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DoggPickle posted:I'm randomly pissed off that 90% of posters think that rich folks wouldn't fund space exploration even then it has no possible payoff within their lifetime. That's not just demonstrably wrong but really frickin cynical. What's it like in the alternate reality you live in? Because in the world I live in, Earth is going to be significantly less inhabitable in 100 years, leading to billions of deaths at a minimum, and rich people have the ability to fix this but are choosing not to because they can make more money actively causing the extinction of the human race then they can by preventing it. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 03:46
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Skippy McPants posted:ME: A will probably follow the same format for follower missions as DA: I, which is basically what you just said. They're optional missions you can complete to develop the characters and learn stuff about them, but they're not directly tied to the resolution of the main plot. Except if you miss Iron Bull's, which I did despite having him in my party the entire game, and then he backstabs you with no warning in Trespasser. Which is exactly the sort of thing that guy is complaining about in the first place. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 04:47
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CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:Iron Bull betraying me in Trespasser because I made the "wrong" choice (which honestly seemed like the thing he would appreciate more) was a pleasant surprise. It's one thing when it's a result of an actual decision you made, it's quite another when you miss the trigger for the mission entirely and then he betrays you outta nowhere because the only metric the game checks is 'did you do loyalty mission y/n' Ainsley McTree posted:This new one looks terrible, unlike my favorite video game ever, ME2, which had no weird animations, or unremarkable characters, or characters based on models except the characters had weirdly puffy faces, or female characters with bad haircuts Believe it or not, people can not like those things in Mass Effect 2 and ALSO not like them in Andromeda! It's not an either/or thing at all, actually!
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Mar 7, 2017 05:17
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Is it weird that I want the Pathfinder Initiative to fail? Like, the hubris of just going to another galaxy - one you suspect may already have sentient inhabitants - and claiming it for yourself is just kind of staggering, and I REALLY want it to bite them in the rear end even though I know in my heart it won't. I'm sure the writers will just handwave it away, "We're going to live in peace and harmony with the natives! We can share the land!," but if you look at the history of colonialism that isn't how it plays out. Like, ever. It also really bugs me that (whatever excuse the writers come up with) the main character essentially gets their job due to nepotism. They're already on the elite explorer team solely because of who their father is, and then they get promoted over the designated second-in-command? Again I'm sure the writers will use some kind of Prothean Beacon type plot device to justify it but it still objectively sucks. Both of those plots elements could be good if addressed properly and actually discussed at length but I strongly suspect Bioware isn't going to do that. Edit: I guess I'm just bummed that Shepard was a distinguished war hero (or war criminal) recruited to protect humanity and battle terrorists and monsters, whereas Ryder is a scrawny 22-year old underachiever on a (totally unnecessary) quest for Lebensraum. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 10:13
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Stranger Danger Ranger posted:The idea of colonialism kind of falls apart on a galactic scale. And besides what difference does it make if a group starts colonising from the milky way or some random planets in andromeda? It's a loving galaxy! "The idea of colonialism kind of falls apart on a continental scale. What difference does it make if a group starts colonizing North America from Europe? It's a loving continent!" - An attitude that worked out really great for Native Americans
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Mar 8, 2017 13:06
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Admiral Ray posted:Neat! I dunno if I can really get into the emotional hook of invading and colonizing an already inhabited place, though. Depends how that aspect is handled, if at all. This is the only thing that's keeping me from legitimately anticipating the game. I can deal with janky animations and fanfiction-grade writing and whatnot, but I just can't bring myself to root for a group of people who are basically Space Conquistadores.The whole scenario would feel much less awful if they writers would just admit they're fleeing the Reapers, but the writers seem adamant that there can't be an actual, sympathetic reason for the Andromeda Initiative to exist and it's just 100% hubris and Space Manifest Destiny. It honestly kind of reminds me of that really awful sci-fi story I read once, where Earth is under attack by aliens and the only way to stop them... was to resurrect a bunch of Nazis. That concept on it's own might have actually worked if the writer allowed the characters in the story to have normal, human reactions to being saved by people who, at a minimum, have a pretty awful reputation, but the writer was determined not to explore any deep themes and made the Nazis unambiguous heroes who were only opposed by evil liberals. It's like, Sci-fi is an loving infinite canvas, you can include basically ANY type of story if you want to, and this is the story you choose to write?
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Mar 10, 2017 23:15
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Edit: ^^^ My argument is that you don't get to have the heroes be on an inherently immoral mission and just handwave that away with 'Well, the guys they are fighting are worse, so it's okay!'. The difference between 60's Star Trek and this is that the Federation had a no-intervention policy, whereas the Andromeda Initiative is explicitly looking to interfere, via loving colonizing their habitable worlds. doingitwrong posted:Maybe this is a story about coming of age and trying to be a good person under the wing of your space racist pioneer father. I would be 1000% down for this, or really ANY in-depth exploration of why Colonialism maybe isn't that great, but with the trailer pretty explicitly stating that's its going to be 'Plucky Colonists VS Evil Alien Empire' I don't have a lot of hope. Edit2: VVV I would also be down with this if they did it Starship Troopers style, because at least then they're acknowledging it. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 23:31
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AngryBooch posted:How is colonizing an uninhabited habitable system in Andromeda any different from the Milky Way? The difference is that these worlds ARE inhabited, something the Andromeda Initiative clearly anticipated (from the videos), but didn't care enough about to rethink any part of their extremely dumb and negligent plan. Still, I'm clearly just annoying people so I'll shut up now.  HaitianDivorce posted:Holy poo poo. Who are you reading, John Ringo? Haha, that was a great joke but then I looked it up and it actually WAS him  Ah, the perils of growing up in a town where recreation options for teens w/o cars are 1) hang out at the post office/gas station/lovely diner combo, 2) trudge through six loving feet of snow or 3) desperately search through the shack of a used book store for something new to read.
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Mar 11, 2017 01:22
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Norns posted:Yes clearly I'm a paid Bioware viral marketer lmao. It's literally one dude running the same gimmick he does everywhere else and like one other person playing along for laughs. Settle down, Beavis.
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Mar 16, 2017 02:16
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hat poo poo. It's unreal
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Turtlicious posted:Like, maybe the animation is more "unsettling" because you grew up with pixel art, and retro sprites, and basic polygons, while the younger generations grew up with better animated games. It's not as upsetting, because it's not as far as a deviation from the norm that we are used too compare to those whose first game was made 20+ years ago. If you think  is an appropriate facial expression to pair with the line of dialogue "My father is dead," then there is something wrong with your eyes and/or brain.Like I'm an actual, diagnosed sperg who's had lifelong problems with 'reading' faces and even I recognize that that expression is like the polar opposite of the emotion that is supposed to be conveyed there. The video I'm referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zUilV_oemg Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 02:28
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I guess we get to find out on Monday the lowest review score each publication is comfortable giving a AAA title from a major studio. My prediction: 82-86 on Metacritic. EA made a huge mistake letting people play this early, DA2 reviewers got away with it because it wasn't apparent until a couple days after launch what a mess it was. In Andromeda's case way too many people know about it's problems for major reviewers to just give it a 95 and hope nobody notices.
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Mar 16, 2017 03:14
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Rabid Snake posted:There should be another topic about people actually playing the game and wanting to discuss it versus people bitching about animations from twitch I am currently playing it. My take: it's not great. The jetjump is sort of fun and I'm really happy to be unshackled from linear shooter corridors... but predictably the actual shooting gameplay is much worse when that's the case. That's the nicest thing I can say about it, everything else - writing, animations, pacing - is a straight downgrade from ME3, which is genuinely baffling to me. Like, seriously, what happened?
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Mar 16, 2017 03:25
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Skippy McPants posted:No, it's Kumail Nanjiani. The guy from Big Bang is Kunal Nayyar. Yeah, he's fantastic in almost everything else, his delivery here is just REALLY phoned in for some reason.
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Mar 16, 2017 03:38
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so far i kinda like vetra(basicaly female garus,) peebee is ok and krogan is cool because i like the BIG super badass curmgeion trope. and liam is ok. I can confirm that Vetra and Drack are cool and good. Liam is like the second coming of Jacob tho, take that as you will. Can't comment on Peebee, she reminds me too much of Sera to actually use her. I may have Sera-related PTSD.
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Mar 16, 2017 03:55
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Quitting for the night. Had some fun, game isn't horrible so far, just not as good or NEARLY as polished as previous ME titles. The only change I really, unambiguously like is no class limits on skills or weapons, everything else is a mixed bag at best.Conot posted:Is anyone having issue where the trial launches in a small black window and never progresses beyond there? Have you tried uninstalling Corsair Utility Engine and restarting? Edit: I have no idea WHY that's necessary, I just saw a couple people upthread mention it. TastyLemonDrops posted:I've got a GTX 970 and i5 4690K. I'm running everything on high with no hitching and my computer doesn't sound like it's going to explode. This has been my experience as well, with almost the exact same specs. Game runs fairly well, I'll certainly give it that. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 06:29
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Some random observations: - So many people have partial or total facial paralysis in this game it's disconcerting when someone's face can emote fully; see Dad Ryder for an early example. - The default Ryder faces might be more detailed, but the custom faces at least don't show weird maniacal glee at totally inappropriate times. - I have like eight forms of currency/collected stuff and no practical idea how to spend half of it. Glad too see they brought back Credits, I was worried they'd do something that makes sense like have you 'spend' iron to have people make guns for you; instead it's just the standard totally illogical RPG shop. "On the one hand, I should probably give Ryder this rad shotgun because my survival literally depends on them. On the other hand, holla holla get dolla." - Cover mechanic takes some getting used to but isn't terrible, I need more time with it to tell for sure but it might be another unambiguous improvement.
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Mar 16, 2017 06:56
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Drifter posted:Like, the sentences don't combine to create a sensical dialog. I hadn't realized it earlier but this is kind of a problem throughout. Dialogue isn't edited any better then it's written.
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Mar 16, 2017 07:05
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Schlesische posted:I get the feeling she's somewhat important or, to put it another way, someone you're going to end up talking to for missions and background info far, far too much. Yeah, she's one of the senior Nexus officials, I imagine she's going to get a fair amount of screen time.
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Mar 16, 2017 07:51
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Bardeh posted:Is this actually real? Not a voiceover someone has edited in there? It's so unbelievably bad. Yep, it's real. While the dialogue in general isn't so much bad as it is aggressively perfunctory, it's received seemingly zero editing, leading occasionally to lines like that.
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Mar 16, 2017 08:13
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Verviticus posted:goty I can confirm that Biotic Charge is very good. Take the Scrapper background to get it at character creation. Pick up Lift and use that first to oneshot basic enemies (on Hard, anyway)
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Mar 16, 2017 08:41
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Mr President posted:Does it have the 80s SCI fi movie aesthetic the previous games did? How is the story? The story is pretty much exactly the plot of ME1 (sans Saren, so far) with rock-men in place of robots: "The Kett are harassing human colonists and hogging all the sweet ancient artifacts, go get 'em." The game doesn't do itself any favors in the characters department, it throws like 20 plot-relevant characters at you in the first two hours and I don't like or care about any of them except the Nakmor family and Vetra. When I look back at it the lack of facial movement must REALLY makes the human characters hard to like or empathize with, the only human I emotionally connected with was Dad Ryder and, not coincidentally, his face is fully animated and look great compared to the glassy-eyed stroke victims that are his children and coworkers. The only other human I even remotely liked was Cora, and that's solely because a) we're vanguard buddies and b) she calls you out for getting the job via nepotism, even if it is very pro-forma and dropped almost immediately. Overall the game feels like Mass Effect fanfiction, which I guess based on the high employee turnover is... actually pretty appropriate? There isn't anything horrifically wrong with it, it's just very mediocre and safe. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 11:51
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cams posted:remeber when people cared about video game reviews and spent lots of their time talking about whether or not a video game is good on the internet Dude, I don't think you get to stick with the 'Anyone who cares about or has opinions on a videogame is a worthless loser' gimmick immediately after posting your own impressions of the loving game. Maybe the person who has zero self awareness... is you!
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Mar 16, 2017 19:10
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Welp, finished up all the story stuff in the demo, still have 5 hours left and there isn't much to do in the demo area. Checked out multiplayer but basically have no interest in it, same as ME3. The animations on humans and asari remain real bad but those aren't nearly as irritating to me as the writing. I agree with whoever in the thread said it felt like a third-party tie-in novel, I originally compared it to fanfiction but that implies a passion for the source material that is frankly kind of lacking here. My ultimate verdict is that it's basically ME1 fused awkwardly with DA:I, except not as good as either. The game feels like it needs another 6 months in the oven, specifically with a dev team that actually can get stuff done since the game is still in this shape after 5 years. I'd recommend checking out the demo if you're interested as clearly not everyone agrees with me, but unless you're foaming at the mouth for more Mass Effect I wouldn't pre-order it first. Also, whatever you do don't buy Origin EA Wallet prepaid cards, they're nonrefundable and (unlike Steam Wallet cards) can't be combined with cash for some goddamn reason. I'd at least be considering requesting a refund if I weren't effectively locked into spending $60 on Origin. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 21:38
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Bolow posted:Spoil it for me because I have zero desire to buy this game right now but krogan are v cool When he says 'sort of' he means it's a blatant handwave. They evolved in stasis somehow so now they aren't a dying race anymore, regardless of whether you cured the genophage or not. Then a bunch of them got pissed over Salarian racism and abandoned the Nexus, they have a colony on one of the habitable worlds (but not the demo one, AFAIK). Drack, the Krogan companion, is pretty good and brings to mind vintage Wrex.
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Mar 16, 2017 22:07
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Fojar38 posted:This is actually one of the reasons I'm actually more confident now that I will enjoy the game than I was a few days ago because I was expecting the weakest point of the game to be found and then hammered repeatedly on the internet and so far it looks like that's the character animations and if that's the worst part of the game then holey moley The character animations are the most visible problem with the game, but hardly the worst imo.
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Mar 16, 2017 22:11
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Nichael posted:What's the worst? It's almost certainly not going to be like ME1 or DA2 and reuse assets over and over. It might end up having Inquisition's problem of having a shallow open world, but if the characters are interesting that's not a terrible thing. A lot of the open world stuff seems VERY shallow (every sidequest seems to be 'get in the Mako, drive somewhere, scan something, repeat 2-4 times, have 1-2 fights along the way'), yes, but I think overall it's the writing that bugs me most. Maybe the game does itself a huge disservice by introducing so many plot-relevant characters in the first two hours but I didn't really form an attachment to any of them in the 5 hours I played. Drack and Vetra have good introductions and initial conversations (which is as far as the demo goes), but the other three companions are basically just the ME1 squadmates renamed, except the Ashley-alike has much less personality and the Liara-alike is twee as gently caress. The Salarian pilot has a good voice actor but hasn't actually done anything yet, and he's the most memorable Tempest crew member just for that. Like it's certainly POSSIBLE the game's writing will improve from here, but initial signs don't seem great.
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Mar 16, 2017 22:27
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Arglebargle III posted:Was Josephine the self-serving wizard politician? No that was Vivienne, Josephine was the not-Spanish diplomat. VV There's also the Brute or whatever the hell it's called, the big armored animal. No idea if it's actually a multiplayer boss, but the singleplayer sure treats it like one. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 22:33
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Arglebargle III posted:Oh wait that was the Spanish aristocrat lady. Haha people thought she wasn't white enough?! Yuuuuup.
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Mar 16, 2017 22:38
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Brosnan posted:See most people would never see this because why would you not choose to kill Ashley in ME1? Because Ashley at least had a personality, unlike Kaidan "Bread Sandwich" Alenko?
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Mar 16, 2017 22:44
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Fojar38 posted:I unironically chuckled when he said "Nah do you know how many humans I've watched die? You guys are meat." when you ask him to join you so I guess I'm a huge retard No, Drack is cool, you don't have to be embarrassed about liking him or whatever.
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Mar 17, 2017 02:24
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Apraxin posted:I've seen a couple of comments from reviewers who are 20+ hours in and like the game saying that they think the plot picks up past Eos and that it was a mistake for Bioware/EA to make that the cutoff (and to forbid them from talking about stuff that comes after), so I suppose it's possible that this is the ME equivalent of putting out a pre-release demo of DAI that let you play the prologue and then 10 thrilling hours of roaming the Hinterlands. Which would itself be a decision lol-worthy in its dumbness, but I wouldn't put it past them I certainly hope that Eos isn't this game's Hinterlands because there isn't nearly enough stuff to do. I'm only 6 hours in and I've exhausted all the quests except scanning minerals.
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Mar 17, 2017 02:33
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Rinkles posted:For those that played, how's the loot? What I've seen looks worryingly ME1-like (lot of garbage). How's it compare to Inquisition (didn't love that either)? Lots of garbage AND loving inventory Limits again. I think like half of my max inventory is weapon mods now, so unless they introduce a way to sell or sort those easily it's looking like the ME1 inventory all over again. Someone on the design team seems to have a HUGE hardon for ME1, even the parts that objectively weren't good.
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Mar 17, 2017 02:54
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Funky See Funky Do posted:What exactly is Pathfinder training? What are they trained to do? They are Player Characters. Kind of like Spectres, except stripped of any justification whatsoever.
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Mar 17, 2017 04:50
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CJ posted:It might also be that they animated the facial rig to the male face and just said gently caress it for the female face since in the original games ~80% of people used the male face. This seems most likely, the facial rigs aren't bad so much as they are unfinished. Take this with a huge grain of salt because my only source is 'I remember hearing someone say this,' but I think they tried a Witcher 3-type system for the human characters and it got scrapped partway through. It's not like they couldn't animate peoples' faces well, Dad Ryder looks fine and is able to emote with his full face... I just suspect they did his custom so it wasn't affected.
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Mar 17, 2017 09:57
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I really wish I could get into multiplayer (I've exhausted all of the actual content in the singleplayer demo), but the rewards for Bronze seem comically bad and Silver (not to mention Gold) seems way too hard. I wish they would just let you play with bots if you wanted to, because I hate dying really early on and letting my teammates down 
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Mar 17, 2017 11:09
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Josef bugman posted:So game average to good? I'd say just average, for whatever it's worth. The only unambiguously good thing is letting the PC pick whatever powers and weapons they want without class restrictions, p much everything else is a mixed bag at best. Unless there is a drastic upswing in writing quality after the demo area then it's probably going to be the least-good Mass Effect game to date, but it's more Mass Effect, which clearly a lot of people (including myself) want. I'd encourage you to try the demo at least.
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Mar 17, 2017 11:51
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Schlesische posted:It is definitely more DAI and less DA2. Can... can we split the difference? I guess the most accurate way to describe the way I feel is that the trial area feels like Act 1 of DA2. Nothing offensively bad has happened yet and the mechanics SEEM good so far... but like DA2 Act 1 I just can't shake the impression that something is 'off', especially with the writing. DA2 had some standout characters like Varric and Aveline, the same way this game does, but it overall feels like it was written by the B-Team, know what I mean? It doesn't help that much like the Mage/Templar conflict, Ryder becoming The Most Important Person In Andromeda seems weirdly forced and inorganic, like there's a dozen reasons why this shouldn't be happening but the writers aren't going to let THAT stop them. There aren't any giant warning signs saying 'avoid avoid avoid' so far (unless you care deeply about facial animations) but the plot definitely hasn't inspired confidence so far, and while it COULD spread it's wings and soar it could just as easily crash and burn. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 12:25
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BULBASAUR posted:is it a knock off MMO with re-spawning enemies like DA:I? As to your first question: Yes, it has respawning enemies and busywork-based sidequests. As to your second: the only real consensus among the people who've played so far is that it's neither the best or worst game ever. I think MOST people would agree with the overall descriptor 'mediocre', although there are a fair amount who wouldn't.
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Mar 17, 2017 22:23
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Dr. Abysmal posted:I had more success with multiplayer in my second round of matches and also noticed that I had a million free packs to open thanks to owning Mass Effect 3 and such so I unlocked some aliens. The krogan vanguard sadly isn't quite as fun as the ME3 version, the shoulder tackle heavy melee attack is gone and there's no maniacal laughter when you kill stuff (or if there was, I didn't hear it because the sound is hosed up). The headbutt remains but it's a little slow and awkward to use. Thank you so much for pointing this out, I got the Asari Adept and Disciple and suddenly multiplayer doesn't suck so bad! I mean, I still lost but at least we got to round 6!
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Mar 18, 2017 01:27
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Vikar Jerome posted:i like dad ryders line about his wifes terminal cancer. "not on my watch" that poo poo was just loving incredible. Ah gently caress, I forgot about that, thanks for reminding me. I had already heard about that one but it still stunned me when I encountered it in person. Like, after playing multiplayer for a bit I have more faith that the mechanics are solid, but I'd be loving amazed at this point if the plot is good.
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Mar 18, 2017 01:53
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