DA fan gives ME:A a second chance (Text Based Let's Play)

SAM doesn't do everything. He's important for interfacing with Remenant tech. A lot of things were done thanks to Ryder.

he fixed every gadget, door, electronic we came across as well as did all of the hacking. wWhich, how else was I supposed to read people's personal email?   He translated in both directions.  he is literally the only reason we could do anything with the remnant. Only successful and heavy exposure gleaned Ryder a weakened self destructive method of interfacing with the Remnant that she claimed should never be repeated at the end game. 

He didn't walk, or shoot, and he very likely recorded all the sex I had as Ryder for all I know "to study."   I wish there had been a "personaly boundarieS" discussion.

Additionally, does his voice play from the Omni Tool or is there a speaker on your implant? I could never tell if people were patiently watching me have a conversation with myself or they could hear him too. 

I haven't really gone on about the non fighting comrades.

Kallo: the super excellent pilot who desperately loved his ship. Had a purpose in being there, and I liked his character. I was careful, but I managed to drag out most of his content over the span of the game. I don't know if he ever does find a hobby outside the ship, but I think he did learn to let go a little.

Gil: goofy engineer who improved the Tempest (although we only ever heard about these improvements, they didn't translate to anything in game.) I used up near all his content at the very start, then there was nothing until the very end. Had a purpose being there, I liked him alright. When he told me he was going to have a baby with Jill and co raise it with her, I did kinda be glad I didn't romance him. That sounds like a conversation that would never be handled to my satisfaction. mostly the him unilaterally deciding that part

Suvi: the very religious... science officer? The lady with the soothing voice who would randomly talk about planets you were approaching. I'm not against religious characters, but I feel like that was 95% of our conversation. Religious characters that I can think of that were handled better; Cassandra, Leliana, Thane. Even Sera's "I believe but don't want to think too hard about it" was better than how they depicted Suvi. I think her job tasks were redundant; all covered easily by a combination of Kallo, Gil, Lexi, and SAM, and heck, even Ryder. She seemed to belong more with Dr. Aridana and her team on the Nexus then on the Tempest. I feel like my last conversation with her as Ryder was purely there to make us butt heads rather than anything useful or illuminating about her as a person. Because it was "Be religious" or "try to be understanding of her religiousness" and she did NOT like the latter. Unless I was supposed to understand that she has a mean scowl and a sharp tongue. What's sad is that I thought she had a very pretty smile and a beautiful way of looking at the world. I agreed with that part strongly, but after the initial conversations, she seemed to button up pretty tight and mostly frown at me.

Lexi was very interesting and I didn't even get along with her. There were two times where I was outright mad at her, mostly for her psychology role. I wish she'd gotten more content... talking about the Angarans, the Kett. Even maybe that she feels out of place as a 200 year old that acts like a 600 year old and maybe admires Peebee's youthfulness a bit. Instead of that one weird conversation at the Vortex o.o She could have covered Suvi's role pretty easily, except for the "soothingly narrating your journey" part. that would have been out of place for the Ship's doctor.

At first yeah that's one of the only reasons why you were to at least speak to the Angara. However over time you proved than your worth.

My understanding from the Primus subplot is that the Archon hasn't been focused on actually exalting for the sake of exalting since he found the Remnant tech. HE decided that gaining enough power through the remtech so he can go back home to take over the Empire and become Emperor was #1 priority. And so he's just been exalting enough folks to keep his research going, and give a moderate appearance of actually doing his job.

The email I read (pretty sure) says he hasn't sent word back to the Empire in 30-40 years. 

Planets in Order of Like:

1. Voeld and Kadara are tied for first place. Voeld is more full of Angaran culture than Aya; I learned a lot about them there. Kadara was full of the darkness of humanity and was very Initiative centered. Both were pretty.

2. Eos for the feels of first successful outpost.

3. Elaaden: For endless Dunes my nomad flew over.

4. Aya: For being a city. Sort of. All we got to see was "Downtown", not anyone's homes.

5. Havarl is dead last. Which is sad, I do like the flying creatures and the sky. (Zerg infestation, better get that taken care of.) But the map, and everything upon it's floor, can just burn.

Bonus Mention to PB's LAva Planet. I liked it. I also kinda liked the Turian ex-planet.

Story Content:

As a stand alone, the remnant tech is weird and poorly done. Tie it to the Kett and the angarans, it starts being less dumb but no less mysteriously opaque. The Vaults were a chore. The Ship on Elaaden a massive disappointment. And we didn't even learn anything much about how those who created remtech lived or why in their very own city. Maybe now that I've landed on Meridian, I'll get to find out more? Makes me look forward to playing again next week.

I liked learning about the Angarans- it's too bad they're a half culturally destroyed race so even they are learning about themselves.

The Benefactor Mystery was introduced with no resolution. But I really don't get how it can still be important 600 years after the fact. Guess we'll find out in DLC or MEA2. Or they'll drop it, because it doesn't really matter?

The PAthfinder Ark ended up being excellent, although it made me rage when I first began. I hope to spend more time with the other Pathfinders, and wish there were more of them. I guess I throw the SAM/Alex Ryder mystery in there. My only complaint was getting Scott so late and even then, limited dialogue with him.  The game doesn't give you a chance to fix the whole injected needle thing before it bites you in the ass. 

I found the side quests, and even some of the tasks, to be .... entertaining in idea even if it still required me to go to XYZ location and destroy/collect/kill XYZ things. I felt compelled to do nearly all of them (the only non tasks I did not perform were Architects and Remnant Tiller and Aid APEX by scanning Enemies). There are a handful of completely stupid ones though "Plant samples, scanning rocks" comes to mind. There were tasks that seemed to need doing, like collecting KEtt intelligence and destroying their survaillence devices, but I didn't do them. Might do them as Scott. *shrug* There was one task quest for Dr Aridana that involved scanning 50 planets. It's interesting, I did that because I wanted to way before I even received the quest, but if I'd gotten it as an official Task, it would have made it more of a chore. The quest given by Qar sounded absolutely vital to morale, and I totally wanted to do it, went out of my way to complete it...then when I went back to him to talk about it, he was all like, "Ya, thanks for doing that." I would have liked some more feedback to it than that. But I supposed the knowledge of well informed colonists will just have to warm the cockles of my heart.

Edit Add: Oh ya. And the ambiguous warning threat from teh Archon: "You have destroyed yourself, thinking you were helping." Ominous. I liked learning about the Kett, even if I wanted to murder the Archon. 

Through the implant on their private channel and through the Omni-tool for others to hear.

happened to me too!

Quest wise I hated quests like Contagion for forcing you to go to so many different places. The vaults were fun at first but Voeld in particulars vault was frustrating and annoying. I didn't mind the scanning plants, rocks and planets as it made sense to build knowledge for the Initiative. They were also able to be done pretty much in the normal course of play. 

Scanning enemies was fine on casual but one of the most annoying things on hardcore. Why couldn't they just leave corpses their longer????

In general regarding quests, they just wasted too much time for no obvious result or benefit. That's another reason I liked Havarl, fewer quests and only a few fetch quests in a much smaller area. However the quests that involved random locations wre the by far the worst of the lot. Especially when they had no real conclusion like "Little Mouse" and just wasted so much time hoping that the next Outlaw/Raider/Scavenger camp would have a data pad or whatever it was you needed.

I hated Contagion because the woman HAD an Omni tool. You could see her phantom tring to use it at the Tram. But the option to call it, or the shuttle she stole, was never suggested. Additionally, The Tempest should be much faster than a shuttle, so it was absurd that she was so far ahead of us. 

Good to know. I didn't do little mouse, but if something as little as that doesn't even have an ending, I'll be sure to skip.

excellent. Now you know what to do when you start your speedrun.