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CottonWolf posted:The game does have a strong ending. Indeed, everyone is happy when the game is over.
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Apr 2, 2017 04:53
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Android Blues posted:I don't have an issue with the pulpiness. The basic building blocks are where it's lacking. One of the big problems is you're just being lead by the nose through someone else's story instead of forging your own. There's a few rare places where you can make decisions, but they don't have the same weight as the original because all they do is keep the same status-quo regardless of what you pick. There's no over-bearing worry as to how this might gently caress you down the line, or even in the sequels, like in the original trilogy. I choose a science or a military outpost. No-one comments either way about what you chose beyond a minor protest on the Nexus. You choose to keep Sloane in charge instead of Reyes. Either way, you get an outpost and it's defended just fine. The only one that's maybe got any weight is choosing whether or not to let the Krogans keep the drive core in exchange for an Outpost, and even it's a stupid binary choice of extremes because it's "the Krogans are happy and join the Nexus once more with no repercussions" or "The Krogans are angry and hate you forever and ever, go away NERD SPECIES!  ". There's no subtlety, only Morda suddenly not wanting to declare war on the Nexus. Instead she just wants to power New Tuchanka with it because it's all a big understanding. Pinky-swear, promise!
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Apr 2, 2017 04:59
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the ending of this game is real
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Apr 2, 2017 05:00
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I think I've put my finger on the chief thing about the story that bothers me: I don't understand why. Why Andromeda? Now, I as a human being sitting in a computer chair at a computer playing a video game, understand why. It's because Bioware  ed themselves into a loving mess at the end of ME3 and the easiest way to steer clear of that mess was "nope, we're out". Turns out basically blowing up the galaxy isn't the best way to set the stage for future games in the franchise.But, in lore, why are any of these people here? How did Jien Garson and Alec Ryder convince 100,000 people to basically just say "goodbye" to everything they've ever known and loved and set sail on a massive journey across dark space to a galaxy on basically a 'maybe'? Did none of these people say "hmm, I know they're promising a big deal and I do like adventure, but what if something goes wrong, what's the plan then"? Knowing full well that basically if something did go wrong, the end result is most likely death? It's, like, if someone walked up to me and said "hey, we're gonna send you to Mars, it's gonna be great, we've got it all figured out, you're going to make the planet yours and start a colony and become Martians, doesn't that sound great?" Well, to be fair I'd probably say "no", but even if I were interested my first response would be "okay, good, can I come home?" and they just say "no", I'd probably nope right out again. Even if I were inclined I'd inevitably ask "well, okay, what if something goes wrong, what's your plan?" and they just say "oh, it's okay, nothing will go wrong." I'd ask "but what if it does, can you guarantee it?" and they say "well, just improvise, like in the Martian", I'd immediately slam the door. At that point I'd figure I was being taken by a conman and I'd find a cardboard "Marz Shutel" if I found anything at all. I know, the story is supposed to be adventure and uplifting, and "space is great" and exploration, but it's not really being examined who exactly the people who would sign up for this are? Everyone's just like "I wanted a fresh start and an adventure", and I'm like "okay, the Milky Way is big, you couldn't have just moved to some colony on the other side of the galaxy and gotten your fresh start? You took a one-way ticket 600 years away, in cryosleep, because this woman basically promised you 'everything's gonna be great, we'll all be kings and be super rich and gently caress all the hot space babes and nothing will go wrong'. Okay, are you desperate or running from people?" And if things went wrong the plan was "well let's improvise and if we fail we all die of starvation or something". The thing that bothers me the most is that in the lore it's presented that this was this visionary ideal presented by Garson and lots of people flocked to it for the adventure, and while a few would easily sign up for adventure, I think it'd be a lot of desperate, pathetic losers (like Redditors) to basically say goodbye forever to your family, friends, home, cat, everything you know and love, everything you've ever met, just because of "adventure". To be fair, they do do a bit of that with the mutineers and such who wake up to discover "poo poo's hosed" and start feeling that way, but they could do more with it. Like why wouldn't you ask that before you left? And the Quarians supposedly have built an Ark? A group of people who, at the current time of departure, were space nomads who needed every resource to keep their massive failing flotilla of hand-me-downs moving along? I think I'd have liked it if Garson was basically an eccentric loudmouth who couldn't get funding, and then all of a sudden conveniently a few years later some convenient funding poured in, and nobody was really sure who (it was the Council governments playing an insurance card incase the Reaper War went really bad), and some people got "volunteered", and the entire point was that there was no plan. It was an attempt to ensure that, if the Reapers ripped everything to shreds, at least some humans, turians, salarians, and asari would survive. So they threw things together and sent them away and said "if this works and you don't hear from us when you get there build a civilization and come back and take the galaxy back from the yahg and other species". I know I selected Male Shepard, and there has been no mention of Shepard yet, nor Reapers, but it just bugs me that they severed so completely from the original trilogy that they can't tie the why in when it matches perfectly. I think an amusing thing is yeah, I get why it's Andromeda, it's a sexy title, but given that we're not exploring Andromeda in its entirety (cause no Relays), couldn't it have been set in one of the dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way? And dealt with the idea of severing ties with saying "we're not going that far, if poo poo's bad we can bail pretty easily". I guess Mass Effect Large Magellanic Cloud isn't as much "oomph" as Mass Effect Andromeda. Plus, it annoys me that we're the invaders here, but we're presented as "we're not imperialist assholes at all and we want to be friends with everyone (except the Kett because they really ARE gigantic assholes)", but that's not really touched on. The angara used to have a stellar empire before the scourge, and they've been fighting off the kett, but it'd be a pretty good story beat for them to say 'okay, you're helping us with the kett.... then what? You came all this way for a new home... and what does that mean for the people who live here?' I mean, I understand, rah rah good guys, especially after the dark-bordering-on-grimdark that was ME3, but there's a lot of neat themes here that are just set aside. I haven't beaten the game, not even close yet, so maybe these do get touched on (I have doubts, though, what with the quality of the writing so far).
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Apr 2, 2017 05:09
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I don't know why they didn't go with "this was an expedition because we thought we wouldn't win against The Reapers." It makes a lot of things make a lot of sense.
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Apr 2, 2017 05:13
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Sky Shadowing posted:I think I've put my finger on the chief thing about the story that bothers me: have you considered reading this thread from 400 pages ago
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Apr 2, 2017 05:13
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After a second thought, why the gently caress are the Nexus exiling anyone at all? We're in the middle of a loving new galaxy, and dumping people out the door means they're taking a ship with them. It's not like they already had a lovely planet picked out and were going "gently caress you, we're dumping your rear end on Kadara. Eat poo poo, don't come back". There's also the massive question of First Contact situations when they're wandering around in their own ships, because thanks to Tann we had the Angara's first encounter with the Milky Way races being through the loving Exiles and having to clean that mess up. Why not just shove them right back into their Stasis Pod for a couple years until you've got poo poo sorted to handle them better?
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Apr 2, 2017 05:18
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In the interest of...I dunno, something...my friend and I were talking today and agreed that this game doesn't have enough "fail conditions." As in, there's not really enough ways to make things go badly for yourself or others. Most decisions in this game just result in one outcome...or another outcome that's a bit different but not worse. I understand that they were trying to step away from more obvious, "you obviously want this/you obviously don't want this" choices, but there's got to have been a happier medium. The way that things stand, you can go through the game making zero planets viable other than Eos, and the game is still going to end with all planets being fixed by space magic anyway. There's no way to actually fail. It doesn't have to be failure in major story-altering ways, either. But consider: what if there were ways to "fail" at your relationships based on your personality type? What if Peebee or Gil won't like if you're too formal all the time, or Jaal won't like it if you don't let your feelings show more often? That'd be an interesting way to adapt the "alignment-based" relationship-blocks from some of the earlier Bioware games, where Viconia doesn't like good guys or whatever.
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Apr 2, 2017 05:18
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Sky Shadowing posted:
They do get touched on. Do the Ryder Family Secret questline.
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Apr 2, 2017 05:27
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Chill Nazi Frog posted:I like how Elaaden and Eos have these morally-taxing water scarcity plot beats when Voldt is a loving ice planet which you have already settled. Any idea of bringing water from one planet to another is completely laughable (the "economy" of Voeldt's outpost) in the first place when there is an abundance of ice everywhere in the universe, where you don't have to bring it out of a gravity well first. It's easier and cheaper to mine water from an asteroid in the Eos-system than bring it out of Voeldt.
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Apr 2, 2017 05:53
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Decius posted:Any idea of bringing water from one planet to another is completely laughable (the "economy" of Voeldt's outpost) in the first place when there is an abundance of ice everywhere in the universe, where you don't have to bring it out of a gravity well first. It's easier and cheaper to mine water from an asteroid in the Eos-system than bring it out of Voeldt. I think you're forgetting the basic fundamentals of Mass Effect fields that negate that issue.
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Apr 2, 2017 05:54
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I think you're forgetting the basic fundamentals of Mass Effect fields that negate that issue. The Mass Effect fields cost valuable Ezo and H3 to make. Or a Biotic.
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Apr 2, 2017 05:59
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Decius posted:The Mass Effect fields cost valuable Ezo and H3 to make. Or a Biotic. Considering even the Exiles are throwing interstellar Shuttle flights around like candy, I'm pretty sure the fuel and eezo expenses are negligible. This isn't exactly pushing a NASA payload into orbit here.
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Apr 2, 2017 06:03
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Sky Shadowing posted:I haven't beaten the game, not even close yet, so maybe these do get touched on (I have doubts, though, what with the quality of the writing so far). Yeah, they get touched on. There is an element of mystery that they try to build up about certain things, and the Angarans definitely aren't comfortable with your presence overall. I don't find it unbelievable at all that they'd get volunteers for the initiative though. If there's a thing, a certain percentage of people will be into it, no matter how stupid or hosed up it is. There are trillions of people in the milky way, it's not much of a stretch that they could get like 100,000 of them to buy into it.
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Apr 2, 2017 06:07
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Considering even the Exiles are throwing interstellar Shuttle flights around like candy, I'm pretty sure the fuel and eezo expenses are negligible. This isn't exactly pushing a NASA payload into orbit here. Which would make any water shortage plot point even more stupid. You argue that bringing ice from a gravity well from a system dozen lightyears away is about as cheap or cheaper than bringing ice from asteroids in the same system. If it is the case it make the plot point on Kadara and Elaaden even more stupid than "only" asteroid mining. Regardless if this is the case or not, coming by water in a setting with routine interplanetary or interstellar travel is easy and cheap enough to make it moot. Decius fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Apr 2, 2017 |
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Apr 2, 2017 06:14
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Sky Shadowing posted:But, in lore, why are any of these people here? How did Jien Garson and Alec Ryder convince 100,000 people to basically just say "goodbye" to everything they've ever known and loved and set sail on a massive journey across dark space to a galaxy on basically a 'maybe'? Did none of these people say "hmm, I know they're promising a big deal and I do like adventure, but what if something goes wrong, what's the plan then"? Knowing full well that basically if something did go wrong, the end result is most likely death? youre joking, right? if i had promising technology that would allow me to realistically do ME:A to alpha centauri or whatever i could get 100,000 volunteers from loving canada alone by walking door to door - and you're wondering how they found 100,000 people across dozens of civilizations and trillions of people? didn't spacex literally do this? they basically said "we're gonna fire you at mars and you're gonna die" and i think like a quarter of a million people applied
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Apr 2, 2017 06:20
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It's really great that the andromeda initiative was a giant disaster because it makes sense when you consider the kind of brokebrained weirdo who would voluntarily blow their own lives up because of a charismatic lady the initiative is basically a cult come to think of it
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Apr 2, 2017 06:24
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When you think about it for half a second you realize Fojar38 is an idiot. As for finding water in space, these are the people who wrote their spaceship running into a stationary object in deep space as a major plot point. They're lazy and don't care, so water shortages are a fine reason for plot to happen. edit: sorry it's Sky Shadowing who is also an idiot
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Apr 2, 2017 06:28
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Arglebargle III posted:When you think about it for half a second you realize Fojar38 is an idiot. rude
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Apr 2, 2017 06:30
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You meet an asari that hauls ice from the ice planet to eos.
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Apr 2, 2017 06:39
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What I would have found interesting and which I think would have provided interesting story beats would have been putting your sibling (non-romanceable you pervs) into your squad instead of into a coma.
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Apr 2, 2017 06:42
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https://youtu.be/MJFBYUORsW0 Video games are art.
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Apr 2, 2017 06:42
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Decius posted:What I would have found interesting and which I think would have provided interesting story beats would have been putting your sibling (non-romanceable you pervs) into your squad instead into a coma. Dragon Age 2 actually did that pretty well I thought.
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Apr 2, 2017 06:43
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Verviticus posted:huh, weird. i actually just ran back and forth over the gas from the start to the end and let it completely finish the phase and it didnt even damage my shields. do you just keel over dead or what Yeah, you just keel over. I guess there's a time limit on it, and this was the Voeld vault where you have to run a long way to get out. And also I'm an idiot and ignored the quest marker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X99hbWvOe4
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Apr 2, 2017 07:38
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Anyone else had the problem where you die, but it won't show a game over screen, and won't let you go to the menu to load? Everything keeps progressing as if you weren't dead?
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Apr 2, 2017 07:39
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Anyone else had the problem where you die, but it won't show a game over screen, and won't let you go to the menu to load? Everything keeps progressing as if you weren't dead? ive had this problem a lot but ive always been able to hit esc and load out FronzelNeekburm posted:Yeah, you just keel over. I guess there's a time limit on it, and this was the Voeld vault where you have to run a long way to get out. And also I'm an idiot and ignored the quest marker. lol, good warning there scott
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Apr 2, 2017 07:42
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Arglebargle III posted:When you think about it for half a second you realize Fojar38 is an idiot. The scourge is pretty huge though, I don't know if it's all one big thing but they show at least parts of it being the size of a solar system.
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Apr 2, 2017 07:42
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I unlocked the last Ryder Family Secrets memory and AHAHAHA they spent so much time telling us "No, going to Andromeda has nothing to do with the Reapers" and the Internet spent so much time saying "That's idiotic this whole thing makes way more sense if the Reapers were involved in the decision to leave." And lo'! The big mystery reveal is, "Yeah it was totally about escaping the Reapers after all." Which is obviously a big shock to Ryder but not really a shock to we, the game playing public. That's a lot of self-inflicted bad impressions this game decided to take on for the sake of one particular reveal. e: Stranger Danger Ranger posted:The scourge is pretty huge though, I don't know if it's all one big thing but they show at least parts of it being the size of a solar system. Yeah, no kidding. The Sourge is Space Weather. Suvi describes it as an ocean with currents that will pull things between stars. The ship ran into a reef or a hurricane. doingitwrong fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Apr 2, 2017 |
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Apr 2, 2017 07:55
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Neddy Seagoon posted:choosing whether or not to let the Krogans keep the drive core in exchange for an Outpost, and even it's a stupid binary choice of extremes because it's "the Krogans are happy and join the Nexus once more with no repercussions" or "The Krogans are angry and hate you forever and ever, go away NERD SPECIES! She was never intending to make a bomb. The other Krogan was lying.
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Apr 2, 2017 08:00
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The Lone Badger posted:She was never intending to make a bomb. The other Krogan was lying. I tried to edit that to remove the reference to the bomb before posting that because you're right, whoops, but she still wanted to start serious poo poo with the Nexus to prove they were strong. There was no lie about her naming herself Overlord Morda or ranting about attacking the Nexus.
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Apr 2, 2017 08:04
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Rinkles posted:Funny, that's a criticism you could have levied against the marketing as well. It lacks a clear identity of what it is, what story its telling, beyond being a Mass Effect game in a galaxy that happens to not be the Milky Way, I agree completely. Compare Andromeda's marketing to the incredible Mass Effect 2 Launch Trailer.
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Apr 2, 2017 08:21
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Sky Shadowing posted:I think I've put my finger on the chief thing about the story that bothers me: Even though the Andromeda Initiative is basically a lovely Silicon Valley startup attempting to bootstrap civilization by throwing a ton of money and resources at the problem, a lot of NPCs mention why they wanted to leave the Milky Way behind. The Milky Way has aeons of histories and all of the baggage that brings. Is it so hard to believe that ~100,000 people would sign up for the chance of starting their own society in a stellar frontier, especially in a setting nearing post-scarcity?
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Apr 2, 2017 08:25
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There are people alive right now who literally leapt at the chance to maybe go to Mars and die alone.
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Apr 2, 2017 08:27
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If anything the scale should of been higher, 20k people is nothing my neighborhood has that many. They talk about struggling to get water for an outpost of what looks to be 4 buildings and 20 people I can fit enough for them for years in one trip to the cargo bay, even the vendor is like "we have to charge you because we are getting it from outside sources" who the gently caress are these outside sources literally everyone who exists is an enemy alien/allied alien who doesn't understand the concept of money/person we thawed for one specific person and I sure has hell hope that purpose wasn't "sell us the guns you had frozen with you" or an exile who has less resources then Nexus. It also annoys me when we mine an asteroid and we get enough metal for half a gun.
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Apr 2, 2017 08:38
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Decius posted:Any idea of bringing water from one planet to another is completely laughable (the "economy" of Voeldt's outpost) in the first place when there is an abundance of ice everywhere in the universe, where you don't have to bring it out of a gravity well first. It's easier and cheaper to mine water from an asteroid in the Eos-system than bring it out of Voeldt.  The idea of mining a planet for ice (probably by hand) when you have a civilisation that conducts casual interstellar travel is pretty funny. Even more so if you've played Elite Dangerous and done space mining. Frozen H20 is basically the unwanted dirt you eject to stop clogging up your cargo bays while mining ice rings.
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Apr 2, 2017 08:44
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I tried to edit that to remove the reference to the bomb before posting that because you're right, whoops, but she still wanted to start serious poo poo with the Nexus to prove they were strong. There was no lie about her naming herself Overlord Morda or ranting about attacking the Nexus. That's why I made her ambassador for the cluster 
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Apr 2, 2017 08:47
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DancingShade posted:Elite Dangerous Man I wish they'd hurry up and release that for ps4, it looks so good.
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Apr 2, 2017 08:55
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Stranger Danger Ranger posted:Man I wish they'd hurry up and release that for ps4, it looks so good. Hope you really enjoyed the travel times on the Galaxy Map in MEA 
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Apr 2, 2017 09:06
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In the season 3 premiere of Rick & Morty, was Rick teleporting the Citadel a reference to that dumb plot point from ME3? I know it seems kind of reaching to think that, but the aesthetic and the name of the Citadel in Rick & Morty are inspired by the Citadel in Mass Effect so it seems possible.
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Apr 2, 2017 09:06
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For all the massive and often cringeworthy flaws with the writing, I have to commend the way the main character is written most of the time. Plus no idea about how the dude voice actor handles it, but the lady VA is really good. They did a good job differentiating Ryder from Shepard, in ways that make sense. Even if you go for the rational and professional options, Ryder has a much warmer personality than the serious-minded Shep, and relies on charisma rather than authority. The character isn't nearly as badass but is genuinely likeable. At first I was disappointed at the lack of Renegade-esque rear end in a top hat intimidation options. Most aggressive options are just being rude and sarcastic. Then I realised that this makes total sense in context because we're no longer Commander Shepard who starts the game as a decorated veteran, we're some college aged scrub who lucked into a position through nepotism and doesn't scare anyone. It makes the "I will gently caress your poo poo up" moment pretty satisfying when it comes. The game could really use a nod to that though, I wish there was an early conversation choice where you try to coldly threaten someone Shep-style and get laughed out of the room.
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Apr 2, 2017 09:07
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