seasoning you feel necessary.

On something totally different, but still related - I'm interested as to why they would bother adding Krogan. Obviously it's because they're popular with fans, but from an in-universe POV, they're still very much a dying race at this point. Assuming they all survive the 600 year journey, they're going to be dead in the next 600 years anyway with no way of continuing their race - so why bother wasting the resources keeping them alive on the way over?

Ah, hadn't seen that compilation of info, cheers for the link.

As far as the Krogan go, I think it's basically the same reason most Krogan in the originals made successful careers as mercs. Their species might not have a future, but while they are around they're damn good at killing stuff. With no real prospect of family or any legacy to pass on, I imagine they were encouraged to join up with the Andromeda initiative for that reason, to them it's potentially new and exciting stuff to kill and to the rest, it's some very deadly expendable muscle in case things go awry with whatever species the initiative encounters that might need shotgunning in the face.

The cynic in me also thinks that in-universe, bringing the Krogan despite their lack of prospects for colonisation is kind of the point. The Council Raves are still very anti-Krogan at the time the initiative launches, so if they can get rid of a bunch of them from the Milky Way that's a win, and the future colonists of Andromeda won't need to worry about them as they'll all be dead a few centuries after they reach their destination.

I'm kind of hoping the Krogan will get a Genophage cure at some point in Andromeda. The prospect of having to weather another trilogy of sullen reptiles bitching about their impotency leaves me cold - even if I did root for them all the way through the original trilogy. Perhaps Maelon came along for the ride. Apparently, they plan to address the lack of females (Other than Humans/Asari) shown in previous ME games - it would be interesting to see if they include more female Krogan, to 'civilise' the male Krogan on the arks.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
... but still no Quarians. Which is strange because they would be a pretty useful species for long voyages, seeing as they live on ships their entire lives.

Yeah, but Quarians are also extremely community-oriented. One of their worst punishments is to be banished from the flotilla. So, any Quarians going along on this journey would have to be the ones who can live with the fact that they will never return home. I'm sure we'll see a few, but expect there to be an emphasis ingame as to why there would be few.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
... but still no Quarians. Which is strange because they would be a pretty useful species for long voyages, seeing as they live on ships their entire lives.

Yeah, but Quarians are also extremely community-oriented. One of their worst punishments is to be banished from the flotilla. So, any Quarians going along on this journey would have to be the ones who can live with the fact that they will never return home. I'm sure we'll see a few, but expect there to be an emphasis ingame as to why there would be few.

You have to remember though, that Quarians undertake a pilgrimage in their formative years and these pilgrimages can last several years, really as many years as it takes to find something useful to the Fleet. The trip to Andromeda is like the ultimate pilgrimage - it may take centuries to return to the fleet, but the rewards may totally outweigh the hardship. In any case, the Quarians have adopted a very long-sighted view of life. Their culture and every action is devoted to eventually retaking their planet from the Geth and that's been 300 years in the making. Furthermore, they were pushed into retaking Rannoch only because of the impending threat of galactic destruction - they didn't want to spend their last days dreaming of their planet, they'd rather go out in a blaze of glory.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
I'm kind of hoping the Krogan will get a Genophage cure at some point in Andromeda. The prospect of having to weather another trilogy of sullen reptiles bitching about their impotency leaves me cold - even if I did root for them all the way through the original trilogy. Perhaps Maelon came along for the ride. Apparently, they plan to address the lack of females (Other than Humans/Asari) shown in previous ME games - it would be interesting to see if they include more female Krogan, to 'civilise' the male Krogan on the arks.

I know I sound like a troll, but I will die a happy man if I can romance a Krogan.

Developers at BioWare have confirmed that not only will romances return, but they will not be limited by predesignated character sexual orientations.

This worries me. Having characters be straight or gay or bisexual (or Asari ) can be something important to who they are as a person and influence their interactions with other characters. In ME3 you had the playful back and forth banter (basically flirting, let's be honest) between Vega and Cortez, Traynor finding EDI's voice sexy and the hilariously awkward pickup lines which a maleshep would try if attempting to romance her. These small aspects of character behaviour and personality go a long way to making the characters feel like real people, in my opinion.

Programming such small personality quirks to work no matter what sexual orientation is going to be very difficult without having to sacrifice them into something more bland.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frankenberry wrote:
I know I sound like a troll, but I will die a happy man if I can romance a Krogan.

Hey, if Bioware didn't want us to want to get with a Krogan then they shouldn't have made the main Krogan characters so goddamn awesome!

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Developers at BioWare have confirmed that not only will romances return, but they will not be limited by predesignated character sexual orientations.

This worries me. Having characters be straight or gay or bisexual (or Asari ) can be something important to who they are as a person and influence their interactions with other characters. In ME3 you had the playful back and forth banter (basically flirting, let's be honest) between Vega and Cortez, Traynor finding EDI's voice sexy and the hilariously awkward pickup lines which a maleshep would try if attempting to romance her. These small aspects of character behaviour and personality go a long way to making the characters feel like real people, in my opinion.

Programming such small personality quirks to work no matter what sexual orientation is going to be very difficult without having to sacrifice them into something more bland.

Personally, I think I'd be happy these days if there was something in the options to just allow you to turn off the romance options. It was a neat little extra in Baldur's Gate 2. And they were decent up through ME1 (and the ME1 continuation romances *only* in ME3). But after ME1, forget it. I could do without them entirely, and I find them annoying. The fact that the romance options in conversations have gotten increasingly clumsy only makes matters worse. Anders in DA2 was the flagrant example of Bioware's botched romance conversations (where you literally had to tell him off during your first conversation with him if you didn't want a romantic relationship with him). But the new romances since then generally haven't felt much better.

At least part of the fanbase appears to disagree, though, given that toward the end of the time when I visited the Bioware forums, over half the posts were from what I tend to refer to as the "romance mafia".

Oh, and Bioware already did the "not limited by predesignated character sexual orientation" thing in DA2. It got panned, iirc.

I dunno what to make of that. On the one hand, Mass Effect is a science fiction universe and therefore, things being more open isn't that big of a deal.

On the other hand, their orientation *IS* a part of a characters, well, character and can be relevant to their story / background. - The perfect example with this is Dorien from Dragon Age: Inquisition.

I'd probably go with a concept of, "characters do have their own sexual orientations, however being bi is very much a possible option, and may, considering the game and players fondness for romances, may even be the expected/default one for a teammember."

I can take or leave the Romance option, so I'm not too fussed either way. That said, by not locking specific characters to specific sexual orientations it does kind of remove the sense of immersion. For them to replace the romance system with a more Skyrim-esque type of romance (Where you can more or less ask anybody for a set pool of candidates, male or female, to marry you and they will unconditionally accept regardless of your gender), seems a massive step backwards. It's possibly the laziest option you can implement in an RPG - there's no challenge, no potential to fail, no.. romance. Rather than invest some time into building up an NPC's backstory, personality, motivations and preferences and then determine orientation from that, just to blanket them all with what amounts to an 'open for business' sign seems... lax.

That said, all the previous ME games have had little changes here and there, but all have still been been excellent - I can't think that they would willingly throw a winning formula clean out the window by making such sweeping changes to everything that people enjoyed in the first 3. I'm willing to bet that the changes to Romance, Paragon/Renegade and the Class system aren't quite as radical as we're all fearing, and where they do change, I reckon they'll still be semi-familiar.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
I can take or leave the Romance option, so I'm not too fussed either way. That said, by not locking specific characters to specific sexual orientations it does kind of remove the sense of immersion. For them to replace the romance system with a more Skyrim-esque type of romance (Where you can more or less ask anybody for a set pool of candidates, male or female, to marry you and they will unconditionally accept regardless of your gender), seems a massive step backwards. It's possibly the laziest option you can implement in an RPG - there's no challenge, no potential to fail, no.. romance. Rather than invest some time into building up an NPC's backstory, personality, motivations and preferences and then determine orientation from that, just to blanket them all with what amounts to an 'open for business' sign seems... lax.

I suspect it's due at least in part to the "romance mafia" that I mentioned above. Pretty much any character who has had any real presence in a Bioware game probably had at least one post demanding (yes, demanding) that the character be made romanceable with a sexual orientation that matched up to the poster's character, no matter how inappropriate that might be for the character in question. More prominent characters end up with threads that are dozens of pages long demanding the same thing.

Eumerin wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Developers at BioWare have confirmed that not only will romances return, but they will not be limited by predesignated character sexual orientations.

This worries me. Having characters be straight or gay or bisexual (or Asari ) can be something important to who they are as a person and influence their interactions with other characters. In ME3 you had the playful back and forth banter (basically flirting, let's be honest) between Vega and Cortez, Traynor finding EDI's voice sexy and the hilariously awkward pickup lines which a maleshep would try if attempting to romance her. These small aspects of character behaviour and personality go a long way to making the characters feel like real people, in my opinion.

Programming such small personality quirks to work no matter what sexual orientation is going to be very difficult without having to sacrifice them into something more bland.

Personally, I think I'd be happy these days if there was something in the options to just allow you to turn off the romance options. It was a neat little extra in Baldur's Gate 2. And they were decent up through ME1 (and the ME1 continuation romances *only* in ME3). But after ME1, forget it. I could do without them entirely, and I find them annoying. The fact that the romance options in conversations have gotten increasingly clumsy only makes matters worse. Anders in DA2 was the flagrant example of Bioware's botched romance conversations (where you literally had to tell him off during your first conversation with him if you didn't want a romantic relationship with him). But the new romances since then generally haven't felt much better.

At least part of the fanbase appears to disagree, though, given that toward the end of the time when I visited the Bioware forums, over half the posts were from what I tend to refer to as the "romance mafia".

Oh, and Bioware already did the "not limited by predesignated character sexual orientation" thing in DA2. It got panned, iirc.

The ones which I thought were best were Garrus/femshep and Tali/maleshep. The fact that the romantic aspect of it didn't start until the second game made it way more believable as an actual love story as the characters had way more history with each other and time to actually get to know each other as people separate to the battlefield before becoming romantically involved. And Garrus certainly wasn't foisted on you as a romance option as his automatic route through the conversations. The line to start pursuing a romance with him rather than friendship was very obvious so people who didn't want to go that route wouldn't accidentally end up on that path.

Garrus and Tali did have an advantage in being crew members in all three games, which gave them more opportunities for character development in the series which paid off, in my opinion.

And yeah, the DA2 romances were pretty bad because it didn't matter what sex you were, they all played out the same way from what I remember. So it didn't really feel personal to your character, at least in my experience.

@Eumerin - No doubt. It's a common trend now to assume your opinion is the only one that matters and to lump everybody under convenient labels like 'Feminist', 'Misogynist', 'Homophobic' or 'Racist'. It seems that people have forgotten that coins have two sides, and both sides are legal tender...

As for romances, I rather think more thought needs to be put into Xeno-relationships. Asari, I understand (Who doesn't! ), but a Human-Turian relationship - they aren't even made of the same basic building blocks of life. I'm not sure what the long term relationship goal is there... One things for certain though, I'm not missing any romance option with Vorcha. Ugh.

Oh goodie, "mafia" used as a descriptive term for people who have opinions different than yours.

Can we not?

I honestly think it's an understandable approach to the whole 'sex in space/future' topic that was eventually going to be a thing. I appreciate the more subtle dialogue bits that you had between say, Vega and Cortez (who didn't love those), and I think it adds something to overall feel of the game.

I don't think that post means that they're going to do away with that sort of dialogue, but I admit I don't actually know what they mean. Maybe that it doesn't matter what sex you choose the options will remain the same? I.e. MRhyder/FRhyder have access to all of the same romance options period instead of some being off-limits? Which seems more intrusive in the overall game.../shrug

Different topic though: I was a massive fan of the ME3 multiplayer when it was still a thing (yeah, I know it's back on PC and current consoles) - does anyone play now (playing on a Xbone for those that are)?

Since we're on the topic of romance in video games, I thought this would be relevant.