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@Paradigm - That's somewhat of a relief. I've read a few reviews, but most of them are either heavily biased one way or another or focus on glitches and bugs that can reasonably be ironed out. Most of the reviews seem almost obsessed with the fact that it starts off slow - but I kind of guessed that's just societies craving for instant gratification. As long as it feels like the first 6 hours have scope to build up towards something bigger I guess I won't be put off to quickly.

Heh, I didn't mind James Vega - I kind of liked how he always seemed a little awkward and out of his depth around the longer standing members of the crew. But he was certainly no Garrus.

He was certainly no Wrex or even Grunt. Iirc the devs joked that he filled that type of role in the squadmate roster.

I think it was the slightly childish 'Loco' thing and the play-fighting that kind of put me off him. All the other squad-mates seemed to be more natural in their interactions. Even Grunt's informality is easily explained by him being a 2 ton, angry vat-grown wrecking machine.

I'm not really liking Liam Kosta at the moment. Several bits of his dialogue have annoyed me so far. He's meant to come off as jokey and a bit of comic relief at times but it feels very forced, at odds with the tone of the current conversation and he just isn't funny.

Like at one point there's you, him and Cora in a tram. Your character is feeling a bit overwhelmed with their position and events which led them to that position. Cora offers some support and then Liam says something about looking forward to a welcome party with champagne. And it does not work as a "diffuse the tension with humour" thing like Jokers similar dialogue interactions did. Whether that is the script, the voice acting or both, I don't know.


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 Warpig1815 wrote:
I think it was the slightly childish 'Loco' thing and the play-fighting that kind of put me off him. All the other squad-mates seemed to be more natural in their interactions. Even Grunt's informality is easily explained by him being a 2 ton, angry vat-grown wrecking machine.

My femshep always cut Vega's nickname stuff in the bud, where possible. Lola? No, no, no lieutenant. You need to earn the right to refer to her as Shepard rather than commander, let alone by some nickname.

Anyone who's picked this up, how does it play? Because some of the cutscenes look rough

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@Paradigm - That's somewhat of a relief. I've read a few reviews, but most of them are either heavily biased one way or another or focus on glitches and bugs that can reasonably be ironed out. Most of the reviews seem almost obsessed with the fact that it starts off slow - but I kind of guessed that's just societies craving for instant gratification. As long as it feels like the first 6 hours have scope to build up towards something bigger I guess I won't be put off to quickly.

The emphasis on bugs does seem to be the focus of a lot of negativity, and that is starting to annoy me; yes, bugs are objectively a bad thing, but they're also much more infrequent and less obvious than is being suggested (you'll find them if you go looking, but I'd not read any reviews before my first playthrough of the trial and I hardly noticed anything wrong), and don't take away from the fact the combat is brilliant and refreshing, the world design is awesome and the story is compelling (at least as far as I'm concerned). It's really focusing on one tiny facet of much bigger, better picture for the sake of a few clicks and to continue being bitter about the end of ME3.

As for the criticisms of the intro, it's maybe a bit slow compared to the big openings of ME2 and 3, stuff certainly happens, but not anything like Shep getting spaced and resurrected or the Reaper attack on Earth... Those games definitely set out where they were going from the very start, which MEA doesn't. But really that suits the tone a lot better, this is a game built on mystery and exploring the unknown, putting everything on the table from the word go defeats the purpose of that.

Well, no going back now. Pre-order: confirmed. This may put a spanner in the works of my entry for the Unofficial Painting Contest.

Paradigm wrote:

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@Paradigm - That's somewhat of a relief. I've read a few reviews, but most of them are either heavily biased one way or another or focus on glitches and bugs that can reasonably be ironed out. Most of the reviews seem almost obsessed with the fact that it starts off slow - but I kind of guessed that's just societies craving for instant gratification. As long as it feels like the first 6 hours have scope to build up towards something bigger I guess I won't be put off to quickly.

The emphasis on bugs does seem to be the focus of a lot of negativity, and that is starting to annoy me; yes, bugs are objectively a bad thing, but they're also much more infrequent and less obvious than is being suggested (you'll find them if you go looking, but I'd not read any reviews before my first playthrough of the trial and I hardly noticed anything wrong), and don't take away from the fact the combat is brilliant and refreshing, the world design is awesome and the story is compelling (at least as far as I'm concerned). It's really focusing on one tiny facet of much bigger, better picture for the sake of a few clicks and to continue being bitter about the end of ME3.

As for the criticisms of the intro, it's maybe a bit slow compared to the big openings of ME2 and 3, stuff certainly happens, but not anything like Shep getting spaced and resurrected or the Reaper attack on Earth... Those games definitely set out where they were going from the very start, which MEA doesn't. But really that suits the tone a lot better, this is a game built on mystery and exploring the unknown, putting everything on the table from the word go defeats the purpose of that.

It's good to hear a different perspective on MEA other than 'professional' critics - who invariably either blindly enthuse about things or outright deplore them. Personally, I'm never fussed too much by bugs (Unless they're really game breaking), because I gather gak happens when you're programming a 100 hour long interactive and cinematic experience from the ground up - it's reasonable to expect things to go wrong. What defines the game is how the devs respond to the bugs.

A Town Called Malus wrote:I'm not really liking Liam Kosta at the moment. Several bits of his dialogue have annoyed me so far. He's meant to come off as jokey and a bit of comic relief at times but it feels very forced, at odds with the tone of the current conversation and he just isn't funny.

Like at one point there's you, him and Cora in a tram. Your character is feeling a bit overwhelmed with their position and events which led them to that position. Cora offers some support and then Liam says something about looking forward to a welcome party with champagne. And it does not work as a "diffuse the tension with humour" thing like Jokers similar dialogue interactions did. Whether that is the script, the voice acting or both, I don't know.

Yeah, I have to admit I was enthused when I heard there was going to be a British squadmate (Because usually were cast as villains in common tropes), but then I groaned a little when I heard he was going to be from London. With the exception of Assassin's Creed Black Flag, who's pirates featured a number of regional accents, it seems that games developers still haven't figured out that the 'English' accent is much more varied than simply Oxford RP or Cockney 'Geezer'. Voice acting aside, if anything I'm surprised his humour is off as typically British humour revolves around being cheerful or nonchalent in the face of adversity.

I haven't played but from watching the video.. am I the only one that thinks alot of the "armor" in the game looks like motorcycle leathers guys on racing bikes wear? I know they incorporated a new material based visual system but stuff that previously looked like carbon fiber or metal looks leathery now in texture. Not all the armors and clothing but alot of them.

The armour is a fair bit lighter than in the original trilogy, certainly, but I think you can explain that with the change in context; most of the armour you see in 1-3 is on soldiers on the front lines, the Pathfinders and other military personnel in Andromeda are scouts and security operatives rather than actual soldiers; the Initiative is not a military operation, after all.

I noticed that as well. I'm hoping that it's just the base armour and some of the customisation options may provide a heavier set.

For example, this set featured in the reveal trailer:



Or this set (not sure if it's just a fan pic):



I hope, as with ME3, we'll see a bunch of weapons packs released later on as DLC, possibly alongside some armour packs for both the character and squadmates (Again, like ME3).

I think the first picture is of the Dad, due to the N7 logo.

There are a few ways to get N7 armour for Ryder, both the Pathfinder version Alec has and the traditional Shep style set. The former can be researched or bought from one of the Nexus vendors, the latter has to be researched and crafted which requires some pretty rare elements, such as a fair bit of platinum.

Paradigm wrote:The armour is a fair bit lighter than in the original trilogy, certainly, but I think you can explain that with the change in context; most of the armour you see in 1-3 is on soldiers on the front lines, the Pathfinders and other military personnel in Andromeda are scouts and security operatives rather than actual soldiers; the Initiative is not a military operation, after all.

Good points but I just found the surface textures odd. Even some of the Krogans look like they're wearing shiny leather on occasion. I suppose it's just the theme and side effect of the new system. The first game's armor looked dull and rubbery (but I figured that was a limitation of the tech), the second had a carbon fiber feel to most, and the third had traditional "hard" scifi armor. This one seems to start out everyone in brand new Andromeda Initiative Kawasaki riding gear.

Warpig1815 wrote:I noticed that as well. I'm hoping that it's just the base armour and some of the customisation options may provide a heavier set.

It's definitely not all of them so I've chalked it up to the lighter starting gear like in ME1. It's not even consistent within the same armor. Sometimes Cora looks like she's got armor and other times it looks like a leather jump suit in cutscenes depending on the lighting; the krogan (soldier?) in multiplayer on the character select screen closeup looks that way too. In any case, it's definitely not all the armors as I said. Even some of the recent Sara Ryder pics on the customatization menu screen have her in some dark looking hard armor (although for the life of me with a google search I can't find the pic now when I need it!).

Eos is pretty big. You spend a lot of it riding around, and parts of it are still largely inaccessible (for reasons). But from what I can tell, there's a lot of room to play around in on the planet.

I don't know how many other explorable planets will turn up in the game. But if there's more than just a few, then it looks like you're going to have a decent amount of room to play in while doing planetary exploration this time around.

A few hours of playing mean nothing, ME 2 & 3 were perfect since the beginning IMHO but when I played the first one I wasn't satisfied till I played 8-10 hours. I was considering quitting from that game which was incredibly boring and with a gameplay that I didn't like at all (I still think ME1's gameplay is awful), but luckily I gave it some possibilities.

ME andromeda also carries the burden of the comparison between it and the previous trilogy so any judgement can be reliable only if it comes after finishing the entire game.

As someone who just replayed Mass Effect 1 this month, I can confirm that the initial gameplay is indeed awful. Realtime drunken sailor on shoreleave shooting mechanics vs one shot kill geth in that first 10 hours has not been patched since launch.

The upside to that, such as it is, is that making the jump from the end of ME1 to the opening of ME2 and noticing such a profound improvement in the combat feels awesome. If you're like me, and literally just swap over to the ME2 disk and keep going after the end of ME1, that change is so refreshing!

Some of the "background noise" conversations are amusing. Apparently Girl Scout Cookies were still around when the Initiative left Milky Way. And the bunch of them that traveled to Andromeda on Ark Hyperion are a coveted item.

Speaking of conversations, I ran across an interesting bit of lore yesterday. Very minor spoiler:

My copy shipped. Now we play the waiting game...

I finally started messing around with the Strike Missions. Dispatched a strike team, they completed the mission and ranked up, and I got the reward chests. No problem. Well, one problem, actually. I was informed that I'd received a Credit chest, and an item chest. I'm *guessing* that the item chest contained exactly one of the item that was in it. But I don't know for sure. I have no clue how many credits were in the credit chest.

So I figured, time to try out an APEX mission in multi-player mode. I selected the Bronze level APEX mission that was available, and went to the mission screen. The customization settings were locked in (for obvious reasons), but I had the option to either Host or Join a match. Since my internet connection sometimes gets weird, I picked Join.

Things went well until Wave 6 (of 7), when it seemed as if the difficulty suddenly jumped. We wiped on that wave.

That sucked, but no problem otherwise, The APEX mission was still available. So I selected it again. Once more, I picked Join instead of Host. I was put into a group with three others... and two of the members left shortly after I joined. No idea why. I tried again, and this time ended up in a match with just the Host. I waited for a few minutes, but the Matchmaking System didn't put anyone else into the group. So I left. I tried again, and this time I found a group that managed to get the full numbers and launch the mission.

This time we cleared all 7 waves, and got a partial extraction (one of the team members went down literally two seconds before the Extraction completed).

Yeah! Mission Complete! Went to check the rewards, and...

No rewards. The Pathfinder crates I was supposed to get as a reward weren't there.

My guess is that Bioware has decided that unless YOU host the match, it doesn't count for your APEX Strike mission. There's nothing to indicate that, but it's the only thing that makes sense. With this in mind, I went back to the Strike mission selection screen, picked the same APEX mission again (it was still there), and selected Host. And then I waited. And waited.

After waiting more than five minutes, I still had no other players in my match. So I quit.

Based on what I've seen, I'm guessing that Bioware decided to "encourage" players to Host missions by only making Pathfinder rewards available in multi-player missions when you Host the mission. The problem is that this then encourages everyone to Host their own match, which means that no one is joining other matches, which means that if you try and Host a match (so that you can get the APEX rewards), no one joins unless you fill the match up with friends.

If that's not the case, then I'm completely in the dark as to why I didn't get my APEX rewards.


Edit - It should be noted again that my conclusions are purely speculation. I don't know why I didn't get any rewards. I'm just guessing. But my theory is the only one that makes sense to me at this time.

Unless it's a bug, of course...

Currently preloading the game now.
So, to me, the big question is: Who is voiced better, the male or female protagonist? That's probably going to be my deciding factor. My first playthrough of ME was with the male Shepard, and the second time was with the female, and of course Jennifer Hale was leaps and bounds better. Same thing when it came time to play Fallout 4, I felt the female character's voice was better.
So, who is better in this one?

Having played through all the story in the trial as both, I come down on the side of Male Ryder being the better voice actor. Not that Female Ryder is necessarily bad, but at times her delivery lacks some 'oomph' and/or come across as a little nonchalant or whimsical. Even with the more casual dialogue choices, male Ryder seems a little more convincing and committed. Given you mentioned Fallout 4, it's kind of the reverse of that, I always found the male voice in that to be a bit more whimsical and the female a little more invested in the role.

It's worth noting the two do have slightly different personalities, but not drastically so, there are a few lines that are different but nothing that really changes the direction of a conversation or limits your personality choices.

Eumerin wrote:
Eos is pretty big. You spend a lot of it riding around, and parts of it are still largely inaccessible (for reasons). But from what I can tell, there's a lot of room to play around in on the planet.

I don't know how many other explorable planets will turn up in the game. But if there's more than just a few, then it looks like you're going to have a decent amount of room to play in while doing planetary exploration this time around.

Only problem I found was that after completing most of the missions on the planet up to the stop point in the trial, I couldn't really find anything left to do there. By that I mean I couldn't find anything to fight or shoot that provided any challenge. Had the same issue in the Mad Max game, where the best part of the game was taking out caravans of enemy cars. But once you killed them all there was no good fight left to find in the open world. Thats the problem with making an open world game, where you can keep playing after the main story ends...you need to make sure enemies can still spawn in some places or idk...

Exploring these planets for the first time will be fun, second time and after...not so much. One thing that never gets old is replaying a great story, which is why ME2 was so beloved along with the OT in general.

I'm also not sure why they are trying to target a younger audience with this more lighthearted game, considering most of the people who are ME fans are now five years older than they were when ME3 came out. Doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I'm not just talking about the banter and writing, the entire look of the game is very PG and not as gritty and lacks the dark shadows and seedy spirit some areas that the OT had. I also have not seen any evidence of the full nudity stuff either.

 Thargrim wrote:
[I also have not seen any evidence of the full nudity stuff either.

?

The only nudity that the first game had in it was some quick images during the sex scene. IIRC, the second and third games didn't even have that. I'm not sure why you're expecting to see any nudity during the preview.

As for gritty...

The preview is just the preview. It only contains the first bits of the game. There are hints that not everything will be straightforward once we get past the initial stages. But we barely have any of the game available right now.

And lighthearted?

Eumerin wrote:

 Thargrim wrote:
[I also have not seen any evidence of the full nudity stuff either.

?

The only nudity that the first game had in it was some quick images during the sex scene. IIRC, the second and third games didn't even have that. I'm not sure why you're expecting to see any nudity during the preview.

I think he's referring to the comment from one of the devs rejoicing jokingly the upgrade to full nudity warning in the esrb rating a month back as well as comments by devs that casual (and multiple) sexual encounters would be in the game. With that in mind and the myriad of comments about in game romances this year, I don't think it's unreasonable to see a hint of it in the preview.

I believe the exact comment used by the various devs on Twitter was "#prettygoodbanging"...

I got about 7 or 8 hours in before i hit the plot stopping point for the trial. I'm pretty happy with what I saw so far and don't regret breaking my post Colonial Marines rule of "no pre-orders".

Some of the animations are a bit goofy but I the whole kerfuffle over that seems like a really big mountain out of a very small molehill.

The character creator is legitimately terrible, though. I found 90% of the base characters to be fairly ugly and the sliders only take you so far from that 2/10 starting point.

I found combat OK, sometimes fairly challenging. I imagine that will change as I get better weapons/skills.

Whoever wrote this dialogue needs to be fired, immediately. Same goes for the person directing the voice acting work. The whole delivery of the line is awful, there's no space in it which makes it sound like it was cobbled together from multiple different cuts and badly.

Lots of reviews up this morning on youtube. Overall, it seems like the consensus is ok to good but definitely not great nor bad. A step back from the trilogy despite the five years in between in terms of story and polish.

I haven't played it myself but from some of the spoilers and points in the reviews it sounds like a Stargate Atlantis to the original trilogy's SG-1.


Edit: final boss battle videos already online. It's... disappointing. Not marauder shields ME3 bad but certainly not the badass cinematic end that ME1/2 had.