Constructive Criticism of Andromeda.

but OP isn't wrong

OP has good reasons to dislike ME:A sure, but it's titled, "Constructive Criticism of Andromeda." Plus he never really explains why he dislikes the game, also putting "fans" in quotations like we aren't "true fans" which I have criticized fluffy/pouf for in the past. I mean, yes I disliked ME3's ending, did I like Andromeda? Yes. Am I condoning some of the mistakes made with the game? No. I'm sure there are plenty of people who disliked ME3's ending yet liked ME:A despite the flaws, but that doesn't mean we aren't "true fans" just like it doesn't mean that people who don't like ME:A aren't "true fans".

You lost me at constructive.

We'll take out the word "constructive" out and he won't be.

Prolly would require a bite on the bell end... from a turian. 

The more I think about how to fix the game, the more I think that the basic premise of the game is just flawed. No matter how you go about perfecting it, it will just not work well. The idea of having a exploration based gamed, in space, set at the tech/science level of Mass Effect just makes no sense.

1. Exploration
You need to have things to make exploration interesting. This right there is already huge challenge. It can't all be about scanning rocks, flowers and animal.You would need quests, which means you need to have NPC to give quests, locations for quests and generally some sort of setting for quest to make sense. Which also means you need to have aliens and ancient lost civ and what not fill your setting.

2. Space
Having the game being spaced based game just makes the scale of the problem unmanageable, given that mass effect is a third person shooter, meaning that you will spend bulk of the game controlling a character, not a space ship. If the game was high fantasy based, walking around an area makes perfect sense, no reason needed to stop and explore a cave as you walk by. If you are in space, you  don't happen to travel by an interesting place that you want to park your ship somewhere to explore, it just doesn't make sense. Exploration just don't happen organically, you always need to have a target or reason to get there in the first place, and to worth your time of getting out of your ship go on foot.

Now, say that we restrict exploration to planet side, like open sandbox. But this doesn't help because exploration on land is stupid if you have space ships. "What's over that mountain? Let's check it", "nah, lets just scan from orbit and fly there"

3. ME setting
ME universe makes the problem even worse because it insists on universe being realistic as oppose to artistic. Which means that if the galaxy is mostly uninhabited and empty, a freaking robotic probe should be the explorer. The lore already made it as if its exceedingly rare to have a densely packed region in area that we are allow to travel w/o Mass Relay, so what's there to explore really?

I suppose the could have wrote around the problem by establishing that the portion of andromeda galaxy is already populated and terreformed by space travelling civ, therefore there are tons of cities, ports, stations to see, and plenty of conflicts to make quests from. But that's not what they did.


Given the direction that they went of trying to make the player a pioneer type, it bound to suck. That's why the Kett/remnent BS had to be included, because pioneering is really boring if you make a game out of it. You can't shoot starvation, disease and loneliness in the head.

It could have been much more interesting if they went down a different path. No MW races already being all over the place, but a species that hadn't mastered space flight so far. It would have been hilarious and vastly more interesting if we stumbled over a friendly civilization stuck in the Middle Ages, so to speak. The culture shock alone would have made for many interesting dilemmas. What if we were needed to support them against something like the Kett instead of the already advanced Angarans.

There would have been millions of more interesting settings and scenarios if the devs would have shown a little more courage. The above only one of them.

Exploration isn't just about going new places and seeing new things. There's another aspect (definition) of the concept of exploration the game invites us to explore (word choice intentional).

thorough analysis of a subject or theme.
"an exploration of the religious dimensions of our lives"
synonyms: investigation, study, survey, research, inspection, examination, scrutiny, observation; consideration, analysis, review
"the exploration of space"

So they created this Pathfinder role to investigate what went wrong in the cluster and try to find some way to make it habitable. They did have essential sensor information about these worlds before they set boots on the ground.


They did fall to the old everything trying to kill you trope that open world games do too frequently, imho - where the wildlife is insta-hostile and plentiful. In any game that supports combat as gameplay, the devs always make sure you have plenty of that to do.

In any case, all things considered - I thought they did well with the themes.

Because people liking something you didn't is "delusion" and not simply difference of opinion. 

EDIT: TP sucks. Wet wipes are where it's at.

And nazi reference...   amazing.