Aaryn Flynn says: We Have Learned From The Mistakes of Inquistion....

Well it is only natural that they have learned something. Nevertheless, Mass Effect games are not like Dragon Age games and they shouldn't be. Even if Bioware had learned nothing, I would never expect to see something like the Hinterlands in a Mass Effect game.

Thanks! 

Well this kind of eases some of my worries.

The leaked ME:A questionnaire/poll (which so far has all come true) had a lot of mentions of game ideas that made both Dragon Age: Inquisition and Fallout 4 absolutely tedious chores.  A lot of material collecting and settlement building type stuff. Some of the exploration even sounded like No Man's Sky (ugh).

Like ME1-3, I  really hope it's light on the sim mechanics and heavy on the rpg, combat, and story mechanics.  Building, fetch quests, and exploring can all be very useful and great in a big RPG, but there is a thing as going overboard.  It's happened many times this gen with games trying to go open world or "big, resulting in vast but shallow content.  A game that doesn't really know what its trying to be, and not too fun to replay.

It's funny because it's the direct opposite of me. Almost every issue with fetch questing or other oddball issues with DAI I have I can see being fixed by just being in space. I realize that's an odd one but to give you some examples look at past mass effect games. Specifically ME1 - how many planets did you land on that 'actually' had life or NPC's? Basically like 80% of them had jack shit on em as far as living people.

The 'Shards' for the Magical dungeon? That doesn't work in space either. We've heard of what amounts to space dungeons on planets, moons or astroids that result in us getting some kinda master key we can use to crack the larger space-station like space dungeons. But that's not really the same level of mind numbing bullshit sounding as finding shards via a magical-skull looking glass.

Or think of the Hissing Waste. Theres NOTHING there but like 4 mini-rooms with a basic word puzzle. Also one merchant and a dragon somewhere but the place is massive right? Boring as shit in DAI for a few reasons. One the mounts aren't all that enjoyable, they 'feel' slow, mostly becuase they're much larger then they should be. But 'speed' is a general issue in DAI. MP you move slow, your sprint barely moves any faster and the animation stops matching so it just feels slower then it is. Oh and with the slow-ass feeling mounts you get 0 dialog/banter cause your companions disappear.

Now pretend the hissing waste is some weird oddball planet (probably no enemies or wildlife) and your in the Mako. Speeding along, jumping over dunes searching for whatever the shit your searching for. You can have banter because everyones 'inside the vehicle' and it wont break immersion hearing them talk. I'm looking forward to that far, far more then I am with how DAI handled it.

Now if the Mako drives slow as balls that'll be a problem, so I'm definitely in hopes it has some speed to it. The only thing we have to go off of though is the little mako semi-reveal way back in... 14-15? It seemed to have some speed to it and that little hop over the snowy edge was funny. Either way I got at lest some hope that between the Mako and how sci-fi and space fundamentally changes the kinds of things that 'make sense' in the world will change a lot of the BS in DAI.

You and me both. I enjoyed the original Mako, for what it was...  



I find it interesting that there is quite a variety of opinion about what's less fun to different people and what is generally acknowledged as 'ok, that could have gone better' content.

Mindful that aarynflynn lurks on this forum, I'm going to briefly empathise with the challenge of making any statements at all about the game  . Games media is hungry for news and even tweets by devs let alone a studio GM can be big news.

You just have to look at the recent experiences of 'No Man's Sky's Sean Murray, to realise that getting carried away with your thoughts on a game, in public, is a dangerous thing.

The other thing that I think gets missed is that game development is a staggeringly slow process, so (for example) if aspects of a game get criticised (I'll take Dragon Age 2 as an example) it can literally take years for that feedback to be realised. Some reviewers on the release of Dragon Age Inquisition, thought it was an almost comic over-compensation for the limitations of Dragon Age 2, four years earlier.

Inevitably, Mass Effect Andromeda will be BioWare's 'answer' to Mass Effect 3, but that's an answer that has taken 5 years to get to. Tweaking the game's development in the light of Dragon Age Inquisition seems do-able, but where do you draw the line? Can you sneak in some side-content lessons from the Witcher 3? What about settlements, are we all 'bored' of those now after Fallout 4? Will aspects of the game be compared to 'No Man's Sky'?

It's tough to have your game compared to 'lessons learned' from games released in 2016, when game features may have been locked in 2013 or 2014, but that's AAA game development, I guess  .

Hmm, DAI was a good game. Good enough. It's just that for me it lacked intensity. Imo, the combat was problematic and fairly mediocre. The combat did not excite me in DAI, it was boring af. Right down to the audio for it..the sounds, the feel of combat; the ways you could approach it.

The narrative lacked intensity, too. Imo. I play games with a strong narrative and meh combat, or strong combat and meh narrative. Ideally, I want both. DAI was very middle of the road intensity wise in both departments. That's unusual for a BW game. At least in my experience.

So, yeah, fetch quests. And yeah completionism and Lost in the Hinterlands. Even though I did not have a problem with the Hinterlands. I ran around there as long as I wanted and it was fine. But it's more than that, or those are more emblematic of the issues.

It's just.. I want to do some cool shite. I want to feel scared, or threatened, or at least uneasy. I want to feel that in both combat and narrative, as well as general exploration. I want to feel like I'm taking a chance with my life by pushing to explore because that's the way it is. You are under threat being an explorer/pioneer.

I'm not worried about the combat in MEA. The ME franchise has had some solid and fun combat. And apparently there are not!Brutes gallumphing at you. So, that's good. Keep you on your toes. I mean, in DAI, the best fights were the dragons. Only thing was that you had to actively seek them out. They're tucked away minding their business, raising their dragonlings. So, now I get to feel like a bully.

I would have preferred if they had harassed us. Fly by's. Taunting. I wanted to get to the point where everytime a shadow passed on the ground I jumped because I thought it was the dragon coming for us.

The Fade rifts, imo, should have been far, far fewer. But far, far more of a big deal. More of a challenge to close. More of an impact on the surrounding area, which also should have covered a larger space. Its supposed to be a breach, a tear, between "dimensions", or whatever it is; tortured and vicious spirits are flooding through, but the game never shows the intensity of this story line. This is apocalyptic level stuff going on, yet that was never communicated effectively in the game.

That was my issue with DAI. It was very pretty, but had no intensity. So, its not just about shards or completionism. If the story is about the apocalypse, then give me the apocalypse..not little bunnies and foxes and tweeting birds; until; I find a little corner off to the side with a few demons..circling the area. It's almost like they were too in love with how their game was that they didn't want to dirty it.

So, yeah. There are lessons to be learned. I hope the right ones. Many enjoyed DAI, I did, too..overall. My favorite questline was the Adamant/Fade one. But there seems to be a preoccupation with how good MEA looks; and that's a beautiful thing, but it makes me concerned with the possibility that the really interesting, intense and scary stuff will be nudged to the side so that we can safely admire how good everything looks.

At least ME brings the enemies and combat closer to you. Gives them scale and they get in your face. DA--I love the franchise, I really do, but enemies, besides the dragons, were too far away, too small. Now the conversations are too far away.

Did they bring the camera distance in MEA back around to the ME1 cam distance? I remember the cam got much closer to the over the PC shoulder in ME2 and ME3. I wonder if/how they're combining the two approaches?

Yeah very glad to hear them acknowledge the grindy fetch nature of inquisition's exploration.
I'm still rather nervous about how they are going make exploration come alive that adds to the story rather than detracting from the game experience. Hopefully there will be side story content with interesting choices

Honestly with the settlement idea I'd be fine with just throwing down prefab buildings on a grid, then assigning a person to each via menu and let the resources roll in.

Hand placing walls, defenses, crops, furniture, etc.  is something that works for FO4, but Bioware shouldn't copy it.

Why do I have a feeling they got it as wrong as usual and are going to scrap out something good instead of true fillers DAI had?

i wouldn't go that far.

Like they "learned" from the mistakes of ME3's endings?

I'll believe it when I see it.

Yes, finally!  Are devs starting to see this?  That adding so much unnecessary padding just kills the pacing of the game?  Would you rather have an 80-hour game where 50% is just padding and fetch quests, or a 40-hour game that has deep quests and a cohesive story?  I've always preferred the latter, and that preference has become extremely apparent lately as the drive for open-world games has exploded.