Redbull interview

Don't count on it.  Chris L'Etoile was the driving force behind "the alien side of the setting" and he left years ago

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. Bioware (and most other game developers - well, anything that does marketing, actually) loves to tout their "innovation" that isn't actually innovative. It's just standard marketing, and while I've learned to basically tune it out, it's still kind of sad. I agree with the others who said they could have said they are different from Shepard, but that they shouldn't have claimed they were some new idea in RPGs.

It's not that I disagree with you, it's just that I'm - as I said above - numb to their claims about the game at this point. I can't get excited just because I worry about how accurate they really are. I mean, I hope so! That stuff really does sound awesome. But that's just how I am with Bioware now.

I'm having this thought of Andromeda being this seasonal, episodic RPG now, instead of a trilogy. They release the game, then every so often, just add more stories to it. Maybe this time the crew has to stop a civil war on a planet, maybe next time they encounter an eldritch abomination in deep space. Could be interesting

I know! They should totally have Ryder record 1000 preset names like Codsworth from Fallout 4! Yes, he only had one line with each, but if they just used it for that introduction line, I think it would go a long way

Also... you of all people... misspelled "Jean-Luc Picard"! Go look at your first post. "Jeanne-Luc"??? What heresy is this?! 

Hey, that would be awesome, but I'm not sure if we'll get our wish in practice. While Bioware has let our protagonists be smart/knowledgeable sometimes, they rarely if ever let them actually participate in techno/arcano-babble conversations with other characters  And have them ask questions about things they should already know, even with auto-dialogue

Still, I hope you're right, because making a smart and knowledgeable protagonist - a geek - in a Bioware RPG has been one of my wishes since forever, and with their emphasis on Ryder being more of a scientist/explorer, maybe it will finally happen!

Now, off to work.

I've liked the parts about the alien worlds feeling alien, and the artwork being awesome, but I am not that crazy to play a noob protagonist who seemingly just happened to pick up the magic gun, but really was fated to do so all along.... From the two tropes I prefer the old dog who knows what's what. Well, as long as Ryder is not imbued with an uber-Ancient curse, bless, or both, doesn't prominently feature in every prophecy, and does not at any point lose her life and memory, and have to retrace her steps to change or reinforce her former glorious self, I am gonna call it original. Exploration is great, many interesting stories intertwining is great, meeting cool aliens is great...

Again, my main concern it is going to be that it's gods forbid is high on micromanagement and OCD completionism. I want to just play it however I want, and skip stuff that I find boring and not be punished for it.

Yeah, I get the scepticism; I actually share some quantity of it, though I may not show it much. Still, ultimately, the worst I expect from ME: A is that it'll be Inquisition in the Mass Effect universe, and while that'd certainly be a pretty huge disappointment, I think I'd still find enough to enjoy about the game that getting excited now won't be a complete waste. Inquisition might be my least favourite BioWare game, depending on how charitable I'm feeling about ME3 at any given moment, but I'm still glad I played it--and Andromeda has the advantage of being a sci-fi game, which'll always be a bigger draw for me than fantasy, much as I love Dragon Age's setting.

Of course, I'm still very much hoping that Andromeda will be a quite a bit more than just Inquisition In Space. Heck, I'm even somewhat optimistic about it--call it a character flaw.

Oh, that'd be fantastic! It's the perfect format for DLC, too--compelling stories, told within the game's existing narrative framework - in this case, 'Hey, you've got a spaceship; go look for stuff in it!' - but ultimately nonessential to the game's main story, as all the best DLC ought to be. That's actually one of my biggest problems with Inquisition: the game genuinely has a fantastic ending and villain, possibly BioWare's best ever--but if you never bought Trespasser, you certainly wouldn't know it.

Now, I've historically been against the Codsworth idea - it just seemed like too much trouble for too little gain, and I'm one of those crazy people who'd honestly be okay with having a set first name - but couched in those terms... Yup, onboard. 'This is Captain Jeanne-Luc Ryder of the ______ starship Tempest' is just too wonderful a possibility to pass up!

Ah, and you notice how I just did it again? There's method to my madness: my Ryder's gonna be Picard... But also a lady, like basically all my RPG protagonists, and 'Jeanne' is the feminine form of 'Jean'. 'Luc' is still masculine, but hyphenated names with both feminine and masculine components aren't unheard of in France, so I think I can get away with it. 


On being a nerd:

Yes! Please let me actually play one of the people who get to do the fun exposition, BioWare, just for once! (Though for the sake of my roleplaying plans, I think I'll be needing a series of dialogue options dealing with amateur archaeology, classical literature, and the proper care of horses in addition to the pre-requisite technobabble, thanks!)    

I still think it is stupid they didn't do race selection for this game. There are a ton of fans that want it, and it is the perfect time because all the races are in the same boat, both metaphorically and literally. But no, they had to force family on us instead keeping us just human. 

They may succeed in the "You are the alien" thing, but I will bet you money it is going to be human-centric and Humans Are Special. We already see that with all the "find a home for humanity", "a new hope for humanity", etc stuff they've been promoting, as well as things like going to Andromeda being a human effort with the other aliens "pitching in" and "tagging along".

Honestly, I don't think another ME3-style disaster is even possible with Andromeda, no matter what happens with the game. Those 'years of investment' being, ultimately, wasted in the eyes of a lot of players by such an unsatisfying conclusion is absolutely key to why Mass Effect 3 blew up in the way it did, so even if Andromeda's bad in all the exact same ways as Mass Effect 3 was, the fact that we haven't spent five-to-six years with these characters and this story means that it simply can't hurt as much. Besides, as you say, BioWare have a way of overcompensating for whichever criticisms their previous game received with the next one - in the process coming up with new and frequently shittier problems - so there's a good chance that, whatever's wrong with Andromeda, it'll be something we don't see coming.

I agree that better DLC integration would be great, though I have a suspicion that it could be quite difficult to actually accomplish--I think the issues you describe are, in part, an artefact of both the way DLC is made, and the way it's expected to be played. Frequently, all the VO and such for DLC will be recorded after the stuff for the main game, and it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to get certain voice actors back in the booth for more work. This can be difficult to write around even within the confines of the DLC itself - the ending of Arrival, with Joker's uncharacteristically mute self, is a good example - and would, I imagine, become exponentially more troublesome if they had to integrate further references to the events of the DLC throughout the rest of the game. There's also an argument to be made that, as a lot of players will only do a single playthrough, and then play each DLC as it releases from the post-game, the effort-to-value ratio for integrating references to DLC events throughout the rest of the game is less than optimal, as a lot of players won't ever go back for another playthrough and experience those references.

To be clear, I still think it'd be totally worth it to do, and it's certainly not impossible--The Witcher 3 ties its DLC back into the main game in a few different ways, from minor conversations - for example, Geralt picks up a new scar as part of one of the DLCs, and it comes up in conversation with a few characters from the main game - to having characters from the DLC show up back in the main game, and all those little touches really help the world feel more cohesive and 'real', while also allowing the writers to avoid RP-limiting contrivances like the aforementioned Descent, 'Well, I'd better not tell anyone about this!'

My position on DLC is basically that the game should tell a complete and fleshed out story out of the box - including personal moments for the MC, which I agree base-Inquisition really suffered from the lack of - so you never really see any 'holes', as it were, where DLC would slot in. Now, that doesn't mean fun little cryptic references to upcoming DLC/areas where DLC would hook on sensibly are a bad thing--look at Fallout: New Vegas for a good example of how to do that sort of thing well. It's just, you shouldn't come out of the base game feeling that you had an incomplete experience 'cause they were saving stuff for DLC. I mean, had Trespasser been the actual in-box ending of DA: I, I think that game's overall story would be remembered much, much more fondly than it generally is, as it completely solves pretty much all the issues with Corypheus as a villain--yes, he's still a fairly one-note adversary who isn't terribly interesting, but when his role in the story is re-contextualised from 'big bad' to 'pawn of the actual big bad, who's been manipulating you from within your party for the whole game', that isn't so much of a problem. I only played DA: I after all the DLC was already out, so I had that complete experience out-the-box, and the game was so, so much better for it. (Also, yeah, last-gen got utterly screwed.)

It's possible to do expansive DLC that caps off the game well, without the base game/ending feeling incomplete for it. The Witcher 3's 'Blood and Wine' is by far the best example of an 'epilogue' DLC I've ever played - I see Trespasser as less of an epilogue and more, well, the ending the game should've had from the start - and yet the base game's conclusion didn't suffer for it, at all. It took an already-satisfying ending and expanded on it tremendously effectively, while also giving you a whole new substantial story to play though. After playing it, it truly felt like the perfect way to cap off that game, that world and those characters--but before playing it, I didn't feel like I needed anything more than what the game had already given me, so it was really the best of both worlds.

Yup, I hadn't really considered that potential use for such a system before you suggested it, and now I'm definitely on-board--I'd just have the biggest smile on my face the second Ryder started introducing herself! (Ideally via viewscreen, having just stood up out of the captain's chair the Tempest will almost certainly not have  and given her uniform a little tug.  ) I'm not great at naming my PCs either, truth be told - I have a few standard names I always fall back on - but I've actually come up with quite a few different ideas for Ryder, based on astronauts. Fallout 4's voiced name list actually bugged out for me on my first playthough, so even though I picked a name I knew was supported, I just got 'Ma'am' from Cosworth the whole game.

I'm just generally not that attached to my characters' first names when no one ever says them. It's not so bad in older/throw-back RPGs, that still rely on text-based conversations with either only partial or no voice acting, but in games like Mass Effect... Yeah, I've actually forgotten my characters' names part way through on occasion. So, it's something I'd be willing to give up for the sake of just having a first name people used somewhat frequently. Maybe they could let us pick our middle names, instead? Anyway, I'd prefer a gender-neutral name, too--so would BioWare, I imagine, since it'd halve the number of names they had to account for in voice acting. (Obviously, this is all just my preference: I know a lot of people are really attached to naming their characters, even in fully voice-acted games.)

Heh, I was actually kinda worried people would just think I didn't know how to spell his name. But then I'd just show them this picture, which seems to do a pretty good job of dispelling any doubt in my Star Trek fan 'cred'. 
This is where I'd bang out some French to demonstrate the benefits of having had mandatory French language lessons for about six years in school... If I remembered more than, like, three phrases. 
So, you'd know much better than I on that front--I just stuck with 'Luc' 'cause, as you say, 'Luce' just sounds nothing like it, whereas 'Jean' and 'Jeanne' can be pronounced pretty similarly. Annnnnd I once again find myself quite literally rolling my eyes at something from YouTube's comment section.   

Yes to all of this! I wish the DA: I knowledge dialogue had been much, much more expansive than it was. My Elfquisitor spent most of that game trying to formulate passive-aggressive responses to shems explaining her own culture to her--indeed, she spent so much time thinking of these responses, that she almost never actually got to use any of them.

The thing is, humans are special because we are humans.

Even the aliens are just funny looking humans, Rubber-Forehead Aliens really.

Asari are hot blue (or purple) human women

Turians are chitinous, mandibled humans with sticks up their butts

Krogan are aggressive lizardy humans that like to head-butt things

Quarians are masked humans with "dem hips"

Even hanar are just polite humans that look like jellyfish.

So what would be the point in playing an alien?  A different skin for your avatar?

That, roleplay and MP-esque classes with unique builds.

I bet we'll still get that. Tons of alien characters in Mass Effect explained humanity to our human character. With this being a first contact kind of thing, if anything we'll get more since the new and old races will be explaining humanity to us. 

I have to wonder how much race-specific dialogue would have to be written for the game for it to be satisfactory. Just having different voices obviously wouldn't be enough. ME's aliens may be rubber-headed people for the most part, but they're still more alien than elves, qunari and dwarves are, and people have stronger reactions or stricter boundaries (examples: a human can never be STG and a turian will never captain an alliance vessel)

Because the game is made by humans for humans. Therefore, it is a purely human experience.

What differences, though? Aliens in Mass Effect have had, by and large, very "human" perspectives. Alien characters always act in large part the same way a human may act in a similar situation. Mercs act like mercs, be they human, turian or asari. Scientists act like scientists. Soldiers like soldiers, and so on.

How could playing an asari show how an enormously long life (compared to most other races) affect them and their relationships with others? How about turian regimented society? The drell utter dependency of the hanar? Quarians as the pariahs of the galaxy, unable to even leave their suits?

I'm certainly not opposed to a game which lets us play an alien and explore these things. But if it's to be an option alongside humans, we're just going to be playing funny-looking humans.

I think there are only one or two writers left from the original Mass Effect team.  The others either moved to Dragon Age (Like Patrick Weekes and Sylvia Feketekuty) or went on to the Secret IP.  


More likely this will be a test on how well these newcomers can salvage the wreckage the old team left behind.  But with Mac at the helm, I'd prepare for more "organic energy" "you would not know them and there is no time to explain, "resources", and other Deus ex Nonsensica.


And yeah, Dagna was a dwarven arcanist, studied in magical theory (but not practice, because dwarf) Yet even her ramblings turned out (in DLC) to touch on things long buried and forgotten, hints of stuff that might be explored later (like the Descent DLC)