Why BioWare Moved Away From ME2 Style "Assignments"

Don't forget the ME1 Admiral Hackett audio brief before and after the missions.

It was never clear to me why illustrating that was useful. Don't we all know that?

This.

LiS and all of TellTale's games are like this.  Hell, even The Technomancer was on rails to a point.

The kind of comment where we're discussing a game feature. You said it was good to illustrate that the universe is empty. I said that I didn't see why illustrating that was good. Can you explain why illustrating that is good, or is this just a feeling you have without knowing why you have it?

I thought that most of the UNC missions made no RP sense and should have been scrapped, FWIW. Illustrating the emptiness of the universe just emphasizes that Shepard shouldn't be anywhere in these random clusters in the first place.

Raiding the Batarians on their own ships to push their shit in

Easily some the best missions in any ME game

When developers were azzking people What Does N7 Mean to You. THat's the game of action I was expecting in Andromeda

Because all this missions sux?

Well, not all, I like two of then, the one with the javelin missiles and blue suns in strontium mule (there 3 or 4 sub-bosses in this mission).

The ME2 style N7 assignments were only good as a means to enjoy the combat system of the game more. Each mission was a genuinely unique handcrafted combat zone. If you only wanted to shoot things they were great, if you actually wanted narrative out of them...well I've played MMO's that make more compelling side quests.

ME1 side quests had a lot of effort put into their story and it paid off even if the areas they were set in were the worst sort of copy pasta. There's a reason I remember Toombs, Major Kyle and others to this day yet I struggle to recall any ME2 N7 assignment.

I still feel like there should have been a best of both worlds, side quests in unique combat zones with actual story interaction interspersed. Unfortunately ME3 failed to find it, I honestly entirely forgot about the MP map N7 side quests until someone in this thread mentioned them.

ME:A on the other hand I feel has done more for the narrative of side quests than the previous two games put together. I was genuinely hooked into the story of a good number of side quests because they had actual narrative depth and interaction. The Contagion and Firefighters side quests made me genuinely worried about the state of the in game world and characters. Even small things you run into have this extra level of polish, like helping a random group of friendly outcasts repair their communications antenna so they can talk to their loved ones on the nexus again.

Idk the more I think about it the more I feel like the way ME:A delivers its content is what ME1 originally set out to do, for better or worse.

Can't wait for the next installment of TWD:ANF to come out.  Heh, sounds kind'a odd saying that since I'm not interested in the ME series at all now a days.  And I am recognizing different voices in other games.  For instance, Courtenay Taylor (who does Jack) is doing the voice for the female protagonist in FO4.

I'm really enjoying FO4, which I never thought I'd be saying.   But it is what it is, I s'pose.

I still prefer those to the Fetch X, Find Y number of things that ME:A has. I really hate those types of quests. I like the combat, so heading down to a combat mission with a backstory was a lot of fun for me.

The hyperbole in this thread is hilarious. I love how someone can criticize the idea of "running down a corridor, shooting bad guys and hitting A to end the mission" when 50% of Andromeda is driving around to bad guy camps, shooting them and searching for randomly generated datapads.

ME2's assignments were pretty cool. They expanded the galaxy, making it feel like there was more happening than the central story. Boarding pirate ships, checking out a crashed wreckage, faulty satellite stations, etc. All of these missions were on unique levels (meaning, not part of a larger map we've been exploring), and I appreciated that effort. I liked the atmosphere these missions provided and made me yearn for a truly standalone adventure for Shep and crew.

I'd love to see BioWare go back to these kinds of sidequests in the future.

Do not mistake criticizing ME2 as praising ME:A.