Honestly, should Andromeda been a bit more alien?

Two conversations (and one rehashed conversation in ME 3  ) granted, but the Rachni were one of the few uniquely alien things we encountered. Every other species, like the Drell or the Turians, could have just been replaced with a human and practically nothing about them changes. The Rachni, Thorian and (pre-retconned) Geth were outliers that didn't have a direct 1:1 comparison with humanity. So yes, while the impact that an alien like the Rachni had on the overall trilogy was negligible, the were decidedly different than any of the other, interchangeable human-like aliens were. 

And I mean "sexually appealing" the the sense that they were specifically designed around being romance options. I have no real interest in banging a Turian or Angaran either and I never wanted to 'get busy' with the Rachni like you are implying. However, in looking at how things are written, especially with how the whole "Make Jal Bi" petition came about, it seems quite obvious that the Angara were designed to just be the new bangable aliens rather than as an attempt to try and explore a more 'alien' side to things.

As for the other aliens hinted at, they are no different than the hints of the Protheans in ME 1. Sure they're there, and we don't know anything about them, with the possibility of discovering more in the future, but that's wholly background noise to the current plot. We got to meet the Thorian and the Rachni in our quest to stop Saren in addition to the background hints of the Prothean empire. In Andromeda we only get vague hints that may or may not be explored in the future.

Look at the Remnant as a culture and a species... The building struggles and interactions with them are what you're describing as this "alien encounter" experience.  It evolves over the course of the game froma disastrous first attempt at communication that costs Alec Ryder his life to a series of mediated encounters through the vaults towards trying to understand why the Remnant attack, building a language database and learning to use the tools of their culture (the vaults).  Later on in the game, with what Ryder has learned through SAM, they even take SAM out of the picture to illustrate that he/she can, with a great deal of effort, now communicate with the Remnant on his/her own and that they can possible be allies against the Kett.  The Remnant as a species have been introduced in far more depth and with far more possible long-reaching consequences to a sequel than either the Rachni or the Thorian were in ME1.  The Jaardan are hinted at as the overarching creators of it all... and we don't yet know who they are either.  I also find it intriguing that the Remnant tech dates back only to a time just AFTER the geth device is used to scan the Andromeda Galaxy.  Are the Remnant something "geth" inadvertently introduced/uploaded via the beam emitted from that geth device.  Remnant is only PeeBees name for them... we don't yet know what they call themselves or how they really came into being.  There is just so much possibility here that you're missing by being so focused on a very particular type of alien and very particular type of story you're looking for in the game.

There is yet another intriguing thought coming from the "Is Voeld Screwed" thread - a note that the Remnant tech seems to be geared to being able to communicate only with species that have achieved Synthesis (which in effect may be what Alec Ryder did independently of the Crucible) by developing SAM as this symbiotic being within the head of a host human being.

Open up your mind.  Stop focusing on bashing the game for second... because there are possibilities here even way beyond what you're currently imagining.

Even the nomad banter continually hints at something more... I just got a  bit between PeeBee and Ryder on Eos:

Ryder: "I wonder what all these bits of Remnant tech used to be."
PeeBee: "Something even the Observers couldn't piece together."

So, here's an idea emerging that even the Remnant themselves don't truly understand their own history... something very "alien" to the ideas about AI introduced in the old Trilogy... that AI are so different from us because they arbitrarily understood who created them and why.

I think there is a lore explanation for that

The argument appears to be that, because bipedal humans evolved to the dominant species on Earth, all Earth-like planets should produce similar bipedal humans. Is that about right?

But most of the life on Earth isn't even bipedal. So, it's rare on our own planet...run the numbers and it should even be MORE rare as you examine larger samples. IE: Galaxy.

Also: someone had argued that the "cluster" of planets in ME:A were similar in viability to MW planets and that "physics are physics, wherever you are". This is a false assertion. Einstein himself postulated that it may be possible to get far enough away from Earth where all of the laws of physics are fundamentally changed. IE: 2+2=5.
Just some actual science to mix in with the opinions stated previously.
Also also: Have I ever pointed out how much the Remnant reminds me of the Forerunners?...and the Kett...religious cult bent on converting all species to their cause...wow...uh...don't you mean the Covenant?

PS: I can't like the post containing the "lore explanation" bit enough. If I could like it twice I would.


A thought: it seems like Bioware started ME:A with the intention of creating a new draw to the IP. What if, the reason ME:A was so controversial because in the middle of development some brainiac decided that the new features/races they were working on in ME:A would be better served as a new IP (*cough*Anthem) and that they could then use ME:A to feed the nostalgia demons?

Aside from the Exalted Plains and Hissing Wastes (Ironic) I disagree.  But I suppose there are worse things to disagree on.

Any future planets added via DLC really need to step away from the desert theme, I'll agree there. I'd love some kind of alien savannah, or a forest where the trees are immense and there is a lot of spacing between each so that we can drive through the forest. Just something a bit different.

No, that isn't the point being made.

The argument is that a common theme in the MEU so far has been that the universe favours bipedalism as a positive trait amongst intelligent species. This is even literally stated in the Mass Effect: Revelation when Anderson is musing on how odd Hanar are compared to the majority of citadel species. It's speculated as being a survival trait that various individual lines of evolution all tend to happen across due to he advantages it offers. Furthermore, the few intelligent species in the MW that aren't bipedal tended to evolve on planets that were in the extreme minority (Waterworld for hanar, massive rocky planet within the life zone and 3g+ gravity for Elcor), so statistically its actually a lot more likely by the existing data we have on the MEU.

Since Citadel species all evolved in an entirely isolated fashion, it stands to reason that the fact they're mostly bipedal means that undiscovered intelligent species are more likely to be bipedal than not. Or to put it a different way - the expectation that simply because it's a new galaxy means that new intelligent species need to be quadrapedal/hexapedal/something else is neither sensible nor is it relevant - as AlanC9 pointed out, from an evolutionary perspective, actual raw distance doesn't matter if the distances between the species' homeworlds are interstellar.

Actual raw occurances of Bipedalism across all the combined ecosystems in the MW may well be low, but no-one is arguing that. In fact, that's to be expected - if bipedalism is a common trait of intelligence then it would be less common as intelligent species are less common.

I mean, sure, I'd like some evil alien bugs or shadow monsters to fight as much as the next guy but there isn't any in-universe argument to demand them. 

That is one way to view the Remnant, and it would be amazing if that is indeed how the narrative explores them in the future.

Though if your theory about the Remnant is true, and that's all it is at this point: a theory, then they would be something more "high brow" than anything BioWare has ever done in the past. Not saying I wouldn't want that mind you, but if their previous track record is anything to go by, what with their continuous "humanization" of everything then I am honestly a bit dubious the writers of the 'B Team' would have just suddenly jumped to hard sci-fi levels of depicting a fractured artificial intelligence. One that operates and communicates on concepts of matter/anti-matter interactions, the internal mathematics of a black hole's singularity, or the possibility of parallel universes etc. Especially since the unofficial tagline for Andromeda during development was "Pretty Good Banging".



The insight I got from my playthrough was that the Remnant were just "simple machines". Sure the technology behind them is incredibly advanced, being able to completely alter the atmosphere and biosphere of an entire plant in a matter of seconds, but noting about them signifies that they are more than just mindless machines preforming a set task to me. Much like a Tier 2.5 Kardashev civilization's version of a roomba, the Remnant seem capable of making adjustments on the fly to changing conditions (see Voeld), but they still require an operator to turn them on, they still require user input to determine which parameters they should follow. If the Remnant truly had their own agency, then why would Ryder have to reboot the Vaults on planets devastated by the Scourge? It would seem that they would be concerned with the well being of the planet they were terraforming if they were sentient, but rather than attempting to fix what was wrong, they instead carried on with operations as normal: Patrol the vaults, attack intruders, and then, once a restart command is given, purge the system and begin reconfiguring the host plant to desired specifications. The Geth decided to repair Rannoch, the Remnant vaults fix their planets because they're ordered to.

The outcome of Alec Ryder's actions at the beginning of the game seemed to be more akin to a person not reading the safety instructions or following proper start-up protocol with a nuclear reactor, than any sort of "communication" between two sentient beings. Unless of course, one views the input/output dichotomy of typing on their keyboard, or depressing the switch on a toaster to be somehow "talking" to the inanimate object. Later, when Ryder has learned the rudiments of the Remnant designers' language, he/she can, without the aid of SAM, make "demands" of the machines in order to "convince" them to help in the fight against the Archon by issuing the proper system commands or pressing the proper sequence of figurative buttons.  


The Remnant seem more like a regimented Von Neumann Probe than anything (IMO), and just like how those hypothetical machines aren't truly sentient, neither are they. For an extreme example, take a look at another form of self-replicating machine, like nanites and the whole Grey Goo scenario envisioned in other science fiction stories. Those machines aren't actively hunting down everything, killing and converting people, plants, animals, and buildings into more of themselves because they are some sort of evil intelligence hell-bent on murdering others for laughs. They are just simple machines following a pre-set series of commands. Likewise, when the Remnant are seen warming up Voeld, it's because of their programing, not some innate, conscious act on their part.

Is Halo Wars 2 any good?

I played the first one and thought the campaign was okay, if a little bit cliche by Halo standards. At least the Arbiter got a tiny amount of screen time, certainly more than any of the aliens in more recent Halo games have received. I also really enjoyed the co-op feature they had in the first one, is that still in the second?

The Flood's potential return, might get me interested in the franchise again for the same reasons you said. It would be nice to see the narrative shift over to the Covenant's side of things and have them cast as heroic or at least protagonist-oriented characters.

Eh, I'm still on the fence about the capabilities of the new team. While there is certainly the possibility that we could get something nuanced and decidedly 'alien' out of the new games in future, chances are equally likely that we will get a setting even more watered down and human-centric as the series goes on. One need look no further than BioWare's own track record in that regard.

Both ME 1, and DA:O were far more nuanced and contained a noticeable diversity of human and non-human elements compared to the third title in the series. Sure, they expound more on the human side of things, and all of our "lovely" social/political issues , but all those 'other' things are either killed off, ignored, turned into running jokes, or retconned into becoming more like us. Judging by previous trends I'd say it's actually more likely that we will see less high brow concepts rather than more; especially with a writing team that apparently treats the light hearted camp-fest of the Citadel DLC as it's bible.

I would like to believe that we will have writers on the team not unlike Chris Le'Toile, who wished to explore science fiction concepts for their own sake as opposed to making any sort of a statement, or playing things off for a cheap laugh but I'm not quite convinced that we will get that.

Well to be fair the same things you mentioned can be said of all Alien movies. Also that planet wasn't LV426.

I like it. It's fun to play if you like RTS games. The story is pretty simple, but it sets up a new interesting antagonist group known as the Banished led by a Brute named Atriox. Yes co-op is still in the game. 

With the Awakening the Nightmare expansion pack, the one bringing back the Flood, you actually play as the Banished for those missions instead of playing as humans. And yeah, everyone is excited to see how and if the Flood come back into the main story, especially since Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2 are connected a bit.